Building metropolitan governance capacity: the case of the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal.

Lafortune, Marie-Eve ; Collin, Jean-Pierre

The Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal, or Montreal Metropolitan Community, is one of two such units of governance in Quebec (the other one being the Communaute metropolitaine de Quebec). This body is composed of eighty-two municipalities and functions as a planning, coordinating and financing agency with responsibility for areas of concern - such as urban planning, economic development, waste management and public transportation--common to its constituent municipalities. This article is about building metropolitan governance capacity. Based on the case study of the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal (CMM), our research seeks to understand how this new metropolitan institution develops its capacity to manage metropolitan issues, the factors influencing metropolitan governance capacity, and the impacts of actor behaviour, incentive structures, and political leadership on that capacity.

In particular, our results focus on two of the CMM's areas of responsibility: land-use planning, and social and affordable housing. Analysis of the CMM's official documents (its act of incorporation, activity reports, budget, etc.) and the content of thirteen interviews with elected municipal officials and public servants show that the building of metropolitan governance capacity is influenced by the interactions between those three factors--actor behaviour, incentive structures, and political leadership--as well as by other elements specific to each context.

The 21st century will be metropolitan (Heinelt and Kubler 2005). A few years ago, the United Nations predicted that, by 2008, more than fifty per cent of the world's population would be urban (United Nations Population Fund 2007), and a significant portion of that urbanization takes place in large cities that are undergoing major expansions (Manzagol 2003; Thery and Velut 2001; Veron 2006). Due to its characteristics and impacts, this process of "metropolitanization" (i.e., the growth and changing spatial patterns of large urban centres) (Hoffmann-Martinot and Sellers 2005) forces us to rethink the terms of the debate with regard to, among other aspects, the management and governance of metropolitan agglomerations.

More than a simple process of demographic concentration, metropolitanization is a complex phenomenon that is inseparable from the new economy and globalization (Manzagol 2009). It corresponds, first of all, to the advent of the so-called global cities and the remodelling of the territories at national and transnational levels (Collin and Robertson 2007). Metropolitanization, moreover, results in the rescaling of territories, which ultimately contributes to the transformation of the nation-state (Bherer et al. 2005). Globalization and restructuring of nation-states contribute to the "re-territorialization" of politics at the level of cities and city-regions, which have emerged as collective actors, in both the North American and European context (Brenner 2003; Le Gales 2003). This translates into a new configuration of actors (or urban regimes) on the metropolitan scene, on the one hand, and the development of urban policies in response to the challenges of metropolitanization, on the other (Savitch and Kantor 2002). Due to its characteristics, metropolitanization thus gives rise to many new issues that affect all spheres of society (e.g., social disparities, air pollution, wasteful use of resources, and competition at the international level).

In the face of this state of affairs and its impacts, many researchers and public decision-makers advocate a restructuring of politics in order to be able to respond to the problems generated by spatial disparities, improve international competitiveness of their metropolitan regions, and address environmental challenges. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, moreover, underlines the importance of politics for tackling these new challenges: "Because market forces alone cannot ensure the integration of environmental, social and economic concerns in cities, an urban region's ability to reach a consensus about its governance arrangements is important" (2001: 14).

Although the challenges facing urban agglomerations are new, the question of metropolitan management itself is old. The example of Montreal is a good case in point (Collin 2001; Hamel and Rousseau 2006; Pineault 2000). The idea that the island of Montreal should represent one city was put forth as early as 1910. An ongoing topic in the news, the project finally reached its goal in the early 2000s--before being reversed by the de-merger of 2006, during which the municipalities regained their autonomy. Thus, while there were always people who aimed for the ideal of one single, large municipality, there were also always those who opposed such an amalgamation. At a more theoretical level, this debate is played out between two schools of thought: the metropolitan reform movement and public choice theory. (1) While the first school of thought denounces municipal fragmentation as being the main problem of urban agglomerations, the second considers it beneficial. After years of debate, it has become more and more doubtful whether either of these schools could actually serve as a reference framework for the study of metropolitan regions (Kubler 2005). Moreover, these two camps are not in a position to respond to new issues, such as the internationalization and polycentric form of large cities and environmental protection.

In the early 1990s, a new approach was developed in response to this new context and these issues. The arguments and proposals of this approach, which is referred to as a "new regionalism," are focused on three essential areas: the economic and urban interdependence between core cities and their surrounding suburbs; economic competitiveness, which, in a context of globalization, is played out between city-regions; and the social and environmental viability, increasingly compromised, of metropolitan development (Champagne 2002). In contrast to preceding approaches, this approach does not assume that there is only one good way of governing metropolitan regions; rather, it subscribes to the notion of governance instead of government (Savitch and Vogel 2000). As an empirical-analytical concept, it offers a perspective that is useful for concentrating on the questions of "why" and "how" metropolitan governance capacity was realized (Heinelt and Kubler 2005).

