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Participatory Budgeting: What Does It Deliver?

Letting residents directly vote on how public money gets spent — what the real record shows about whether it works.

DRAFT v1.0The evidence fileThe playbook

What this page draws on: carried-forward (from that page's own internal recordsthis page's inherited master briefing (participatory budgeting), carried forward from earlier research per this page’s this page’s own scope note) and NEW (2026-07-14 live discovery, each with an inline source quote: exact quote + source + date accessed). Date: 2026-07-14 · Coverage: not evaluated this review (breadth check against v1/master briefing equivalents is a separate follow-up). Cui Bono: 0 beneficiary entities identified — see Cui Bono section below.

Live-verification priority note: this page’s master briefing (the inherited master briefing's §Toronto-specific factors) flagged, unconfirmed, that "Montreal has run a citywide budget participatif since 2020, with recent rounds allocating roughly $45M and drawing 28,000+ ballots — the strongest large-Canadian-city comparator [confirm]." A cut-off prior session flagged, but did not confirm, a materially different development: that Montreal reportedly ENDED its participatory-budgeting program after three editions (~$101.5M total, 2020-2025). This review live-verified that lead directly against primary and named-journalist sources — see "Montreal: confirmed program discontinuation" below. The finding is confirmed, and it materially changes how "strongest large-Canadian-city comparator" should be framed throughout this page.

Scope

The neutral scope question this document answers: does participatory budgeting (residents directly allocating a defined share of public money) reliably deliver measurable service, equity, or trust outcomes, and under what conditions does it succeed or fail? This backgrounder covers: Toronto's own 2015-17 PB pilot and its discontinuation; global PB evidence including the Brazilian causal literature and the honest decline/reversibility literature (Porto Alegre's 2017 suspension, Brazil's broader program decline); named international comparators (Paris, New York City) with published evaluations; and the Montreal comparator's status, now confirmed changed since the master briefing was written. It does not cover, and hands off by name: sortition-based citizens' assemblies (citizens-assemblies-sortition); day-to-day municipal service delivery (government-that-works-basics); and the detailed council/ward governance structure questions city-hall-democratic-reform owns. No claim citations are required in this section — it frames the document rather than asserting facts about the world.

Current state

What participatory budgeting is, and the central design variable

Participatory budgeting (PB) lets residents propose, deliberate on, and vote to allocate a ring-fenced portion of public money — usually capital/infrastructure spending, originating in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989 [the inherited master briefing's §Background & key terms]. The single most consequential design variable is the scale of money on the table: results range from symbolic (Toronto's pilot, $150,000-$250,000 per ward) to transformative (Paris's roughly 5% of its capital budget) — and the amount largely determines whether residents show up and whether the process changes anything [the inherited master briefing's §Background & key terms].

Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the master briefing draws a distinction, silently absent from this backgrounder until now, between binding PB (winning projects actually get built) and advisory PB, where "many North American versions... devolve a councillor's existing discretionary funds" ("menu money") rather than committing core city budget [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "Background & key terms" section]. The master briefing also names a mainstreamed framework model, distinct from a one-off pilot: a government target routing a fixed share of council budgets through PB on an ongoing basis, citing Scotland's adoption of "a ~1%-of-budget approach" engaging "well over 100,000 people" [same section] ⚠️ still being checked (Scotland's framework and participation figure are carried from the inherited document; not independently re-confirmed against a Scottish government primary source this review).

Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — a second strand of the case for PB, silently absent from this backgrounder until now, is that the consistently reported benefits across the literature are governance ones rather than hard service outcomes: PB "exposes how money is spent, gives residents a verifiable stake, builds budget literacy and organizing skills, and frequently engages people — youth, non-citizens, lower-income residents — who are absent from ordinary elections," with participants in several programs found to be more demographically representative than local voters, per Public Agenda's US/Canada synthesis research [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "strongest case FOR," item 2, citing publicagenda.org] ⚠️ still being checked (not independently re-fetched from the Public Agenda source this review).

The causal evidence: Brazil

The cleanest causal result in the global literature is Gonçalves (2014, World Development): across Brazilian municipalities from 1990-2004, adopting PB shifted spending toward sanitation and health and reduced infant mortality, holding per-capita budgets constant — on the order of a 1-2 per 1,000 reduction in infant mortality (roughly 5-10% relative), achieved by re-weighting existing budgets rather than spending more [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case FOR, item 1]. This evidence comes from a low-baseline-services context under specific political conditions (Workers' Party municipal dominance) that a wealthy, high-baseline city like Toronto does not share — a caveat the master briefing itself attaches, not one this backgrounder adds independently [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case FOR, item 1].

