ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

TO FINALLY RESTART Montréal

In its development strategy entitled Montréal 2025, the outgoing Administration has listed 130 projects to be carried out for a total of $76 billion from public and private funding. All of this, of course, without any real priorities and as the current mayor has so often got us accustomed to, without a main thread or vision.

130 projects, a total of $76 billion of investments and no idea of what their origin might be. This is what is known as wishful or pie in the sky thinking. Obviously, the truth is altogether different. One only has to recall all the projects that were turned down, delayed or abandoned over the last 8 years: the Havre de Montréal, the Montréal Casino/Cirque du Soleil, modernization of Notre-Dame Street and Griffintown project, to name just a few.

Under the Tremblay-Zampino Administration, Montrealers witnessed a different kind of festival: the “aborted-project festival”.

COMMITMENT

• To accelerate and encourage the realization of major projects currently being examined, such as: dismantling of the Bonaventure highway, revitalization of the Griffintown area, development of former CN land, of vacant lots on L’Assomption Boulevard as well as those on the Blue Bonnets site and Outremont’s marshalling yards.

Under an Administration led by Harel–Lampron, a Montréal mayorship would exercise its leadership by using its political clout to realize these projects, but intends to place special emphasis on five (5) major catalyst projects.

COMMITMENT

• To assume the necessary leadership to realize the following five (5) major catalyst projects:
• To register, in April 2011, Montréal as host city of the 2020 Universal Exhibition;
• To begin planning, from the moment the Harel-Lampron Administration is elected, the 2017 festivities marking the 375th anniversary of Montréal’s foundation;
• To cover up Ville-Marie highway, between the Palais des Congrès and the Jacques-Cartier bridge;
• To introduce a rail shuttle service to linking downtown Montréal to Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau Airport;
• To develop 3 public beaches to improve access to the St. Lawrence River for Montrealers (Pointe-aux-Trembles, Old Port and Verdun-LaSalle sector).

Investors are exasperated by the delays and heaviness of a bureaucracy that is disorganized and scattered about the 19 boroughs of its central city. Meanwhile, some of the most renowned architects and urban planners no longer wish to undertake projects with the City of Montréal!

This absence of leadership on the part of the outgoing mayor has resulted in consequences that are devastating to Montréal's economy.

The economic development approach of the Harel-Lampron Administration shall center on opening to local and foreign investments, seamless customer service towards developers who choose to invest in Montréal, as well as an understanding of the City in the creation of wealth: strong leadership, that fully assumes itself and especially prioritizes projects with the greatest economic impact and which seem most promising for Montrealers.

The approval process for ALL major projects shall be from start to end, under the sole responsibility of the central city and entrusted to an Office of Structuring Projects with considerably more powers, made up of a multidisciplinary team of professionals—economists, tax specialists, urban planners, architects, designers, and jurists. This Office shall be in charge of simplifying obstacles, getting rid of the multiple levels of intervention and speeding up the realization of projects. This Office shall rely on values and regulations of governance that will prevent any type of infiltration, collusion or favouritism. Integrity, transparency and competitiveness shall be at the heart of this governance. This approach will not only allow for an integrated vision of the major projects, but also enable a proper follow-up from start to finish.

COMMITMENT

• Reinforce the City’s Office of Structuring Projects, to:
• facilitate and better support promoters and investors in the process of carrying out their projects;
• establish and respect the deadlines in the processing of project evaluation requests and permit-issuing from promoters and investors.

Over the years, project approval procedures have become increasingly complex, lengthy and unpredictable. Some large-scale real estate projects are increasingly constrained by public questioning and bureaucratic constraints. During the past decade, several major projects were thus set aside or halted while others were greatly delayed.

The current project approval process includes a consultation mechanism which comes too late in the process and is too formal.
It comes too late in the process because the law provides for a consultation mechanism when elected representatives have decided to modify the regulatory framework in order to ensure the project’s consistency. Confronted with a situation such as this, citizens rightly or wrongly observe that their elected representatives give immediate approval to the project in its initial form and feel cheated and left to their own devices.
It is also too formal because the law provides for a consultative process that is very restrictive. On the one hand, promoters have very little opportunities to highlight their projects. On the other, direct interactions between promoters and citizens have become difficult because of an overbearing municipal apparatus.

Finally, the complexity of the regulatory amendment procedure also plays a key role.

This leads to a situation where conciliating promoters interests with certain citizen ideas or concerns is sidestepped, making it virtually impossible to really improve projects.

COMMITMENT

• To work with the Government of Québec, notably within the current revision of the Act respecting land use planning and development, to ensure that public consultations on large-scale projects can begin before the revised planning Act is tabled, so that citizens can fully contribute to improving the project prior to the setting in motion of any formal consultation process.

Our economic development plan shall not target investments that will only be carried out in 2025–Montrealers have waited long enough: we are anxious to succeed and to finally restart Montréal. Our plan will not include an endless list of projects devoid of any clearly defined priorities. This way of proceeding shows a complete lack of leadership which will certainly not be our trademark.

