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A former television reporter intends to seek the Conservative nomination in the riding of Mont-Royal to run in the 2015 federal election.

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Pascale Déry, a prominent journalist at TVA, confirmed Tuesday she will seek the nomination in the riding, once considered one of the safest Liberal seats in the country.

She resigned from TVA last Tuesday saying she wants to take on new challenges. She is to make a formal announcement in the next few days. Déry, a trilingual mother of two, has a master’s in political science and international law.

Her decision could mean a race in the riding where former Equality Party leader and MNA Robert Libman has already announced plans to seek the nomination.

A former Liberal organizer and editor of The Suburban, Beryl Wajsman, is also interested.

The riding has been held since 1999 by Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who announced a few months ago he would not seek a new term. Anthony Housefather, the mayor of Côte-St-Luc, is trying to succeed Cotler.

The Conservatives would dearly love to win the riding. The party has not won a single seat on the island of Montreal since taking power in 2006. It holds five seats in the whole province.

Once among Canada’s toughest Liberal strongholds, the party’s dominance in the riding has been slipping of late.

In 1999, Cotler won with 92 per cent of the vote, 15,820 votes, in a byelection. His closest competitor, a Conservative, got 648 votes.

In 2011, the margin of victory was just over 2,000 votes, with Cotler garnering 41 per cent of the vote, while Conservative candidate Saulie Zajdel received 36 per cent.

Zajdel was arrested in June 2013 on charges of accepting bribes allegedly given to officials in Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce related to development projects.

No date has been set for the Conservative nomination meeting. The next federal election is Oct. 19, 2015.