Nouveau Montreal

Nouveau Montréal (abbreviation: NM; English: New Montreal) was a municipal political party in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from 1998 to 2001. The party was led by Jacques Duchesneau, who was also its candidate for mayor in the 1998 municipal election.

Duchesneau announced the formation of Nouveau Montréal on 29 April 1998, shortly after standing down from a four-year term as the city's police director. At the time, public opinion polls in Montreal showed Duchesneau leading incumbent mayor Pierre Bourque and all other potential candidates for the position. Duchesneau's control of Nouveau Montréal was never in question, and some critics charged that it was more his personal electoral vehicle than a proper political party.

Sitting city councillors Jack Chadirdjian, Germain Prégent, Marie Lebeau, Pierre Gagnier, Louise Roy, and Robert Laramée joined Nouveau Montréal soon after its founding, giving the party representation from both the centre-right and centre-left. This allowed the party to become the Official Opposition on council on 25 May 1998, with Chadirdjian serving as leader of the party's council grouping. Independent councillor Michael Applebaum joined the party shortly thereafter, and Philippe Bissonnette also joined before the election. Another councillor, Thérèse Daviau, decided against seeking re-election and did not join the party, but supported it from the outside.

Duchesneau focused Nouveau Montréal's campaign on tax reform, decentralized government services, and urban renewal to prevent a flight to the suburbs. He stated his opposition to privatizing essential municipal services (though allowing for the privatization of the city's real-estate corporations), promised five hundred units of social and co-operative housing and a task force on public transformation, and said that he would not promote expensive mega-projects. On labour issues, he promised not to lay off blue-collar workers and to reassign municipal service workers by geographical area rather than department. Duchesneau promoted socially liberal views, and his party's candidates included anti-poverty activists and representatives of the city's LGBT community.

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