Montrealers have their say as city drafts new nightlife policy project

Is Montreal a party city? That reputation could be further solidified if officials have their way. A consultation at city hall Tuesday night, to help draft Montreal’s new nightlife policy.

The Plante administration is planning to invest in nightlife in hopes of boosting its economic and cultural potential, without leaving anyone negatively impacted.

“We’ve lost a lot of venues and then that was even before COVID. So it’s kind of a really critical time to make sure we have protections,” said Max Honigmann, a Montreal nightlife organizer and member of the Homegrown Harvest Collective.

“Right now there’s nowhere really safe for nightlife if you want to have music, like live music playing. There are a lot of existing venues, clubs, concert halls, etc. that have been there for 10, 20 years – sometimes even more – that are threatened by new neighbors who move in,” he added. “We’re kind of working with a bit of an outdated model and this nightlife policy offers the potential of kind of taking us really in the right direction in the future.”

According to an economic impact study by mtl 24/24, the nightlife industry accounted for nearly 2.5 million visitors to Montreal in 2019.

“Montreal has a really long and colorful history with nightlife going back to the disco scene or even before. It’s one of the main things that attracts people here, especially young people,” said Honigmann.

“We don’t want to disrupt people but at the same time we want to have like a certain framework in which we can you know work to create a nice culture in the city.”

One change Honigmann hopes to see is later opening hours, which he believes will contribute to overall safety.

“For alcohol, everything ends at three. So it can get kind of crazy like on Saint-Laurent Boulevard with everyone flooding out to the streets at the same time, everyone trying to get as many last minute drinks in as they can. So I think it’s much smarter to adopt a more flexible model like what they have in a lot of European cities, where people can kind of enjoy for as long as they want and then kind of trickle out in a more organic rhythm,” explained Honigmann.

“There’s like a public misconception that you see a lot from certain Montrealers that having more flexible nightlife policies will result in chaos or that all we want is like anarchy – we want no rules. That’s not really the case at all.

“I think it’s a really critical part of our city’s identity and if we don’t do stuff to protect it, we’re just going to become another Toronto basically.”