I hear almost daily from people telling us to stop giving building permits or to stop development. Even if we wanted to do that, it is totally impossible at this point and for many reasons. I wanted to explain why so that people would better understand the challenges that all municipalities in Quebec face in terms of development and municipal governance.

In order to divide the document into different sections for easier reading, I will be publishing in a series over the next few days or weeks (depending on my schedule).

Here are the points that will be covered:

  1. Population growth
  2. Housing shortage
  3. Labour shortage
  4. Our Obligations
  5. Our Resources and infrastructures
  6. The Law
  7. Dependence on property taxes
  8. Solution: better development

[1] Population growth

The latest projections from the Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ) predict that the number of households in the CMM should increase by 2031 and 2041. Despite this, it is still too early to measure the medium and long-term effect of the pandemic on demographic trends, so the numbers could change over time.

Source https://observatoire.cmm.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/CMM_10e_Cahier_metropolitain_web.pdf

The eleven municipalities in Vaudreuil-Soulanges that are part of the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM):

  1. Vaudreuil-Dorion
  2. Saint-Lazare
  3. Hudson
  4. Les Cèdres
  5. Notre Dame de l’Ile Perrot
  6. L’ile Perrot
  7. Pincourt
  8. L’Ile Cadieux
  9. Vaudreuil sur le Lac
  10. Terrasse Vaudreuil
  11. Pointe des Cascades

For the 11 towns of the Vaudreuil-Soulanges MRC that are part of the CMM including Saint-Lazare, it is more than 9,900 additional households that are projected by 2041.

Conclusion: The population is growing, whether we like it or not, and people will continue to move into our region in the years to come, and we will need to provide housing for these people. We are also talking about an increased need for housing for the aging population, as this category is rising over time, including in Saint-Lazare (+2.4% between 2016 and 2021).

Coming up in the next post: Housing shortage