Local Journalism Initiative

Monthly Lennoxville borough meeting: Snow removal, parking and local events discussed

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By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

Snow removal, parking issues on College Street and many upcoming local events highlighted the Lennoxville Borough’s monthly council meeting Nov. 28. Beginning at 5 p.m., Borough President Claude Charron presided over the nearly hour-long meeting with seven local residents in attendance.

Question period began with a complaint from a resident on Speid Street concerning snow being plowed onto her property from a neighbouring apartment building’s parking lot. The problem has lasted years, but became pressing when she recently installed a plastic snow-fence in the area. She circulated pictures of the problem to the council members.

Although she installed a sign saying ‘private property, no snow dumping permitted’, they have continued to plow snow there, right up against her fence, ripping it apart. “I just want them to respect the property line,” she explained.

Charron asserted that the apartment building is privately owned, so what the contracted snowplows do is not the responsibility of the town; conflicts between citizens can be resolved using a mediation service that avoids lawyers. He suggested a real fence could be installed, but the woman insisted such a fence would just be damaged itself and cause her more problems. Charron noted that the new fence would count as a “shared expense”, so the apartment building owner would have a personal interest in its maintenance. Charron suggested the apartment building owner’s phone number could be ascertained through finding the lot number on the town’s website.

A Bishop’s University (BU) student, who lives in a residence there, practicing his French, asked why the installation of a winter bike route on King Street had been voted against by the Sherbrooke City Council. It was a “difficult” project, Charron responded, at a projected cost of half a million dollars. Other more important projects exist that require monetary support and this one was too much of a challenge. The minor objective of lessening of gas emissions do not weigh favourably against the possibility of injury which would be the City’s responsibility.

Another resident pointed out that College Street was not plowed, after the recent snowfall, until 2 p.m. Other minor streets were plowed first, which did not make sense to him. Charron responded that the issue was likely due to new personnel and a lack of City employees. The man was skeptical. “There has to be a system,” he said, that even new employees can follow. Charron insisted that he is trying to improve the system in the best way he can from his position. Garfat noted there were some equipment breakdowns and things will only get better.

The resident went on to question the legitimacy of some new parking spots on the corner of College Street and Vaudry Street. Charron explained that the new parking there was authorized recently because of related new construction. The resident emphasized that his issue was about the “aesthetics… of having cars everywhere”. Charron assured the resident that the new parking plan submitted was a reasonable request, but admitted there could be more cars there than there should be, so an inspector could be sent to see if the plan was being followed. Charron noted that similar parking could be seen higher up on College, so a denial of the request would have been unfair.

The Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité Durable (MTMD) recently put in a request that, according to their guidelines, the stop sign on the corner of Mount Street and Charles-Lennox Street should be removed. The council reported that they denied this request, citing safety concerns. Councillor Jennifer Garfat explained that many use Mount to avoid Lennoxville’s main intersection, and that the stop sign contributes to speed reduction on the residential road. Charron noted that the request would now be bumped up to the City level and may still be accepted.

Garfat announced that the list of 13 community organizations that were receiving funding from the town would be available soon on the town’s website. Funding numbers range from approximately $500 to $2,500 per year per organization, with no major changes from 2023 to 2024.

Garfat thanked the organizers of the Sunday Santa Claus Parade in Sherbrooke. Over 40,000 people participated, she noted. She mentioned that Nov. 27 began the 16 Days of Action Against Gender-based Violence campaign, which will culminate with a commemoration of the École Polytechnique Massacre on Dec. 6. Many other activities are happening this week, including Santa Claus coming to Square Queen, details of which can be found on the borough website. Jeux de Québec is still looking for volunteers; they need 2,500 and only 900 have signed up.

