Author name: Brenda O'Farrell The 1510 West

After more than a year since the city of Pointe Claire launched its public consultation process following the adoption of a development freeze in key areas in the municipality to allow the public to weigh in on how and how much development should be allowed, one question is emerging: Why hasn’t the consultation process focused public discussion on these specific areas.

These areas include the woods known as Fairview Forest; the Fairview Pointe Claire shopping centre parking lot, where Cadillac Fairview has proposed building a 20-storey seniors complex and two 25-storey apartment buildings; areas along St. Jean Boulevard; and the Pointe Claire and Valois villages.

“Almost one-and-a-half years later, we haven’t had a city discussion on any of these areas,” said resident David Johnston, who has attended three of the five consultation sessions that have been held so far.

The process to date has not given “citizens the opportunity to talk about what everyone wants to talk about,” Johnston said.

The five session held so far have dealt with general topics that include mobility and transportation; strategies that involved renovating homes, the transformation of underused commercial and industrial properties and the acquisition of vacant lots for redevelopment.

None of it has touched on issues like the height of high-rises, the redevelopment of commercial zones or what would be the cost of possibly acquiring Fairview Forest, Johnston said in an interview.

Last week, Johnston put his questions to council at the April 2 meeting.

“I think we need polling assisted by information that teases out the degrees of public opinion,” Johnston told council, explaining that it is clear that residents are divided, but it is still not known to what degree there is support for issues like a complete ban of development in Fairview Forest, partial development of the wooded area, development on the parking lot at Fairview mall in exchange of preservation of some or all of the neighbouring forest, and the potential of development across from Fairview at the Maxi shopping plaza.

And there are other questions, he says, including the eventual fate of the Pointe Claire Plaza property and other areas of the city that have been included as part of the building freeze.

Pointe Claire Mayor Tim Thomas pushed back. He disagreed with Johnston’s assessment.

“A lot of these consultations have been very positive and well conducted and the citizens have come away satisfied, which is, in the end, the objective,” Thomas said.

In an interview earlier this week, however, Thomas admitted that he is disappointed with what he called “the lack of specificity” of the consultations.

“I would have liked it to be more specific on height, greenspaces, the waterfront,” he said, adding the size of homes, specifically new homes being built, is another issue.

The city has promised to host an additional session that will focus on Fairview Forest. A date has not yet been set.

However, Johnston raised concerns about the possible scope of that session.

“We can’t consult on it in isolation,” Johnston told council last week, referring to the woodland. “Any consultation on the Fairview Forest has to be in conjunction with the mall property because I see them as two parts of a whole of one development project that has been presented by Cadillac Fairview.”

Johnston continued: “At the same time, I think it’s important that a number of other dimensions be brought to the debate. It would be nice if the consultation on Fairview Forest and (the neighbouring mall property) had with it a component that summarized where we are in the courts.”

In an interview, Johnston highlighted a number of other issues he said citizens should be informed on, including the significance of the permit issued by Environment Quebec to Cadillac Fairview to build in Fairview Forest and the cost of possibly saving the forest from development given that it is right next to the REM commuter rail station.

Although the consultations can be criticized for the lack of specificity, Thomas said, people are expressing themselves.

“They’ve been effective,” Thomas said, referring to the consultation sessions and online survey that have been conducted. “People have come out and spoken.”

Three West Island mayors voted against the Montreal agglomeration’s proposed land use plan last month, after the city of Montreal failed to include the region’s three main north-south arteries among the thoroughfares listed as essential for public transit.

The omission, according to Dollard des Ormeaux Mayor Alex Bottausci, is particularly egregious given the fact these roadways – Sources, St. Jean and St. Charles Boulevards – serve as direct access routes to the REM light rail stations, which are expected to be in operation later this year.

“I do not understand how a city can achieve densification on its territory without integrating public transit,” said Bottausci in a statement. “It’s a contradictory statement.”

