And they’re off! City Hall campaign begins with feud between Hamad and Villeneuve
Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
peterblack@qctonline.com
The signs are going up, candidates are filing their papers and voters are being asked to reflect and choose who they want to run their towns and cities.
Quebec City, along with some 1,100 other municipalities in the province, is now engaged in an election campaign that will culminate with the election of new civic representatives on Nov. 2.
So far six candidates have declared themselves in the running for mayor: incumbent Bruno Marchand of Québec Forte et Fière; Claude Villeneuve, leader of Québec d’Abord and councillor for Maizerets-Lairet; Jackie Smith, leader of Transition Québec and councillor for Limoilou; Sam Hamad, leader of Leadership Quebec and a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister and MNA for Louis-Hébert; Stéphane Lachance, entrepreneur and leader of Respect Citoyens; and Anne Guérette, an architect, former city councillor and past mayoral candidate, who is running as an independent although she has registered a party name, Parti du monde.
Even before the 45-day campaign began officially on Sept. 19, two candidates were engaged in a skirmish of personal attacks. Villeneuve accused Hamad of intimidation for allegedly saying to him at an event in April, “Be careful with your criticism of me, because you have two beautiful little girls.”
Villeneuve said Hamad repeated the comment at another event. There were no witnesses at either occasion to corroborate Villeneuve’s claim. Hamad asked Villeneuve to withdraw the accusation, which he said amounted to defamation.
It was not the only accusation of intimidation aimed at Hamad last week. Karine Gagnon, the veteran Journal de Québec reporter and municipal affairs columnist, wrote a piece in which she said Hamad “has taken the liberty, during and outside of his press briefings, of attacking my integrity and my reputation, as well as those of the Journal de Québec.”
In another incident in a rocky start to his campaign, Hamad’s candidate in the Saint-Roch–Saint-Sauveur district, restaurant owner Napoléon Woo, went on a rant against the problem of home- lessness in the district.
“Homelessness should be a period of transition, not a culture where you eat for free, you get free housing, you get free clothes … No one died of cold or hunger,” Woo said, as Hamad listened uneasily and then intervened. (Editors’ note: Napoléon Woo is no longer the party’s candidate in Saint-Roch-Saint-Sauveur. On the afternoon of Sept. 22, as this newspaper went to press, Hamad announced that the party had “put an end to” his candidacy.)
On a more positive note for Leadership Québec, the party now has city council candidates in 20 of the 21 districts. A last-minute change saw Patrick Paquet, most recently the non-elected leader of the now-defunct Équipe Priorité Québec (EPQ) party, become the party’s candidate in the Les Saules- Les-Méandres district after Lydie Pincemin withdrew for health reasons. As of this writing, the party has a full slate of candidates, except for Woo’s recently vacated district of Saint-Roch-Saint-Sauveur.
The only other established party not to have a full slate is Villeneuve’s Québec d’Abord, which, as of this writing, was still short six candidates.
Respect Citoyens, meanwhile, has a full slate for its first run at City Hall, including Eric Ralph Mercier, former ÉPQ councillor, former Liberal MNA for Charlesbourg and son of longtime Charlesbourg mayor Ralph Mercier. He’s running in the Des Monts district.
Another notable recruit for the party is Anne-Laurence Harvey in the Loretteville– Les-Châtels district. Harvey is the daughter of Luc Harvey, the former Conservative MP for Louis-Hébert. She has a claim to fame in being the first girl to score a touchdown as a quarterback when she played for the St. Patrick’s High School Fighting Irish football team.
With the election campaign just underway, a poll in Le Soleil had some good and some worrisome news for Marchand and his bid for a second term. The survey by the SOM firm found 51 per cent of respondents were satisfied with his work as mayor, the highest level in two years and a major uptick since a low of 36 per cent two years ago.
However, in a somewhat counterintuitive finding, 50 per cent of those polled felt it was time for a change at City Hall. The poll also found Marchand’s approval rating is less positive in the suburbs, particularly in Charlesbourg, Beauport and La Haute-Saint-Charles.
In the 2021 election, QFF won four of its six seats in downtown districts.
It was not by coincidence, then, that Marchand officially launched his campaign Sept. 19 at a historic site in Charlesbourg.
“We’ve achieved a lot in four years, and there’s still a lot to do. There’s momentum in Quebec City, and we want it to continue. We’re not going to take anything for granted,” Marchand said.
In 2021, Marchand beat Marie-Josée Savard, the inheritor of former mayor Régis Labeaume’s party which later became Québec d’Abord, by 834 votes.
With files from QCT staff