In that context, the objective of this article is to understand which factors influence the building of metropolitan governance capacity--that is, "the capacity to initiate and to offer a collectively discussed and defined solution to the metropolitan stakes affecting a region" (Lafortune 2010: 22). Using the neo-regionalist analysis grid proposed by Hubert Heinelt and Daniel Kubler (2005), our hypothesis is that the building of metropolitan governance capacity is influenced by three factors: the incentives (or disincentives) implemented by the upper levels of government; the collaborative (or conflictual) behaviour of the actors; and the quality of the territorial political leadership.

These three factors identified by Heinelt and Kubler support those previously identified by Leo van den Berg and his colleagues (1997 and 2001) in their studies of metropolitan organizing capacity in European cities. They argue that the metropolitan organizing capacity can be revealed by seven elements: administrative structure; strategic networks; vision and strategy; leadership; political support; societal support; and spatial-economic conditions. Most of these elements are included into the three aforementioned factors. For example, the administrative structure and the political support are part of the incentives implemented by upper levels of government, and the strategic networks are analysed as part of the cooperative behaviour of the actors. But it should also be noted that the investigation by van den Berg and his colleagues was primarily concerned with different questions and perspectives--"organizing capacity" as a condition for improving competitiveness and sustainable economic development of European cities--and consequently was interested more in administrative structure than in governance. Nevertheless, some elements are not taken into account in the analysis grid proposed by Heinelt and Kubler (2005)--for instance, as in the case of societal support and spatial-economic conditions, which, as we will see later in this article, can be important in the metropolitan governance capacity of the CMM.

Based on the case study of the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal, our results show that the building of metropolitan governance capacity is influenced by the conjunction of the three factors identified in the Heinelt-Kubler grid. These factors should not be viewed in isolation bur with regard to their interdependencies and by taking account of certain characteristics unique to the context.

This article has three parts. We will first describe the main characteristics of and the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal. We will then provide an assessment of its achievements as compared to initial expectations. Finally, on the basis of the results of a survey conducted with thirteen selected observers and research of original documents2 (Lafortune 2010), we will analyse the factors influencing the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity in two areas, namely, land-use planning, and social and affordable housing.

An institutional response to metropolitanization

Influenced by different theoretical trends in the management of large cities and agglomerations, many countries have proceeded with institutional reform of their major urban regions in order to face the stakes of metropolitanization. Following that trend, the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal (CMM) was officially created on 1 January 2001, in the framework of a municipal reorganization orchestrated by the Quebec government at the provincial level.3 The CMM thus constitutes the response of the provincial government to the stakes of metropolitanization, and its creation "should provide the tools to allow the emergence of an overall vision of metropolitan issues and a fairer way to finance metropolitan-wide infrastructure" (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2004: 88). Considering the limited experiences with metropolitan governance in North America (Collin, Poitras, and Leveillee 2002), the CMM provides a unique occasion to question the factors influencing metropolitan governance capacity.

The reform is seen as a significant episode of the new "metropolitan" hybrid urban regime that emerged starting in the 1980s in the midst of "initiatives taken by the business community with the support of the upper levels of government" (Boudreau et al. 2007: 163; Hamel and Jouve 2008). Support was given in the mid-1990s to the initiative by the minister of state for Greater Montreal, Serge Menard, for the creation of a Commission de developpement de la metropole, which was to fight for the political autonomization of the city-region, as well as for an opening towards the direct participation of civil society in the production of new metropolitan public policies. However, the then-dominant urban regime in Montreal ultimately rallied for a solution that resolutely put the metropolitan question in the exclusive hands of the municipal government. This choice was, in fact, in line with the dominant trend in Canada to favour institutional solutions for governance-based approaches (see Collin and Tomas 2004).

The Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal: a modest agency

As a governance agency, the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal brings together 3.6 million inhabitants (in 2009), distributed over eighty-two municipalities and spanning a territory of 4,360 square kilometres. This territory corresponds approximately to Montreal's "census metropolitan area," as defined by Statistics Canada (Figure 1). The CMM was created on top of and added a new piece to a complex array of local institutions. For instance, its territory also includes other regional organizations, such as the Montreal Agglomeration Council (4) and regional county municipalities. The Montreal Agglomeration Council grouped all the municipalities on the island of Montreal, which already had the experience of working together as members of the Communaute urbaine de Montreal, between 1970 and 2001. For their part, each regional county municipality brings together a number of municipalities on the basis of territorial contiguity. The regional county municipalities were created between 1980 and 1982 and have several regional responsibilities such as land-use planning, waste management, and management of major watercourses (see http://www.mamrot.gouv.qc.ca). Ten such municipalities are under the CMM's jurisdiction, but six of them are only partially included. The CMM's fields of intervention are land-use planning, economic development, artistic or cultural development, social housing, facilities, infrastructures, services and activities concerning metropolitan matters, public transit and the metropolitan road network, waste management, and water and air pollution control (see the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal web site at http://cmm.qc.ca/index.php?id=310).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The CMM is managed by a council of twenty-eight members: the mayor of Montreal and thirteen councillors appointed by the Montreal Agglomeration Council the mayor of Laval and two councillors appointed by the council of Laval, the mayor of Longueuil and two councillors appointed by the agglomeration council of Longueuil, four mayors designated by the municipalities on the North Shore of Montreal, and four other mayors designated by those of the South Shore of Montreal (Act respecting the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal, R.S.Q., c. C-37.01). The Montreal agglomeration holds half of the votes, and the mayor of Montreal has a tie-breaking vote. The council of the CMM is thus not directly responsible for the population. Rather, each of the council members is answerable to the elected local officials from a portion or sector of the metropolitan territory. It is moreover significant that this understanding of the geographical sectors was gradually taken over by the CMM, to the point where the North Shore and South Shore of Montreal each appointed a coordinator responsible for metropolitan matters. The agglomerations of Montreal and Longueuil, as well as the City of Laval, also appointed persons to handle metropolitan matters and act as intermediaries. These coordinators have the mandate to promote consensus-building between the cities and assist the cities in their handling of metropolitan affairs. This process is symptomatic of the "municipalization" of an institution that was meant to be innovative (in the sense of the new regionalism) at the time of its founding.

The power of the municipalities over the CMM is all the stronger because --apart from the obligation to hold public consultations on certain questions such as the adoption of the strategic vision or the draft metropolitan land-use and development plan (sections 132 to 137, R.S.Q., c. C-37.01)--there is no formal mechanism in the CMM for engaging civil society in decisionmaking. Thus, while introducing some remarkable initiatives compared to its predecessor organization, the Communaute urbaine de Montreal, (Belley 2002) concerning territorial coverage and the fields of competence, for example, the CMM does not innovate with regard to governance because its officials are not elected by a direct vote and because there is no real involvement by civil society. This lack of innovation has as its main consequence "the absence of societal debates at the metropolitan scale" (Boudreau and Collin 2009: 278).

The majority of council decisions are made with a simple majority, except for certain important questions such as the adoption of the budget, the tax-base sharing program, the metropolitan land-use and development plan, as well as the acquisition, construction, or allocation of facilities or infrastructures of a metropolitan scope. In all those cases, a two-thirds majority of votes cast is required. The council of the CMM also has the power to create advisory committees, the functions of which are to follow up on the mandates entrusted by the council or the executive committee.

As to its funding sources, the CMM has no direct taxing power. Its financing comes mainly from the contributions received from its member municipalities on the basis of their fiscal capacity, and this accounts for two-thirds of the budget. The remainder of the financing comes from conditional transfers from the provincial government, loans, and other revenues. The CMM also has a fairly modest annual budget, namely, $93 million (in 2008) (Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal 2007b).

All these characteristics are provided for in the organization's act of incorporation and were negotiated within the framework of the Comite des elus de la region metropolitaine de Montreal (Committee of the elected officials of Greater Montreal), which participated in the reform of the territorial institutions in the region of Montreal in the early 2000s. The CMM was thus designed to be a modest, low-interference agency. Quebec's Ministere des Affaires municipales, des Regions et de l'Occupation du territoire (Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Regions and Land Occupancy) emphasized this aspect of the agency in its evaluation of the CMM's first years. The ministry acknowledges that the CMM showed its capacity to gradually mobilize the municipalities on common objectives that go beyond the municipal limits. However, it indicates that there are still some needed adjustments for it to be able to fully exercise its responsibilities, in particular concerning the integration of the different planning procedures and the communication with its members (Quebec, Ministere des Affaires municipales, des Regions et de l'Occupation du territoire 2007). This evaluation was yet another example of how the ministry is in essence looking to the municipal level to settle matters of a regional nature.

Following this first evaluation by the ministry, we examine the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity and try to identify the factors that influence its achievements. A first research study was conducted by Nicolas Douay (2007), who compared the metropolitan planning strategies of Montreal and Marseille. In our study, we add to that work by focusing not on the CMM's planning strategy bur on its capacity to exercise its responsibilities and to rally the actors of the region around common solutions concerning issues that go beyond the municipal borders.

Achievements of the CMM: mixed results

What assessment can be made of the CMM with regard to its missions, from its founding in January 2001 to the end of 2008? In response to this question, we will focus on two fields of responsibility: metropolitan land-use planning, and the financing of social and affordable housing. The choice of these areas is explained by their importance in terms of metropolitan stakes (land-use planning) and their importance in the daily life of the institution (social housing accounts for half of the CMM's budget). Moreover, this selection aligns with an evaluation made of the achievements for each of the CMM's responsibilities, which revealed that its governance capacity, after eight years, varies significantly depending on the issue. It is clear that three main cases coexist: First, the organization developed a real metropolitan governance capacity for four of its responsibilities--social and affordable housing; economic, artistic, and cultural development; waste management; and water pollution control. By contrast, it still has not shown metropolitan governance capacity for land-use planning and for public transit and road network, two major competencies in terms of metropolitan stakes, as well as for air pollution control. Moreover, its performance is rather mixed concerning metropolitan-type facilities, infrastructures, activities, and services, as well as for the tax-base sharing program and the metropolitan development fund. Although it met its obligations in these areas, it did so only to the minimum and by eliminating any redistributive effect from the tax-base sharing program, by allocating no more than $100,000 to the program annually, and by procrastinating, year after year, the starting point from which 100 per cent of the deficit of the metropolitan facilities is to be shared by all municipalities in the CMM.

