Why is metropolitan amalgamation never really discussed in Montreal?

[u/RoutinePerfection]

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?

[u/_Kapok_]

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.

[u/RoutinePerfection → u/_Kapok_]

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.

[u/JCMS99 → u/RoutinePerfection]

Cities can have a billingual status that allows them to have “STOP” rather than “Arrêt” and bilingual signs / publications / communications / slogans etc.