Old Brewery Mission President and CEO James Hughes will run with the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) in the upcoming fall election. Liberal Leader Charles Milliard made the announcement Thursday afternoon. The longtime advocate for Montreal’s homeless population is slated to run in the riding of Vaudreuil, replacing Marie-Claude Nichols, who has represented the area since 2014. “It was the time for me to say, ‘OK, I want to start thinking about how to change the rules, not just live within the current rules,’” Hughes told reporters. Though he is not from Vaudreuil, Hughes grew up in the West Island. As his parents live in Hudson, he said he’s often in the area, but admitted he still has a lot to learn about the riding. A lawyer by training, Hughes previously led the Old Brewery Mission from 2004 to 2008 before departing to work for the Department of Social Development at the Government of New Brunswick. He later returned to Montreal to serve as president of the Graham Boeckh Foundation and executive lead and senior fellow at the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation before once more taking the helm at the Old Brewery Mission in 2020. Homelessness a key issue Milliard said he is hoping to tap into Hughes’s experience and knowledge of the homelessness crisis to develop a strategy on the topic, which he said will be a priority on the campaign trail. “We will unveil a concrete [plan] that will be designed to address the urgent needs on the ground because, obviously, hopefully, this will be a main issue that will be discussed,” said Milliard. Hughes added he is calling for transformational change to solve homelessness. “We need to see homelessness go down, otherwise we know what’s going to happen - hospital emergency rooms are going to be even fuller with homeless people than they are now,” he said. “Everyone here probably has been to see the encampment in the east end of Montreal. It’s getting bigger and bigger. Right now, it’s largely the municipalities who are all by themselves doing it.” Former Quebec premier Daniel Johnson said Hughes’ candidacy is timely and it speaks to Milliard’s ability to recruit. “It shows that Charles Milliard can attract wonderful talent. People have confidence in him. They trust what he can do for Quebec and they want to join him,” he said. When asked about Hughes, Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said, “Any Montrealer, any Quebecer that puts his name forward to run in an election, I salute that.” “We’ll see what happens. I think we share the same objective in terms of addressing homelessness... It’s an issue that we can no longer not talk about and resolve, and whoever is at the Government of Quebec will have the full collaboration of our administration to do that.” Hughes previously tried his hand at federal politics, running with the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 2015 in the riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount. He lost to Liberal incumbent Marc Garneau. Hughes currently co-hosts Difference Makers, a weekend radio show with Welcome Hall Mission CEO and President Sam Watts on CJAD 800. “James Hughes will provide valuable expertise related to housing in the National Assembly, and it is terrific that he has decided to run in Vaudreuil,” he told CTV News, noting that he was aware of his co-host’s intentions. The Quebec election is set for Oct. 5. CJAD 800 and CTV News are owned by Bell Media, which is a subsidiary of BCE Inc.
