Quebec has ordained that a new seat will be created in the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal for small rural towns, at the expense of Montreal, which will lose a seat. Doesn’t sound like much, but it has had 14 seats of 28 and will now have a minority. Thanks, CAQ.
Updates from October, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The state of the infrastructure in our public markets is criticized for being decrepit in this brief TVA piece, although only one stall‑holder is quoted.
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Kate
Your mayoral vote on November 2?
- Craig Sauvé (62%, 106 Votes)
- Luc Rabouin (28%, 48 Votes)
- Soraya Martinez Ferrada (5%, 8 Votes)
- Can't be bothered (3%, 5 Votes)
- Other (2%, 3 Votes)
- Will spoil ballot (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 170
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Jim
It looks like Rabouin and Sauvé will split the vote and open up path for Ferrada to become mayor. I guess we’ll wait and see.
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DeWolf
I think the only thing that is certain about the mayoral race is that it’s completely up for grabs. Sauvé will split Rabouin’s vote, but Thibodeau has been performing way more strongly than anyone expected and he will eat some chunk of SMF’s vote. There has only been one reliable poll conducted this entire campaign (the recent Radio-Canada one) and it shows Thibodeau with twice as much support as Sauvé. I’m not sure if that should be a surprise or not given how much wacko politics have become prominent in recent years.
And of course it all depends on turnout. Low overall turnout benefits Rabouin, because PM-dominated boroughs historically have higher turnout than EM-dominated boroughs. If EM finds a way to boost turnout in its strongholds, Soraya could benefit, otherwise she’s at a disadvantage.
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Ian
I would love to see a poll by borough. Without knowing that much it’s pretty much useless to have a poll.
That said there was only 38.32% voter turnout for mayoral vote in the the 2021 election so it could go anywhere.
Of all the voting districts looking at the record there are some very low turnout PM winners and very high turnout Ensemble winners. Also, some PM like Joseph-Beaubien (60.55% turnout) were high, but others like J.-Émery-Provost are very low (31.74%). What I find more interesting is how most districts have a clear winner but then there are others where it’s super close, like Outremont that was nearlky 50/50. Claude-Ryan is pretty safe for PM, but Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve only won with 51.24% andf Joseph-Beaubien only won with 43%. Similarly,, Ensemble will probably be a shoo-in in Montreal Nord but they only won Jeanne-Sauvé with 41.39% …
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Joey
Best case scenario for Projet is probably something like a SMF victory with PM controlling council (and winning key borough mayoral races). Why anyone would want to be mayor given the economic context & the likelihood that the anti-Montreal CAQ will be replaced by an anti-Montreal PQ in Quebec City is beyond me. If PM can hold on to council it can probably prevent SMF from undoing some of the progress it’s made (e.g., REV) without having to own whatever lousy decisions are on the way…
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walkerp
Rabouin will win with a decent margin.
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Ian
Plante only won with 52% on a low voter turnout, and Rabouin is less popular than Plante. You might be right, but that’s not a safe bet.
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Ian
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Kate
Would it even be possible to turn the Louvain‑Chabanel area into another Plateau, as is suggested here? Development is about to start on the big space left when the old munitions factory was demolished a few years ago. Can a walkable neighbourhood be created here deliberately – and should it?
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DeWolf
There are so many annoying things in that article I don’t even know where to start.
The whole Plateau question is a really silly way to frame the discussion. There’s no plan to get rid of the industrial areas in Chabanel, only a plan to develop mixed-use projects on vacant land. There is already a lot of residential around there: everything south of Chabanel and north of Sauvé. It’s a light industrial area not much different than the old garment district in Mile End or the industrial areas on the edge of the Plateau. (So maybe it’s already like the Plateau?) We’re not talking about oil refineries or steel mills, we’re talking about workshops and light manufacturing. Those are essential to the health of the city but they don’t need to be quarantined in some isolated area the way more noxious industrial uses do.