Toronto's own 2015-17 pilot: the local reality check

Toronto ran a PB pilot in three areas (Ward 33; Oakridge in Ward 35; Rustic in Ward 12), each given $150,000 rising to $250,000, totaling approximately $1.87 million across roughly 1,700 voters and 37 projects [the inherited master briefing's §Toronto-specific factors]. Turnout fell after the first year even as the budget grew; residents reported the projects felt too small to address their communities' larger needs; and the pilot was not continued past its initial run [the inherited master briefing's §Toronto-specific factors, §Executive summary].

Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — two structural features the master briefing names as shaping any future Toronto PB design were silently absent from this backgrounder: the City already organises around 158 social-planning neighbourhoods (used today for service planning, not budgeting) and four community councils plus 25 wards, meaning a Toronto PB program "could build on existing geography rather than invent new bodies"; and Toronto's affluent, civically dense neighbourhoods are already over-represented at City Hall, so without equity-weighting, PB risks "handing them another lever" while higher-need neighbourhoods — many designated Neighbourhood Improvement Areas — participate less [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "Toronto-specific factors" section] ⚠️ still being checked (the 158-neighbourhood and four-community-council figures are carried from the inherited document, not independently re-confirmed against a current City of Toronto source this review).

Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the master briefing names Toronto Community Housing's tenant participatory budgeting, running since 2001, as "Canada's longest-running PB": tenants allocate roughly $9M/year in capital through a needs-and-equity formula (a share split equally across communities, a larger share weighted by building size and condition), before the program was paused in 2017 for redesign [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "Toronto-specific factors" section] — the $9M figure and paused status were already noted in this document's "Thin or contested" list, but the "Canada's longest-running," "since 2001," and needs-and-equity-formula detail were silently missing until this restoration; the program's current (2026) status remains unconfirmed, per the master briefing's own [confirm current status] flag, carried forward rather than resolved. The master briefing separately names Guelph as having run "one of North America's earliest neighbourhood PB efforts" [same section] ⚠️ still being checked (not independently re-confirmed this review — no further detail on Guelph's program is given in the inherited document itself).

Montreal: confirmed program discontinuation (2026-07-14 live verification)

⚠️ NEW (2026-07-14, live-verified, materially updates the master briefing's unconfirmed Montreal claim): Montreal ran a citywide budget participatif across three editions between 2020 and 2025-26, then formally ended the program, citing budgetary constraints tied to broader municipal job cuts. This is confirmed directly, not inferred, against both a named-journalist news account and the City of Montreal's own published program page.

Quote (primary journalistic account, named author): "Lancé en 2020 dans la foulée de la pandémie, le budget participatif de la Ville de Montréal visait à donner aux résidents un pouvoir décisionnel direct sur une partie du budget municipal... Après 3 éditions et 101,5 M$ investis, la Ville a décidé de ne pas reconduire l'initiative." ["Launched in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic, the City of Montreal's participatory budget aimed to give residents direct decision-making power over part of the municipal budget... After 3 editions and $101.5M invested, the City decided not to renew the initiative."] Source: Marie-Hélène Chartrand, "Après trois éditions, Montréal met fin au budget participatif," EST MÉDIA Montréal, published 2026-02-19, https://estmediamontreal.com/fin-budget-participatif-montreal/ · accessed 2026-07-14.

The same article gives the administration's own stated reason, directly quoted:

Quote: "Dans un contexte de rigueur budgétaire marqué par la nécessité d'abolir 1 000 postes pour équilibrer le budget municipal, la Ville doit faire des choix difficiles." ["In a context of budgetary rigour marked by the need to eliminate 1,000 positions to balance the municipal budget, the City must make difficult choices."] Source: same article, City of Montreal administration statement as quoted by EST MÉDIA Montréal, accessed 2026-07-14.

