Québec 2026 : Ce Que les Partis Promettent À Montréal

Five parties are asking for your vote on October 5, and between them they've made hundreds of promises. This is the shorter version, focused on things Montrealers spend their money and patience on, and what these policies would mean here.

Where a party hasn't published anything on a file, we say so. That means nothing published yet, not no position; if you want all of them side by side, CBC's platform tracker and Radio-Canada's comparateur are where to go.

The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) has governed since 2018 and goes into this campaign under a new leader, Christine Fréchette. Running against it: the Parti Québécois (PQ) under Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) under Charles Milliard, Québec solidaire (QS) under Ruba Ghazal and Sol Zanetti, and the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) under Éric Duhaime.

Election day is Monday, October 5. Advance polls are Sunday, September 27 and Monday, September 28, and you can vote at your returning officer's office on the other days from September 25 to October 1. Registration and address changes close October 1, and Élections Québec has the lookup tool.

Cost of living

Two parties are focused on the gas pump: The PQ would cut the provincial sales tax on gas in half for at least a year; the Conservatives would suspend the provincial gas tax for five months.

The measures that would reach a Montreal renter or minimum-wage worker come from opposite directions. QS would raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, cap grocery chains' margins at 2 per cent, and rewrite labour standards to guarantee ten paid days off a year, twelve statutory holidays and four weeks of vacation. The Conservatives would come at it from the other end, charging no provincial income tax on the first $35,242 anyone earns.

The Liberals and the PQ would both put the QST back on the groceries the CAQ exempted in July. The CAQ is mostly holding the line, renewing its cap on public fee increases and holding residential Hydro-Québec hikes to 3 per cent.

Housing

The sharpest split on the ballot is rent control. QS would cap increases at inflation, never above 3 per cent, and ban evictions from the cheapest quarter of apartments while vacancy stays under 3 per cent. The Conservatives would go the other way, pulling units that rent for more than $2,500 a month, or were renovated in the last five years, out of rent control entirely. The CAQ and the PQ would leave it as it is, and the Liberals would cap rents only in private seniors' residences.

Everyone promises more housing. The Liberals are aiming for 100,000 units a year, QS for 50,000 social units in a first term, the PQ for 20,000, and the CAQ for prefab homes priced under $350,000, while the Conservatives would deregulate construction and let the market build.

But construction is a four-year promise. A change to rent control shows up at the next lease renewal, and if you rent in Montreal, that's the part that reaches you first.

Child care and family

Everyone is promising spots. The CAQ would reach 25,000 subsidized places by 2030, though 15,000 of those were announced before the campaign, and add a credit reimbursing up to 75 per cent of school-day child-care fees, which it puts at as much as $1,309 for more than half a million children. QS would hire 5,000 educators by 2030 and open 30,000 places, plus a universal school lunch program it costs at $480 million a year. The Liberals would fund 5,000 new places in five years and convert 10,000 private unsubsidized ones. The PQ would finish building out the network to clear the backlog.

The Conservatives go the other way: keep funding the public network but add no new places, raise the child-care expense credit, and pay $100 a week to parents who keep a child at home, as long as one parent works full time.

Small businesses

The Liberals would cut the small-business tax rate from 11.5 per cent to 10; the PQ and the Conservatives would cut the corporate rate from 11.5 per cent to 9.5 and 4.7. The CAQ hasn't proposed a change, and QS would go the other way, capping executive pay at companies that take public subsidies. The Liberals would also make government pay its invoices within 30 days.

The public plate is where the most concrete food policy sits: QS would set a 75 per cent local target for public institutions, CHSLDs and daycares included. The Liberals would apply a 15 per cent local preference margin across government purchasing and drop lowest bidder as the default in favour of quality and carbon footprint. The PQ would legislate against local-labelling fraud and prioritize Quebec food in public supply. The CAQ's version is about materials rather than meals: 15 per cent Quebec or Canadian content in Transport, Santé Québec and infrastructure contracts.