Province to focus on reviving downtown
Government open to funding requests
Quebec will study any funding request specifically aimed at revitalizing downtown Montreal following two months of COVID 19-induced lockdown, Finance Minister Eric Girard said.
Mayor Valérie Plante last week set up an advisory committee designed “to reflect on the revival of Montreal” and to coordinate the efforts of various social and economic actors. Committee members include National Bank of Canada chief executive officer Louis Vachon, Groupe Germain co-president Christiane Germain and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec executive vice-president Kim Thomassin.
“If there is a specific project that is dear to downtown Montreal, I will be happy to look at it,” Girard said Friday in an online discussion hosted by the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal. “I would hesitate to tell you I have money that’s earmarked for it right now.”
Quebec will probably post a deficit of $12 billion to $15 billion this fiscal year because of the health crisis, the finance minister said Friday. The eight-week shutdown affected 40 per cent of Quebec’s economic output, he said.
Office buildings in downtown Montreal will probably only be about 15 per cent full over the coming months, Chamber of Commerce president Michel Leblanc said during his chat with Girard. The executive sits on Plante’s advisory committee.
About 300,000 office employees typically work downtown, fuelling what Leblanc calls the “ground-level and underground economy.”
The area also draws tens of thousands of university students and about 100,000 foreign and Canadian tourists in a normal year, Leblanc said.
With international borders, schools and universities all closed for the foreseeable future, the situation is “a challenge for downtown Montreal,” Girard said.
Mcgill and Concordia are among the universities that have already announced they plan to hold all summer and fall classes remotely. In the meantime, campus access is restricted to authorized personnel.
Even so, a final decision to force all university classes to proceed online this fall “hasn’t been taken yet,” Girard said.
“We’re looking to have a rotation, to have part of the clientele that’s there half the week,” he said.
“We’re working on different scenarios, and it’s not established yet that there will be no students downtown in September.”
Added Girard: “The situation will evolve. If there’s no second wave, if the second wave is smaller, if there is a remedy, the rebound will be of much better quality. Maybe the 15 to 20 per cent that you talk about will be 40 to 50 per cent,” he said in reference to the expected office occupancy rates.
Girard also dismissed criticism that François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government isn’t sensitive enough to the concerns of Montrealers because it only managed to elect two MNAS on the island in October 2018.
“Montreal has the ear of the government,” Girard said. “The finance minister, the economy minister, the head of the treasury board and the premier all reside in Montreal.”