Land-use planning is an important responsibility for the CMM. Its main obligation is to develop, adopt and maintain at all times a metropolitan land-use and development plan for the entire territory. This metropolitan plan corresponds to the land-use and development plan stipulated in the Act Respecting Land-Use Planning and Development (sections 5 and 6, R.S.Q., c. A-19.1), an obligation and a tool entrusted to regional county municipalities, in addition to some additional elements that apply specifically to the metropolitan territory (Section 127, R.S.Q., c. C-37.01).

Two main elements concerning the CMM's achievements with regard to land-use stand out from our evaluation (see Table 1). First, the CMM has not fulfilled its obligations under the act because it never adopted its metropolitan land-use and development plan. The council only adopted a draft plan, which was fiercely criticized by all municipalities during public consultations. Apart from the critiques concerning the content of the draft plan and its development procedure, the main reason for its blockage by the municipalities is that, upon its entering into effect, it was to replace the regional county municipalities' land-use plans included in full or in part within the metropolitan territory.

The second noteworthy element was the adoption, in June 2008, of an agreement for authority-sharing in metropolitan land-use planning between the CMM, the regional county municipalities, and the agglomerations (resolution CC08-022). If enacted, regional county municipalities and the agglomerations would have maintained their role with regard to land-use and the responsibility of the regional framework plans, whereas the CMM would have been responsible for the development of a new planning tool at the metropolitan scale, distinct and complementary to the regional county municipality framework plans and having an impact on the competitiveness and attractiveness factors related to land-use. Although the CMM failed with regard to the adoption of a metropolitan plan, it succeeded in demonstrating metropolitan governance capacity with regard to the adoption of the agreement for authority-sharing. However, as we shall outline in the following section, the agreement was not generated by the CMM's leadership.

Many interdependent elements explain the failure of the adoption of the CMM's metropolitan land-use and development plan. First, putting into effect the CMM's plan would have meant the end and replacement of the metropolitan regional county municipalities' land-use plans, which provoked resistance from municipal officials. Moreover, the incomplete reform, the lack of financial incentives, and the delays imposed were all unfavourable elements for the adoption of the plan. By contrast, the agreement concluded in June 2008 on a proposal for authority-sharing with regard to land-use planning has been made possible in particular by an openness on the part of the provincial government and the City of Montreal (with the mayor as president of the CMM) for recognizing the role of the regional county municipalities in land-use planning and by a compromise between all the actors in the CMM. However, in practice, it was, above all, the leadership exercised by the Union des municipalites du Quebec, an association and lobby group representing more than 275 municipalities in the province of Quebec--mostly the larger "urban" municipalities (see http://www. umq.qc.ca/a-propos-de-lumq/a-propos/), which rallied the majority of the region's actors around a proposal for authority-sharing. We discuss the lobby group's role in more details later in this article.

As for social and affordable housing, the CMM's powers and obligations concern only the financing of this service. Under its act of incorporation, the CMM must allocate the amount that the municipalities normally have to pay to their municipal housing office towards low-rent housing. Moreover, it must reimburse the municipalities in its territory for the base contributions that they pay to not-for-profit organizations, municipal or regional housing offices or housing cooperatives that realize a project in compliance with a program run by the Societe d'habitation du Quebec (sections 153 and 153.1, R.S.Q., c. C-37.01).

However, this time, in contrast to what took place with regard to land-use planning for the territory, the CMM not only fulfilled the financial obligations imposed by the act but even accomplished somewhat more than what was required (see Table 2). The CMM also participated in consensus-building (the creation of CMM-Societe d'habitation du Quebec committees and the CMM-municipality committees, and consensus-building during the development of planning documents) and in the planning (development and adoption of an orientation document and an action plan), thereby demonstrating a certain metropolitan governance capacity for that responsibility.

The determining success factor of social and affordable housing is the financial incentive that it generates and its impact on the behaviour of the actors. Moreover, our interviews have shown that the social housing committee, in particular its president, has had a major influence on the overall performance of that responsibility. However, other factors are also at work, both with regard to land-use planning and social and affordable housing: the nature of the issues (certain issues are more likely to achieve consensus than others) and the internal functioning of the institution (consensus-building, mode of representation, openness to civil society).

