Montreal’s new nightlife policy: city shares its recommendations

Is Montreal a party city? It may still be too soon to say.

A follow-up consultation was held at City Hall on Monday as the Plante administration drafts a new nightlife policy. With cohabitation, the nocturnal ecosystem, governance and safety as the main talking points, the city hopes to table a full public consultation report in June.

“This policy was an electoral promise from Mayor Plante in her first term, so it’s been seven years in the making. […] I think this policy is a necessity to be able to preserve the cultural aspects and the cultural identity of the city,” said Mathieu Grondin, co-founder and executive director of MTL 24/24.

“We’re losing a lot of these small venues – independent venues – because of multiple factors, be it gentrification, noise bylaws, a general stigmatization attitude,” Grondin told CityNews.

Oliver Philbin-Briscoe, president of the nightlife non-profit FANTOM said “nightlife is really essential here and for a lot of people it’s not just entertainment, it’s their community, or it’s their exercise.”

Montreal nightlife organizer, Max Honigmann, added “we have a very long and colorful history of people from the gay community or trans community, queer community, all kinds of walks of life that have this space of nightlife where they can really express themselves […] so it’s something that’s worth fighting for.”

Among some of the city’s recommendations are creating nightlife vitality zones, implementing agents of change and creating a nightlife administration.

“Governance structure is necessary to be able to implement this policy in the different services and boroughs in the city, because a lot of these changes we want to make are competencies of the boroughs. So we need somebody and a budget to be able to implement that,” Grondin said.

“One of our biggest worries is that on paper what’s going to come out is going to be really great, but in terms of the actual application, it could take years, there could be all kinds of administrative roadblocks. So I think having a nightlife office, whether it’s a night mayor or a night commissioner or something similar, would be great,” Honigmann said.

In a statement, the official opposition at Montreal City Hall regarding the recommendations of the public consultation on Montreal’s nightlife policy said: “We hope that funding commensurate with needs will be allocated to establish a permanent municipal administrative body for nightlife. Sums must also be injected to ensure the deployment of the necessary resources and to allow the boroughs to develop public places so that everyone can benefit. […] If we want harmonious cohabitation between the nightlife and residents, the administration must quickly deploy an agile governance structure that reconciles the realities and needs of all parties.”

The city’s Committee on Economic and Urban Development and Housing hopes to emphasize the need for more inclusivity.

“People are worried that it’s going to be 24/7, seven days a week. There are certain places where we could have extended events that we call ‘nightlife vitality zones,’ so it would be for anyone that would like to enjoy the night and it is important. We already have a nightlife in Montreal. We want to make sure that we could give the right tools for it to be secure for everyone that wants to enjoy it,” said Ericka Alneus, city councillor for Rosemont – La Petite-Patrie, Projet Montréal.