URLWithString: returns nil

Use This Function if you deal with file saved on file manager.

NSURL *_url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];

You need to escape the non-ASCII characters in your hardcoded URL as well:

//localisationName is a arbitrary string here
NSString* webName = [localisationName stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; 
NSString* stringURL = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=%@,Montréal,Communauté-Urbaine-de-Montréal,Québec,Canadae&output=csv&oe=utf8&sensor=false", webName];
NSString* webStringURL = [stringURL stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSURL* url = [NSURL URLWithString:webStringURL];

You can probably remove the escaping of the localisationName since it will be handled by the escaping of the whole string.