Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante participates in the Adaptation Futures 2023 Conference on Oct. 3, 2023. Plante says she won't be running for a third term and will quit municipal politics at the end of this term in 2025.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, the first woman to hold the office, announced Wednesday that she will not seek a third term in next year’s municipal elections.
“Politics has never been a career choice for me, I’ve always seen it as a way of changing the world,” Ms. Plante said during a brief news conference at city hall Wednesday. “And my world, for the past 30 years, has been Montreal.”
Ms. Plante said she would finish her current term, but “recently realized that I was not able to guarantee Montrealers four more years with the same level of energy that I have always given.” She said not running again was a “heartbreaking decision.”
Municipal elections are scheduled for Nov. 2, 2025, in Montreal and across the province. A leadership race for Projet Montréal, Ms. Plante’s party, will begin in the coming months, she said.
Originally from Rouyn-Noranda, Que., Ms. Plante moved to Montreal to study anthropology and museology at the Université de Montréal.
First elected as a municipal councilor in 2013, Ms. Plante became mayor in 2017. She was re-elected in 2021, beating former federal cabinet minister and former mayor Denis Coderre for the second time, and this time by a wider margin.
During her tenure, Montreal significantly expanded its bike path network, becoming a North American leader in cycling infrastructure, and introduced several temporary pedestrian-only streets that became a fixture of the city’s vibrant summers.
Ms. Plante also faced significant challenges, including navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and its dire effects on transit revenues, a now permanent housing shortage and increasingly visible homelessness.
While Ms. Plante boasted about the revitalization of commercial arteries such as Saint-Catherine Street, this and other long-lasting, poorly co-ordinated construction sites downtown irritated commuters and business associations.
The last few months appeared to take a toll on her health. In December, she collapsed in the middle of a new conference from what her staff described as “malaise”, but she seemed to recover quickly.
A frequent target of right-wing pundits’ vitriol and sexist insults online, Ms. Plante blocked comments under her posts on X in September in an attempt to curb hateful speech.
On Wednesday, Ms. Plante said she will continue to work hard to provide better transportation options for Montrealers, tackle homelessness and make the city’s infrastructure more climate resilient.
“I won’t be slowing down,” she said. “Actually, it will be quite the opposite. Just watch me.”
Quebec Premier François Legault thanked Ms. Plante for her service on X. “Her love for her city has been evident throughout her political commitment,” he wrote.
Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand also said Ms. Plante’s commitment to Montreal has been sincere.
“She has initiated significant changes and has made the entire province of Quebec shine,” he wrote on X. “It has been a true privilege to share this journey with you.”
With a report from The Canadian Press