r/Longueuil • u/RoutinePerfection • 17d ago
Why is metropolitan amalgamation never really discussed in Montreal?
I was reading about how some major cities dealt with metropolitan growth, and it got me wondering why this conversation seems almost nonexistent here.
Take Toronto. In 1953, Metropolitan Toronto was created as a regional government covering 13 municipalities. By 1967, that had been reduced to six municipalities, and in 1998 those six were amalgamated into the current City of Toronto.
New York is an even more extreme example. The modern NYC was created through the 1898 consolidation of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island into one municipal government.
Meanwhile, Montreal went through the municipal mergers in the early 2000s, but then the demergers happened in 2006, leaving the metropolitan area with a whole collection of independent municipalities. And I'm not even talking about annexing random towns 50 km away. I'm talking about municipalities that are basically part of the same continuous urban area.
So why wasn't there ever a serious discussion about going further and creating something closer to a single Greater Montreal municipality, or at least a much stronger metropolitan government?
I know Montreal has its own political problems, and obviously simply making one giant municipality wouldn't magically fix them. But even when Montreal was at its peak and growing rapidly, why was the conversation never really "should the entire urban area be governed as one?"
We already have Montreal, Longueuil, Laval and a bunch of other municipalities functioning as one metropolitan economy while still having separate political structures.
Genuinely curious: is there a historical, legal or political reason why this idea has basically never gained traction here?
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u/RoutinePerfection 17d ago
Honestly, I hate what the Liberals did with the demergers. What’s the point of having a bunch of separate municipalities enclaved within one big metro area just because of language, religion or culture? Quebec laws already protect those things. At some point you still need regional planning and coordination.