Montreal is the most populous municipality in the province of Quebec and the second-most populous in Canada. The city has a distinct four-season continental climate, with warm-to-hot summers and cold, snowy winters.  Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada with 56% of the population able to speak both official languages. Montreal is the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the world after Paris. Montreal has the second-largest economy of Canadian cities based on GDP and the largest in Quebec. In 2014, Metropolitan Montreal was responsible for C$118.7 billion of Quebec's C$340.7 billion GDP. The city is today an important centre of commerce, finance, industry, technology, culture and world affairs and is the headquarters of the Montreal Exchange.

Industries include aerospace, electronic goods, pharmaceuticals, food, printed goods, software engineering, telecommunications, textile and apparel manufacturing, tobacco, petrochemicals, and transportation. The service sector is also strong and includes civil, mechanical and process engineering, finance, higher education, and research and development. 

Montreal plays an important role in the finance industry. The sector employs approximately 100,000 people in the Greater Montreal Area. In March 2016, Montreal is ranked in the 21st position in the Global Financial Centres Index, a ranking of the competitiveness of financial centres around the world. In the 2017 Global Financial Centres Index, Montreal was ranked as having the 14th most competitive financial center in the world and second most competitive in Canada after Toronto.