After a big victory, Valérie Plante returns as Montreal mayor with even bigger challenges ahead

Valérie Plante is back for another four years. It has been a remarkable run for a politician who burst onto the scene in 2017, upsetting veteran politician Denis Coderre to become mayor of the second largest city in Canada.

In her rematch with Coderre, Plante offered up a more tempered set of proposals than she had the first time around, when she grabbed attention with her idea for a new Metro line, a heightened focus on the environment and a promise to get the traffic-clogged city moving again.

Still, there was no shortage of promises in 2021, and, after four years in power, she demonstrated a more seasoned approach to politics.

Under the banner of Projet Montréal, a growing progressive force in city politics, she presented herself as the best candidate to steer the city through what she called the "ecological transition" to counter climate change, with more money for public transit, an expanded network of bike lanes and a pledge to plant half a million more trees over the next decade.

Her platform still cites the proposed Pink Metro line, but after failing to secure funding from the provincial and federal government during her last mandate, she barely mentioned it during the campaign.

The party's strongest support remains where it started, in the city's densely populated, trendy Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, where residents welcomed cycling-friendly planning and traffic-calming measures, but it has also succeeded in gaining support in the city's more car-reliant outer reaches.

Given the rising price of housing in a city not long ago envied for its low cost of living, Plante also pledged to create 60,000 affordable housing units by 2030 and bring in new measures to prevent landlords from illegally hiking the rent or kicking tenants out to flip the property.

And, in a bid to fend off Coderre, who played up a spike in gun violence over the summer, she pledged to hire 250 more police officers even though members of her party had called for reforms to the service.

Her candidacy clearly struck a chord.

After a race in which Plante and Coderre were neck and neck in opinion polls throughout most of the campaign, Plante secured 52 per cent of the vote Sunday night, 14 percentage points more than Coderre. Her party is also projected to have a majority of seats on council.

The question now becomes: what will she do with this opportunity?

The city, it should be said, faces immense financial challenges. Hit hard by the pandemic, the city was bailed out in 2020 by the Quebec government to the order of $263 million and, even though it's facing its own budget challenges, the province will likely need to do so again. 

The city's public transit service, the STM, also warned it's facing a budget shortfall and could be forced to cut back services.  

In an interview with CBC News after her victory, Plante singled out housing as the number one priority, because it was "priority for Montrealers and it's ours as well."