Montreal's 311 line has taken information requests, service requests and complaints since 2007. Handling those requests is a borough power: a central 311 centre answers for most of the nineteen boroughs while the rest run their own operations, so one number fronts several services. Every request since 2014 is published daily as open data carrying the arrival channel, the assigned borough and a dated last status — but no target or due date per case type, and the only published standards measure call answering, not repair. The city's auditor general reported that boroughs had no mechanism to analyse why requests recur, and that elected officials pressed managers to jump the queue.
917,763 calls, 64,663 emails and 26,039 online requests across the 311 network in 2021; 74 percent of calls answered within 100 seconds, up from 49 percent in 2020, with average answer time falling to 1 minute 37 seconds (city accountability report, 2021 figures).
🎓 Lesson
Publishing every request is not the same as publishing a promise. Montreal's data says when a case last changed status and which borough owns it, but never what the fix was supposed to take — and where the work sits with nineteen semi-autonomous boroughs, a single phone number can hide nineteen different standards.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🏙️ City-wide
FundingVille de Montréal operating budget
Sources
↗ Ville de Montréal — Demandes de services citoyennes (Requêtes 311), open dataPrimary dataset. 'La gestion des demandes des citoyens est une compétence d'arrondissement' — managing citizen requests is a borough responsibility, and the portal warns that processes and intervention categories vary between boroughs. 'Fréquence de mise à jour: Quotidien' (daily); 'Couverture temporelle: 2014-01-01/à ce jour'. Fields include NATURE, DERNIER_STATUT, DATE_DERNIER_STATUT, PROVENANCE_ORIGINALE (arrival channel: 311 phone, email, in-person BAM office, mail, fax, social media, web), ARRONDISSEMENT and obfuscated coordinates. No per-case-type service-level target and no due date field.
↗ Ville de Montréal — Reddition et performance du réseau 311, open dataSeparate accountability dataset published by the Service de la concertation des arrondissements et de l'expérience citoyenne, quarterly and annual, from 2020-01-01. The published standards are call-handling only: answer '80 % des appels en moins de 100 secondes' and reply to emails within 48 hours. Confirms the network is a 311 Service Centre covering grouped boroughs plus independent boroughs handling their own.
↗ Ville de Montréal — press release, first public 311 accountability report and two service standards (26 May 2021)'Le Réseau 311 comprend le Centre de Service 311 (qui assure le traitement d'appels et de courriels pour 11 arrondissements regroupés) ainsi que 8 arrondissements indépendants' — the 311 centre handles 11 grouped boroughs, 8 boroughs are independent. The two standards announced: 'répondre à 80 % des appels en moins de 100 secondes' and 'répondre aux courriels en 2 jours'. Note the split has since been reported differently, see next source.
↗ Ville de Montréal — 2021 accountability and performance report for the 311 network (30 March 2022)Launch year: 'Créé en 2007, le réseau 311 est la porte d'entrée de la Ville de Montréal' — created in 2007. Borough split here is '12 arrondissements regroupés, ainsi que 7 arrondissements indépendants', against 11 and 8 in the May 2021 release: the grouping shifts, which is why the snippet says 'most' rather than a number. Volumes: '917 763' calls, '64 663' emails, '26 039' online requests in 2021; average answer '1 minute 37 secondes'; '74 %' of calls answered under 100 seconds.
↗ Radio-Canada — 'Le 311, un service méconnu et parfois mal informé, dit la VG'Coverage of the Bureau du vérificateur général audit of complaint and request handling, covering January 2015 to April 2017. Auditor General Michèle Galipeau found the services receiving complaints are poorly known to citizens and their information sometimes out of date; found no evidence that boroughs had mechanisms to analyse the causes of the requests and complaints received in order to correct service quality; and found that elected officials bypass the complaint system, pressing managers to resolve constituents' problems to the detriment of other requests whose processing was already planned. Only Ahuntsic-Cartierville had adopted a service-delivery policy. Channel mix in the audit window: 68 percent phone, 29 percent in person, 2 percent email, 1 percent Twitter. Page returns 403 to automated fetch; content confirmed via search index.
↗ Bureau du vérificateur général de la Ville de Montréal — annual reportsInstitutional home of the audit above. Montreal has both an Auditor General and a separate Ombudsman de Montréal; the Ombudsman handled 2,164 files and opened 192 investigations in 2024, but no published Ombudsman finding specifically about 311 cases marked closed yet unresolved was located on 2026-07-26.
↗ CBC News — 'Montreal's 311 has a new message for those who want English service' (2023)The line serves French and English. CBC reports that callers selecting English hear a roughly 40-second recorded message asking them to attest in good faith that they hold acquired rights as an English speaker under the Charter of the French Language. Attributed to CBC, not asserted by the atlas. Page returns 403 to automated fetch; existence and coverage confirmed via search and via the Quebec Community Groups Network's report of the same change.
↗ CBC News — 'Montreal gets 311 information service' (December 2007)Contemporaneous launch coverage, independent corroboration of the 2007 start date against the city's own 'Créé en 2007'. Reports the service was offered through the Accès Montréal network with roughly forty staff trained. Page returns 403 to automated fetch; existence and coverage confirmed via search. Refutes the working hypothesis of a 2011-2012 launch.
↗ Open311 — GeoReport v2 server registryNegative result, tested 2026-07-26. Montreal is not listed. The registry's only Canadian entries are Ottawa, Quebec City, Surrey and Toronto. The conventional hostname api.ville.montreal.qc.ca does not resolve at all (DNS ENOTFOUND), so there is no Open311 endpoint to test — unlike Washington D.C. (522) or Toronto (404), where a host at least answers.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Montreal 311: one number, nineteen boroughs” — Montreal, Canada. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/montreal-311/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
