Montreal has a new political party as we move towards the local elections later this year in November. Former football player and current activist Balarama Holness is the head of a new party called Movement Montreal (MM) which is branding itself as Montreal's most diverse party. One of the criticisms of the current political system in Montreal and in Quebec for that matter is the lack of racial diversity in the halls of power.
Mouvement Montreal under Holness has come to the forefront of trying to field candidates that look like Montreal and that speak like Montrealers. Meaning that not all candidates will speak French as a mother tongue as Anglophones and Allophones need to have a voice in this city and Movement Montreal has leaped to the fore at trying to put that metric of diversity out there in the form of candidates. We all know that language is always a political hot topic in Quebec and it will surely be during this local campaign as MM has called for making Montreal a bilingual city. If you are from Montreal you know how difficult of a sale that will be and it might take votes away from MM but we also know that on the streets of this city you will hear French, English along other languages being spoken by the people who live here. There is a reason why Franglais is a word in Montreal.
The progressive nature of MM will be something to look into if you are a voter in the city of Montreal. We need new voices and different voices, so far the candidates of MM provide that both racial and linguistically and there is more to come as MM have pledged to have a candidate in every single district in the city, which means 102 candidates for a party that is only a few months old preparing for a city election only 4 months away as they go up against the incumbent mayor and a former mayor trying to reclaim the top job.
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