Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel

Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel covers two densely populated neighbourhoods in the northeastern part of the Island of Montreal: the entire borough of Saint-Léonard and the neighbourhood of Saint-Michel within the borough of Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension, along with a small sliver of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie northwest of Bélanger Street. It is one of the most multicultural ridings in the country—roughly 49% of residents are foreign-born. The 2021 census recorded mother-tongue languages including French (33.4%), Italian (17.0%), Arabic (12.0%), Spanish (8.6%), English (6.8%), and Haitian Creole (6.2%), reflecting successive waves of immigration that have reshaped these neighbourhoods since the mid-twentieth century.

Candidates

Patricia Lattanzio (Liberal) Lattanzio grew up in Saint-Léonard and earned a Bachelor's degree with honours in political science from McGill University, followed by a law degree from UQAM and a certificate in law from the Université de Montréal. A member of the Quebec bar since 1990, she practised civil law for over 29 years. She was elected school board commissioner for Rivière-des-Prairies at the English Montreal School Board in 2007 and later served as a Montreal city councillor for Saint-Léonard East from 2015 to 2019. First elected to the House of Commons in 2019—the first woman to represent the riding—she speaks English, French, and Italian. In Parliament, she introduced a Private Member's Bill on child health protection aimed at restricting the marketing of unhealthy food to children.

Louis Ialenti (Conservative) Ialenti pursued education and business interests across four countries before running as the Conservative candidate in the riding.

Daniel Ritacca (NDP) A 31-year-old east-end Montrealer, Ritacca holds a Bachelor's degree in sociology and brought a neighbourhood-level perspective to the NDP campaign.

Alicia Di Tullio (Bloc Québécois) Di Tullio became a Canadian citizen at age two, grew up in Saint-Léonard, and held a Bachelor's degree in history with a concentration in Indigenous studies.

About the Riding

Saint-Léonard has one of the highest concentrations of Italian Canadians in Montreal. The borough's transformation from a rural Francophone hamlet of fewer than a thousand residents to a dense urban neighbourhood was driven by a massive wave of Italian immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. The stretch of Jean Talon Street between Langelier and Viau Boulevards is known as Via Italia, and services throughout the borough are commonly available in Italian, English, and French. Saint-Léonard has surpassed Montreal's gentrifying Little Italy as the practical centre of Italian culture in the city, with an estimated 25,000 residents of Italian heritage.

Saint-Michel, by contrast, is one of Montreal's most socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Home to large Haitian, Latin American, and North African communities, it has higher rates of poverty, lower median incomes, and more precarious housing than the city average. The former Miron quarry—once the largest open-air landfill in Canada—has been transformed into the Complexe environnemental de Saint-Michel and Parc Frédéric-Back, a reclamation project that converted the industrial scar into green space, a TOHU circus arts complex, and community facilities.

Affordable housing, immigration services, and public safety were dominant local issues. The riding's dense population and high proportion of newcomers create strong demand for settlement services, French-language training, and credential recognition. Traffic congestion and the state of local infrastructure—particularly along the busy Boulevard Lacordaire and Métropolitain corridors—were additional concerns for residents.