Borough Councillor Guillaume Lirette-Gélinas mentioned some recent public and private meetings and applauded the move towards more public meetings. He congratulated the BU Drama department for their recent play ‘Life is a Dream’, which was “tackled with great talent”. The BU Singers still have tickets available for their upcoming concert on Saturday afternoon. BU’s Chapel Choir is putting on a ‘Festival of Carols’ event at St. Mark’s Chapel on Dec. 9 and 10. Lirette-Gélinas stated that he attended Premier Legault’s recent press conference in Sherbrooke and hopes the “shoes will follow the mouth” and an official positive announcement concerning BU’s relationship to the proposed tuition hikes will come sooner rather than later.

There was a brief objection by Garfat to Lirette-Gélinas’ comments on public vs. private meetings, wherein she insisted on the importance of private meetings. Charron suggested the debate be taken up at another time.

Charron noted that volunteers were needed to help out with Santa Claus coming to Square Queen. He explained that the best way of making a complaint about snow-removal was to call 819-821-5858. There is a fundraiser selling boxed cookies and squares at Uplands on Saturday. Charron thanked the two BU students in attendance, one hailing from B.C., for attending the meeting and practicing their French. “It’s a big challenge, thank you,” he said warmly.

The meeting was adjourned just before 6 p.m.

Monthly Lennoxville borough meeting: Snow removal, parking and local events discussed Read More »

Parc-Ex: A testimony of Montreal’s housing crisis

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Graphic by Maya Robitaille Lopez

Julia Cieri
Local Journalism Initiative

Parc-Extension, a borough with a rich history, characterized by a predominantly working-class population and vibrant immigrant communities, has traditionally faced economic challenges.

Amy Darwish, a worker at Comité d’Action de Parc-Extension (CAPE), said that immigrant tenants in the area are being hit the hardest by the housing crisis, as Parc-Extension is one of the neighbourhoods in the city that is commonly subjected to gentrification and the housing crisis.

According to Darwish, a major cause of gentrification in Parc-Extension was the arrival of the Université de Montréal (UdeM) campus. There was an enormous amount of pressure put on tenants as a result, seen in the form of abusive rent increases, evictions and intimidation from landlords, she explained. The arrival of the campus in 2019 brought an influx of amenities catering to wealthy students, “which incentivized landlords to force out long-term tenants and rent out at much higher rates,” Darwish said. 

Beyond the construction of the UdeM campus as a sign of gentrification in Parc-Extension, renting a place to live in is proving to be a hurdle in itself. According to a 2021 survey conducted by the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ), several barriers stand in the way of finding housing for Parc-Extension residents. With most rental listings being posted exclusively online, those with limited internet and digital access are left unable to access the advertisements. 

“You used to be able to find apartments in adjacent neighbourhoods,” said Darwish. “But what we’re seeing now is that people are being pushed off the island altogether.”

In addition, several tenants experienced being turned away from possible housing in discriminatory ways. The survey found that tenants with children, foreign accents, who are single women, and individuals with “non-Quebecois” names are more likely to be rejected from renting.

“[The housing crisis] disproportionately affects immigrants, women, single parents, elderly people; and people who don’t have the financial, organizational [means], or time to be able to fight back,” said Melissa Simard, a member of the Montreal’s Autonomous Tenant Union (MATU), a non-hierarchical tenant union. 

RCLALQ member Cédrick Dussault explained that, “[recent immigrants] are targets for eviction because they do not know their rights, as well as people who were here for a long time.”

Tenants who find themselves in discriminatory situations may fight for their rights, but must do so through the Régie du logement. The process however, like the listings, is often done online or over the phone, and may only be done in French or English. Additionally, some tenants may not know this service is available to them.

Despite discrimination in housing being forbidden by law, Dussault added that “landlords can just pick and choose who to accommodate.”

Darwish echoed Dussault’s sentiment. “[Discrimination] is very much triggered by the arrival of whiter, wealthier residents into the neighbourhood,” said Darwish. “We see a lot of landlords who are flat out refusing to rent to immigrants and are openly expressing preferences.” 

