Citizen Consultation Prior to the Opening of the REM for the Saint-Laurent Borough

Large-scale consultation: Challenges and issues

The citizen consultation carried out jointly by Saint-Laurent's communications team and Intervia came with a major challenge: the large number of people affected by the project (approximately 39,169) distributed across highly specific areas. This context ruled out the use of a mass communication approach so as not to bias the study's results. A particularly complex hurdle was the language barrier: a portion of the population consulted spoke neither French nor English, which required tailored communication channels and collaboration with local organizations to enable us to reach a representative sample.

Multiple communications tactics were deployed over a short period. The end goal was to gather a significant number of responses to a purpose-built survey, whose analysis would determine the sectors where the SRRR stickers would be implemented. In addition to traditional tools (postcards, advertising in the borough newsletter, publications on Saint-Laurent's social media), a consultation evening was held for each targeted areas to to ensure consistent information for all residents concerned. One of our liaison officers also fielded all requests and questions by email and phone. Finally, door-to-door outreach was conducted in the areas with the lowest response rates to reach the desired sample size.

Once the survey period ended, our teams delivered a precise analysis of the data using geomatics, providing Saint-Laurent with the key insights needed for its final decision-making.

Community relations: meeting the population’s needs beyond the right-of-way of a construction site.

Our community-relations and project social acceptability services, while often deployed on urban construction sites, are not limited to that type of mandate. Urban mobility planning must also account for projects that do not always have a physical right of way, but address broader issues like the consultation described above. Parking and traffic issues on residential streets turning into through-routes due to the development of a major mode of public transit such as the REM are, at their core, mobility issues, ones that call for the full agility of our communications experts.