On the campaign trail: Plante touts record on disabilities, Coderre promises more police

Ensemble Montreal mayoral candidate Denis Coderre addresses media during a campaign event on Thur., Aug. 12, 2021.

MONTREAL — Following Wednesday night's debate, some of Montreal's mayoral candidates were back on the trail on Thursday, introducing new candidates.

Incumbent mayor Valerie Plante announced that Laurence Parent will be joining her slate. Parent, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University also holds a PhD in humanities from that school and conducts research into the exclusion of disabled people in Quebec. She has also served on the STM's board of directors for the past four years.

Plante said Parent will help Projet Montreal do more for inclusion of the disabled population.

“We need to more and better. I feel like we're in a great position moving forward with this issue with Laurence Parent joining us today,” she said.

Parent said she hopes her candidacy will “inspire other disabled people to go into politics.”

“We don't have enough disabled officials. It's an issue and we need to talk about it more.”

Meanwhile, Denis Coderre was also out to introduce new Ensemble Montreal candidates.

The one and possibly future mayor responded to the city's recent spate of gun violence by denouncing the defunding police movement, saying that “Police are not the problem, they are the solution.”

“If we're all working together, everyone has a role to play,” he said. “When I (was mayor) we had a budget of $5.2 billion, now it's $6.1 billion. For God's sake, they have the money for the resources, so explain to me why we still have a shortage of 253 police?”

Montrealers will go to the polls for the municipal election on Nov. 7.