The land use plan, which must be approved by the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, the regional authority that includes 82 municipalities on and around the island of Montreal, provides the framework for development across its vast territory, setting residential densification targets that will force cities and towns to increase construction to accommodate larger population bases.

To denounce what Bottausci described the omission as an “unacceptable situation,” he and the mayors of Kirkland and Pointe Claire voted against approving the draft. The motion, however, passed by majority vote.

At the same meeting, all 15 mayors who represent the demerged municipalities on the island continued to voice their opposition to a series of spending moves presented by the city of Montreal.

The suburban mayors voted against a total of $152 million in spending they deemed unfairly forces residents of demerged municipalities to pay for projects or work that does not in any way benefit them. Among the projects they opposed was a new bicycle network and roadwork on the Jean-Talon corridor between Pie-IX and Cavendish Boulevards.

Next week the suburban mayors plan to continue to oppose the unjustified spending imposed on their taxpayers. To date this year, the representatives of the demerged municipalities have objected to a total of $357 million in spending. The agglomeration council, however, has approved all the expenditures, as elected members from the city of Montreal hold a majority.

A West Island couple’s attempt to advocate for a cause they have been supporting for years that got swept up last week in the growing pay-to-play scandal engulfing the CAQ government say they want to keep the focus on their mission – persuading provincial authorities to impose stricter drunk-driving regulations.

But Roxboro resident Elizabeth Rivera acknowledges the revelation she made during a hearing last Thursday before a National Assembly hearing examining Bill 48 that aims to amend Quebec’s Highway Safety Code has attracted more attention than all of their lobbying efforts to date. Yet, she refuses to be distracted, pointing out that she has still not received a reason why Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault refuses to lower the drunk-driving threshold, leaving Quebec as the only province in Canada that has not dropped the limit to 0.05 for administrative regulations that would permit a driver’s licence to be suspended or have a vehicle impounded.

“They never gave us a clear reason why,” Rivera said in an interview with The 1510 West on Sunday. “We ask the question: Tell us why. Why are we the last province? They don’t want to change it. And we don’t understand why.”

Although the federal Criminal Code makes it a criminal offence to drive with a blood-alcohol concentration of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, a measurement that is referred to as 0.08, all provinces except Quebec impose administrative regulations that permit a motorist’s driver’s permit to be suspended or their vehicle to be temporarily impounded if they are found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.05.

Rivera, who is the president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Montreal, said she and her husband, Antoine Bittar, have been pushing for Quebec to strengthen its administrative sanctions so that drivers testing at 0.05 or above have their cars seized for up to seven days and their driver’s permits suspended for seven days. These measures would not affect the 0.08 threshold that would trigger criminal sanctions.

Rivera argues that stricter administrative regulations that would come with non-criminal sanctions like in the other provinces would have a preventative effect.

If a driver has their licence suspended for seven days, “the next time the person drinks, they will think,” Rivera said.

“Why aren’t we doing prevention?” she asked, pointing out that the statistics from other provinces that have made the move have seen a drop in alcohol-related deaths.

In British Columbia, she said, alcohol-related deaths on the roads have dropped by 52 per cent since the province dropped the limit to 0.05. In Saskatchewan, the limit has been dropped to 0.04.

Rivera urges everyone to sign the electronic petition that is registered with the National Assembly in support of MADD’s demand.

Sponsored by West Island MNA Monsef Derraji, the petition can be found on the legislature’s website: assnat.qc.ca.

To find the petition, look for the tab in the centre of the page that is part of the blue heading that says “Exprimez votre opinion!” Click on Petitions: “Signer un petition électronique.” Scroll down the list of petitions until you see the one sponsored by Derraji entitled: “Ajout de mesures visant à prévenir la conduit avec les facultés affaiblies par l’alcool.”

A grieving West Island couple who unveiled the latest incident in the widening “pay-to-play” scandal that has engulfed Premier François Legault’s CAQ government had no intention to embarrass the minister they were appearing before last week when they presented a brief at the National Assembly in Quebec City. But they have no regrets, either.

