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Rankings use 15 indicators to assess a city’s entrepreneurial environment based on three factors: policy presence and perspective.

In policy Montreal finished dead last, which Gaudreault said is largely due to high taxes combined with red tape that wastes business owners’ time, costs them money and causes a lot of stress.

In Montreal, he said, business property taxes are four times that of residential buildings. “It’s not fair in our view,” he said, adding that about half of the private sector gross domestic product comes from small businesses.

“Those are delays, fees and time that can be extremely costly to the small business owner and sometimes we feel things might be a little more complicated than they need to.”

This summer, Eric Jolander applied for a sidewalk patio permit for his restaurant, Über Bar, but the bureaucracy held him up for months while he waited for the liquor licence.

“The delay was long and painstaking,” said Jolander, who is a real estate agent as well as the owner of three restaurants in Montreal’s Ahuntsic neighbourhood where he has lived his entire life.

Jolander is also upset about the city installing a mandatory water meter in one of his buildings, then charging him for it, and that he has to hire private garbage collection because the municipality says he throws out too much to get municipal service. “Right now in Montreal it’s difficult to be an entrepreneur,” he said.

“The city has improved its processes but it’s still not very functional. It’s complicated, there are a lot of documents, there are rules that change but the city doesn’t communicate.”