For months, Mayor Valérie Plante has been calling for handguns to be banned by the federal government. She hopes this time will be the right one as the government is expected to table a gun control bill on Monday afternoon.

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"What I want is for the federal government to help municipalities that are doing everything in their power to ensure the safety of citizens, and that means banning handguns," said Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, during a Monday noon press scrum.

During the election campaign, she took a position, with the mayors of the five largest cities in Quebec, to demand that handguns be banned and that there be greater control of assault weapons. A claim that she has regularly reiterated since her re-election.

“Unfortunately, we can see that there is an increase in armed violence in Montreal, elsewhere in Quebec, in other cities around the world. It is a plague. The solution is to ban handguns,” she insisted.

In April 2021, the Trudeau government had considered giving cities the power to regulate weapons on their territory. An approach that has been denounced, especially in Montreal, who considered it “unrealistic and disconnected”.

"As long as weapons can travel from town to town, from province to province, from south to north, it will be difficult to ensure the safety of citizens," insisted Mayor Plante, who judges that a province-by-province approach "is not the solution".

For several months, the metropolis has been grappling with a public security crisis, while shootings are increasing there. Last week, a daycare center was even riddled with bullets.