Bloc Montréal announces two more candidates for provincial vote

Joel DeBellefeuille and Heidi Small will run for the new party.
Montreal Gazette Publishing date:
Jun 15, 2022  •  3 hours ago  •  1 minute read
The Bloc Montréal—Équipe Balarama Holness party on Wednesday announced its slate of candidates in the Oct. 3 provincial election had grown to three with the addition of candidates in the ridings of D’Arcy-McGee and Westmount—Saint-Louis.
Joel DeBellefeuille, an entrepreneur and founder of the Red Coalition Inc., a non-profit organization and lobby group fighting discrimination and systemic racism, will run in west-end D’Arcy McGee riding, while Heidi Small, a Westmount resident and entrepreneur, will run in Westmount—St-Louis.
On Monday evening, party leader Balarama Holness, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Montreal in the 2021 municipal election, announced he would run in the west-end riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
Holness has said his party, authorized last week by Élections Québec, was created to protect the interests of Montrealers at the provincial level and plans to run 30 to 35 candidates in Montreal and off-island in the fall election.
DeBellefeuille ran as a city councillor in Holness’s Movement Montreal party in the municipal election. He came in third place with 15 per cent of the vote. He gained fame in 2012 when he was followed by Longueuil police who suspected him of stealing his vehicle because they doubted the Black man driving was named Joel DeBellefeuille. The Quebec Human Rights Tribunal concluded he was a victim of racial profiling and awarded him $12,000.
Small ran a business securing local locations for Hollywood film shoots and stars before turning her attention to food. She’s the creator of the Beyond the Plate video series and wrote a food series for the Montreal Gazette in 2018 and 2019.