Simard believes harmful stereotypes carried out against marginalized communities, including assumptions about their lifestyle and economic contributions, foster more barriers within the housing market.

The issue is also intertwined with unstable legal statuses. Renting while undocumented makes it more difficult to fight for housing rights for fear of being denounced to immigration by landlords. “Having precarious immigration statuses is something that complicates people’s capacity to navigate a housing crisis,” Darwish said.

Montreal has also become a hot real estate market, suitable for speculation—an investment method among properties in which investors expect high rates of return quickly.

Dussault explained that ‘speculation’ drives landlords to make the most profit possible, in places that were originally cheap and affordable, with inexpensive buildings, slowly but surely rendering all sectors of Montreal with exorbitant rents. 

The issue is additionally apparent at the provincial level, according to tenant union associations. “This is probably the most severe housing crisis that we’ve had in the province,” Dussault said.

“Basically, there is no control on the price of rent,” he added. “When there is a change in tenant, the landlord can dictate the price they want.” 

While tenant rights exist in the Code civil du Québec, Dussault believes they are not sufficiently protected, and landlords do not face major consequences when bending the rules.

In the summer of 2023, a landlord in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood attempted to bypass “tribunal rules” by giving money to their tenants in exchange for their eviction.

The tribunal rules in question refer to the Tribunal administratif du logement. Darwish said she’s seen several other cases like these in Parc-Extension. 

“You see many instances where landlords say they’re going to get permits to renovate or are going to be moving in a family member, but it doesn’t end up happening, and they just rent to someone else for higher rates,” she added.

Every year, the tribunal publishes a suggested increase in rent prices for landlords to refer to in their own increases. However, according to the RCLALQ, they are not legally bound to follow this suggestion.

“For a long time, Montreal was considered more affordable than other cities in Canada, like Vancouver and Toronto, but data shows that we’re catching up,” said Dussault. In the last year alone, rent in Montreal rose by 16.4 per cent. According to statistics by the RCLALQ, the average monthly rent for a four-and-a-half apartment in Quebec went from $1,222 in 2020 to $1,504 in 2023. For more than three rooms, it amounts to almost $2,000 on average.

The reason for this bias towards landlords, according to MATU, is that government employees and ministers are part of the people who benefit from these systems. The Minister of Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, is a former real estate agent.

“This is reflective of the ideas around housing and accessibility,” said Simard. “The government is encouraging the speculative real estate market.”

Dussault supported this statement. “It’s a matter of social class,” he said. “People who are in power come from backgrounds of real estate investors.” 

Bill 31 is another barrier to housing accessibility for Montreal tenants. The bill, currently under review, would eliminate the possibility of lease transfers, and would consequently hit lower-income renters the hardest. 

“Lease transfers were a way of keeping rents affordable and getting around housing discrimination in neighbourhoods,” Darwish said. 

Simard believes lease transfers were an important tool for tenants. “They were kind of the last strongholds of tenants to be able to afford housing, and they’re taking that away,” she said. 

At the beginning of this year, another resource for tenants was shut down. AccèsLogis has served as the main provincial social housing program since 1997. According to the housing minister, the project was too outdated, and carried out too slowly.

To Darwish, these are all “concerted efforts by the Legault government to backtrack significantly on tenants’ rights.”

With files from Iness Rifay.

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100,000 protesters rally in Ottawa for Palestine

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Photo Dorothy Mombrun

Iness Rifay & Hannah Vogan
Local Journalism Initiative

In his eight years of bus driving, Mourae Mouassine feels he has never taken a more important contract than the drive from Montreal to Ottawa on Nov. 25.

“This is more than work,” he said, seated in the school bus driver’s seat with a keffiyeh hanging from his shoulders. “I am proud to be here to support humanity.”

Mouassine was one of the bus drivers who volunteered with Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) to mobilize protesters from across Canada to Parliament Hill. Nine sold-out PYM-affiliated buses departed from Place du Canada around 9:30 a.m., all of which carried about 50 participants per busload.

