At the request of a group of prominent figures, the Parti Québécois (PQ) and the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) each pledged on Wednesday to hold a major summit on homelessness by June 2027 if either party forms the provincial next government.
In an open letter published by the daily newspaper “Le Devoir,” the signatories—including the mayors of Montreal and Quebec City, Soraya Martinez Ferrada and Bruno Marchand—call for “setting a course toward zero homelessness,” as Finland has successfully done.
In social media posts, Liberal leader Charles Milliard and his PQ counterpart Paul St-Pierre Plamondon responded positively to the call by agreeing, should they be elected in the October election, to convene all stakeholders at a major summit.
The CAQ government and the other political parties—Québec Solidaire and the Conservative Party—had not yet made their official reactions known.
The driving force behind this movement is former Premier Pauline Marois. She explained that the scale of the crisis prompted her to step out of her usual reserve, given her background in social work.
“I am outraged, appalled, and personally moved by the fact that people are living on the streets in deplorable conditions,” she said during an interview with The Canadian Press on Wednesday.
Through the consultations she has conducted in recent months, she has observed a lack of coordination in efforts to combat homelessness, despite a great many commendable efforts and achievements.
“Everyone is doing their own thing,” she noted, citing examples.
“At some point, there’s a roadblock to getting a grant; there’s a poorly written regulation that prevents someone from being placed in affordable housing; there’s an area where mental health services are insufficient, and institutions can’t coordinate with one another, and so on.”
Holding a summit would, in particular, help build consensus and agree on concrete measures, she argued.
“It has always yielded results when we bring everyone to the same table” in Quebec, argued the politician, who has participated in numerous summits throughout her political career.
As for the goal of zero homelessness, Marois believes it is entirely achievable, but refuses to commit to a timeline.
“It would be presumptuous of me to tell you that we could achieve this, say, in three years, but I believe that the preparatory work leading up to the summit should lead us to set deadlines and take decisive action to get there.”
The open letter was signed by a large number of prominent figures from various backgrounds.
They include former ministers Michelle Courchesne and Marguerite Blais, former QS co-spokesperson Françoise David, Cogeco board chairman Louis Audet, Université du Québec president Alexandre Cloutier, former president of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Claude Blanchet, and the presidents of the FTQ and the CSN, Magali Picard and Caroline Senneville.
In the 2025 count of people experiencing homelessness, no fewer than 12,000 people were recorded across Quebec.
Last week, Lionel Carmant, the Minister responsible for Social Services, suggested that regions outside major urban centers affected by homelessness would receive assistance “as soon as possible.”
According to official data, five regions in Quebec saw a more than 50 per cent increase in homelessness between 2022 and 2025.
These are Abitibi-Témiscamingue (119 per cent), the Laurentians (74 per cent), the North Shore (65 per cent), Laval (59 per cent), and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (51 per cent).
The Fréchette government recently announced that it was investing $28 million to combat homelessness in the Outaouais, the Capitale-Nationale, and Montreal.
According to Carmant, the rise in homelessness is primarily caused by evictions for unpaid rent.
His government announced that $21 million over three years will go to the Preventive Rent Supplement Program (PSLP) to fund a pilot project involving 1,000 housing units.
A $7 million allocation will be used to better support homeless individuals living with severe mental health issues or substance use disorders through the PRISMD program.
The PSLP works on a simple principle: when a person is at imminent risk of losing their home, that home is converted into subsidized housing. The person can then remain in their home while spending only 25 per cent of their income on rent.
Finland has often been cited as a model for combating homelessness, notably by Québec City Mayor Bruno Marchand, who drew inspiration from it in 2021 to launch his own “zero homelessness” initiative for the capital.
Officially implemented in 2008, the Finnish model, known as “Housing First,” establishes that resolving an individual’s health issues—such as addiction or mental health disorders—should not be a prerequisite for providing housing, but rather that housing is a prerequisite for resolving an individual’s other problems.
There were more than 20,000 homeless people in this Nordic country in the late 1990s, but by 2024, only about 3,800 people lacked a permanent roof over their heads, according to Finnish government data provided to The Canadian Press.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
