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At first blush, Marc-Boris St-Maurice wouldn’t strike voters as a law-and-order, public-cleanliness kind of guy. The veteran pro-marijuana activist and political gadfly is currently running as an independent for a city council seat in the upcoming municipal elections on Nov. 1, and his call for more cops on the streets has a puzzling ring to it, until he explains his reasons.

Running in the Plateau borough’s Jeanne Mance district—bordered by Parc on the west, Parc Lafontaine on the east, Mont-Royal on the north and Sherbrooke on the south—St-Maurice says the area “has a lot of criminality. The police shouldn’t be focusing on cannabis, they should be worrying about things like the shooting outside the Blue Dog,” he says. The late-night Aug. 2 shooting left one man dead and one woman injured, while another man was shot the same night a few blocks west. “It’s a question of where we’re putting police resources,” St-Maurice says. He would also like the police to be stronger on issues like property crime, in particular bike theft. (Despite his rich and often colourful history as a pro-pot guy, St-Maurice has long maintained a cordial relationship with Montreal’s police force.)

Another interesting idea he has is introducing public urinals to cater to the army of drunks staggering up busy streets in the wee hours of the morning (or late afternoon. Or early evening. Anytime, really). Rogue urinators have left the Plateau’s alleys and doorways reeking, he says, and getting them off the streets would benefit everyone, and be economical. According to St-Maurice, the urinals could pay for themselves “by fining people who don’t pee in the right location.”

He also mentions more controversial ideas he would like to implement, namely safe injection sites and better protection for sex workers. These probably aren’t the kinds of subjects that will come up during televised debates—St-Maurice says the current crop of politicians “won’t touch safe injection sites with a 10-foot pole”—but he is convinced that there are ways around any legal obstacles that might stand in some sort of pilot project’s way. He cites inaction at the provincial and federal level for maintaining stasis, but is pinning his hopes on some sort of low-key cooperation between the city administration, the police and other interested parties in getting progressive solutions off the ground.

In the meantime, St-Maurice says he will be politicking the old-fashioned way: door to door, rounding up volunteers, seeking donations, canvassing and calling potential supporters. Running an intensely local campaign as opposed to a national one has its benefits, says the candidate. Money goes a lot further, name recognition skyrockets and visibility is not such a difficult thing to get. “There is a lot media attention on this district, it’s high profile,” he says.

Despite voter apathy—turnout at the last municipal election hovered just under 40 per cent, among the lowest in the city’s history—St-Maurice is learning how to be a fan of city politics. “It’s accessible,” he says. “At this level, politics is as local as you can get.”

With that in mind, he is taking his inspiration from another outsider who came out of nowhere to work for real, longstanding radical change at city hall: San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk (who, someone should point out, was murdered for his efforts). His campaign, he believes, has the potential “to touch a lot of people across Canada. Even though we’re working in a small geographical area, we’ll have our eyes on our wider implications.”