Montreal’s auditor general says the city needs to improve the oversight of how public funds are being spent.
In a press release following the tabling of the 2025 audit report, Auditor General of the City of Montreal Andrée Cossette said her office found “shortcomings in the oversight, monitoring, and accountability of official expenses, as well as research and support expenses.”
She recommended tightening the control measures around how Montreal City Hall officials spent public funds.
According to the report, more than half of the hotel and meal expenses incurred by city officials exceeded the federal rates used for city employees. The auditor, however, noted that the city didn’t have its own guidelines regarding these expenses.
“Thus, practices regarding the reimbursement of meal and lodging expenses, combined with instances where allowances and reference rates are exceeded, illustrate the effects of the lack of formal guidelines and raise issues of consistency, uniformity, and justification in the processing of expenses,” the report stated.
The audit also revealed that while air travel by officials complied with the rules, several business-class upgrades and booking expenses were reimbursed without documentation.
The expense approval process varied between departments and boroughs, and in some cases could give rise to conflicts of interest, the report suggests.
“The hierarchical relationship between the borough administration and the council, which is composed of elected officials, may raise questions regarding the perceived impartiality of the approval process.”
Controversial spending of public money threw city hall into a firestorm in 2023. A scandal saw Dominique Ollivier step down as president of the city’s executive committee. She was criticized for allegedly over spending when she was president of the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM), including $350 on an oyster dinner.
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