Soraya Martinez Ferrada, leader of Ensemble Montréal, will become Montreal’s next mayor, CBC News has projected.
Martinez Ferrada, who is of Chilean descent, makes history Sunday as the first racialized person to be elected mayor of Montreal.
She moved to Montreal as a political refugee in 1980, fleeing the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet when she was only eight years old.
The former MP is the second woman to become mayor of the city, after outgoing mayor Valérie Plante. She resigned from Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in February, shortly after which she announced her run for the leadership of Ensemble Montréal.
“The desire to serve the city that welcomed the young refugee from Chile, to serve the city that gave me my start in politics, is one that is too important for me to ignore,” Martinez Ferrada said in her resignation letter addressed to Trudeau.
The last time a leader of Ensemble Montréal was elected mayor was in 2013, when Denis Coderre, another former Liberal MP, was at the helm of the party.
Martinez Ferrada campaigned on a platform that prioritized accessibility to housing and a promise to end homelessness by the end of a first term.
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As of 4:30 p.m. ET Sunday, Élections Montréal estimated voter turnout to be at 27 per cent. Polls closed at 8 p.m. ET.
About 38 per cent of eligible voters in Montreal cast a ballot in the last election in 2021 — four percentage points less than the number recorded in 2017.
More to come.
