As Canada’s voters prepared themselves for a national election at the end of April last year, the Laval region’s Conservatives announced that Konstantinos Merakos would be running for the Laval-Les-Îles seat for the Conservatives.
Merakos, a lawyer and a graduate of McGill University and the London School of Economics and Political Science, also obtained law degrees from the University of Montreal and the University of Ottawa.
He said he felt certain the Conservatives could win Laval-Les-Îles, which has long been a Liberal fortress. He said a particular concern raised by many Laval residents he’d heard from was rising crime, including car thefts, household break-ins, extortions and fire bombings.
In the meantime, incumbent Vimy Liberal MP Annie Koutrakis maintained that new Liberal leader Mark Carney had succeeded in changing the party overnight following the departure of Justin Trudeau.
“We are now back to what we should always be and what Canadians are: in the centre economically and politically,” she told a gathering for her campaign launch.
“We believe in a strong economy to make our people better off,” she said. “And a strong economy to finance the social programs and defenses we need. That’s where elections are won. If you have to find anyone in the world to fit the moment, it would really be hard to do better than Mark Carney.”
Laval’s incumbent Liberal MPs seemed to agree about their party’s newest Laval-area candidate. As far they were concerned, Carlos Leitão would be an asset to a future Liberal government.
Supporters, family and friends of the former Quebec Liberal finance minister crowded into Leitão’s Autoroute 440 campaign headquarters to help launch his bid to win the riding of Marc-Aurèle-Fortin in the April 28 election.
In an informal address to the gathering of more than 50, Leitão was quick to get straight to the point as to why he’s running: the U.S. and its punishing tariffs.
“We will have to readjust, restructure, redirect the Canadian economy,” he said. Leitão, as well as Koutrakis, Laval-Les-Îles MP Fayçal El-Khoury and Alfred-Pellan Liberal MP Angelo Iacono, all ended up winning their House of Commons seats.
Since spring is a time for planting seeds and encouraging growth, it was fitting that officials from the City of Laval and four Montreal-area higher education institutions chose a day in April to sign an agreement to form a consortium aimed at building a college and university campus near the city’s expansive Carré Laval.
