Harout Chitilian sat in his office at Montreal’s City Hall and told us that the city has a long way to go to become a global leader among smart cities.

He had only recently returned from Columbus, Ohio, where he accepted Montreal’s award for being named the Intelligent Community Forum’s (ICF) Intelligent Community of the year. Montreal won on the shoulders of its Smart City plan, something this politician helped develop in 2014.

“It’s extremely important to have the political will and to put your money where your mouth is,” Chitilian told reporters. “We’re not stopping after this award.”

The ICF award seemed to prove that Montreal is, in fact, on its way to becoming a “smart city.” The foundations were put in place almost three years ago by Denis Coderre’s office, including Chitilian, the Vice president of the City’s executive committee for information technologies and the smart city.

Chitilian, 35, comes from an Armenian family of engineers that immigrated to Canada from Lebanon when he was nine years old. The computer engineer by trade called himself the “Number #1 fan and cheerleader of our community,” and said he feels privileged. “I’m doing something I love to serve the community.”

At a high level, the Smart and Digital City Action Plan uses technology to leverage economic growth and make real improvements to Montrealers’ quality of life.

It has also chosen 70 citizen-submitted projects divided into 6 programs based on their direct impact on the population, the return on investment and production deadline. Most lie in the categories of “residents and society,” “transportation,” and “communication and infrastructure.”

Importantly, there are nine “structural initiatives” to the Smart and Digital City Action Plan, with public wifi (developing a telecommunications network) listed first. The list includes things like championing open data, co-developing solutions with the community, developing sites for learning and innovation and reinforcing a culture of transparency and accountability.

Chitilian compared having pubic wifi across the island to “having running water.”

“We need to have the foresight the predict what our future needs are and not always be in reaction mode when it comes to deploying bandwidth in the community,” he told MTLinTECH. “That’s why we have a master plan for the whole island of Montreal where we’ll continue to address all kinds of needs using connectivity in the coming years.”

The Smart City plan, he said, came about after 2011 when various groups in the community had already invested their time, money and lives into tech. He credited major events like the Startupfest, the Quartier de l’innovation de Montréal and Notman House as concrete examples before the city stepped in.

“They were happening but the city didn’t have any particular buy-in into them,” said Chitilian. “That’s when Mayor Coderre stepped in and acknowledged that this subculture existed and we needed to integrate these best practices into the way we manage the city.”

The Smart City plan was born.

The plan focuses on three founding principles: openness and transparency (with public data), innovating on every possible sphere of how the city is managed and lastly, a human strategy that prioritizes dialogue and collaboration.

Within that close emphasis on the community, Chitilian noted how the city created the InnoCité incubation program for Internet startups. The program, now concluding its second cohort of startups, targets smart solutions to city problems. Or there’s the many hacking events the city sponsors that targets things like water quality, bicycle riding and snow removal.

The way the city actually goes forward with its action plan is by either funding projects, acting as a facilitator for people to meet each other and work together, or as an actual developer that can fund and execute projects by itself.

“We’re funding some very notable projects that we know have a proven track record, like when you fund a guy like Jason Della Rocca to set up GamePlay Space - Espace Ludique,” Chitilian told MTLinTECH. “We’re looking to fund a makerspace in Montreal. We funded the InnoCité program and we funded Startupfest. We’re constantly supporting the community.”

Dollars for projects through the Smart City plan comes through two avenues: $23 million for “capital expenditures,” like city initiatives and infrastructure, and “operational expenses” (about $60-70 million per year for a revamped tech department and $1.3 million for the Smart City team).

On top of that, the city has a budget dedicated to subsidizing many non-profit organizations and events. The InnoCité program received $146,000, Startupfest is receiving $225,000 over three years, the recently announced Capital Intelligent Mtl fund received $400,000 and Gameplay Space received nearly $100,000, just to name a few.

“The list goes on,” said a proud Chitilian.

Of all the possible things the Smart City plan has brought to this city, the Executive said he’s most proud of how the city made a point to come up with a strategy that completely valued the community’s feedback.

“For the first time I think all the pieces working in this feel a sense of togetherness. Now we need to put this sense to good use. We need to push the boundaries and make sure that we progress,” he said.

But there is room for the city to do a better job at celebrating its own success, said Chitilian. World-class innovation cities like San Francisco and Boston are constantly lauding their own feats, so why can’t Montreal do more of that?

We ended the conversation by hitting on how provincial and federal politics can affect Montreal’s progress. With a Quebec government currently working out its own digital strategy and a federal government that seems committed to investing in innovation, Chitilian feels confident.

“This is a great time to be in Montreal,” he said. “You have the city on board, a new federal government that understands and appreciates this ecosystem and you have a Quebec government that’s now in the phase of implementing a strategy that will also support this ecosystem.”

“Going forward we have all the stars aligned.”