The budget scaled up across the three editions before ending — $25 million (edition 1, later increased from an initial $10 million), $31.5 million (edition 2), $45 million (edition 3) — and a fourth edition, had it proceeded, was budgeted at $60 million, per the same source. The program's full three-edition total is confirmed at $101.5 million. The third and final edition (2024-25) drew 880 proposed ideas, of which 519 were deemed eligible, narrowed to 38 finalist projects, with more than 28,000 residents voting between February 10 and March 17, 2025, and 7 winning projects selected across 35 sites in 18 boroughs. This exact figure set is independently corroborated by the City of Montreal's own official program page:

Quote: "La Ville investit 45 M$ pour réaliser des projets proposés et choisis par la population. Plus de 880 idées ont été proposées et plus de 28 000 personnes ont participé au vote pour déterminer les projets à réaliser." ["The City is investing $45M to realize projects proposed and chosen by the population. More than 880 ideas were proposed and more than 28,000 people participated in the vote to determine the projects to be carried out."] Source: Ville de Montréal, "Budget participatif de Montréal : bilan de la troisième édition (2024-2025)," updated 2025-11-26, https://montreal.ca/articles/budget-participatif-de-montreal-bilan-de-la-troisieme-edition-2024-2025-87348 · accessed 2026-07-14.

No citywide replacement program has been announced; the City has indicated some boroughs may relaunch PB locally (a path some, including Plateau-Mont-Royal and Ahuntsic-Cartierville, had already used), but this is described as a possibility raised by the administration, not a confirmed successor program [EST MÉDIA Montréal, same article].

International comparators with published evaluations: Paris and New York City

Paris committed approximately €500 million — about 5% of its capital budget, roughly €100 million a year — to PB between 2014 and 2020, with participation rising from approximately 40,000 voters (2014) to approximately 158,000 (2016) and 2,500+ projects realised [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case FOR, item 3]. Two honest qualifiers travel with this headline: despite a 30% guarantee for working-class areas, a disproportionate share of winning projects still landed in already-affluent arrondissements, and the programme was restructured after 2020 under the same administration that built it [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case FOR, item 3].

New York City's Council PB, running since 2011, reached well over 100,000 voters in a cycle at its peak (approximately 118,000 in 2018-19) [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case FOR, item 3].

⚠️ NEW (2026-07-14 discovery, updates the master briefing's NYC figures with the program's current, smaller scale): NYC's PB program remains active into 2026 but has scaled down materially from its cited peak. The FY2026 cycle (voting March 29-April 6, 2025) allocated $30 million across 24 council districts with over 93,000 voters; the FY2027 cycle (voting April 11-19, 2026) covers 22 participating districts with $22 million in capital funding.

Quote: "Speaker Adrienne Adams and the New York City Council announced the winning proposals for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Participatory Budgeting cycle. During the voting period, which took place from March 29 through April 6, more than 93,000 New Yorkers voted to allocate $30 million in capital funding for local improvements to schools, parks, libraries, and other public spaces across 24 Council Districts in New York City. This year marks the 14th cycle of Participatory Budgeting by the City Council since it launched the initiative in 2011." Source: New York City Council, "Speaker Adams, New York City Council Members Announce Results of FY 2026 Participatory Budgeting," press release, 2025-05-30, https://council.nyc.gov/press/2025/05/30/2892/ · accessed 2026-07-14.

The FY2027 cycle's district count (22, down from 24) and dollar figure ($22M, down from $30M) indicate the program, while still running continuously since 2011 and thus a genuinely durable institutionalized model, is not expanding — a nuance the master briefing's peak-figure framing did not capture. NYC's PB remains a "devolved discretionary capital" model — individual council members choose whether to participate each cycle, which is why the district count fluctuates [the inherited master briefing's §Background & key terms].

Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the master briefing names NYC's program as simultaneously "a scaling success and a tokenism warning": roughly $1M per district is real money to a neighbourhood but "a rounding error in a $100B+ city budget," which the master briefing calls "exactly the 'absorb activist energy over small money' critique made concrete" [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "strongest case FOR," item 3] — a qualifier this backgrounder had not previously carried, now more pointed given this review's own finding that the FY2027 cycle's per-district allocation has fallen further (to under $1M/district on average across 22 districts sharing $22M) rather than grown.