“I answered a question,” said Elizabeth Rivera in an interview Sunday with The 1510 West. “At no time did I want to explode a bomb.”

Rivera and her husband, Antoine Bittar, appeared during a commission hearing before Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault to discuss Bill 48, legislation put forward last fall that seeks to amend the provincial Highway Safety Code.

The Roxboro couple have become actively involved in advocating for stricter drunk-driving regulations following the death of their 26-year-old daughter in a car accident on Highway 20 on March 20, 2017. The driver of the car their daughter and two others were in lost control of the vehicle, crashing on an exit ramp. The driver had been drinking and was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 1.25, Rivera said, more than three times the legal limit of 0.08.

After presenting their brief demanding that Quebec follow the lead of all other provinces and drop the blood-alcohol limit to 0.05 for administrative regulations to kick in, allowing police to suspend a motorist’s driver’s permit for seven days and impound their vehicle for seven days, Rivera and Bittar were asked by Nelligan MNA Monsef Derraji, a Liberal member of the commission, to explain the steps they had taken since their daughter’s death to push for these tighter measures.

In answering the question, Rivera described that after initially starting a petition that had been rejected by the National Assembly, the couple approached Soulanges MNA Marilyne Picard after hearing that her step-son had died in an accident. They felt Picard would be sympathetic to their cause and help them push for stricter regulations.

After Bittar had an initial conversation with Picard in the spring of 2023, the couple said they were disappointed with the inaction. They made several attempts to get Picard to respond to their inquiries about presenting Guilbault with the documents they had supplied – proof of how lowering the regulations in other provinces showed a drop in the number of deaths. But their requests went unanswered, so they gave up in frustration, they said.

Then, months later, in October 2023, an aide to Picard called them to say that if they paid $100 each to attend a fundraising cocktail, they would each be given two minutes with Guilbault.

The couple decided to pay and attend the event, as it was two days after the minister had announced publicly that the government would not be reducing the drunk-driving threshold. The couple were hoping to get an answer as to why, Rivera said on Sunday.

The revelation comes as the National Assembly’s commissioner for ethics and professional conduct launched two investigations earlier this month into two MNAs following news reports that they had invited mayors and voters to fundraising events to meet ministers in the Legault government.

Guilbault defended herself after the hearing last Thursday, saying no one has to pay to meet with her.

Questions about the government’s ethical practices has prompted Legault to announce the CAQ will no longer accept donations from individuals, despite having proposed last summer to raise the contribution limit to $200.

Legault has also reimbursed Rivera and Bittar for the contributions received last October. The couple will donate the funds to MADD.

Here are a few points from the report from the Association of Suburban Municipalities to the Commission on Finance and Administration of the City of Montreal delivered last month.

“The City of Montreal, through the president of its executive committee, officially recognized during the Agglomeration Council meeting of Nov. 29, 2022, that the existing system of assessed contributions for the Agglomeration de Montréal had reached its limit. Unfortunately, this legitimate recognition has yet to be translated into concrete action and results.

“For more than 16 years, the (Association of Suburban Municipalities has) been lobbying the City of Montreal to achieve true tax fairness for their taxpayers, and to date, without any real response or success. We insist and remind all concerned that there is a flagrant tax injustice for the citizens of our linked metropolitan cities in the agglomeration of Montreal, and that this problem must ultimately and effectively be resolved. Such an agreement will be the cornerstone of a true agglomeration partnership.

“Now that all our cities, including Montreal, have recognized the obvious fact that the current quota system for the agglomeration of Montreal has reached its limits, productive discussions should be relaunched as soon as possible to identify and implement a new management framework for sharing agglomeration expenses.”

FREDERIC SERRE
The 1510 West

Ste. Anne de Bellevue residents wishing to take a stroll along the canal in the town’s west end will have to wait as Parks Canada and police investigate a suspicious fire last week that gutted a visitors’ cabin on the grounds of the historic site. For now, the area has been cordoned off, said Ste. Anne de Bellevue spokesperson Rita Latif.

