Municipal reorganization in Quebec

The most recent episode of municipal reorganization in Quebec, Canada, was undertaken in 2002 by the Parti Québécois Government of Quebec, headed by Premier Lucien Bouchard and his successor Bernard Landry.

The government of Quebec sought to speed up the amalgamation of the province's municipalities, intensifying a campaign it had been waging during the 1990s. The latest round of restructuring was marked by the consolidation of suburban areas and their respective cities into super administrative units called villes (amalgamated cities). Following the examples they claimed has been set by authorities in Boston and Ontario (in particular, Ottawa and Toronto), the government argued that mergers would improve the distribution of revenue and responsibilities between richer suburban communities and their poorer, inner city counterparts.

Many suburban residents resented the apparent attempt by large urban centres to grab more power and loudly protested the annexations of their communities. Nevertheless, the government abolished more than two hundred suburban municipal areas on January 1, 2002.

Merged cities

The following entities were created from these amalgamations:

Cities over 40,000 or mergers of more than five cities

• City of Montreal: former city of Montreal; cities of Anjou, Beaconsfield, Côte-Saint-Luc, Dorval, Lachine, LaSalle, Montreal East, Montreal North, Montreal West, Outremont, Pierrefonds, Pointe-Claire, Saint-Laurent, Saint Leonard, Verdun and Westmount;......
...

Read More