What "meaningful" money would mean in Toronto, and the administrative-cost layer

Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — this entire costing dimension was silently absent from this backgrounder prior to this review, despite the master briefing treating it as the concrete operationalization of its own central "symbolic sums fail" claim. The master briefing distinguishes two cost layers. First, the allocated pot itself, financed via one of three rising-difficulty options: devolved councillor capital (the Toronto/NYC/Chicago "menu money" model — no new money, lowest friction, smallest sums), a ring-fenced share of the city's capital budget (Paris's ~5% model), or a top-down framework paired with a dedicated fund (Scotland's ~1%-plus-seed-money model) — with Toronto's realistic near-term lever named as devolved capital and/or a defined percentage of the capital budget [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "Costs & financing" section]. The master briefing then operationalizes "meaningful" in Toronto-specific dollars: against a 10-year capital plan (2025-2034) of about $59.6 billion, roughly $6B/year, 1% would be approximately $60M/year (about $2.4M per ward across 25 wards — already an order of magnitude above the pilot's $150k-$250k, and comparable to NYC's ~$1M/district), while 5% (the Paris level) would be approximately $300M/year; the master briefing states plainly that "below roughly $1M of binding capital per ward, the evidence predicts the 2017 outcome" — low turnout, "projects too small," quiet discontinuation [same section] ⚠️ still being checked, carried at the master briefing's own explicit hedge — "[Figures are order-of-magnitude; confirm the current capital-plan total before quoting.]" — the $59.6B capital-plan figure has not been independently re-confirmed against a current City of Toronto budget document this review, and per the canonical-figure guard this backgrounder does not assert it as independently verified.

Second, the master briefing names administrative overhead — facilitation, multilingual outreach, technical feasibility review, and project delivery — as "the one that quietly determines success," with mature programs commonly running admin costs in the rough range of 5-20% of the allocated pot (higher in small pilots, where fixed costs dominate), and cautions that the most expensive part, proactive equity outreach, "is exactly what cannot be cut without reproducing the capture problem" [same section] ⚠️ still being checked (not independently confirmed against Toronto's own 2019 pilot evaluation this review, consistent with the master briefing's own [confirm Toronto's per-dollar admin cost from the 2019 evaluation] flag). The master briefing also names a specific, often-missed overhead trap: PB funds capital, but new assets (a park upgrade, a community garden, a plaza) generate ongoing operations-and-maintenance costs that land on the operating budget — if that liability is not committed up front by the relevant city division, winning projects either decay or trigger friction between residents and staff, so an O&M commitment "should be a precondition, not an afterthought" [same section].

Toronto: the case for and against

Section merged in 2026-08-11 from a companion Toronto-specific brief. Toronto is a single-tier city (CD/CSD codes coincide).

FOR: the Brazilian causal evidence, Paris/NYC's meaningful-scale participation, Toronto Community Housing's tenant-PB precedent, and Montreal's own (now-ended) program as evidence PB can sustain large-scale engagement are all already documented above in full — see "The causal evidence: Brazil," "International comparators with published evaluations: Paris and New York City," and "Key tensions / tradeoffs" below.

AGAINST: Toronto's own 2015-17 pilot, Montreal's confirmed discontinuation, and NYC's recent contraction are all already documented above in full — see "Toronto's own 2015-17 pilot," "Montreal: confirmed program discontinuation," and "International comparators with published evaluations." One additional inherited figure not otherwise carried into this backgrounder's own prose: the number of Brazilian PB programs has more than halved since the mid-2000s, per the master briefing, which attributes the decline to identifiable institutional interests (councillors guarding discretionary control, cautious bureaucracies) and political-coalition changes rather than resource scarcity as such [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case AGAINST] — the same dynamic already named qualitatively in "Key tensions / tradeoffs" below, now with the specific "more than halved" figure attached.

Municipal ask (upward): per this library's issue index, participatory budgeting is a method the City can adopt and fund unilaterally within its own capital-budget authority — no provincial or federal action is required for the core mechanism, distinguishing this issue from city-hall-democratic-reform's ranked-ballot and strong-mayor-ratification asks, both of which do require provincial legislative change. this library's municipal-asks table has not been checked against this specific issue slug — flagged as an open item.

Toronto bottom line: Toronto does not need new evidence that token-scale PB fails — its own 2015-17 pilot already established that. Montreal's now-confirmed ending adds a sharper, more uncomfortable lesson: even a well-resourced, actively-engaged, multi-year PB program is not safe from discontinuation absent structural protection from ordinary budget politics. A credible Toronto PB program, per this page’s combined evidence, needs not only meaningful money but some form of durability protection against exactly the kind of single-budget-cycle reversal that ended Montreal's program.

Toronto-specific uncertainties: no L3-normalized, SGC-keyed fiscal data rows exist yet for this issue in this library's Toronto data layer; all cost figures cited throughout this document are backgrounder-inherited national/provincial/other-city primary-source figures, not committed Toronto-scale rows. this library's municipal-asks table has not been checked against this specific jurisdiction/issue combination. The remaining uncertainties (TCH's current status, Hamilton's ForWard figures, the NYC FY2027 search-summary sourcing, and whether any Montreal borough has relaunched local PB) are already carried in "Open questions / data gaps" below.