An Administration led by Harel-Lampron shall prioritize projects that contribute to deliver our vision of Montréal as Canada’s Cultural Metropolis. We will evaluate them in accordance to the special attention they pay to design, to the protection and enhancement of heritage, as well as to sustainable development. In the latter case, we shall do so while keeping in mind everything that is financially and technically possible to facilitate construction projects of greener buildings and environmentally sound development projects. Therefore we shall make extensive use of every possible regulatory, tax, financial, and technical tool to support developers who wish to build more environmentally sound buildings for our children and grandchildren.

COMMITMENTS

• To enhance Montréal's heritage and its cohabitation with contemporary design.
• To encourage creativity and innovation with regard to building design.
• To establish an innovative “bonus” system for density, to reward developers who respect the new City trends in terms of culture, design, heritage and sustainable development.

An Administration led by Harel-Lampron shall progressively deploy, beginning in the central neighbourhoods and then citywide, a Wi-Fi Internet access.
Montrealers and visitors shall now have easy and cheap access to Internet (free of charge in City parks, as well as for holders of the Accès Montréal card). Now that’s an innovative infrastructure for a city mirroring its century!

Digital technologies can be used for a multitude of uses, to improve the efficiency of municipal interventions. For instance, the mayor of Boston recently launched an I Phone application that allows residents to report problems relative to the public domain (damaged roads, burnt out light bulbs, damaged trash can, etc.) and to follow-up on their complaints through the same means. We shall soon examine the feasibility of introducing a similar service in Montréal.

COMMITMENTS

• To deploy a Wi-Fi Internet network, first in the central neighbourhoods and then citywide;
• To introduce a problem-reporting system in the public domain, by way of cell phones, allowing a better follow-up on cases reported.

The Harel-Lampron Administration will confirm the importance of neighbourhood shopping and its importance within Montréal’s economic development. Neighbourhood shopping allows the development of small businesses which encourages local employment. This type of business also contributes to create a warm, neighbourly and safe atmosphere which draws tourists and gives a signature to the city, both locally and internationally.

COMMITMENT

• Vigorously develop neighbourhood shopping in partnership with the Association des Sociétés de développement commercial de Montréal  (SDC), by:
• Drawing up, within the first six months of the term, a strategic development plan for neighbourhood shopping;
• Strongly support the SDCs in their development;
• Provide financial support to promote commercial arteries.

It has become imperative to better establish investment priorities with regard to infrastructures. The outgoing Administration can only sit around and wait for investment decisions to be taken in a haphazard fashion, whether or not they contribute to the advancement of more-structured projects.

Montrealers are frustrated with the miserable state of the roads, a situation that reached a peak this fall. A survey revealed that 85% of Montrealers are dissatisfied with the state of the roads. No matter their age or origin, this is the main concern of Montrealers. Smarter investments are necessary because the repeated failure and improvisation of Montréal’s current Administration in terms of coordinating the refection efforts and costs is alarming. Just think back to the confusion surrounding the refection of Saint-Laurent Boulevard and Notre-Dame Street and the lack of coordination between the various worksites.  In addition, a city that invests about a hundred million dollars a year in its road network, must implement specific control measures in terms of the work performed, quality and costs. Such mechanisms do not exist in Montréal.

COMMITMENTS

• To target priorities with regard to the numerous infrastructure projects and stick to them.
• To invest, during our first term, an additional $250 million in the refection and maintenance in Montréal’s local and arterial roads, for a total of $850 million over the course of the next 4 years.
• To install public follow-up and consultation via web of all requests for tenders, requests for proposals, requests for qualification and winning bids.
• To impose a code of ethics to bidders and penalizing failures including, in certain cases, banning the business from dealing with the City.
• To reinforce the City's internal audit services and the Office of the auditor general.
• To create within the City of Montréal, a Work Coordination Office, to improve coordination and make sure contractors and various parties involved, respect the deadlines.
• To systematically inform Montrealers of upcoming worksites and their status.
• To set up a team of inspectors dedicated exclusively to the surveillance of the work and compliance of quality standards and deadlines on the various worksites.
• To significantly increase fines and penalties to contractors and other players (such as utilities companies) for not respecting deadlines and orders of work.
• To redevelop the City of Montréal's internal expertise with regard to work, planning and estimate realization, by having City divisions perform some work so that a cost comparative of the work is always available.

In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, educating our youth and our labour force must become an obligation, an inevitable quest for the entire society and especially for current leaders. Yet, despite the advances made in this area, the Montréal’s labour force is among the least educated compared to other Canadian and American cities. Montréal is at the bottom of the list of major North American cities in terms of rate of university degrees and takes bottom ranking with regard to high-school level graduates.

COMMITMENT

• To take on the moral leadership along with the greatest mobilization of all Montrealers since the sixties, in order to become the City with the highest literacy rate in North America and to ensure Montrealers' inclusion within the Knowledge Society.

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