Mouassine keeps a folder on his phone filled with pictures of the children who have died since the attacks on Gaza started. Between Oct. 7 and Nov. 26, over 6,000 Palestinian children have been killed. Following the collapse of Gaza’s health system, the Health Ministry has been unable to keep a regular count of the casualties, but it believes the toll continues to rise sharply.

“I have four kids,” he said. “Every time I see this murder, I can’t sleep. Imagine if it was my child, my friend’s child, my neighbour’s child; I cannot accept this.”

Upon arriving in Ottawa, Mouassine stood on Parliament Hill alongside his family who drove from Montreal to attend with him. They joined over 100,000 protesters gathered from all around the country in what organizer PYM considers the largest pro-Palestinian protest in Canadian history. 
 
“We are not standing on the hills of Parliament because we think we can convince or appeal to Justin Trudeau or the Canadian government’s morality,” said Yara Shoufani, a PYM member. “We are standing here because we know that by building a movement of the masses, we can force the Canadian government to change its direction.”

Speeches began echoing against the walls of Parliament around 1 p.m., delivered by a variety of speakers. Among them were independent Hamilton Centre member of provincial parliament Sarah Jama, who was removed from the Ontario New Democratic Party caucus; Dr. Tarek Loubani, a medic who worked in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital; Montreal Mohawk activist Ellen Gabriel and journalist Desmond Cole. 

“We will never be bullied or intimidated into silence while Justin Trudeau and his partners in crime continue to support the genocidal Israeli regime in the slaughter of more than 14,000 people,” Jama said. 

On Nov. 24, Israel granted a four-day ceasefire in Gaza to exchange 50 of the 240 Israeli hostages held by Hamas with 150 Palestinian women and teenagers in Israeli detention. For Loubani, this isn’t enough. 

Loubani shared his experiences with protesters of “sewing up children’s heads” in Gaza without anesthesia prior to the events of Oct. 7. 

“Ceasefire is not my only demand,” Loubani shared with the crowd. “I will not go back to treating patients without tools. I will not go back to making up for the failures of the world to treat our Palestinian brothers, sisters and siblings.”

Protesters began marching through Ottawa at 3:40 p.m., with the demonstration looping back to reestablish its place on Parliament Hill around 5 p.m. Palestinian flags and signs of all sizes waved in the dry, chilly wind. The signs read “stop killing children” and “end the genocide in Gaza.”

Janine—a Palestinian protester who wished to keep her last name anonymous for safety reasons—has witnessed the Israeli occupation first hand. She feels that what is happening in Palestine is unjust, and deserves nothing less than demonstrators to dedicate their Saturday to solidarity. 

“[Our politicians] are the ones who are in control of this situation, they are the ones who are murdering the children—maybe not first hand—but they are not calling for the ceasefire,” said Janine. “For us to be such a huge number in the capital of our country puts a lot of pressure on Justin Trudeau who is complicit.”

English, Arabic, and French chants were loudly, and diligently, repeated throughout the protest. “The people united, will never be defeated,” “From Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime,” and “Ceasefire now” were among the chants cried out in unison by the masses.

Jina —who wished to keep her last name anonymous for safety reasons— is another Palestinian protester who wore face paint that read “Free Palestine” on her cheek. Jina partook in the protest because Palestinians “deserve to have a land, and deserve to live in it.” 

Jina recalled how when she was little, she would bear jealousy, as her classmates who weren’t from Canada would share about going home for the summer, while she had to stay. “I couldn’t go home, there’s no such thing for me. I just know that’s a feeling that a lot of other [Palestianians] feel,” expressed Jina. “I don’t think that is a feeling that anyone should feel.”

