Montreal, September 8, 2025 – In the article “Did ‘Farfetched’ Renovations Lead FACE to Its
Downfall?” by Zacharie Goudreault, published this morning on the front page of Le Devoir, it has been
revealed that the CSSDM manufactured a sort of ideal “lab-école” with an expensive $375 million
price-tag. The call for tenders issued in 2022 for the building’s renovation required that proposals
include, among other things, the construction of a rooftop courtyard, a third gymnasium built in a
former boiler room and accessible via a tunnel, the relocation of the cafeteria from the 4th floor to
the basement, etc.

All these cosmetic additions obviously inflate the bill exponentially. “Every time the configuration of
the building is modified, it must be adapted to seismic standards, the structure must be reinforced
with steel bracing, all while trying to preserve the site’s heritage value,” explains Patricia-Ann Sarrazin-
Sullivan, an architect whose children attended FACE school.

This is not what our community is asking for. Our school is already functional. It has all the
infrastructure it needs to bring its extraordinary artistic project to life. It simply needs a renovation
that ensures it remains healthy and safe for another half-century.

« We are asking that the CSSDM reassess the entire project based on our real needs. We also demand
that it make the Excel spreadsheets of the budget available to us and release publicly all the
evaluations that led to this staggering $375 million figure. Over the last six months, all our access to
information requests have been met with a refusal. The only document we received is a single 8.5 x
11 page entirely redacted with, at the bottom, the total cost estimate: $375 million. This lack of
transparency and accountability is unacceptable. We are also requesting a swift meeting with the next
person in charge of the Ministry of Education to present our understanding of the facts and our
requests for the future, » says Geneviève Guéritaud, a FACE mother active in the Save FACE Collective.

In the meantime, the Save FACE Collective demands that construction work on the building initially
planned to accommodate FACE secondary school students, on St-Urbain Street, remain halted. As
revealed by a CSSDM o􀆯icial in the Le Devoir article, the cost estimate for the renovation of that
building has not yet been made. The bill is likely to be steep given the building’s state of disrepair,
which is even more advanced than that of the University Street building. The FACE community
demands that these amounts be invested instead in the renovation of the heritage building on
University Street and that a new realistic plan allow FACE primary school students to return to their
original school within a few years.

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Source: Sauvons FACE
sauvonsface@gmail.com