Housing costs in Montreal are half of what they are in
Toronto. Their incomes are lower, but people in Montreal have more time and more disposable income to spend on things like sitting in restaurants and cafes 7 days a week.
http://docs.rlpnetwork.com/rlp.ca/PressR...art_EN.pdf
A friend of mine was telling me people in Montreal would freak out if it cost $30,000 to renovate their house. $30,000 in
Toronto might get you a parking spot at your condo.
The students have more money to spend going out to get drunk because Quebec has the lowest university/college tuitions in the country. Tuition at the Université de Montreal is around $2200. Tuition at the University of
Toronto is $5400.
http://www.aucc.ca/canadian-universities...niversity/
A 'good' job there for someone in their 20s is telemarketing.
If you can't speak excellent Quebec French you can't get a decent job. You can work construction or in the kitchen of a restaurant, or maybe as a janitor. In any business with 50 employees or more, French has to be spoken in the workplace at all times - they actually have language police coming around to enforce this. Even global multinationals have come in conflict with the laws for receiving company emails from their head office, in English, as per company policy. It doesn't matter that all their branches around the world use English in emails - for simplicity, rather than translating everything into 200 different languages - any company emails that end up in Quebec have to be in French. So multinationals close their Montreal office and move to Ontario. This puts a downward pressure on salaries and real estate.
I've spoken to a number of people who grew up in Quebec and have fled because of the language laws and the political climate. Montreal is a divided city sort of like Beirut. Going there on vacation for a weekend can be a lot of fun but actually living there and being constantly insulted might be a little different. And it's not a simple matter of learning French. You're still an Anglo and the focus of all their resentment at not having their own country.
You tell them you're from
Toronto and typically they'll look at you like you're Satan himself. They grew up on bedtime stories that
Toronto is the HQ of the evil Canadian Empire which is enslaving them and trying to destroy their culture.
However the women in Montreal are beautiful and despite everything, generally more approachable than the ones in
Toronto even if you're a maudit anglais. So if you can deal with all the negatives, Montreal does have that as a positive.