Key tensions / tradeoffs

PB is good at small, local capital decisions, but has no mechanism for city-wide strategy. Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the master briefing names a "scale mismatch" limitation distinct from the token-budget critique: PB works at the scale of local capital projects but "has no mechanism for long-term, city-wide strategy (transit, housing supply) — and shouldn't be asked to carry it" [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "strongest case AGAINST" section]. The master briefing separately names administrative friction as a distinct trade-off from cost alone: many resident ideas "prove infeasible under procurement rules, breeding frustration" [same section] — a process-design risk this backgrounder had not previously carried, distinct from the dollar-cost administrative-overhead figures restored above.

Toronto's own pilot and Montreal's much larger program both ended, for structurally different but instructive reasons. Toronto's 2015-17 pilot ended after a small, symbolic budget produced declining turnout and resident frustration that "projects felt too small" [the inherited master briefing's §Toronto-specific factors]. Montreal's program, by contrast, was large by the time it ended ($45 million in its final edition, drawing 28,000+ voters) and was discontinued for an explicitly stated fiscal-austerity reason (the need to eliminate 1,000 municipal positions) rather than declining engagement — Montreal's own final-edition data shows participation holding at scale (28,516 voters, essentially flat versus the vote counts implied by its $45M-and-growing budget trajectory), not the "projects too small, turnout falling" pattern that ended Toronto's pilot. This is a documented tension in the reversibility literature: PB can be discontinued either because it was too small to sustain interest (Toronto) or because it was large enough to become a visible budget line an administration under fiscal pressure chooses to cut (Montreal) — both are real failure modes, and neither should be read as disproving PB's value when done well; the master briefing's own broader observation that Brazil's PB decline followed "identifiable interests... not lack of resources" and "a change of governing coalition" is the closer read for Montreal's case than a claim that PB itself failed on the merits [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case AGAINST].

The "meaningful budget" design lesson survives Montreal's ending, but the durability lesson gets starker. The master briefing's central claim — PB works when the money is real and durable, and fails when tokenistic or unresourced — is not contradicted by Montreal's discontinuation, since Montreal's program was, by the master briefing's own standard, meaningfully resourced ($101.5M across three editions, scaling up each round). What Montreal's ending adds is a sharper illustration of the master briefing's own "political reversibility" risk: even a well-resourced, actively-scaling PB program can be ended by a single fiscal-pressure budget decision, with no legal entrenchment protecting it — exactly the vulnerability the master briefing names in Porto Alegre's 2017 suspension, now with a second, more directly Toronto-comparable large-city data point [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case AGAINST, "political reversibility"].

Paris's continued operation versus Montreal's and Toronto's discontinuation. Paris's PB program, while restructured after 2020, has not been discontinued outright the way Toronto's and Montreal's have — a genuine point of divergence among the three most detailed comparators in this page’s evidence, not resolved by anything in this page’s sources as to why Paris persisted where Montreal and Toronto did not.

Equity is conditional on design, not automatic — and cuts both ways. Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — this whole argument, one of the master briefing's own named sections ("Equity & distribution"), was silently absent from this backgrounder prior to this review. At its best — Porto Alegre's early years — PB "measurably redirected spending toward poorer districts, improving water, sanitation, and services for those long ignored," because the process deliberately weighted need and mobilized low-income participation; but the cautionary pattern is just as real: where PB runs as "a thin, under-resourced add-on," participation skews toward the "already-organized, older, higher-income, and more-educated," and small pots ("projects too small") fail to move resources where they matter — so a poorly-designed PB "can reinforce the participation gap it was meant to close" [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "Equity & distribution" section]. The master briefing names the equity-decisive design choices as concrete and specific: committing real money (so participation is worth people's time), weighting allocations toward high-need neighbourhoods, and investing in outreach, translation, childcare, and accessible formats so residents other processes miss can actually take part [same section] — none of these four specific outreach mechanisms (translation, childcare, and accessible formats in particular) had been named anywhere in this backgrounder before this restoration. The master briefing also names genuine authority — residents deciding real allocations rather than advising on the margins — as a distinct success factor from money alone: "perceived tokenism kills engagement" even where the pot is real [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "What determines success vs failure" section, item 4] — this is the same binding-vs-advisory distinction restored in "Current state" above, now named explicitly as an equity-adjacent success factor in its own right. The master briefing names a fifth success factor beyond the four above: integration with the wider democratic ecosystem — PB as one rung among neighbourhood assemblies, citizens' assemblies, and council, "not an isolated gimmick" [From this library’s earlier research from this page’s carried-forward master briefing (participatory budgeting), original sourcing: the master briefing's own "What determines success vs failure," item 5] — this specific layered-democracy architecture (puroks → neighbourhood assemblies → PB → citizens' assemblies → council) is independently and more fully documented in this page’s own sibling citizens-assemblies-sortition backgrounder's "Toronto-specific factors" section (verified present there directly this review), so it is named here rather than re-developed in full, per the claim-anchored-not-duplicated discipline.

