Montreal mayor ‘fed up’ with lack of public transit funding

Public transport users line up to board a bus operated by the Société de transport de Montréal. Photo taken on June 9, 2025 (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada used the 2026 Montreal Climate Summit, held at the Grand Quai of the Port of Montreal, to call on Quebec City and Ottawa to finally reach an agreement on transferring funds for public transit.

For the past several years, Montreal has been strengthening its resilience against extreme weather events by investing in flood prevention infrastructure and accelerating the electrification and energy transition of its buildings, among other measures.

“But we need to be clear-eyed,” the mayor told the hundreds of guests gathered in Old Montreal Thursday morning.

“The transition also requires structural choices, and public transit is one of them.”

Time is running out, she said.

“Public transit is an essential lever for reducing our emissions, improving mobility, and making the transition accessible to everyone,” adding that, “to get there, significant funding challenges remain.”

The mayor said she is “fed up with Quebec City and Ottawa failing to agree” on public transit funding.

“Lock yourselves in a room and come out with a deal,” said Martinez Ferrada.

“Montreal is ready to do its part, but it needs the means to match its ambitions — and that requires clear partnerships with Quebec and with Ottawa.”

The provinces have access to a $25-billion federal envelope to fund public transit projects, but Quebec and Ottawa have been unable to agree on how to invest the money.

A full room despite climate disengagement

Despite the retreat from climate commitments by several institutions and politicians in recent years, several hundred people turned out early Thursday to hear Martinez Ferrada speak at the fifth edition of the summit.

“Let’s be honest — when I meet Montrealers today, they talk to me less about climate. They talk to me about the cost of living, grocery prices, housing,” she said.

The collective challenge is therefore to “bring climate action back into people’s daily reality” — and to do that, “we need to change the narrative,” the mayor said.

“We need less theory and more concrete action,” she added.

An economic issue

Climate change is “not abstract, it’s more intense rainfall, flooded basements, rising bills. If your building is poorly insulated, that’s not a climate debate, it’s your Hydro-Québec bill going up. If your neighbourhood lacks trees, that’s not a statistic, that’s you suffering through the heat in summer.”

This is “an economic issue,” she said, and the energy transition is not “a constraint” but “an economic strategy.”

The annual summit aims to bring together engaged leaders from the business, philanthropic, union, political, community and environmental sectors to make concrete gains in the fight against climate change.

- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on April 16, 2026.