Former Montreal mayoral candidate makes jump to provincial politics, starts own party

Former Montreal mayoral candidate Balarama Holness is now jumping into the Quebec provincial election race. On Wednesday, he announced he’s launching a new provincial party: Mouvement Québec.

Holness spoke to CityNews and provided the details of what his new party will look like and how it will operate.

What is Mouvement Québec, in a nutshell? 

The party is much more for all Quebecers and all Montrealers, as opposed to simply for just English Montrealers or Quebecers. We’re looking to have candidates in the greater Montreal area in particular, and also possibly areas like Sherbrooke, even in the national capital region where I am here.

And we are really using the municipal work that we did as a launchpad to promote Mouvement Québec to really ensure that Montrealers have representation at the National Assembly. And that’s going to be our main focus.

What did you learn from Montreal’s mayoral race and how will it apply ahead of the Oct. 3 election?

Yes, a better balance of air game and ground game, which is we had a lot of media presence, if you will, but more boots on the ground. And that’s going to be essential for us to win, particularly on the east of the island.

We did a lot of analysis in regards to data to see who the demographic is, who was voting for us. And now we have a great sense of who those individuals are, and that’s who we’re going to be targeting in order to get victory come October.

How do you think Mouvement Québec will impact Dominique Anglade and the provincial liberals?

Yeah, well, for sure we’re going to have an impact. It remains to be seen. And I’ll leave that to the political analysts to analyze that. But for us, the reason why we’re running is because Montrealers were inspired by what we started at the municipal level.

That spark and that drive, that fire remains. And now we want to continue the movement on the provincial. So I think that’s going to be our main focus and the impact we have, whether it’s on Dominique Anglade or Francois Legault. That is a side note.

READ MORE: Q&A with Montreal mayoral candidate Balarama Holness (May 27, 2021)

Balarama Holness in Quebec City on April 20, 2022. (Credit: Stefano Nichele)

What exactly is your goal for this new party?

Well, the goal is to get representation at the National Assembly. So we’ve targeted about 10 different areas from NDG to Westmount to St Louis to D’arcy McGee, Saint-Jacques and many others. And we want to get elected. The first run as political entrepreneurs, almost like a start-up, I got 30,000 votes. The team total got 100,000. Now we’re counting on all those Montrealers to go out and help us actually get individuals elected and to give Montrealers a voice at the National Assembly.

How will you capture the votes of Quebecers?

Well, the same way we did at the municipal level. Sticking to our values, sticking to our policies, advancing equity, fairness, justice. Speaking about the issues, key policies from the economy to the environment to housing to issues of language, issues of culture. That’s how we’re going to do it by sticking to our values and staying authentic.