What the evidence does and doesn't support

Well-supported:

Thin or contested:

International context

1. Treaties/frameworks touched. No binding UN treaty or international framework specifically governs participatory budgeting; it is a municipal fiscal-governance practice rather than a rights-based obligation. The UN-Habitat and OECD both maintain PB-adjacent good-governance and open-government guidance (part of broader participatory-governance norms), but no specific binding instrument or numbered target applies uniquely to PB the way, for example, ICESCR applies to housing — stated plainly rather than manufacturing a treaty connection that does not exist.

2. Best global comparators with published evaluations. Paris (2014-2020, restructured since) remains the most ambitious sustained PB program by budget share among this page’s named comparators — approximately 5% of the capital budget, with a formal 30% equity guarantee for working-class areas, though its own evaluation data shows that guarantee did not fully prevent affluent-area skew in winning projects [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case FOR, item 3]. New York City's Council PB (2011-present) is the most durable continuously-operating North American model, with district-level published results available every cycle via the Council's own press office, though it has recently contracted in both district count and dollar value between FY2026 and FY2027 [2026-07-14]. Montreal's now-ended three-edition program (2020-2025-26) remains instructive precisely because it was well-documented, well-resourced, and still discontinued for fiscal reasons unrelated to its own participation trend — a distinct and arguably more cautionary data point than either Paris or NYC for a Canadian city considering PB.

3. What Toronto/Ontario can steal shamelessly. From Paris: the specific mechanism of a formal, numeric equity guarantee (30% of the budget reserved for working-class areas) built into the program's own rules from the start, rather than added after an equity gap becomes visible — though Paris's own experience shows a numeric guarantee alone does not fully close an affluent-area skew, so the transferable lesson is "build the guarantee in AND monitor its actual effect," not "the guarantee alone suffices." From NYC: the devolved, per-district opt-in structure, which lets a program persist at reduced scale (fewer districts, less money) rather than being cancelled wholesale when political appetite varies — a structural resilience Montreal's single citywide on/off program did not have. From Montreal's own ending: the concrete lesson that legal/budgetary entrenchment (a dedicated, protected funding line insulated from a single fiscal-pressure budget cycle) is the single most transferable design fix for the "political reversibility" risk the master briefing already names as PB's deepest structural vulnerability.

How filled: live-discovery this review specifically targeted the operator-flagged Montreal lead (highest priority per this review's brief) and secondarily updated the NYC comparator's current scale; it did not re-verify Paris, Porto Alegre, or the Toronto Community Housing/Hamilton [confirm]-flagged items, which remain open per the master briefing's own flags.

Cui Bono — who profits from this problem persisting

No beneficiary entity was identified this review. Participatory budgeting's central tension, per this page’s evidence, is about who controls discretionary capital spending (ward councillors retaining control versus residents gaining it) and about program durability under fiscal pressure — not a "who profits from the problem persisting" dynamic in the sense the Cui Bono framework targets (a named entity with an ongoing financial stake in a policy problem continuing). The master briefing's own account of PB reversal names institutional interests — "ward councillors who guard discretionary control over local capital and lose visible credit when residents allocate it directly" and "city bureaucracies wary of the facilitation, vetting, and delivery overhead" [the inherited master briefing's §The strongest case AGAINST] — but these are described as institutional/political dynamics, not named entities with a financial extraction relationship of the kind the Cui Bono table is built to surface, and no live-discovery search this review surfaced a named company or beneficial owner profiting from PB's absence or discontinuation. An empty table with this explanation is the correct output, not a failure to fill the template — this page’s own evidence does not support forcing a beneficiary into this section.

Open questions / data gaps

Claim-index appendix

Merge note (2026-08-11, Lane L2b): this document's "Toronto: the case for and against" section incorporates the former this library's internal records brief in full; that file is now a tombstone. This pair carried no formally registered claims tokens (both files cite carried-forward master-briefing pointers and NEW-tagged live-discovery findings only), so the hard conservation rule does not apply here; no finding was dropped in the merge.

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