Rats in Montreal: The Opposition Asks for Concrete Action to Increase Complaints
In twenty years living in Montreal’s Snowdon neighborhood, he’d never had a rat problem. But now, when he watches television in his living room, he sees them out of the corner of his eye, bustling around in front of the glass door leading to his terrace.
“It’s something indescribable,” he said.
Mr. Klein doesn’t know why the rats suddenly appeared. He thinks they may have been displaced when the city was working on the pipes in his neighborhood earlier this year.
Whatever the reason, the result is that he hasn’t eaten outside all summer. “One night, there was a whole group of them partying on my terrace; they were running around chasing each other,” he says.
“It’s just shocking.”
Mr. Klein isn’t the only one sounding the alarm about Montreal’s rat population. The number of calls to the city about rats has increased sharply in recent years, despite city council’s commitment two years ago to develop a rodent control plan.
Significant increase
Data obtained by The Canadian Press indicates that more than 1,700 calls were made to 311 in Montreal in 2024 regarding rats.
Two years earlier, that number was 1,000. In some of the city’s 19 boroughs, the number of calls more than doubled during that period.
The city says it is taking the situation seriously. It states that boroughs are trying to control rodents through inspections or by deploying exterminators.
But the opposition says the city is not doing enough to address what it sees as a growing problem, leaving residents to face an intractable situation.
“During our borough council meetings, we’ve seen a significantly higher number of residents raising concerns about the presence of rats in residential areas where they would normally never have seen them,” said Stéphanie Valenzuela, an opposition councillor in the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, where Klein lives. “This has repercussions on their daily lives, their businesses, and everyone’s quality of life.”
In his district, calls to the City regarding rats more than tripled between 2022 and 2024.
The city, which provided the figures in response to a freedom of information request, said the calls included complaints, comments and requests for information about rats.
The two boroughs that reported the most calls last year were Ville-Marie, which includes all of downtown Montreal, and Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension. Between 2022 and 2024, the number of rat-related calls more than doubled in both boroughs.
valenzuela said the city government failed to act on an opposition motion, passed unanimously in 2023, calling for a pest control plan.
The plan would have included measures to manage rats during work on the city’s sewers, and to replace open trash cans with closed ones in public places.
Ms. Valenzuela encourages residents to call 311 to complain.
A city spokesperson noted that Montreal already has rules in place to keep sewers watertight during construction. “That said, maintaining a clean environment remains the best way to limit the presence of rats,” said Hugo Bourgoin, adding that each borough is responsible for managing its own rat population.
Mr. Klein said one of his neighbors started a petition about rodents last fall, but it didn’t get anywhere. At a borough council meeting in May, in response to a question about the presence of rats in Mr. Klein’s neighborhood, a city official responded that “the city’s ability to respond remains rather limited,” because traps and poison cannot be used in public places.
“For the city to essentially tell us, ‘There’s nothing we can do and we have to live with it,’ is totally unacceptable,” Klein said.
Explaining the invasion
Hélène Bouchard, president of two extermination companies in Montreal, noted that it is difficult to know whether the number of rats in the city is actually increasing or if they have simply become more visible.
She added that the closure of restaurants and other businesses during the pandemic caused rats to venture further into residential areas in search of food, and that these habits may have continued.
“They have a good memory,” she explained. “They will always take the same path to find their food sources.”
She added that the proliferation of community gardens could also attract rodents, while sewer work could displace rat colonies. Another problem is that people often put out their garbage the day before collection, Bouchard said ; “It’s a real all-you-can-eat buffet for rats.”
Garbage collection has become a controversial issue in Montreal in recent years, with the city encouraging composting while reducing the frequency of collection in some neighborhoods.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration is trying to implement bi-weekly garbage collection across the city by 2029. But valenzuela said the city hasn’t done enough to ensure residents compost their food waste.
“A lot of things that could be composted and collected weekly are being thrown in the trash,” she argued. “And that’s one of the reasons why there’s been an increase in trash lying around, which smells bad and attracts rodents.”
Mr. Klein, however, insisted he had left nothing for the rats to eat. He says he feels disgusted every time he looks outside, while feeling helpless in the face of the problem.
“As taxpayers, there’s nothing we can do,” he said. “It’s the city that has to act.”