100,000 protesters rally in Ottawa for Palestine Read More »

The Yellow Door: Combatting senior isolation

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Kathryn Rieb (second from left) and Gabrielle McLaren (right) participate in the knitting circle alongside two members. Photo Demetra Kritsidimas

Demetra Kritsidimas
Local Journalism Initiative

Amid the clicking of knitting needles and a table full of vibrant-coloured yarn, the Yellow Door’s Tuesday afternoon knitting circle weaves together individuals from all generations. This scene captures the essence of the organization’s mission to bridge the gap between young and elderly communities through a plethora of activities.

The Yellow Door aims to minimize social isolation and exclusion of seniors, which is related to serious health effects and reduced quality of life. According to the International Federation on Aging, “the number one emerging issue facing seniors in Canada is keeping older people socially connected and active.” The government of Canada estimates that 30 per cent of Canadian seniors are at risk of becoming socially isolated. To combat the increasing senior isolation, Yellow Door helps up to a dozen seniors at each of their events.

Ever since moving to Montreal six years ago, Caroline Alince, the wellness group program coordinator, has been actively involved within the organization. Contributing as a volunteer since the age of 18 and getting hired into a full-time position this September, Alince said they have always been interested in the Yellow Door’s mission and thought it was a great community space.

The Yellow Door runs an initiative called the “55+ Community Hour” every Wednesday afternoon. A new activity takes place every week, with certain popular ones on a recurring basis. Seniors who would like to partake in this weekly hour are required to sign up free of charge to become a member. 

“I choose [the activities], but I also like to listen to seniors’ input about what they would like. That’s one of the only wellness groups that’s exclusive to our members.” Alince explained. 

So far, the community hour has seen activities like line dancing, bingo, workshops held by special guests, potlucks, a reading group and yoga. The group also goes on field trips, for instance, their apple-picking excursion this fall.

The Yellow Door also teaches seniors about technology. The idea was created in response to people’s reliance on technology during the pandemic. Dubbed BiblioTech Connect, the initiative notably allows seniors to borrow tablets. Tech Cafés are also hosted, where seniors can bring their own devices while volunteers give presentations and initiate small group projects about tech-related topics to help seniors get more familiar with their cell phone or tablet. 

If the members need more help, the organization provides one-on-one support with trained volunteers. Those Tech Help sessions are also great social bonding moments for many seniors. “Sometimes seniors have to wait a little bit before they’re able to get help, and I’ve seen some members helping each other while they wait and that’s really cool,” said Alince. “A lot of times they’ve actually problem-solved before we even get to it, and it’s really amazing to see that kind of mutual help.”

According to Alince, Tech Help is quite popular, with 10 to 12 members attending each session. 

The Yellow Door’s contributions to well-being, however, go beyond its senior members. Many volunteers have found a place of belonging through the organization. 

Gabrielle McLaren, who is currently employed at Concordia University, has been volunteering at the Yellow Door since moving to Montreal for her Master’s degree during the pandemic. She says that the most fulfilling part of volunteering is meeting people from all walks and stages of life. 

“I had a pretty good academic community, but then I realized, I didn’t want to only talk to people who were equally entrenched in academia in Montreal,” said McLaren. When a call went out for more people to join the Tuesday afternoon knitting circle a little over a year ago, McLaren began volunteering and has kept coming back ever since.

Kathryn Rieb, a software developer, relates to McLaren’s experience. Upon moving from Victoria, B.C. to Montreal last August, and knowing nobody in town other than her partner, Rieb  wondered how she could immediately become a part of something in this new city. Having enjoyed previous volunteer experiences, a few Google searches led her to join the knitting group at the Yellow Door.

“I really enjoyed having an immediate and accepting community. From the first day I showed up, everyone was so kind, everyone was happy to talk about their projects and share, and it was so easy to become a part of this group,” Rieb said, as she knit a wine-coloured turtleneck.  

