Montreal’s plan to restore integrity of the Village, protest planned demanding action

The City of Montreal is unveiling a plan to clean up and reinvigorate the Village area Thursday.

A public forum on life in the neighbourhood was held to uncover residents and business owners’ wants for the area.

1,400 people were surveyed and their concerns centre on homelessness, public intoxication and other social issues, while they want a cleaner, greener, more pedestrian-friendly neighbourhood.

“We were good before, I don’t know what happened, but we were fine,” said resident, Serge Sanfaçon. “It was a nice neighbourhood, we had fun, we were able to walk in peace. It’s all finished.”

Just under 32 per cent of survey respondents said, “homelessness, trafficking and substance abuse, as well as the presence of people suffering from mental health problems, make Ste-Catherine Street East an inhospitable place to live.”

“The customers, sometimes, are scared. Sometimes they’re like they want to go inside cause they don’t enjoy their time outside,” said Steve Grenier of Motel Motel Bar. “They have a good time, they enjoy the food, but they’re going to notice what’s going on around, they make like bad reviews about it, saying the area is kind of dangerous, this kind of thing is not even our fault.”

Motel Motel bar deals with the social issues in Montreal’s Village (Alyssia Rubertucci, CityNews image)

The action plan touches security, public space, identity, socio-economic vitality and coexistence and culture.

“It’s important to say we didn’t wait for this report to come out,” said Montreal mayor Valerie Plante. “Security have already started and it will have to continue and intensifying and next in during the summer for sure.”

The detailed promises unveiled at a press conference with Thursday and in the morning, she met with local business owners.

“We’re also getting some feedback that it’s it’s improving, though we need to continue for sure,” Plant said. “And this is what today we were walking, meeting some business owners and the message we gave to them is we did add security measures like more police officers, but also social workers, too.”

The city is creating a working committee made up of key players and a spokesperson for a future citizens’ association.

A revamping of the public space includes work totaling $100M. Some of the projects include:

• the financing of a permanence for the working committee and the constitution of a citizens’ association;
• the creation of a fund dedicated to socio-economic initiatives in the Village;
• the production of signature works that will help revitalize the sector;
• funding of facilities and summer and winter activities;
• the creation of a work of commemoration, awareness, cultural expression and community support that will be defined with community partners;
• redevelopment of rue Sainte-Catherine Est and support for businesses during the work period, with the implementation of a mitigation strategy to reduce the nuisance caused by construction work;

Montreal mayor Valérie Plante meeting with business owners and others in the Village on June 22, 2023. (CREDIT: Alyssia Rubertucci, CityNews Image)

Protest planned

“This is a good plan, but it’s on a local level. We need now a plan, a global plan, a bigger plan and look bigger and higher to actually revamp and bring back actually the wealth and the love that we need in a village.

A demonstration is planned in support of the Village for July 4 at 5 p.m. at Parc de l’Espoir.

The Facebook event describes the protest being needed because: “Unfortunately, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that today, even merchants are threatening to close their terrace, a first!”

They cite that for several years, residents have seen the deterioration of the Village, usually a hub for tourists.

They’re demanding decision-makers do more to counter the issues in the area.

“Loving the village, it’s not just a business of the mayor, it’s the business of everyone,” said protest organizer, Christian Généreux. “By bringing everybody together and showing actually to our elected people that we really do love Village and the actions need to be done – not in three months, not in six months, right now.”