“We have today, through economic success, and also through the huge ongoing cultural success of Montreal, we have a new pride, where we do not compare ourselves to Toronto, at all. We have our own positioning that is global, and so with that comes, of course, a lot of pragmatism in young people, who don’t look back in anger on old politics, but look forward, and that’s one of the big strengths of this city, that it’s a forward looking city, and that is hungry to grow, and where there’s still a lot of opportunity and room to make the city better, better in integrating top talent from around the world. ”

“It’s important that we use nature and integrate it more into our lives, and even into our business lives. I have started using the concept by proposing hikes in the Austrian Alps as part of my promotion tools for Montreal, and bringing Montreal based partner companies who are very excited to sponsor those activities. ”

“We’ve been using innovative conference formats like proposed by our friends from C2 Montreal, and then later also translated into the Movin’ On World Summit on Sustainable Mobility. We use those conferences to put Montreal on the map; to invite and attract representatives of large corporations that we wanna have a conversation with about opportunities in Montreal. ”

“What would I say to somebody who doesn’t know Montreal? I would say, “Come and check it out.” You have this diversity, cultural diversity, that translates into fantastic restaurants, great music, and even though we have the community spirit that I mentioned before, we also are very much a live and let live society. So, very much unlike Europe, people do not observe and watch all the time what everybody is doing. It’s much more easy going, laissez-faire, which is very enjoyable, and at the same time it is very easy to connect with Montrealers and the city is easy to discover. ”

“How politics works in this city and in this province is that people expect decency, and when they don’t get it, they raise their voices, and they use their votes to get it, and that’s very healthy. ”

“Montreal has a very diverse economy with lots of strong industries. The strong industries are financial services, aerospace, agrifood, life sciences, and medical technologies, and of course IT, IT, IT. Lots of IT, information and communication technologies, and now the games industry has had decades of great success here. We are one of the major hubs for video games, special effects, VFX, animation, the film industry is big here, and lately was the transfer from academic knowledge, and artificial intelligence to industry application has created another area of growth that fuels many sectors, actually, and that is very interesting to watch, because we might gain some competitive advantage out of that sector, which is certainly hyped these days, but it’s here to stay. It’s gonna be a revolution just like the internet caused. ”

“I think Montreal is on a good path, and I think we are well-advised if we continue to develop our pride, but also to cultivate our humility and our hunger to learn and to expand, and, you know, when we compare ourselves, not in a negative way, but really to find the highest benchmark we can find, and aspire to improve our city to a point where we can say, you know, we don’t need to envy any Copenhagen, or Vienna, or Stockholm of this world. That should be our vision.”

“Foreign investment is stronger than ever today in Montreal. I mean, our results, which only calculate the projects we really are involved in doubled from one billion dollars to two billion dollars in the last three years, and that, of course, has a snowball effect and a lot of indirect benefits.”

“Today I would say Yoshua Bengio is one of the heroes of the city, because the professor who is one of the leading researchers and teachers of artificial intelligence, and his decision to stay in Montreal and not go to California is probably one of the key elements of our success that we have today to attract international businesses and tourists to this city.”

Well, we’ve seen a reverse brain drain for the first time in everybody’s memory, right? People from California who knock on the doors of our companies here to move to Montreal. Of course, we’ve always had immigration from Europe and other areas, but, you know, that’s really new that we attract Silicon Valley people, that’s fascinating to see it happen. The capacity that we have today to make people move to Montreal, attract people from around the world, and make people move back to Montreal really lies in our geopolitical stability, right, where we stand out for peacefulness, predictability, the capacity to integrate, the ease of raising a family because the prices are, cost of living is lowered in most North American cities, housing is affordable so we can raise a family here. Even though a software engineer here might earn only 40% here of what he would earn in Silicon Valley, but at the end of the month he has more purchasing power to create a new life, and build their families and their lives.