Quebec City Residents More Satisfied with Merger than Montrealers
Residents of the province’s capital city are more likely to say that services have improved since the merger.
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(11/05/11) -
Ten years after the implementation of the city merger project in Quebec, residents of the province’s two largest municipalities have different views on the effect of the policy, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll conducted in partnership with Gesca Newspapers has found.
In the online survey of representative samples in the two cities, large majorities of respondents in both Montreal (66%) and Quebec City (71%) say they were not affected by the mergers a decade ago. However, while a majority of respondents in Quebec City (52%) think that municipal mergers are a good thing, only 27 per cent of Montrealers concur. Residents of Gatineau are more likely to say that mergers are a bad thing than respondents in other areas.
Montrealers are evenly split when assessing the 2001 merger, which amalgamated 27 municipalities and created a unified city that occupied the entire Island of Montreal, with 36 per cent calling it good and 36 per cent deeming it bad.
Francophone Montrealers are more likely to feel that the merger was positive (40%) than anglophone Montrealers (27%). Francophones on the other hand are less likely to think that the demerger of 2006—when 12 cities that had merged in 2001 decided to go back to being autonomous—was a good thing (26%) than anglophones (35%). In Quebec City, two thirds of respondents (69%) believe their own merger was a good thing.
Less than one-in-ten Montrealers (7%) feel that are getting more value for the taxes they pay now than before the mergers, compared to 21 per cent of Quebec City residents. In fact, a majority of Montrealers (55%) say they are getting less value for their taxes now, while only 31 per cent of Quebec City residents feel the same way.
When asked about service improvements since the mergers, people in Quebec City were once again more likely to offer a positive impression. At least two-in-five respondents think libraries (49%), public transportation (also 49%) and recreation and parks (42%) have improved, and almost three-in-ten feel the same way about firefighters (28%) and overall cleanliness (27%).
In Montreal, only five services are seen as better than they were before the mergers by at least one-in-five respondents: public transportation (34%), recreation and parks (24%), libraries (21%) and phone lines to citizens (20%).
Full Report, Detailed Tables and Methodology (PDF)
CONTACT:
Jaideep Mukerji, Vice President, Angus Reid Public Opinion
+514 409 0462
jaideep.mukerji@angus-reid.com
Methodology: From October 28 to November 1, 2011, Angus Reid Public Opinion conducted an online survey among 810 randomly selected adults in Montreal and 598 adults in Quebec City who are Angus Reid Forum panelists. The margin of error—which measures sampling variability—is +/- 3.4% for the Montreal sample and +/- 4.0% for the Quebec City sample. The results have been statistically weighted according to the most current education, age, gender and region Census data to ensure samples representative of the entire adult population of Montreal and Quebec City. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.
