With less than a week until Election Day, candidates spent the first day of advance polling encouraging everyone to have their voice heard.
As of 8:00 P.M. Sunday Elections Montreal confirmed 6.54 per cent of Montrealers had cast their ballot. Overall it's about 13,000 or one per cent more than the first day of advance polling in 2013.
The last municipal election saw only 43 per cent of Montrealers vote.
Both main mayoral candidates were out looking to get that number up.
"All the work you've been doing, the door-to-door, the hands you shook, the business cards you got, put that on the list and make sure they're getting out," Denis Coderre said.
"At the municipal level [voting] is so relevant, so important because it is how we will be using Montrealers tax money in the next coming years" Projet Montreal leader Valerie Plante said.
You can still vote early if you'd like, you simply need to visit the returning officer's office in your borough on October 30, 31 and November 1 from 10:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M.
Your reminder card will also have the address and opening hours.
For more information on how to vote click here.
As the election winds down, a new poll shows it's still a toss up to decide Montreal's next Mayor.
The CROP poll, commissioned by Radio-Canada, found 39 per cent of decided Montrealers back Projet Montreal's Valerie Plante, while 37 per cent are behind Denis Coderre. There are about 17 per cent of respondents who were undecided.
According to the poll, the issues that matter most to Montrealers are snow removal and public transit.
Just over half of Montrealers believe Plante can fix their traffic headaches, while just under half felt the same about the current mayor.
While Denis Coderre and the rest of his team have scoffed at the idea of Plante's Pink Metro Line, 47 per cent of respondents believe it's a good idea even with the $6 billion price tag.
The problem that seems to be plaguing the incumbent is not his record as nearly 60 per cent said they thought the city has improved compared to four years ago.
Coderre's problem seems to be centered on his personality; with more than half saying they would describe him as arrogant, compared to 17 per cent for Plante.
The poll surveyed 1,094 Montrealers online between October 19 - 24; the margin of error is about three percentage points.
Paving problems
While almost any resident in any municipality can point to a number of roads in their town that need to be fixed, a controversy is a brewing in Laval over how the work is being promised.
You may have noticed a number of signs promoting Mouvement Lavallois city councilor Stéphane Boyer are now accompanied by a little note underneath.
A second sign reads "This street to be resurfaced starting 2018."
A spokesperson for Mouvement Lavallois told La Presse that Boyer has already put in the request to repair certain city streets, but those plans could change based on the election results.
Michel Trottier, mayoral candidate for Parti Laval has denounced the extra signage, telling the newspaper it reminds him of the days of former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt.
Trottier said streets should be paved based on proper analysis and the needs of the people, not on political will.
What about disabled Montrealers?
In Montreal one man is taking the Cote-Des-Neiges-NDG borough, the city as a whole and all municipal candidates to task for not caring more about disabled Montrealers.
Norman MacIsaac suffers from ALS and uses a wheelchair. He recently posted a video to social media showing how the curbs on some newly constructed sidewalks are too high for him and other wheelchair users to use safely.
Current regulations require the curbs be one centimeter higher than the street.
"When they were doing the work, they make the streets accessible to pedestrians, but not necessarily to people in wheelchairs," he MacIsaac told CTV Montreal.
"If I come towards the incline, I have to slow down," he said. "If that's at a stop sign, the danger is that if I slow down to make that maneuver, the cars are coming very close behind me… Frankly, in some places I was scared I would tip over."
MacIsaac said the corner of Monkland and Oxford is particularly dangerous, even after the period of major construction.
His video caught the attention of borough Mayor Russell Copeman, who said the curbs were an error made by the contractor, and had been remedied at their expense.
Projet Montreal also took notice of the video, saying with a number of disabled candidates the party can sympathize with MacIsaac.
For his part, Norman just wants someone to listen, and do the job right the first time.
"If I do renovations in my home, I hire contractors, I don't let them do the work, I inspect it," he said. "If there's thing I don't like, I go back to them and ask them to correct. I'm the inspector in this case, I'm the one raising the issue and I don't work for the city."