Mayor Denis Coderre said he is taking steps toward having gender parity at City Hall.
His party is running 46 female candidates out of 103 positions in borough and city councils, and said that if he is re-elected, his executive committee will be 50-50 male and female.
Currently the executive committee is composed of eight men and four women.
"If you want to make sure that you represent what Montreal is all about, you have not only to be on the ground, you have to listen to the people and make sure that you have the right people at the right place. These candidates are the right people at the right place. There are a lot of people who wanted to have them as candidates, and they chose to join our administration," said Coderre.
In 2013, Montrealers elected 59 men and 44 women as councillors.
In addition to more elected officials, Coderre said he wants more female employees and managers working for the city, as well as more female firefighters.
He's promising family-friendly policies in order to encourage women, said Team Coderre candidate Tiffany Callender.
“Politics wouldn't have been an option without this type of support,” she said. “I'm a mother of three. I'm an active mother three, so it's important that if these things are taken into consideration. This is why I'm able to choose this team, because it's my life right now.”
Meanwhile Valerie Plante said she wonders what took Coderre so long, saying Projet Montreal is the real feminist party.
“We have half women, half men for borough mayors, city councilors and borough councilors and our executive committee will have the parity,” she said.
Meanwhile Coalition Montreal continues to deal with the fallout from one of its candidates’ remarks.
On her personal Facebook account, Orchard claims that she hates radical feminists, speaks against the women’s march against the election of Donald Trump, and in one post says she’s upset by women trying to change the term “rape.”
In unsubtle terms, Orchard asserts there’s a difference between a woman who gets drunk and assaulted, and someone who get violently raped.
Another target: feminists who try to convince themselves that obesity is beautiful: “Something to make you vomit,” she posted.
Coalition Montreal leader Marvin Rotrand did not remove Orchard as a candidate, although he said she has rough edges and tried to justify Orchard's comments by referring to her as “working class.”
Women’s group Femmes du monde condemned both Orchard and Rotrand due to their comments.
“Just because I'm from a community group or a working class -- I'm not from university -- it doesn't mean I'm not able to do my job in the right way,” said Patrizia Vinci, of Femmes du monde.
Plante wants more car sharing downtown
Meanwhile on the campaign trail, Plante is pushing to have more car-sharing vehicles available in the city's downtown core.
The companies that rent cars by the minute, Car2Go and Communauto, are able to park their vehicles throughout several boroughs, but in the Ville Marie borough they have had to make arrangements with private parking lot owners because the city only permits car-sharing vehicles to park in spots with electric charging stations.
"Elsewhere it can be a mix, but here it was a restriction decided by the administration to limit it to electric cars. And not only this is not good for mobility, but it's not good for the economy. And Projet Montreal, we want to support small businesses. We want to support businesses like Car2Go, and Communauto. We want to cut the red tape," said Plante.
