Two surveillance contracts took two different routes into the city. The expensive one was tendered in public. The one that put a camera on a street corner cost $17,134 and needed no vote at all.
Montreal keys contract approval to dollar value. A five-year, $1.8-million video-analytics platform went out to public tender. Four automated plate readers cost $17,134 — under the threshold at which a delegated manager can award a contract by mutual agreement — and reached a lamp post on Henri-Bourassa Boulevard without a council resolution. Nothing in that route is irregular. That is the finding.
DOCUMENTED ROUTEPlate readers
Delegated manager→$17,134→Genetec Cloudrunner
Public records show a $17,134 award in October 2025 for four Cloudrunner CR-H2 units on a one-year subscription. Montreal's rules allow contracts below $25,000 to be awarded by mutual agreement under a delegation of powers. The approval route was set by the price, not by what the device collects.
A City of Montreal public tender for the SPVM was won by Quebec integrator iMotion Security on a five-year, $1.8-million contract. The software is ROC Watch, built by a Colorado manufacturer specialising in biometrics. The SPVM says the identity-matching functions are not enabled. The capability is in the product either way.
A City spokesperson said Montreal had not installed the camera and referred deployment questions to the SPVM. Public records show Montreal awarded the contract for the units ten months earlier. Both statements can be accurate at the same time. The gap between them is the working definition of the word acquired.
Filter the source ledger without changing the published evidence state.
Capability register
What the record establishes today
“Unknown” means the decisive public record has not been obtained.
Decision chain
1Quebec government
Section 63.5 requires a privacy assessment at acquisition, with no dollar threshold. Provincial consent still gates body-camera footage as court evidence.
2Agglomeration council
Receives the work of the public-security commission.
3Commission de la sécurité publique
Monitors and studies SPVM matters. Nine members. No procurement approval power.
4Council and executive committee
Approve contracts by resolution above the delegation threshold.
5Delegated managers
May award below $25,000 by mutual agreement. The plate-reader contract fits here.
6SPVM
Specifies, configures, deploys and governs operational use.