McLaren found that a simple activity like knitting can offer much more than just social benefits. “I knit in classes, I knit on the bus, and I get comments like, ‘I could never do that.’ And the answer is, no, you for real could, and it actually is shown to be good for you,” said McLaren. “Textile crafts are good [for maintaining] your cognitive abilities and they have good emotional regulation benefits. It’s also cool to do volunteering that is good for you and that is good for the people who are participating.” 

As the winter months approach—a time linked to heightened senior isolation—the Yellow Door continues to organize lively activities like their Nordic walking group on Fridays, and a potential snowshoeing or skiing field trip. They are also marking the holiday season with a fundraising drive, a holiday concert on Dec. 6, and meal deliveries to seniors who are homebound on Dec. 14. 
Alince said they are looking forward to making new community connections and collaborating with organizations doing similar things in order to increase the number of participants and share resources. They have already reached out to Growing A.R.C. Montreal, a non-profit group with a community garden for new summer activities. 

As the pandemic highlighted the need for increased attention to seniors, the Yellow Door’s mission is as vital as ever, as McLaren put it, to “make sure people in [our] community aren’t falling through the cracks.”

Alince gets testimonies of the impacts the Yellow Door makes every day. “It’s amazing to see that that is actually happening with these seniors who are making connections every day, remaining active, and yeah, it’s just good to talk to them about that and be a part of [the Yellow Door’s mission],” they said.

The Yellow Door: Combatting senior isolation Read More »

Editorial: Power to the public sector

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Graphic Zachary Fortier

The Link
Local Journalism Initiative

“Guardian angels” is how Quebec Premier François Legault described healthcare workers in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We heard similar sentiments towards teachers who made sure children were being educated, both online and eventually in-person, often putting their health at risk by doing so.

Now, these “guardian angels” are all without contracts and going on strike because the Coalition Avenir Quebec is failing to fairly compensate them for their work.

Teachers in Quebec remain the lowest paid across Canada, even if they’ve been working in the profession for over a decade. According to the latest salary-scale, released by the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers, the base salary of a “regular teacher” has increased 15.6 per cent over eight years, from $39,291 in 2014-2015 to $46,527 today. 

This pales in comparison to the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) who was recently offered—and rejected—a 21 per cent increase over five years. On their website, the SQ 2021 starting salary is $48,386, which rises to $84,366 after five years. The SQ also increases the salary of officers every six months for the first three years, and every year after the fourth year.

Many nurses, who often have to deal with insufficient staffing and lack of beds, have reportedly been sleeping at the hospital between double or triple shifts.

At any given time, Montreal hospitals are at 80 to 200 per cent (or more) occupancy. Nearly 14,000 patients have been waiting for various surgeries for over a year, including over 4,000 in the Montreal area. An estimated 450 further delays are caused every day, that healthcare workers are on strike.

In the last few years, broken promises have led to growing anger. This includes the promise of bonuses to people to work in the healthcare system being cut, and a Quebec tribunal ordering nurses to stop threatening mass resignations.

Quebec has more than enough talent and money to be able to fill vacancies and properly compensate those who take on the exhausting work most often performed by women, particularly immigrant women of colour. 

Previous strikes by various unions have led the government enacting “back to work” legislation, and then continuing to shaft the people who were deemed heroes globally just under four years ago.

Back in 2021, Legault said “We’ve reached the capacity of what we can pay. So when some union leaders say ‘We want more money,’ well, we don’t have any more money,” adding that he had “been patient” with the unions for the previous year. The truth is that our essential “guardian angels” have been patient with you, Frank.

If the National Assembly is looking for extra funding, they can rescind the $30,000 salary increase they gave themselves in June 2023, or one of the other benefits that amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars for travel and “transition” allowances when they get voted out or leave politics.

If any of these politicians gave half a fuck about any of the roughly 570,000 striking workers, they would cap their own salary increases to match that of the lowest public sector employees. 

The Link stands firm in its support of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé, The Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, the Common Front, and all labour unions. We applaud the fight to ensure members are paid more than subsistence wage and given protections from the abysmal working conditions far too many are subject to.

