Projet Montréal campaign manager leaves to join rival party

The official start of campaigning for the next Montreal municipal election begins Friday. But things are already heating up with mayoral debates and a high-profile departure in a major party campaign.

Earlier this week, the campaign manager for Projet Montréal, Julie Bélanger, left her position to join Transition Montréal, the new party founded by mayoral candidate and city councillor Craig Sauvé. 

“When she reached out to me after having left Projet Montréal, I did not take half a second to say ‘yes, absolutely I want to work with you,’” Sauvé said.

“She will be coordinating top-level decision making at our party and top-level strategy. So she’s one of my most important confidants,” he added.

Ensemble Montréal party leader and mayoral candidate Soraya Martinez Ferrada reacted to Bélanger’s departure from her leading rival and said, “I’ve worked with [Bélanger] for a long time. I’m very surprised and that’s the only thing I would say.”

Projet Montréal leader and mayoral candidate Luc Rabouin said that Bélanger’s departure was involuntary. “I asked her to leave because we have an issue about the climate within our team. So we had to make this decision,” he said.

Bélanger declined to comment on whether she was let go.

The sudden change in campaign leadership of Projet Montréal comes just before Rabouin took the stage for another mayoral debate Thursday with Martinez Ferrada hosted by the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations (CORIM). 

The debate covered international issues: Montreal, a welcoming city; Montreal facing a new global reality; and Montreal on the international stage.

During the debate, Martinez Ferrada said that Montreal hasn’t been very ambitious when it came to international issues.

“We have not been very vocal on the international level. And we should be more vocal because I really believe that Montreal has what the world needs right now. A city that’s vibrant, a city that can have a quality of life, can give you a good job because we’re in very strategic sectors,” she added.

Rabouin said that the ongoing trade war with the U.S. was “a very problematic situation.”

“We have small businesses that are used to work with the United States and they have to find other markets. So we have to accompany them to be sure that they find other markets for them,” he said.

Sauvé, who was excluded from the CORIM debate, presented his vision when it came to international relations, earlier in the morning.

“The first being, to be the place of welcoming for the Americans who are trying to flee from Trumpism. Two, to be the academic city of excellence around the world, to attract the best thinkers and researchers from around the world. And three, to show our solidarity with actions to the victims of genocides that are underway in Palestine and Ukraine.”

Montrealers head to the polls on Nov. 2.