An uneven governance capacity

The hypothesis informing our research is that the building of metropolitan governance capacity is influenced by three factors: the incentives implemented by the upper levels of government; the collaborative behaviour of the actors; and territorial political leadership. The incentives can take many forms, such as transfers of funds, the granting of more responsibilities (positive incentives) or the threat of the imposition of a solution by the upper levels government if the actors of the region do not achieve a consensus (negative incentive) (Heinelt and Kubler 2005). The incentive structure thus corresponds, on the whole, to the role played by upper levels of government in building metropolitan governance capacity. The cooperative behaviour of the actors is important not only in the case of a governance based mainly on collaboration between networks of actors but also in the case of reforms, as these are likely to encounter local opposition (Heinelt and Kubler 2005). Political territorial leadership, for its part, is important for stimulating the cooperation between the actors of the region and for facilitating consensus-building (Heinelt and Kubler 2005).

Accordingly, the results of our study illustrate that the three factors identified by Heinelt and Kubler (2005) are interdependent and that, in combination with certain characteristics that are unique to the context, they explain the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity.

First, we found that the incentives implemented by the provincial government have considerably influenced the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity. In fact, in the case of land-use planning, the main obstacles to the adoption of the CMM's metropolitan land-use plan are related to the role of the provincial government. The loss of the responsibility in land-use planning by the regional county municipalities upon the enactment of the metropolitan plan is a provision set forth in the act respecting the CMM and constitutes probably the main factor that impeded the adoption of the CMM plan. The development of a land-use plan propelled the creation of regional county municipalities, between 1980 and 1982, and still constitutes their main responsibility. This provision in the act respecting the CMM is tantamount to asking the elected officials (serving both the CMM and a regional county municipality) to vote in favour of a loss of authority.

Second, largely signalled by university researchers and professionals interested in the reform (Collin and Tomas 2005; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2004; Trepanier 2008), the unfinished government reform also restricts the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity. This element manifests in two forms: a territorial incoherence and an overlap of the structures and responsibilities. In fact, the CMM's territory does not correspond entirely with that of the census metropolitan area nor to that of the Agence metropolitaine de transport, to those of the administrative regions, the regional county municipalities, or to the Conferences regionales des elus. (5) This incoherence results in, to give only one example, the partial incorporation of many regional county municipalities under the jurisdiction of the CMM. This means that certain municipalities belong to the territory of the CMM and others do not. Thus, in the case of those six "schizophrenic" regional county municipalities (Trepanier 2008), certain municipalities will be subject to the CMM's metropolitan plan and others will be subject to the regional county municipality's land-use plan. As underscored by one interviewed public servant, the fact of not having kept track of the territory of the regional county municipalities during the definition of the CMM's territory is an illustration of the non-recognition of those institutions in the metropolitan region. It seems clear that their role is not truly recognized. Yet, the regional county municipalities have not been entirely renounced either. They are in a very ambiguous situation, with a territory that does not correspond to the metropolitan territory. The mission is thus incomplete.

The absence of true financial incentives constitutes a third element in the way the provincial government impeded the adoption of the metropolitan plan. However, the act respecting the CMM obliges the CMM to establish a tax-base sharing program and create a metropolitan development fund, supported by that program. Still, the act respecting the CMM does not impose a redistribution of the money amassed from that program nor does it specify a minimum amount to be paid into the fund. For example, in the oft-cited case of the metropolitan region of Minneapolis/St-Paul in the United States, a similar program stipulated, from the start, the sharing of forty per cent of the growth of the industrial and commercial tax base among the regions (Collin and Beaudoin 1993). In Montreal, however, in the absence of such a provision, elected officials have been able to continually reduce their contributions to the metropolitan development fund, to the point of contributing only $100,000 annually since 2006. Moreover, any redistributive character that the program could have contained was already eliminated while the committee of the elected officials was active (Comite des elus de la region metropolitaine de Montrea12000).

Lastly, the very short delay imposed on the CMM for the development and the adoption of its plan is another way the provincial government impeded the adoption of the metropolitan plan. According to our results, the difficulty resided in developing, within only five years, a plan as complex as a metropolitan plan, with people who were not used to working together (including the development of the vision, the consultations, etc.). In addition, this constraint of the act respecting the CMM also had the effect of encouraging it to dedicate less time to consensus-building in order to meet deadlines. This lack of consensus-building also contributed considerably to impeding the adoption of the plan, as will be discussed in more detail later.

The government also exerted a significant influence on the conclusion of the responsibility-sharing agreement. In fact, a first step towards the adoption of the CMM's proposal was the openness of the government to recognizing the role of regional county municipalities in land-use planning. This openness has been expressed in two ways: first, by entrusting Pierre Delisle with the mandate to examine the problem of the regional county municipalities located in full or in part in CMM territory, and, second, by committing to the development of a bill that would define a new responsibility-sharing between the CMM and the regional county municipalities.

