Breaking down Ensemble Montréal’s election victory

Soraya Martinez Ferrada and Ensemble Montréal are taking over city hall for the next four years after Sunday night’s election victory.

While the results remain unofficial, Martinez Ferrada was elected with 43 per cent of the vote.

CityNews breaks down the result with Daniel Tran, the director in communications and governmental relations at Casacom.

What did you make of her win last night?

What I’m seeing in this is that Montrealers wanted change and I think in this case Soraya Martinez was able to put the change forward and communicate on that aspect that she represents the change that Montrealers need.

So do you feel that Montrealers voted her in or were they voting Projet Montréal out?

In this case I think they were voting Projet Montréal out. However, Soraya Martinez has a great opportunity right now because a lot of people wanted Projet Montréal out, but she has an opportunity to tackle the issues right now, especially with winter coming, with homelessness. There’s a lot of protests at the same time with the collective agreement being negotiated. At the same time she has to come back, she did mention in her campaign, getting back to basics. And in August there was the general auditor’s report that came out with many issues including the roads, including the tracking of equipment for firefighters. So in this case of course a lot of promises are there, and the expectations are high, but if Soraya Martinez is able to succeed, it’s a win for all Montrealers.

At the beginning of the night on Sunday, she was leading with about 20 per cent and Luc Rabouin was trailing quite far behind. He then managed to catch up with just about under 10 per cent difference. Were you surprised with that lead?

I’m not surprised because in this case, unlike the last election, it was a completely different race. We had Action Montréal with Gilbert Thibodeau, they got around 10 per cent. Transition Montréal came in and took about eight per cent of the vote as well. Some people think that if Transition Montréal wasn’t there, maybe that vote would have gone on to Projet Montréal. But the reality is that you can never be in the voter’s mind, right? So the transference is not necessarily automatic. So in this case, I think it’s fair to say that Ensemble Montréal and Soraya Martinez won fair and square.

One thing that people were quite shocked about was in NDG, Stéphanie Venezuela, she won by a big margin. People thought maybe that was going to be a Projet stronghold and they ended up going to Ensemble Montréal. What did you make of that?

I’m not surprised at all because back in 2021, there were two factors. Number one, there was a recount, so it was very tight already. Second of all, there was a Balarama (Holness) effect with his party at the moment, right? And in this case, Stéphanie Valenzuela, she’s really well known in the community. On top of that, she recruited very good candidates as well.

READ: Montreal mayor and borough election results

And I’m expecting a recount from Projet Montréal as well because in Côte-des-Neiges, last time I saw the result, it was only two votes separating Projet Montréal and Ensemble Montréal with Yvonne Nguyen, which is a really well-known person in the Vietnamese community. So I’m not surprised at all. They really put all the efforts out there.

What do you think Montreal is going to expect in her first 100 days? She’s promised a lot of things. Do you think she can really carry and pull through with what she’s promised?

We hope so because right now, challenges are high, not only from Montreal, but all cities all across Quebec. Winter is coming, so definitely the first issue to tackle will be homelessness. There’s going to be a crisis happening imminently. And then after that, she did promise to accelerate things for housing too. She described herself as she wants the city to act as a promoter. So hopefully she’s able to tackle the issues for the housing crisis. And like I mentioned, ultimately, it’s back to basic needs, right? So roads, infrastructure, following for the firefighters’ equipment, these are things that Montrealers expect from the city to be able to put forward. And let’s see what she can do in her team.