Posted September 15, 2026 1:02 pm.
The mayors of Montreal and Longueuil held a joint press conference Tuesday to present their infrastructure priorities to the Quebec political parties ahead of election day on Oct. 5.
They say the state of basic infrastructure is alarming.
“It is not normal that the second-largest city in Canada almost ran out of water,” Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said.
They say there is a maintenance backlog for just water and roads that has reached nearly $50 billion and that Montreal alone needs billions more in investment each year.
“We are responsible for 60 per cent of our public infrastructures, and we only have eight per cent of the revenues tax,” said Catherine Fournier, mayor of Longueuil. “So that doesn’t add up.”
They said it was disappointing that the Greater Montreal Area and its issues have not taken up more space on the campaign trail.
“When you think about 55 per cent of our GDP in Quebec comes from the metropolitan area, 50 per cent of the jobs in Quebec are in the metropolitan area and not considering in the economic geopolitics right now a conversation around how you see this being important for the future of Quebec’s nation, I think, it’s very disappointing,” the Montreal mayor said.
Martinez Ferrada added that more investments were also necessary for the STM, solving homelessness, and housing.
“We need to make sure that we’re working together in order to make the right choices and the right choices is to make sure that in two, three, five years, people will still have water, that people will still be able to go to a pool because it’s been to the norm and they can actually swim in it,” she said.
“Or people can go to a library because I didn’t have to close it down because I didn’t have the money to just fix the toilets. So I think we have to go back to the basics.”
