This month's Grand Prix weekend will run smoother than last year's, Plante says

Montreal Gazette

3 days ago

The city has learned from its errors, and this month's Grand Prix weekend will be a much smoother event than the 2024 edition, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante pledged Tuesday.
Last year, Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx bashed the city's lack of organization during Grand Prix weekend, saying she was 'ashamed' of some of the events that transpired. Among them, paddocks were flooded during a heavy downpour, as was the broadcast booth. The city's police force had a miscommunication with race organizers and closed access points to Île Notre-Dame, which led to heavy congestion. And the fire department forced several restaurants to close because their terrasses didn't conform to the city's fire code.
Plante said on Tuesday that things will be better for this year's edition of Grand Prix weekend, which gets underway on June 13. She insisted that public transit will be the best way to reach the island, even though transit workers are poised to walk off the job on June 9 for a nine-day strike. During the work stoppage, buses and the métro will only run during morning and evening rush hours and late at night, but regular service will be maintained during the entire Grand Prix weekend.
'Last year a lot of things happened all at the same time,' Plante said. 'What I'm really proud of is that in the last year, we've been working to address every single thing that went wrong and find solutions. It wasn't perfect last year. We need to do better, and this is what we're working towards.'
She said, however, the city wasn't solely to blame for all the problems, as the province also owns part of the infrastructure that was problematic.
Plante welcomed the decision by the Tribunal administratif du travail allowing transit workers to strike, but ordering service to remain the same during weekday rush hours and the Grand Prix weekend. However, she said she hopes that STM management and employees can come to a resolution resolving the labour conflict quickly in order not to punish users.
Also speaking to reporters Tuesday, Éric Alan Caldwell, the chairperson of the STM's board of directors, said he welcomed the declaration of transit as an essential service, but said managers will be scrambling in the coming days to figure out how to modify service during the strike.
He plans to meet reporters on Wednesday to further detail how the STM will cope during the labour conflict.
Negotiations between the maintenance workers' union and the public transit company are continuing. At issue are the way nighttime and weekend schedules are created, how workers are transferred between facilities and the use of subcontractors and privatization. On Sunday, bus drivers and métro operators, who are part of a separate union, also voted in favour of a strike.
This story was originally published June 3, 2025 at 2:56 PM.