Let’s call a spade a spade.
How can we describe the mayor of a city where housing starts have fallen by 37% (Montreal) and 40% (Quebec) in 2023? A performer? A qualified one? An effective one? I would rather say incompetent, in this sphere of activity at least.
In 2023, the mayors of the largest cities in Quebec have stood out in terms of the war on homelessness, the war on cars, the environment, important themes of course for which they asked for more municipal powers and especially more budget from higher governments.
In Montreal, Ms. Plante called for more foreign students, blissfully witnessing the galloping anglicization of her city and a significant increase in crime.
The housing shortage has made headlines with its share of more or less scrutinized explanations, the decline in available labor, the pandemic, high interest rates, Trudeau-style immigration, dilapidated and out of place. control.
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The numerous bureaucratic obstacles faced by entrepreneurs wishing to start new housing construction are never addressed by mayors.
In Quebec and Montreal especially, bureaucrats make the law and the endless steps that entrepreneurs must go through are legion.
Mayors Marchand and Plante never talk about that.
The Conservative leader’s accusations of incompetence will now force them to explain what they intend to do, and quickly, to remove bureaucratic irritants, facilitate the approval of projects, and establish an accelerated process.
Rather than whining in the corner and curling up in a ball, mayors must confess their faults in the process of analyzing and approving projects.
The fact that federal subsidies for home construction are not paid directly to cities, but go through the Quebec government is of absolutely no importance. This is an insignificant, purely diversionary argument.
It doesn’t matter who writes the check. In the end, the money comes from the federal government and Mr. Poilievre is right to be concerned about it.
The basic problem, and it is not new, is at least in part the incompetence of mayors.
Marc Bellemarelawyer