“We know as much about this fire and its cause as what Parks Canada has told us,” Latif added.

Parks Canada issued a public notice Jan. 10, alerting residents that a fire had broken out inside the building, causing extensive damage.

“Please note that the Ste. Anne de Bellevue Canal National Historic Site is currently closed indefinitely due to a fire in the lock’s log cabin. We ask you to respect the signage in place,” the notice stated.

The town also posted a public notice on its website and Facebook page, repeating Parks Canada’s warning to stay away from the locks while the investigation continues.

Parks Canada officials could not be reached for comment.

Local resident Natacha Filion, who regularly strolls along the canal, said she hopes the cordoned off area will reopen to the public soon.

“One thing for sure is that I miss my jetty walks,” Filion said. “The crossing is blocked from access.”

Another local resident, photographer Dan Bouger, visited the site this week and posted a photo of the gutted structure, suggesting that perhaps some good can come from the unfortunate incident.

“Here’s wishing that Parks Canada takes the occasion of this fire to rebuild and beautify the current site,” Bouger said, “with more open space and lots of windows rather than a cabin with disgusting toilets for employees who deserve better.”

When there is a bridge crisis at the western tip of the island, the town of Ste. Anne de Bellevue has learned how to react: You cut off all the so-called “shortcut routes.”

It’s the only way to avoid complete gridlock in the town’s village core. Then, you wait and hope that the growing number of people who travel to and from the West Island and Vaudreuil will stop trying to find some alternative route through the quaint little village as they desperately attempt to avoid lines of traffic on the highway and rejoin the queue closer to the bridge.

That is one of the coping mechanism Ste. Anne Mayor Paola Hawa has adopted in the last weeks since ongoing emergency repair work on the Île aux Tourtes Bridge has closed all but one lane in each direction on the span along Highway 40.

“There is almost no access to (Highway) 20 west from the village,” Hawa said, explaining that eliminating left turns for commuters heading north on St. Pierre Street from the village to access the autoroute to Île Perrot has deterred drivers heading west from leaving the highway at Morgan and attempting to make their way along the lakeshore in the hope of bypassing the congestion on Highway 20.

“We’ve shut down each and every way,” Hawa said.

That includes eliminating access to commuters who attempt to cut across the John Abbott and Macdonald College campus to access westbound Highway 40 as a means of avoiding the backlog of traffic on that expressway that often snakes back all the way to St. Charles Blvd. in Kirkland during rush hours.

“It’s not ideal,” Hawa admitted. “It’s making the most out of a really bad situation.”

It is also – slowly, as commuters figure out the restrictions put in place and – in some instances enforced by police, who are handing out fines – ensuring that local traffic flow through Ste. Anne is not constantly snarled like when the Île aux Tourtes was closed completely for a short while in May 2021.

Hawa is outraged that mayors and provincial elected officials on both sides of the Île aux Tourtes are not clamouring for the Quebec government to answer for not acting sooner to begin construction of a new bridge or put forward a design of a new span that would accommodate extending the REM light rail service to the off-island.

“When are we going to call for an investigation on how we got here,” she said. “Who dropped the ball?”

On Monday, Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault held a press conference in Senneville to announce that work on building a new span has begun and that its completion would be accelerated so that the new span would be put into service by the end of 2026, a target date that had already been put forward by Transport Quebec officials back in April.

Five of the West Island’s 13 high schools are listed in the Top 100 of the Fraser Institute’s annual ranking of Quebec secondary schools, with Collège de l’Ouest de l’Île, the French wing of the private school in Dollard des Ormeaux, listed as the best performing in the region.

Another five are listed in the top half of the think-tank’s list that looks at all of the 468 high schools in the province.

The private schools in the area scored the highest on the ranking that was released Nov. 18, with Kuper Academy in Kirkland ranked in 37^th place, while the English wing of West Island College was in 61st place.

