Pierre Poilievre likes to repeat that Mayor Valérie Plante has blocked the construction of 25,000 housing units in Montreal since coming to power in 2017. The Conservative leader said it again Wednesday evening, when he was in the riding of Mont- Royal to present his candidate in the next elections.
But what about it? Did Valérie Plante’s administration really prevent the construction of so much housing?
To support his statements, the Conservative leader was inspired by a study by the Montreal Economic Institute (IEDM), published in June 2023, which maintained that, since 2017, some 25,000 housing units had not been able to be built by the city’s fault. Among the projects targeted, Tower 6 of Square Children’s, the Bridge-Bonaventure projects and the Namur-Hippodrome site.
“Without exonerating municipalities from all responsibility in the housing crisis, I have been quite surprised, over the past year, to see the relentlessness with which we have tried to make cities appear to be the main culprits for the housing crisis. I think it’s going a bit fast in business, if it’s not downright unfair,” says Louis Gaudreau, professor at the UQAM School of Social Work.
For the past one or two years, there has been a slowdown in construction in Quebec, he admits, but, according to him, the housing crisis cannot be attributed to this slowdown or to the rules in force, but rather to a constant increase in the cost of housing.
“I think that cities cannot be held solely responsible for the rise in housing costs because that would ignore the fact that there is speculation and that there is a systematic obstruction of the part of the real estate industry in the face of any attempt to force or encourage it to provide affordable housing,” maintains Mr. Gaudreau.
He cites the case of the Namur-Hippodrome sector. The call for tenders launched in 2022 by the administration for the purchase of a lot for a real estate project which would have included 60% affordable housing found no takers. “The industry boycotted this call for tenders,” he said. There are perhaps things that the City could have done better. But she also tried to put measures in place, and it was the private sector that opposed them. »
He also points out that the City does not have the financial means to invest as needed and that it must rely on investments from other levels of government.
For his part, Adam Mongrain, director of housing issues at Vivre en ville, also believes that the Conservative leader is wrong to omit the growing construction costs. “The reality is that construction costs in Quebec — not just in Montreal — are so high that developers have a hard time generating a profit margin,” he says.
The regulatory environment that Pierre Poilievre speaks about is just one element among others that must be taken into account. But even in regulatory matters, several areas are beyond the power of the City, including the Building Code, he adds. “Canada has the most restrictive regulations in the world regarding second exit requirements [dans les bâtiments]. This leads to a lot of additional costs,” explains Mr. Mongrain, referring to traffic areas, stairs and other requirements associated with these rules. “It can represent 15% to 20% of the total construction cost just in materials. This is something that will directly attack the viability of manufacturers’ projects. But the City of Montreal does not directly control the Building Code. »
Technology could make granting permits easier, he said. For example, Singapore has an automatic 3D plan verification system that examines plans for compliance with zoning requirements. “Within four hours, we have a green light or a red light. But here, it can take months and months to compare PDF plans between municipal services and developers. That’s a ton of wasted time. »
And it is not because the zoning allows the construction of housing that they will be built, because the high costs must be taken into account, he points out.
The head of housing on the executive committee of the City of Montreal, Benoit Dorais, believes that the data mentioned by Pierre Poilievre lacks nuance. In the context of the Namur-Hippodrome site, for example, the deadlines are longer than expected, but the planning efforts will allow 20,000 housing units to see the light of day, of which 10,000 will be affordable. “So it was worth it. We arrive at 50% of 20,000. It’s even higher [que prévu] », argues the elected official.
“Mr. Poilievre personalizes the debate by saying that Mr.me Plante is blocking projects, even though there are several boroughs involved, including those of the official opposition,” Mr. Dorais also underlines.
The City is not without reproaches, but Benoit Dorais recalls that, last month, the mayor made a commitment to accelerate the processing processes for real estate projects in order to limit the deadlines for issuing construction permits to 120 days. in the metropolis for projects as of right from 2025. And the Urban Planning and Mobility Plan presented last week will make it possible to modify the authorized densities in order to reduce the use of exemptions, since this lengthens the deadlines, believes Plante administration.