Montreal's Plans to Curb Inflation

In the most recent budgetary meeting, the City of Montreal assessed how the pandemic closures have continued to disrupt the city economically. With inflation rising in Canada, Montreal's government is hoping to curb inflation, but this could affect borrowing costs.

So how can they do this? La Commission sur les finances et l'administration submitted its findings and recommendations to the city, stating they are considering rigorous management of municipal finances. Councillors said Montreal is limited in how they can collect funds, as decided by the Quebec government, so the city’s main source of revenue is collected through property taxes.

La Commission sur les finances et l'administration said one of the four axes of Montreal's 2030 strategic plan of the city is to strengthen solidarity, equity and inclusion. They said the importance of using differentiated data is to guide its decisions in order to better meet the needs of the population.

La Commission sur les finances et l'administration also recommended that the city pursues tight control of expenses and identifies all sources of savings that are possible, as well as ensures debt sustainability, by controlling indebtedness, and containing the rate of expenses. 

Since property taxation is the main source of revenue for the city, La Commission identified that the secularism of the province and that Montreal is home to more than 900 places of worship and buildings owned by religious communities. They are considering the fiscal inquiry created by the exemption from property tax for places of worship and buildings owned by religious communities conferred by provincial legislation.

The amounts of this would be estimated at more than $180 million in taxes to be collected from Quebec municipalities and specifically in Montreal, the loss of this revenue was estimated at $30 million in 2022 following the overhaul of compensations in lieu of taxes from the Quebec government.