Editorial: Power to the public sector Read More »

Integration over extraction; prioritizing action: Sharing ideas on the role of academia in addressing homelessness

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(Left to right) Carmela Cucuzzella, Shayana Narcisse, Jayne Malenfant, Chris Brown listen to Jonathan Lebire (far-right) speak at Comm-un’s panel on universities role in addressing homelessness. Photo Julia Cieri

Hannah Vogan
Local Journalism Initiative

On Nov. 25, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., community members and students gathered at Concordia University’s SHIFT center to learn about the non-profit Comm-Un, and discuss the role of universities in addressing homelessness.

Founded just over a year ago, Comm-Un is a non-profit collective deeply rooted in the Milton-Parc community, an area of Montreal made up of a number of unhoused Indigenous and Inuit persons.

In 2018, Indigenous people represented 12 per cent of Montreal’s unhoused population, despite representing just under one per cent of the city’s total population. Inuit made up 25 per cent of unhoused Indigenous people, despite making up only five per cent of Montreal’s Indigenous population.

Comm-Un’s panel addressed and critiqued the multiple social-worker and research programs throughout Montreal universities, highlighting what is missing in the exploration and intervention of homelessness.

Comm-Un believes the most important part about working with the unhoused is healing trauma.

According to Jonathan Lebire, founder and director of Comm-Un, the different approaches to homelessness—like “housing-first,” a concept that is recovery-focused which prioritizes swiftly placing individuals experiencing homelessness into stable housing, followed by further support and services that are offered based on individual needs—isn’t effective. Comm-Un, however, approaches care for the unhoused differently; to make healing and love the first step with unhoused communities.  “I coach, I listen, but I don’t tell them what to do. They tell me what they need to do and I make sure they can do it,” Lebire told The Link.

“Unhoused people experience lots of trauma—most of the services now are focused on just survival needs, and we need some spaces that consider the healing process,” said Concordia PhD student Moh Abdalreza. Abdalreza helps organize, plan events and projects, and so much more, according to Lebire, who has dubbed the Concordia student “Super-Moh.” Abdalreza researches the relationship between art and homelessness. 

A frequent sentiment expressed by Comm-Un is that there is a lack of communication between government bodies, neighbours, media and (most importantly) the unhoused regarding efforts to create safe spaces and take steps towards healing for a vulnerable population.

“We found that there is a big gap between lived experiences of unhoused people and policy making processes,” Abdalreza said.

Comm-Un also launched their current project and proposal for the collective at the panel. Their project, “Street University,” is described to be a strength-based space, alternative to day-shelters. 

“[Street University] is about moving from fragmentation to reintegration, from survival needs to healing, and also merging resources,” Abdalreza noted. 

Abdalreza stressed how universities have access to many resources. He shared how they own large amounts of land, infrastructure, and public spaces that have a copious potential to be employed for the benefit of the community. He feels many students who study homelessness within the walls of an institution fail to have actual conversations with their subjects; unhoused people.

When it came time for the panel, rectangular tables with three chairs were dually positioned in front of the panelists. Tables were set with crayons, markers, and paint-sticks coupled with paper to encourage art during the discussion.

The night, which drew in an audience of all ages, began with Lebire introducing himself and Comm-Un. He shared how, when he was about 16, he was unhoused. 

Lebire left his home for Sherbrooke, Que., with $20 and a backpack. When he came back to Montreal, he wanted to make a change. He went to the Université de Montréal to become a social worker. However, school didn’t help him understand the complexity of being a social worker and working with unhoused populations. 

“By the magic in life, I was introduced to the Indigenous people at Atwater park,” said Lebire. This changed how he saw intervention work.

The floor was then turned to the five panelists and researchers whose work aligned with addressing homelessness; Jayne Malenfant, Shayana Narcisse, Carmela Cucuzzella, Janis Timm-Bottos and Chris Brown.

