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Montreal is the best North American major cities and improving, but nowhere near a good European or East Asian one. As a local I completely agree with the observations and can say that while some of that is just a case of the Grass always being Greener since we are legitimately envious of Toronto's GO and Streetcars we do have the better all around package. Issues like OPUS being stupid and lines being too long are well known, and when coupled with the disaster of the REM de l'Est enraging the Premier so much he's making a new transit agency to handle new projects it's an issue that'll probably get solved eventually.
What makes Montreal different is just how the powers are deferred. In Canada there's a split between Federal and Provincial power that's very clear in the constitution which is why the Supreme Court handles very few cases involving such conflicts, the provinces pick how anything is done below them since it's not viable for even P.E.I. to have the province handle all administration, and Montreal has a structure where the cities and burrows have a single government for handling island wide issues made up of the city and burrow mayors, with the Mayor of Montreal being first amongst equals. Below that the independent cities do their thing while Montreal has the mayor's office that itself has delegated power down to the burrows which are effectively cities within Montreal with how much autonomy they have. One thing of note is that this means the mayor can with enough support railroad things through (though after Jean Drapeau that has become very rare to see since they're typically spineless pushovers) while the provincial government can and has unilaterally done the same thing to the city. Put simply, if Quebec City ordered them to triple the Metro's trackage, rebuild the 500 kilometers of streetcar trackage we had 100 years ago, demolish the autoroutes on island, and to do it for only 50 billion dollars, all the city can do is say "yes sir" and find a way