The provincial government also played a determining role in the CMM's overall performance with regard to social and affordable housing. The CMM's main success in this area resides in its own act of incorporation, which stipulates, for example, that the CMM has no possibility of reducing its contributions, unlike with the tax-base sharing program. Moreover, this financial effect provides the institution with legitimacy in that area with regard to the other actors and has a positive impact on the willingness of elected officials to collaborate. In fact, for social and affordable housing, the municipalities spent a total of more than $50 million, namely, fifty per cent of the CMM's budget (Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal 2008b).

Our results also show that each of these elements, attributable to the role of the provincial government, cannot be viewed separately from the collaborative behaviour of the actors.

In the case of the metropolitan land-use plan, the argument that the act respecting the CMM was inadequate is not sufficient in itself. In fact, it was the actors who did not accept the act as developed, and they chose to exclude any redistributive element from the tax-base sharing program and decrease the amount of the contributions to the development fund. This thus represents a real interaction between an element imposed by the upper levels of government and the refusal by local actors to accept such an imposition. By contrast, in the case of social and affordable housing, the incentives implemented by the upper levels of government have had a positive impact on the willingness of the actors to collaborate, mainly because the elected officials wanted to have the right of review for the projects for which they pay. According to the act respecting the CMM, the CMM is mandated to receive and pay invoices for projects to which the municipalities contribute yet without having a say in the projects as such or to engage in consensus-building or regional planning. Given the CMM's major financial contribution, elected officials have found it important to ensure a minimum of planning and consensus-building with regard to social and affordable housing. It was in this context that the CMM came to, in December 2005, adopt guidelines concerning those matters (resolution CC05-028). Moreover, the act of financially contributing to social and affordable housing served to sensitize certain elected officials to the fact that it could be advantageous to provide such housing in their territory.

As argued by Heinelt and Kubler (2005: 191), the effectiveness of the incentives implemented by the upper levels of governments depends on the capacity and the willingness of the local actors to perceive them as such, and to use them.

The comparison between the areas of land-use planning and social and affordable housing at the CMM is a good illustration of this affirmation.

Our results also show the important role played by political leadership in metropolitan governance capacity, as well as in its interaction with other factors. In the case of social and affordable housing, we found that the leadership exercised by the social housing committee, in particular by its president, has had a positive impact on the actors' willingness to collaborate. It appears that the president succeeded in rallying many elected officials on that question and in convincing them of the advantages of having social and affordable housing in their territory.

As for land-use planning, the CMM has not been in the position to rally the different actors around the adoption of the metropolitan plan. In that domain, the leadership has rather been exercised by the Caucus des municipalites de la metropole of the Union des municipalites du Quebec. Following the land-use reforms, the Union des municipalites du Quebec proceded with a remodelling of its internal structure in order to better reflect the "new face of the Quebec municipal map" (Union des municipalites du Quebec 2003: 12). To avoid contentious issues, one of the features of this remodelling was the creation, in 2002, of five affinity caucuses. In this context the Caucus des municipalites de la metropole spearheaded the development of the agreement on the new authority-sharing. Following an openness expressed by the provincial government to review the sharing of the responsibilities between the CMM and the regional county municipalifies, the caucus initiated the development of a proposal for new sharing. This proposal was published in the framework of a memorandum submitted by the caucus in 2007 and corresponded almost entirely to the one adopted by the CMM one year later, in June 2008. It merits mention that the City of Montreal, since 2005, no longer belongs to the Union des municipalites du Quebec. In its absence, the caucus developed a proposal and sought to gain support for it from all the other municipalities. This has led to a certain metropolitan governance capacity with regard to land-use planning in the region of Montreal, yet outside of the CMM. In fact, the caucus has been able to rally the different actors of the region around a consensus about the roles of the CMM and regional county municipalities in land-use planning. According to that consensus, the metropolitan regional county municipalities' role in land-use planning is acknowledged by all the actors of the region, and the CMM's role has been redefined towards the promotion of the region's competitiveness and attractiveness at the international level. Ina way, the actors can be considered to have agreed to limit the action of the CMM in that area.

In contrast, in the case of social and affordable housing, the interaction between the three factors mentioned in our hypothesis allowed the CMM to develop a metropolitan governance capacity. Nevertheless, our study reveals that other elements, specific to the context of the study, have had an influence on that capacity.

First, we must acknowledge that certain issues are more amenable to consensus-building than others. For example, land-use planning is an area that has direct impact on the autonomy of the municipalities and even more on their sources of revenue. In fact, the bulk of the budget resources--more than three-quarters--for local municipalities in Quebec come, in one way or another, from local land and property taxes. Thus, any new real-estate investment has a direct impact on their budgets. From that perspective, the adoption of a metropolitan land-use and development plan establishing protected zones, development hubs, and density targets can be limiting for the municipalities. Conversely, certain responsibilities are less likely to raise controversy. This is the case in particular with social and affordable housing. The obligation to contribute to the financing of social and affordable housing could constitute a form of constraint and has moreover been contested by certain municipalities from the beginning. However, once this element is accepted, the adoption of the guidelines and an action plan was much less controversial because it did not challenge the autonomy of the municipalities. The CMM's guidelines and action plan with regard to social and affordable housing establish its targets and broader objectives but do not impose constraints on the municipalities. The same applies to the metropolitan waste management plan. The CMM adopted a plan, but the municipalities can ultimately decide how to manage their waste. Similarly, the CMM's municipalities can comply with the guidelines and the action plan with regard to social and affordable housing and pay their contribution, but they can ultimately decide whether or not to have social housing in their territories.