Also, the article states that Chabanel is the “last industrial area in Montreal” which is like… huh? There are vast industrial areas in VSL and Anjou, not to mention LaSalle and Montreal North.
The mattress guy complaining about the bike path is exactly the kind of blowhard who dominates media coverage despite a total lack of credibility. He’s lying through his teeth when he says the bike path suddenly appeared overnight. There were notices delivered to mailboxes, signs put up… it’s this kind of bellicose rhetoric that is poisoning any discussion of municipal issues. And the kicker is he isn’t even directly affected by the bike path!
Speaking of which, all the discussion of the bike path I’ve seen makes it sound like it was just randomly plopped there with no rhyme or reason. But look at a map: it’s meant to connect the western part of Ahuntsic with Chabanel and Park Ex. There are people that need to get to and from these areas without risking their lives. And whatever Soraya says, the opinion of bellyaching business owners does not change the fact that it’s much safer to cycle to and through Chabanel than it was before.
There are industrial areas next to highways with no sidewalks and nothing else nearby. This isn’t one of them. It’s a central district surrounded by residential areas with no shortage of retail. Those big industrial buildings are full of workshops, small factories and studios whose employees and customers often come by public transit — and even sometimes by bike! — and they need safe and comfortable ways to get where they’re going.
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Ian
I used to work up there at a garment factory, and I rode my bike. A whole sewing factory and shipping and receiving warehouse and office and I was the only person who rode a bike. Everyone who didn’t drive took the bus, no exaggeration. I never understood why, the bus in those mixed light industrial areas really sucked, riding my bike was fast and easy in comparison.
After reading this article, I think more important than what grouchy merchants or well-meaning urbanists think, I’d love to see a survey of residents and workers in the area, and I don’t mean just an invite to attend council meeetings to express their views because most people simply don’t have time for that especially working class people with factory jobs. WHY don’t more people in the old schmata district bike? Is it really because of bike paths?
This seems to be an underlying assumption that every cross-section of society wants to bicycle, and honestly, despite what cycling advocates & sympathetic urbanists seem to think is an inherent truth, I don’t see that universality in working class adults – and I’d like to know why.
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DeWolf
That’s a good question, but at the same time, both Montreal and Chabanel have changed a lot over the years. 20 years ago I didn’t feel safe riding my bike anywhere but on quiet residential streets around Mile End. It’s no wonder most people wouldn’t have considered commuting by bike back then. It’s not for nothing the modal share of cycling has doubled over the past several years.
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Ian
Oh, I don’t disagreee – I’d just like to know why there seems to be a class divide.
There has been a bike path going up the back of Marché Centrale for a while that you can go down Meilleur then around the bridge over the 40 then into residential Parc Ex which is pretty easy to navigate & is a 30 zone so relatively safe – plus the path on Querbes – but it’s massively underused compared to the paths throuh the Plateau. I see way more bicyclists on Bernard than Ogilvy, for instance. I really don’t see why that is though becasue they seem like comparable rides, and I don’t think it’s just proximity to the trendy “artisanal doughnut shop to bilboquet “corridor
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Kate
With both its drivers’ union and maintenance union poised to strike, the STM says it simply doesn’t have the money to meet their demands.
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steph
I see an anti-strike law homing in on them.
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Ian
Bill 89 was designed for precisely this circumstance, agreed.
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Kate
Given recent proof of strong support for secularity laws, Jean-François Roberge is intent on extending the law to daycares, which are already concerned about running short of staff.
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Kate
Metro has a piece about a report from the Association des sociétés de développement commercial de Montréal about a record number of visitors to the city’s commercial streets this year.
I don’t mind the text being generated by AI, but check the image at the top of this piece.
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EmilyG
Yikes, I didn’t know that they’d have AI images as well as AI text. That’s a terrible picture. It looks so sloppy with all the misspellings/made-up words.
