Quebec’s third-largest city is also going to the polls in November. Cast in the shadow of Montreal’s race, Laval has three candidates facing off on issues ranging from aging infrastructure to bike paths. Incumbent mayor Stephane Boyer is only 37, but says he’s accomplished a lot during his first mandate. “The first time I ran in 2021, what we proposed the citizens was to realize all the projects we had been talking for so long in Laval that were not done yet in terms of sports infrastructure, community access to shore, so on and so forth,” he says. “Now, all those projects are either done or on the way.” If re-elected, Boyer promises to focus on basic services like maintaining infrastructure, streets and parks “to make sure they’re clean, they’re well done, they’re safe.” But Boyer is facing two opponents. Frederic Mayer currently leads the opposition with Action Laval. He says Boyer failed to deliver on his 2021 promises. “If you’re looking at the actual finances of the city, we can see that they are the actual team in power, completely lost control of the finances of the city,” he says. If elected mayor, he says he’ll invest in missing infrastructure that the current administration has ignored. “And what we’re talking about is a soccer field that kids can access from walking distance from their home. Now they have to take the bus or ask their parents to bring them to go play soccer,” says Mayer. The second opposition is led by Claude Larochelle of Parti Laval, who is running with an unusual slogan. “The boring, boring, boring,” he says. “Because I want to take care of the boring things. Because in this city, after 12 years of administration of Mr. Boyer, nobody is taking care of the boring things.” Boring things, he says, include the underground water network, which he calls inadequate, adding that several parts of the city now flood every time there’s heavy rain. “So when the rainfall sewer was overflooded, instead of going in the basin, they just overflowed on the street and the homes around,” Larochelle says. “We need to put more money in maintaining our underground system, and we need to build a new basin.” That work alone would cost the city $800 million. All three candidates say they’ll invest in it. There are other divisive issues, like garbage collection, housing, and bike paths. Boyer says he won’t stop building more of them. “A lot of cities are doing bike paths for a good reason. Because it’s good for health, for the environment, for air pollution,” he says. Mayer, on the other hand, wants to stop their expansion. “When we get in power, a moratorium on developing new bicycle paths. It’s just, it has to stop,” he says. Meanwhile, Larochelle says they need to be reassessed, saying there are two bike lanes in an industrial sector. Last municipal election, the participation rate in Laval was 28 per cent, one of the lowest in Quebec. One thing the three candidates agree on is that more people need to get out and vote.