Further, in the case of the CMM, the internal functioning of the institution is another key factor. Among the elements relative to the CMM's functioning, consensus-building stands out as being a determining factor in the building of metropolitan governance capacity. In the case of land-use planning, the lack or even the absence of consensus-building among the member municipalities has been heavily criticized and identified as being an element that impedes consensus around a draft metropolitan land-use and development plan. By contrast, our results illustrate that the CMM's consensus-building approach with regard to social and affordable housing has had a positive impact on the overall performance of the institution in that field. Moreover, the lack of involvement of civil society and the mode of representation by officials are other elements specific to the context of the CMM that were identified as having a negative impact on the building of this metropolitan governance capacity.

Conclusion

Our study yields many findings. First, the incentives implemented by the upper levels of government have played a particularly significant role in the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity. While they have had an essentially negative impact on the CMM's overall performance concerning land-use planning, their impact has been positive with regard to social and affordable housing. In an effort to provide the CMM with a strong and restrictive tool with regard to land-use planning, the provincial government impeded the development process and the adoption of the metropolitan land-use and development plan. However, in the case of social and affordable housing, the government's request obliging the CMM to include this financial responsibility in its act of incorporation has had a truly positive impact on the overall performance in that area.

Our study moreover shows that the three basic factors influencing the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity are interdependent: they have an influence on each other and they are inseparable. For example, the incentives implemented by the upper levels of government can only be efficient if they are accepted and used as incentives by the local actors. Similarly, the case of social housing illustrates the influence of political leadership on the actors' willingness to collaborate. The social housing committee, and more particularly its president, succeeded in rallying many elected officials and in convincing them of the advantages of having social and affordable housing in their territories. Conversely, in land-use planning, the leadership was exercised outside of the CMM by actors that did not accept authority in land-use planning as defined from the start.

Finally, this study also illustrates that in addition to the factors suggested by Heinelt and Kubler (2005), certain characteristics unique to the context can have a determining influence on metropolitan governance capacity. This pertains to the nature of the issues and the internal functioning of the institution. Due to their nature, some issues are much more controversial than others, in particular due to the constraints that they can impose on municipalities. This is particularly true for land-use planning, while the CMM's authority over social and affordable housing does not impose major constraints on the municipalities and does not affect their autonomy. Moreover, the internal functioning of the institution is another element influencing the CMM's metropolitan governance capacity. In particular, the lack of consensus-building and the absence of involvement of civil society are elements that affect the CMM's governance capacity. The CMM would do well to ensure the implementation of better consensus-building mechanisms among its member municipalities. For that, it could, for example, look to the area of social housing as a model--all the more so, since more involvement by civil society, through committees in particular, should be seriously considered.

However, our analysis acts as another illustration that in the Montreal context (and the Quebec and Canadian contexts) traditionally, and more recently, in spite of the highly heralded new regionalist approach, institutional solutions have been favoured to advance metropolitan governance (Collin and Tomas 2004). More precisely, in Quebec, in general, under the leadership of the provincial government, political, economic, and social actors have opted for "municipal" solutions rather than for the implementation of new regionalist and governance schemes for regional or agglomeration matters and issues (Belley 2002; Boudreau et al. 2007; Tomas 2007).

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Notes

(1) For more information on the literature on these issues, see Robert Bish and Vincent Ostrom (1973), M. Keating (1995), R.B. Parks and R.J. Oakerson (2000), H.V. Savitch and R.K. Vogel (2000), R. Stephens and N. Wikstrom (2000), Frances Frisken and Donald Norris (2001), T. Swanstrom (2001), and MarionaTomas (2007).

(2) These thirteen semi-directed interviews were conducted with elected municipal officials (some former) on land-use planning and social housing committees, present or former public servants of the CMM, as well as municipal public servants called to work in collaboration with the elected officials and/or servants of the CMM. We also consulted the CMM's acts of incorporation, its activity reports, council minutes, regulations, budgets, and its various planning documents.

(3) For more information concerning Quebec land-use reform, see Serge Belley (2002), Jean-Pierre Collin (2001), Jean-Pierre Collin, Claire Poitras, and Jacques Leveillee (2002), Celine Soucy (2002), Jean-Pierre Collin and Mariona Tomas (2004), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2004), and Mariona Tomas (2007).