John Rennie High School in Pointe Claire, which is administered by the Lester B. Pearson School Board, was the top ranked public secondary school in the region, registered in 67th place on the listing.

Appearing on the bottom half of the annual ranking report are École Secondaire des Sources in Dollard at 246^th position, Beaconsfield High School in Beaconsfield, which was pegged in 255^th position; and MacDonald High School in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, which was 307^th on the list.

Joanne Malowany, the assistant director of communications with the Lester B. Pearson School Board, declined to comment on the report, explaining the board does not remark on external rankings.

The Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools 2023, evaluated all 468 public and private high schools that provide instruction in both French and English in the province. The schools were ranked based the results of provincewide tests in four key subjects – the language of instruction, second language, science and math – during the 2021-22 academic year.

Taking the grades data, the Fraser Institute calculates a rating for each school based on five indicators: average uniform examination marks in each of the four subject areas; the percentage of uniform examinations failed; school-level grade inflation, which measures how a given school’s average marks compares with the overall average mark for required courses; the difference between the examination results of male and female students; and a measure of the likelihood that students enrolled at the school will not complete their program of studies in a timely manner. This computation results in a grade for each school on a scale of 1 to 10.

“Our report card offers parents information they can’t easily get anywhere else about their child’s school and how it compares to other schools across Quebec,” Yanick Labrie, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, said in a statement. The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

West Island municipalities are pushing the Montreal Agglomeration council and Transport Quebec to revisit the idea of extending Jacques Bizard Blvd. south into Pointe Claire.

The hope is to build a new major north-south artery from Pierrefonds Blvd. to the south side of Highway 40. The city of Pointe Claire last week became the latest West Island municipality to endorse the push. Dollard des Ormeaux, Kirkland and the borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro have also supported resolutions aimed at encouraging regional and provincial authorities to prioritize the plan.

The resolution passed by Pointe Claire council last week in support of building a new artery between St. Jean and St. Charles boulevards stipulates the need for either an overpass or an underpass at Highway 40. Pointe Claire’s support is contingent on an interchange of some sort at Highway 40, to avoid creating traffic bottlenecks on Pointe Claire streets. Pointe Claire council, however, did not unanimously endorse the idea. Two councillors voted against it, claiming it is not yet clear how and where the artery would be integrated in the existing street grid and whether it should be restricted to public transit.

Will the iconic windmill along the waterfront in Pointe Claire be renovated and restored?

It’s still an open question, despite decades of talk, negotiation, the city pledging money to help cover the costs and – earlier this year – the announcement by Pointe Claire Mayor Tim Thomas that an agreement to make it happen was struck between the city and the Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal, which owns the historic landmark.

Last week, Pointe Claire council reset the long drawn-out process by approving a notice of motion to create a way for the Archdiocese to apply for funding from the city to restore the crumbling structure. Available funds have been capped at $967,000.

Determining if this is a step forward or a step backward in the process depends on who on Pointe Claire council describes this latest development.

According to Mayor Tim Thomas it’s a major setback that could delay any work getting started to restore the stone windmill by years.

“This process could easily take one or more years, if it happens at all,” said Thomas in an interview. “So we are back to Square One.”

Thomas contends that he and the city’s previous director general stuck a deal with the Archdiocese in September of 2022 that would have allowed work to begin, with the city contributing about $950,000, and the Archdiocese obtaining a matching amount from the province to carry out the needed restoration work that would see the windmill renovated and restored to working condition.

But the majority of councillors who refuse to accept the deal Thomas claims was struck last year and have approved the new framework last week claim the new process is a prudent and necessary step that aims to protect Pointe Claire taxpayers from getting hit with what they predict could be hefty maintenance costs in the future.

“The aim of the committee was especially to protect the taxpayer,” said councillor Claude Cousineau, referring to the group of councillors and city officials who put the latest process in place. It avoids, he said, “a very costly deal if it goes sideways.”

Councillor Paul Bissonnette described the deal Thomas had put together as “far from being complete.”

