Transition Québec

Smith unveils full slate, gets booted from council

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

A day after Transition Québec Leader and Limoilou Coun. Jackie Smith unveiled a full roster of candidates for City Hall, she was expelled from a city council meeting for breaching rules of conduct.

Nearly four years after her run for mayor as the head of an avowedly left-wing party, Smith’s feisty approach has earned her an eager following and, seemingly, the enmity of some fellow councillors.

On Aug. 25, Smith convened the media in Jardin Jean-Paul-L’Allier in Saint-Roch to announce her party had recruited candidates for all 21 districts, including many who decided to run for a second time under Smith’s leadership.

In introducing the candidates, she said, “We have assembled a strong, bold, dynamic team rooted in its community. The team has been on the ground for several weeks and the party’s funding is breaking a historic record. This demonstrates the enthusiasm for ideas that focus on fairness, solidarity and respect for the environment, and that respond to the challenges of our time.”

The next day, during a city council debate over the city administration’s public consultation program, council speaker Bianca Dussault ordered Smith to leave the chamber.

Smith had refused to withdraw an accusation that Cap- aux-Diamants Coun. Mélissa Coulombe-Leduc, member of the executive committee responsible for heritage, urban planning and tourism, was biased due to a job she had as a lobbyist prior to becoming a city councillor.

Coulombe-Leduc said, “I want her to withdraw the comments she just made, which have nothing to do with my role as a municipal councillor. If she wants me to dig into her past, I will do it.”

Dussault, describing Smith’s comments as “a rather personal attack,” ordered her to leave the meeting, which she did peaceably.

The council meeting was the second last before the official municipal election period starts on Sept. 17, leading to voting on Nov. 2. It’s an election Smith hopes will bring her, if not the mayor’s office, at least a larger contingent than her solo seat in Limoilou.

Smith said that “everything is different” from the last time around in 2021. “Recruitment is just so much easier. The fact that people know me, they know what we do … I’m a woman of action, and accessible, and people sort of feel close to me, feel like they can tell me their issues and I can help them.”

She said, “The four years of experience have been huge” and she’s learned “a lot more about how the system and the political dynamics work.” Plus, she said, the party has made “many gains” over that time in targeting issues and moving the administration forward on such matters as shelter for homeless people, protected bicycle paths and measures for parents at City Hall.

She said she has been effective despite being the lone Transition Québec councillor. “I have an idea and a lot of people say, well, no, it’s not possible. But in my four years, it almost always starts like that. I go in the media, I propose something publicly and then [Mayor] Bruno Marchand says immediately, ‘That’s impossible. You’re crazy.’ And then six months to a year later, it exists.”

In that vein, at the news conference to announce candidates, she denounced the Sept. 5 deadline for voters to change their address online. “The complexity of the process for changing addresses discourages young people from voting. It’s a structural obstacle that could be easily resolved.”

Smith is also calling for public transportation to be free on election day, as is the case in Lévis. “Voting should be simple and accessible for everyone. Free transportation on election day is a concrete measure to achieve this, and one that has already proven effective.”

As for her mayoral prospects in a field of at least four other credible candidates, Smith said she feels she has a “real chance” this time around; she finished fourth in 2021, with 12,000 votes, 6.6 per cent of the total.

She had initially been concerned about the impact of former provincial Liberal minister Sam Hamad, “because he’s a big name,” but said he has not lived up to billing, having failed to recruit a full slate of candidates only a couple of weeks before the campaign starts.

Smith, the mother of two young children, is a native of Hamilton, Ont., and has lived in Quebec City since 2006. She has several links to the English-speaking community, including with the Quebec Art Company and the Morrin Centre, where she is currently a member of the governing council.