(4) The agglomeration councfls are a product of Bill 9 concerning the citizens' consultation on the territorial organization of certain municipalities, adopted by the provincial government in December 2003. They were implemented in the territories that underwent mergers during the reform of 2000 and/or in municipalities that chose to withdraw from the merger. There are now eleven agglomeration councils in Quebec (Bherer 2006). The council of Montreal is composed of the City of Montreal and the fifteen reconstituted cities on the island. For more information on the de-mergers and the creation of the agglomeration council, see, among others, Jean-Pierre Collin and Tomas (2005), Laurence Bherer (2006), and Julie-Anne Boudreau et al. (2007).

(5) Created in 1996, Agence metropolitaine de transport is a government planning agency with a metropolitan focus, under the jurisdiction of the Quebec transport minister. The Conferences regionales des elus were created in 2006 as the last stage of municipal reform of the early 2000s in the province of Quebec. As a replacement for the Conseil regionaux de developpement, the Conferences regionales des elus acted as regional development planning forums comprising municipal elected officials and representatives of civil society organizations (such as chambers of commerce, unions and women's organizations). They are mainly funded by the provincial government, under the supervision of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Regions and Land Occupancy. We count seven of these Conferences regionales des elus within the CMM's territory--five of them being only partially included within the CMM.

Marie-eve Lafortune is a doctoral candidate in planning, University of Waterloo. Jean-Pierre Collin is professor in urban studies, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre Urbanisation, Culture et Societe. The research reported herein was made possible by the financial support of the Fonds quebecois de recherche sur la societe et la culture. The authors are grateful to Mariona Tomas Fornes, Pierre J. Hamel, Laurence Bherer and the journal's anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments. They would also like to thank Cathleen Poehler, who translated the original French manuscript.

Table 1. Achievements of the CMM: Land-Use Planning

Year            Achievements and activities

2002     - building the orientation committee for
         the strategic vision statement and the
         adoption of its mandate

         - development of an interim control
         bylaw

         - publication of a diagnosis

         - extension request for the adoption of
         the draft strategic vision statement

         - request for a moratorium on
         agricultural de-zoning

2003     - public consultations in the spring on
         the strategic vision statement

         - adoption of the strategic vision
         statement

         - development of a series of thematic
         studies

         - adoption of the interim control bylaw

2004     - submission of a draft metropolitan
         land-use and development plan (in
         French: Projet de schema metropolitain
         d'amenagement et de develop-pement) to
         the municipalities

2005     - adoption of the draft plan

         - public consultations on the draft plan

         - request to the Ministere des Affaires
         municipales et des Regions for a one
         year delay (ending in 2006) for adopting
         the draft plan

         - collaboration with the regional county
         municipalities to create maps of flood
         risk zones of the Mille-files River

2006     - proposal of revised guidelines
         (following the public consultations)

         - realization, in collaboration, of the
         mapping of the flood risk zones of the
         Mille-Iles River basin

2007     - submission of a summary document
         concerning the orientations and the
         criteria used to develop the advisory
         statements related to the urban growth
         boundary

2008     - adoption of a proposal for
         competence-sharing between the CMM and
         regional county municipalities

         - approval of the report of the
         technical committee on the new
         authority-sharing

Sources: Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal 2003,
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007a,  2008a,2009

Table 2. Achievements of the CMM: Social and Affordable
Housing

Year    Achievements and activities

2001    - request to the minister to discuss the
        Acces Logis file

2002    - production of an analysis report on
        fiscal measures

        - creation of the social housing fund

2003    - financial contribution of the CMM
        ($26.2 million)

2004    - contribution of $32 million

        - 1,300 units built in the framework of
        AccesLogis and Affordable Housing Quebec

        - first steps in the development of CMM
        guidelines on social and affordable
        housing

2005    - financing ($48 million, fifty per cent
        of CMM's budget)

        - loan of $51 million for the financing
        of social and affordable housing

        - municipal consultations relative to
        the guidelines on social and affordable
        housing for the metropolitan area

        - adoption of the guidelines to
        structure the interventions with regard
        to social and affordable housing

2006    - implementation of the metropolitan
        guidelines on social and affordable
        housing

        - 29 June: official launch of the
        guidelines

        - creation of the CMM-Societe
        d'habitation du Quebec and CMM
        municipality committees

2007    - three consultation sessions on the
        first module of the metropolitan action
        plan on social and affordable housing
        (in French: Plan d'action metropolitain
        pour le logement social et abordable)

        - submission of a study by the firm
        Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton on the
        realization costs of the projects
        AccesLogis and Affordable Housing Quebec

        - publication of the INRS (Institut

        national de la recherche scientifique)
        study on the spatial distribution of the
        supply and the demand (Apparicio,
        Seguin, and Leloup 2007)

2008    - four consultation sessions on second
        and third modules of the metropolitan
        action plan for social and affordable
        housing, 2009-13

        - adoption of the metropolitan action
        plan on social and affordable housing

Sources: Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal 2003,
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007a,  2008a,2009