Canadiens, Alouettes fans out of luck as transit network paralyzed by strike Saturday

MONTREAL — Montreal sporting fans who had planned on taking public transit to major events on Saturday are out of luck, as the union representing thousands of bus and metro drivers will walk off the job.

It’s their first strike in 38 years, the union says, with two more strikes planned later in November.

On Saturday, the Montreal Alouettes are playing the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at home in the CFL’s eastern semifinal; the Montreal Canadiens are facing off against the Ottawa Senators at the Bell Centre; meanwhile, the Canadiens’ farm team — the Laval Rocket — is playing at home against the Rochester Americans in the AHL. Fans will have to find alternative transportation for all three games.

“We know that this is exceptional, and that it’s extremely disruptive for our customers not to be able to rely on our public transport, even though it’s the weekend,” Marie-Claude Léonard, the general director of the transit agency, told journalists Friday morning.

She said the agency has made a new offer to the bus and drivers union that includes higher salaries.

A separate strike, involving 2,400 maintenance workers, promises to disrupt service for most of November. It begins on Sunday — municipal election day — and is scheduled to run until Nov. 28, restricting bus and metro service to morning and afternoon rush hours and late at night. It will be the union’s third strike since June.

“No one wants to see such a long strike,” Léonard said. “We are doing everything in our power to prevent it from happening and to ensure it can end as quickly as possible.”

Léonard said it was a “draconian” decision for the maintenance workers union to call a four-month strike, especially considering it was the union itself that had proposed mediation. She said the public transit network is considering calling for an arbitrator to come in to resolve the dispute.

“All options are really on the table right now,” Léonard said.

The current impasse with the maintenance workers union largely revolves around salaries, with the transit network saying it can’t offer the wages the union is asking for without making significant cuts to essential services. Should an arbitrator intervene, they would have the final say on the collective agreement.

Meanwhile, it’s still unclear whether the second and third day of the bus and metro drivers strike — scheduled for Nov. 15 and 16 — will paralyze the entire system like it will on Saturday. Quebec’s labour tribunal will still need to need to weigh in.

At Bonaventure metro station on Friday, Pierre Chabrier and Matthias Luqent, both students at ETS engineering school, said they’ll need to spend an hour walking to get to campus on Saturday because of an exam they have scheduled.

“The school sent us an email saying that even though there are strikes, each course will still be in person,” Chabrier said. “Unfortunately, we can’t do the exams remotely since we could cheat and they don’t trust us, so we have to come in to do them.”

Mark Moutter, a civil engineering student at McGill, said none of his courses will be offered remotely either. “I’m feeling uncomfortable about it, definitely,” he said, but he placed the blame on the provincial government saying it is underfunding the network.

“They’re the ones ultimately who are causing all of this,” he said, saying both the workers and the public deserve better.

But as much as he supports the workers, he said he was disappointed that Quebec’s labour tribunal didn’t make an exception for election day this Sunday, by granting the network’s request for more hours of service.

“I do think that the court should revise their opinion on that, especially on Nov. 2, because we are talking about people expressing their right to vote,” Moutter said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2025.

Miriam Lafontaine, The Canadian Press