For several years, the Tables de quartier network has been taking advantage of Montreal’s election campaigns in order to publicize issues that are important to Montreal’s quality of life. By inviting the population and neighborhood organizations to come and discuss these issues with the candidates, the Tables make a major contribution to the vitality of democratic life in Montreal.
Autumn 2021 will have been particularly intense again. Indeed, the Montreal elections follow a federal election campaign that had not been announced before the departure on vacation last summer. Several Neighborhood Tables somehow managed to organize citizen events during the federal campaign, while others preferred to focus on municipal elections.
Let’s talk about it: the current context is not easy, with two successive elections, health instructions that limit the organization of face-to-face debates, the obligation for some to turn to the virtual, the reluctance of some candidates to participate in assemblies… There is something to be proud of in the work of the Tables de quartier! No less than 26 citizens’ assemblies were organized (for the municipal elections alone), not to mention all the citizen activities of exchange on issues. A colossal job!
The CMTQ also has requests!
For its part, the Montreal Coalition of Neighborhood Tables (CMTQ) intervened at the regional level by presenting a platform containing four requests and proposing five orientations to candidates for mayor and their party.
The central element of our demands in order to have inclusive living environments is certainly the question of access to housing.
What we hear most about in this campaign is affordable housing: 50,000 pledged on one side and 60,000 on the other. But affordability is a very relative concept, because 90% of the median price of a home that is already too high is still too expensive for many people. This is why our request is to develop a strategy allowing to have a large social housing project. To ensure a real mix that can counter gentrification while providing long-lasting living environments. Let’s be innovative! We can no longer be satisfied with a starving rate of social housing construction.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, PRESS ARCHIVE
Demonstration for affordable housing in Montreal
On the food insecurity front, we saw during the health crisis the importance of the local social fabric to help families who cannot feed themselves because they are struggling to make ends meet. If there is one priority on which a municipal administration can make a difference, it is that of supporting local food security initiatives already present in the neighborhoods, both financially and by facilitating their work in other ways. Twenty months after the start of the crisis, these organizations are still overloaded and the workers are breathless.
Another of our concerns is to ensure that the next administration continues to invest in the problem of the lack of affordable premises for community organizations.
Among the strategies under the City’s responsibility, it should be noted that it must provide for and include community premises in the conversion projects of surplus public buildings under its responsibility and, more broadly, in all major urban development projects. A complete living environment must also take into account access to community services.
Finally, we believe in giving the Neighborhood Tables the means to properly play their role in local governance in social development. Financial but also collaborative and political resources. Among these means, the Neighborhood Tables must be included in the planning during the redevelopment of sites or the development of large projects (two examples: the Louvain East Steering Committee and the Center-South Large Projects Support Committee). Or in policies and interventions in ecological transition. A “green and inclusive recovery” is truly inclusive when we leave no one behind, when we do not accentuate social inequalities and when we integrate social actors around the table.
Issues that must be at the heart of the campaign
The issues of poverty, isolation, social exclusion or urban security did not appear with the crisis, but of course inequalities were exacerbated by it. Montreal is slipping dangerously towards increasing inequalities. To recover from this crisis and to have fair and inclusive neighborhoods, these issues must therefore be at the heart of the current electoral campaign and the priorities of the next administration.
In any case, we will be there after the elections to collaborate, as usual, in making Montreal a city for everyone.
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