A story like this – the city planning to eliminate at least 250 jobs this year – is obviously pitched to please people who dream of tax cuts. SMF has said she plans to cut 1000 positions by 2029.
But I ask: what jobs? Even if a few are sinecures, they can’t all be meaningless bullshit jobs. People were hired to do various tasks, and if they’re sacked, the work remains to be done, and if SMF follows in classic neoliberal style, the work will be contracted out to private businesses.
First off, by ending internal positions the city loses organizational expertise and collective experience that it won’t get back.
Secondly, contracting out is almost always more expensive than having work done internally. Someone has to spec the work for contractors, which is a job in itself that would otherwise have been understood and absorbed by internal workers.
Thirdly, and in this situation probably most importantly, contracting out is rife with the potential for corruption. Speccing jobs, getting bids – we’ve seen how easily this slides into palm‑greasing and brown envelopes.
It looks like it’s provident and commonsense to cut jobs, but for all those reasons, it’s a piece of flimsy chicanery meant to please Ensemble’s base. It will harm the city in the long run.
bob 16:38 on 2026-02-11 Permalink
250 out of 10,000 seems like a low estimate of useless functionaries. I suppose it depends on which 250 people get the axe.
There is also the clearing out of patronage hires. But I think the idea is continuous privatization of the public/civil service, partly to save money, but mainly to remove effective power from elected offices, the holders of which have become like contractees themselves, effectively, hired to win elections so that they can direct public money to the right private pockets.
Joey 17:44 on 2026-02-11 Permalink
The article points to expectations around duplication of services as being a likely source of finding redundant positions – for example, there’s probably some natural reduction in headcount you can get from combining the communications and public affairs teams. Additionally, it looks like they are going to reduce the number of managers by increasing the ratio of employees to managers (they specifically state that this will lead to seven headcount reductions). The proof will be in the pudding – typically big organizations and governments try to accomplish this kind of thing by implementing hiring freezes and not replacing departing workers, which is kind of the coward’s way out since it absolves the decision-makers of having to make actual choices and will disproportionately penalize some teams/functions. The only thing that makes me slightly optimistic is that Luc Rabouin began a lot of this work last year…
Ephraim 10:01 on 2026-02-12 Permalink
Kate – Woke has it’s extremes, too. While rooted in social justice, Many have this idea that we all need to agree. We definitely DON’T need to agree. For example, I have never thought that the city should duplicate widely available capitalistic services, especially when it does it at much higher costs. Does that mean that I don’t care about the poor. No?
And in the case of eliminating jobs at the city… I think there are a lot of jobs at the city that can be eliminated. We put in computers to do so many things and yet never really did anything performative to make the city more efficient. We don’t look at the numbers and say things like we are now using spreadsheets and accounting software to do this, why do we still need x people in that office if we have automated? We also don’t look at budgets from $0 and give no bonuses for saving money on those budgets. In fact, we do exactly the opposite of capitalism in this regard. And those savings could go to other parts of the budget that need it.
A good example, the police. We spend a lot of money on the police and yet, we had 2 policemen leave the city to take a homeless man and drop him in Ontario. And no one, up the chain was held accountable for the fact that they had to gas up the car for more km than normal, that they left the island and their beat, etc. This should have all been caught by proper accounting system. And if they did it, others are too.
Ian 10:32 on 2026-02-12 Permalink
Not even looking at redundancy or considering that cost reduction through employee tradition is a classic neoliberal mover that rarely improves efficiencies beyond reducing opex, Montreal has more police per capita than any other Canadian city. If reducing opex is the goal here, reducing the number of cops seems like a pretty easy win.
Quickly searching (Glassdoor, Payscale,Gazette, etc), I see that the average salary of MTL police is $174,000 but the average salary of SPVM employess is $42,000. You could maintain 3 “average” positions by reducing the police headcount by one. For that matter, the average social worker makes $62,292 in Montreal – so you could have 2 social workers and money left over simply by eliminiating one cop job.
That aside, if the city REALLY wanted to save money, making cadets do traffic lights & similar work instead of letting cops do it for overtime pay would literally save the city millions every year – the Montreal police department was almost $50 million over budget in 2024 and most of that was in overtime.
jeather 11:32 on 2026-02-12 Permalink
From your lips, Ian. That was one of the things I most disliked about Plante, when I was overall pleased with her as a mayor.
Ephraim 11:36 on 2026-02-12 Permalink
Ian – The traffic problem is a great example. The city of Montreal, instead of converting to electronic signalling not only kept on buying mechanical lights, it actually bought other city’s mechanical lights. And they are not networked or timed to move traffic. So we are paying cops and cadets to signal traffic at overtime rates… when we should have invested in the technology to make this all electronic in the first place. So we wasted money on old tech as a false economy. And it’s costing us in overtime.
We also don’t look at costs and outcomes. Having more social workers is not only cheaper, the outcomes are often better. Especially with things like domestic disputes. We send out a fire truck because we have designated them as first responders… so someone faints and a energy inefficient fire truck rolls out. Not to mention that I’ve seen them take the fire truck out on a depanneur run. Seriously! That thing drinks petrol like it’s water. And that isn’t even speaking of the fact that so much of what the police do in the city is basically nonsense. How much work is actually done when a bicycle gets stolen? So, seen bait bicycles out there? Cameras on St-Laurent… seen them catch a bike thief? And don’t even get me started on the cost of giving everyone a $55 10-year sealed smoke alarm…. which is essentially cheaper than having to buy 20 9v batteries! And could prevent deaths and serious fires. But nope…
It reminds me of the healthcare system. We know that getting people in for a regular check-up is less expensive than dealing with the cost of them waiting. So, we have an entire healthcare system online. We even have a carnet sante. But do we provide doctors with an appointment program and push people to set an appointment to see the doctor? Do we make it easy to get the blood/stool tests that are needed? No. And then we deal with the costs rather than having people healthier at lower costs. The hospitals won’t take most people for blood tests anymore. When I wanted to have my blood done within 7 days, I was offered paid services (where they won’t even tell you the cost!) and the free service of going to the Lakeshore. The Lakeshore is so far out that I think I need a passport, 2 vaccinations and travel insurance!
Tim S. 23:09 on 2026-02-12 Permalink
Not to argue against your general thrust Ephraim, but they take the firetrucks with them so they don’t have to go back to the station in the event of an actual emergency.
(I know this, because while living in a different town, I asked why they needed the whole truck to come check my smoke detector)
Ephraim 09:29 on 2026-02-13 Permalink
@Tim – One man in a fire truck doesn’t seem to serve that purpose. One man in a car with a mobile device who can be told where to meet them seems a lot more functional.
If it was everyone, I understand, but one man on a dep run?