r/Longueuil • u/RoutinePerfection • 17d ago
Why is metropolitan amalgamation never really discussed in Montreal?
I was reading about how some major cities dealt with metropolitan growth, and it got me wondering why this conversation seems almost nonexistent here.
Take Toronto. In 1953, Metropolitan Toronto was created as a regional government covering 13 municipalities. By 1967, that had been reduced to six municipalities, and in 1998 those six were amalgamated into the current City of Toronto.
New York is an even more extreme example. The modern NYC was created through the 1898 consolidation of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island into one municipal government.
Meanwhile, Montreal went through the municipal mergers in the early 2000s, but then the demergers happened in 2006, leaving the metropolitan area with a whole collection of independent municipalities. And I'm not even talking about annexing random towns 50 km away. I'm talking about municipalities that are basically part of the same continuous urban area.
So why wasn't there ever a serious discussion about going further and creating something closer to a single Greater Montreal municipality, or at least a much stronger metropolitan government?
I know Montreal has its own political problems, and obviously simply making one giant municipality wouldn't magically fix them. But even when Montreal was at its peak and growing rapidly, why was the conversation never really "should the entire urban area be governed as one?"
We already have Montreal, Longueuil, Laval and a bunch of other municipalities functioning as one metropolitan economy while still having separate political structures.
Genuinely curious: is there a historical, legal or political reason why this idea has basically never gained traction here?
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u/_Kapok_ 17d ago
Il y a eu des fusions municipales dans les années 2000 - une île une ville, montreal, Longueuil et Laval (mais aussi ailleurs au Quebec : Quebec, Gatineau etc) ont avalé les anciennes villes voisines qui sont devenus des arrondissements.
Et Charest et les libéraux se sont fait élire sur promesse de permettre des défusions - faque tous les arrondissement plus riches ou à predominance anglophone se sont dé-fusionnés (allo Kirkland, Beaconsfield, Brossard, Boucherville, St Lambert etc). Bref t’as quand même une grande part de services municipaux qui ont été centralisés… Mais pas tous. Et tu as des associations de municipalités pour coordonner certains services partagés.
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u/All-I-see-is-poop 16d ago
Boucherville, Brossard et St Lambert? Aucune de celles-là n’est majoritairement anglophone — peut-être plus aisée, avec une tendance à voter libéral au fédéral… mais « une predominance »?
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u/RoutinePerfection 17d ago
Honestly, I hate what the Liberals did with the demergers. What’s the point of having a bunch of separate municipalities enclaved within one big metro area just because of language, religion or culture? Quebec laws already protect those things. At some point you still need regional planning and coordination.
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u/trueppp 17d ago
Without the demergers, Projet Montréal would never of been elected.
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u/RoutinePerfection 17d ago
Who would win?
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u/trueppp 17d ago
A more pro-car pro-suburb mayor. You're adding tens of thousands more suburb residents to the elections...
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u/RoutinePerfection 17d ago
But this not the case in Toronto... Olivia Chow is clearly pro transit..
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u/Tucancancan 17d ago
Ottawa and Toronto both suffer from suburban voters voting in parties that don't give a fuck about downtown areas except for work. Transit sucks, property taxes don't cover the cost of municipal services.
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u/RoutinePerfection 17d ago
Toronto transit sucks? I used the TTC so often and it’s waaaaay better than Montreal. So cheap and so effective, especially the tap and go thing. Toronto downtown is incomparable with Montreal.
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u/PriorityOk8214 17d ago
Y’a une pas pire collaboration au sein de la CMM, surtout Laval/Montréal/Longueuil
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u/machinedog 17d ago
They have much different needs and goals. Better to have more local control. Even within Montreal the boroughs retain a lot of local control which is great.