The party's founder, leader, and mayoral candidate was Michel Bédard.
He proposed free public transportation for welfare recipients and the unemployed, and promised to create a new arts centre in place of a run-down factory at the corner of Rene Levesque Blvd.
and de Lorimier Ave.[2] Later in the campaign, he promised an emergency municipal fund to attack poverty and said he would petition the provincial government to end the practice of reimbursing half the election expenses of candidates who receive twenty per cent support or higher from the electorate.
[5] One candidate, Sofoklis Rasoulis, was a former council member, and Bédard acknowledged that Rasoulis represented the party's best hope of winning a seat on council and hence receiving a municipally funded research budget.
Bédard changed Montreal 2000's name back to the White Elephant Party to contest the 2001 municipal election.