Property and business owners held a demonstration in front of city hall on Friday denouncing recent actions taken by Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante and her administration.
The protest, which gathered two dozen people outside of Plante’s office, focused on denouncing the administration’s recent regulations regarding housing renovations and the expansion of bike lanes on the city’s major streets.
The city’s recent housing regulation prohibits property owners from converting duplexes into a single family homes and precludes developers from taking large surface apartments and subdividing them into smaller units.
This regulation applies to eight boroughs of the city.
Jean-François Tremblay, property owner and spokesperson for Coalition pour la qualité des logements, told Global News he believes Plante is implementing this regulation because her party failed to deliver on her campaign promise to develop 12,000 social housing units in the city.
“She is instrumentalizing the Montreal economy for her political advancement and re-election,” Tremblay said.
Tremblay also criticized the lack of public consultations held by the city on the matter of renovations.
As Montreal faces a housing shortage crisis, landlords argue that in lieu of the city getting involved, more housing developments are what is needed.
Business owners were also among the demonstrators outside the mayor’s office on Friday calling for her administration to reverse some of their recent actions that affect the city’s struggling commercial sector — such as the increased size and amount of bike lanes in the city.
Yannick Godbout from Maisonnette Bistro on St-Denis Street told Global News the city’s decision to create large bike lanes harms the car and pedestrian traffic outside his business, ultimately hurting his income.
“It doesn’t make sense to (create) a highway for bicycles in a (cold) country,” Godbout said.
Business owners also argued that freezing or lowering property taxes would help their bottom line.
“They lost months and months of revenue and revenues are very slow to pick up to their normal rate,” said Renaud Brossard from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “They cannot afford to pay the very high taxes they have to pay right now.”
The City of Montreal told Global News they have no comment.