“There were a lot of things to iron out,” Bissonnette said. “We are not going to be there to maintain the windmill,” he said, after claiming the Archdiocese has failed up until now to maintain the structure or the neighbouring convent.

“We are not the evil bad guys here,” he said during last week’s council meeting. Built in 1710, the windmill is Pointe Claire’s civic symbol, gracing everything from the city’s water tower to its municipal website and banners. It was classified as a heritage site by the provincial government in 1983 and is one of a handful of Quebec windmills built under the French regime that still exist.

Serious questions are being raised about the future of the farm at Macdonald Campus of McGill University in Ste. Anne de Bellevue in the wake of the provincial government’s plan to dramatically hike tuition for students from outside Quebec looking to attend English-language universities.

In an open letter Nov. 2, Deep Saini, the principal and vice-chancellor of McGill, singled out a short list of faculties and programs that could face the biggest impacts if the tuition increases are imposed for 2024, levelling a serious financial blow to the university. The letter has sent waves of concern about the long-term prospects of the operations at the university’s campus in Ste. Anne.

“The Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the Faculty of Education and the B.A. & Sc. Interfaculty programs will also be severely affected,” wrote Saini, outlining the hit McGill would suffer from the provincial government’s decision.

The Agricultural and Environmental Sciences faculty has about 2,000 students, according to Valerie Orsat, assistant dean of student affairs for the department. That includes roughly 1,300 undergraduates and 700 graduate students. In the last five years, about 20 per cent of them come from other provinces.

Another 20 to 25 per cent are foreign students. With Quebec also proposing changes in the funding model for international students, this could further reduce the revenue McGill retains from the tuition paid by these students.

“We can’t offer programs if we don’t have students,” Orsat said.

The immediate question looming over the faculty, Orsat said, was the university’s current student recruitment campaign, which is in full swing in November.

“It’s recruiting season right now,” she said. “Do we completely forget the rest of Canada?”

With tuition for students from outside Quebec set to jump from $8,992 to approximately $17,000, Orsat seriously questions how many students from the rest of Canada would opt for McGill.

Orsat says the faculty always attracts students from the western provinces, explaining they see McGill as an exciting option that offers them a “different experience before settling on the family farm.”

Adding to the uncertainty is the blow that the campus’ Farm Management and Technology program has already suffered this year with the changes it was forced to impose due to Bill 96, the province’s update to its Charter of the French Language.

The FMT program is a CEGEP-level offering that has seen its numbers drop in the past year because it must now abide by new regulations requiring all students to have certificates of eligibility to attend an English-language institution. Post-secondary students from other provinces do not qualify for an eligibility certificate.

“My numbers are already down,” said Pascal Theriault, head of the FMT program.

“I’m not sure what to think yet,” Theriault said recently in an interview. “There is still a big fog around it,” he added, referring to the uncertainty of what the future holds.

With the number of FMT students dropping and the number of students in the Faculty of Agriculture poised to take a dip due to the tuition hikes, the cost of maintaining the farm becomes more difficult, he said.

The capacity to continue to offer quality programs if the faculty loses a number of students in the undergrad level could be affected, he said, adding the FMT program would not be able to afford to keep the farm operating on its own. “We might lose a critical mass of students.”

Theriault said offering proper training for students in the field of agriculture is expensive, but in the era of growing climate change challenges it is even more crucial.

“If you want to train farmers in new technologies, you need that infrastructure,” he said.

Training agrologists and agricultural engineers is crucial now more than ever, Theriault said. “When I look at climate change, the financial stress, the need to have professionals working with (farmers) to feed Canadians – that is where my concern is,” he added.

Who put a gag order on the consultants who are conducting the city of Pointe Claire’s public forums for its urban plan that forbid any resident from discussing the future of the wooded area north of Highway 40 known as Fairview Forest?

That is the question residents who recently attended a consultation meeting were asking members of Pointe Claire council last week. And so far, the answer is still not entirely clear.

