Unlicensed tours in Montreal's Mile End spout false info, sparking frustration

Guillaume Vaillant has been hosting tour guides at his bakery for years. But since the spring, he says his business has seen a wave of new guides bring in groups — unannounced — and then proceed to tell fabricated stories about his shop and the city.

"They falsified my background as Alsatian, European," Vaillant, co-owner of Guillaume bakery, told CBC Montreal. "They gave completely false information, as much about the neighbourhood and the city of Montreal as they did about our establishment. That's what shocked us."

Irked by the situation, Vaillant and his business partners decided to demand that all future tour guides present a valid permit before entering their store. "Only licensed guides can enter with their group," reads part of a sign on their door.

Montreal and Quebec City are the only two Canadian cities with bylaws that require tour guides to obtain municipal licences. Prospective guides must take a $2,500 course over several weeks and register for a permit which costs $105 a year.

According to the city of Montreal's bylaw, guides who do not abide by these rules may be fined up to $1,000 for repeat offences.

"It's been a problem for many years," said Michel Ménard, vice-president of the Association professionnelle des guides touristiques (APGT), a professional association of tour guides in Montreal. "It just increased recently because of the accessibility with the Internet [and] also platforms like Viator, Airbnb."

Despite this, Ménard says there's been little enforcement from the city.

"I don't understand," he said. "If you ask for a licence for something, why not apply the regulation there? It's kind of unfair for those who actually pay [for] that licence."

Ménard is also concerned that tourists won't know they're experiencing a bad tour with false information. Ménard ran fake April Fool's tours for three years — and when he told the participants at the end that the stories were fake, he said "nobody saw it coming."

"Sometimes people don't know that they had a bad tour because the guy is funny, making jokes," he said. "But in the end, maybe half of the stories he told were not true."

The city of Montreal says it hasn't received any complaints from dissatisfied tourists but that it has begun a review of its bylaw and its enforcement.

Despite the ongoing tensions, several local businesses who spoke with CBC Montreal were either unaware or unbothered by the disputes.

"We got put in the middle of fights," said Samsara Gattuso, manager of the family-run Drogheria Fine, who reported that their shop recently received a complaint from a licensed tour guide about the unlicensed groups.

"But we can't really do anything unless [we don't] take them. But I don't understand why I would say no to a sale," she said, noting that licensed or not, the tour guides she's met have been pleasant to work with.