Usually I read at least one of the articles linked before commenting here on the blog, but I’m not going to bother to read an article that humans didn’t bother to write (or illustrate.)
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walkerp
In spite of all those pesky bike lanes taking up parking spots obviously…
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MarcG
They appear to be using the WordPress/Automattic Jetpack AI assistant for the images, and probably the text as well. $6.95 a month to generate a “newspaper”, what a time to be “alive”.
As a bonus the image names seems to contain the prompt e.g. “a-highly-animated-commercial-strip-in-downtown-montreal.png”, “stylized-image-representing-outdoor-dining-on-montreals-saint-laurent-boulevard_ac390b.png”, etc.
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Ian
That’s an amazing predatory business model. Whoever figured they could revive Metro with a frickin’ jetpack plugin is a classic Montreal scam artist
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GC
Is that image the sort of thing we can complain to the OQLF about? Because that sure doesn’t look like French on most of those signs (or English.)
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Kate
At this stage of a campaign, party chiefs often have to cope with having chosen controversial candidates. Craig Sauvé knows about that, but now he’s facing questions about bar owner Sergio Da Silva, running in St‑Jacques.
I’m not seeing a thing about this “issue” except on TVA’s site, and the so‑called scandals listed in the article are incredibly trivial. I suspect a journalist was sent out to find something they could shade to sound distasteful about Transition, and since Da Silva is one of the party’s stars, and has often expressed himself publicly long before he ran for office, they zeroed in on him.
Sauvé’s keeping him, and so he should.
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MarcG
Sergio’s a must-follow on IG.
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Dom
Story was sourced by Rebel News. The X posts are valid. We love Sergio
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DeWolf
TVA copying Rebel News is something else. Wow.
Then again, Soraya compared Christopher Curtis and the Rover to Rebel News at a recent debate, so anything goes these days!
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Ian
If everything is Rebel News then nothingh is Rebel News. Problem solved haha
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Kate
La Presse talked to several homeless people about what they think is important in the election campaign. Not surprisingly, they find their situation is the most important issue.
Ian 23:28 on 2025-10-23 Permalink
Yes, heaven forbid smaller populations be represented. How dare they. It should clearly be reserved for such bustiing dens of progressiveness as CSL, Hampstead & Senneville.
https://cmm.qc.ca/a-propos/territoires-et-municipalites/
saintlaurent 08:31 on 2025-10-24 Permalink
> heaven forbid smaller populations be represented
This reply presumes that an additional seat could have been added for those small municipalities, without having taken one away from the city of Montreal.
Joey 09:56 on 2025-10-24 Permalink
@saintlaurent that wouldn’t have made much of a difference, though – either way, Montreal was going to drop below 50% off the seats (14 out of 28 or 15 out of 29 if they had added one).
Nicholas 09:57 on 2025-10-24 Permalink
The Agglo of Montreal has half the seats, not the city; two suburban island municipalities are on the CMM board, with ⅐ the Montreal Agglo seats on ⅑ the population. Also the Agglo has just over half the population, but apparently less than half of the voters: Quebec doesn’t like including children or non-citizens when drawing districts.
If Quebec was hewing to the principle of rep by pop I’d be sympathetic, but it regularly has given extra weight to certain regions over others when drawing districts; Quebec allows a deviation of 25% from the average population (other provinces and the feds are 5% or 10%; the US Congress is 1 (not percent; people)). And Quebec regularly goes over 25%. And when the Gaspé was around 37% the independent commission drawing districts removed a seat to bring that number back in check, and the legislature overrode the commission to keep the disproportionate weight.
It’s also the case that everyone in the CMM is represented already: seats are allocated to the Agglos of Montreal and Longueuil, Laval, and the Couronnes Nord et Sud. What this would do is create a separate seat for small towns, instead of or in addition to(?) their regular seats by geography. I’m fully supportive of reassigning seats if the population warrants it, but that is not the fidelity being practised here.