It’s a situation described by one resident as “outrageous.”

“The evening’s consultation had been long awaited, long anticipated as its focus was on the environment – a hot topic, as we know, in Pointe Claire,” said resident Ralph Stocek, describing the public forum held Oct. 25. “Yet, we were forbidden to discuss the most important environmental decision the city faces – Fairview Forest.”

“What exactly were the instructions from the city that allowed such an outrage to occur?” Stocek asked council last week.

According to Stocek and others who took their turn during the question period at last week’s council meeting, the consultant hired by the city to host the public forums to solicit residents’ input on the city’s urban plan informed those in attendance that due to what was referred to as “judicial considerations,” the topic of Fairview was off limits.

“What judicial consideration forces the city to cancel public input on the most important issue facing Pointe Claire?” Stocek asked. “What judicial consideration forces Pointe Claire to abandon the democratic participation by its citizens on the future of its last protected forest?”

In 2022, shortly after the city of Pointe Claire imposed a development freeze on many parts of the city as part of the process of updating its urban plan, Cadillac Fairview, which owns the forest west of its shopping mall, filed a lawsuit against the municipality.

Resident David Johnston referred to the inability to discuss the forest as a “gag order.”

“They couldn’t bring it up,” Johnson said, referring to the topic.

Said Stocek: “The consultant said nobody would be allowed to discuss Fairview Forest.”

“No mention of it, he emphasized,” Stocek added, referring to the consultant, who reportedly continued: “No mention of Fairview Forest would appear in any of the documentation and any of the reports coming forth.”

“The political wars and the legal battles are one thing, but the voice of the citizens should not be denied like that,” Stocek continued. “In my mind, the city’s actions here are kind of suspect.”

“Why can’t we say Cadillac Fairview?” asked Lynn Conway when it was her turn to ask council a question. Conway attended the Oct. 25 consultation meeting as well.

“We should still be able to say what we would like north of Highway 40 west of St. John’s,” she added. “We weren’t allowed to say anything like that.”

In response, Pointe Claire Mayor Tim Thomas promised to inquire what instructions were given to the consulting firm Groupe BC2 for the session. Contacted Monday, Thomas said he has yet to get an answer from city administrators.

“I have demanded a meeting with the (city director general) and the consulted,” Thomas said in an interview.

“I am concerned a key part of our consultations is flawed,” he added. “We should have to revisit this part of the consultation. You can’t alter your methodology. You need to get an accurate reflection of people’s views.”

According to a city spokesperson, participants at the Oct. 25 consultation were clearly told the topic for the session was residents’ private property, and that the forested land would not be discussed. The reason Fairview Forest would not be discussed was the ongoing legal action launched by Cadillac Fairview.

“We understand that people are frustrated,” said Lucie Lemieux, Pointe Claire’s director of  communications.

She said the consultant said he would not deal with Fairview Forest and would not include any reference to the woods in his report in an attempt to focus the gathering on the narrow topic of private lots after one participant lost his temper. “It was not the topic of the day,” Lemieux said. The 43-acre forested area owned by Cadillac Fairview is currently under two development freezes imposed by the city of Pointe Claire as well as the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal.

Many of the more than 250 urns stored at the Collins Clarke MacGillivray White funeral home in Pointe Claire are salvageable, said an official at the fire site last Saturday.

The urns are being collected and transported to the company’s other location in N.D.G., where they will be cleaned. Families will then be notified, the official said.

In an official statement released by the owners of the property, Dignity Memorial, the cause of the blaze is still being assessed.

“However, our priority is our families. We have been a proud member of this community since 1940 and will continue to provide funeral services for our families through our other locations in the area,” said Christopher James, a communications official with Dignity Memorial. “Rest assured we are in the process of contacting families about this unfortunate circumstance.”

He would not respond to other questions.

Church officials from around the West Island have reached out to offer facilities for services that had been planned for the funeral home, the official on the site last weekend said. He also said the company plans to rebuild the funeral home in Pointe Claire.