When the question was posed to panelists about the universities’ impact on addressing homelessness, Malenfant expressed dissatisfaction with the disconnect from university researchers and those being researched. 

Malenfant, an assistant professor in social justice and community engaged studies at McGill University, spent a period of her life unhoused. 

“I often ask, ‘what is the point of working with researchers, and what is the point of working with universities when we as (unhoused) communities can take care of ourselves?’” she said. “The way we evaluate impact in the university is not just. It is not grounded in community knowledge, and there aren’t ongoing mechanisms for evaluation that are led by people who are directly impacted by the issues we are studying. The accountability isn’t there,” Malenfant explained. 

She believes one way universities could improve with its research approach, particularly when tackling homelessness, is by resourcing people with lived experiences and allowing them to lead the research.

For Timm-Bottos, the founder of Montreal’s first art-hive, social infrastructure within universities is the catalyst for action and change.

“We need to have gathering places, otherwise people are afraid of each other,” said Timm-Bottos. “We need to have these safe environments where we can throw off our identities and be real with each other.” She elaborated on how art is a method to communicate and learn from those residing in different socio-economic classes.

Comm-Un’s art hive is a testimony to Timm-Bottos’ shared sentiment. Members of the community paint, draw, carve stone or create any craft desired. Once the crafts are made, Lebire will

 sell the creations —sometimes for upwards of $200— and relay the money back to the artist. According to Abdalreza, there is a type of communication that transcends beyond words when those of different power dynamics gather to create art and learn techniques from each other.

Lebire borrowed the mic from panelists for a moment to heed caution of the delicacy that should come with conducting research of the unhoused.

He described how, if you’re considered unhoused by the system, it’s primarily because you went through struggles which transformed into traumas that were not dealt with—as there was no safety net in place. Lebire explained how these traumas want to be forgotten.

“The worst thing for [an unhoused individual] is somebody poking you, and reminding you of all of these [traumas],” asserted Lebire. “Whenever all of these researchers ask those questions, you have to keep in mind, you are bringing those things back up for a person that still does not have any means to deal with it. So every time, you trigger [their trauma] without giving a healing opportunity.” 

Narcisse is a creative with a focus on visual art and works toward action with her art. She has a lived experience with homelessness, and believes researchers with the subject of homelessness should approach the research in a holistic way: hiring the street workers and compensating them for the time spent learning from their experiences.

The panel later made room to hear and inquire further on the audience’s ideas on where they think the role of universities fit in addressing homelessness.

One participant expressed suspicion in whether an institution can have an acceptable role in helping the unhoused community.

“Unless we radically transform what a university is—and it can be in the service of direct action by collectivity that is autonomous—we have to be really skeptical about what we can do,” they explained.

The night concluded with a workshop where everyone was encouraged to share and explore alternative ways to mobilize researchers and leverage university resources effectively. 

Looseleaf was passed around, prompting participants to jot down resources and programs with their paint-sticks and markers— information Comm-Un could utilize to strengthen Street University. 

During the workshop, ideas were bounced off of both organizers and participants in hopes of mending ideas and outlets that Comm-Un can use to leverage storytelling through their work.

“If we want to understand [homelessness] from different perspectives. We need a new way of research and understanding that is connected to action,”  Abdalreza said.

Integration over extraction; prioritizing action: Sharing ideas on the role of academia in addressing homelessness Read More »

Bill 31 will mean more impossible choices for Montreal women

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Bill 31 will only make the housing crisis worse for women. Graphic Panos Michalakopoulos

Benjamin Lucas
Local Journalism Initiative

Content warning: this article mentions suicide and abuse.

Posters on signposts, recurring protests down major streets, petitions and newscasts reveal the outrage of renters against the Legault regime’s proposed end to lease transfers through Bill 31. 

The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated: Quebec now stands at a crossroads, with a 44 per cent increase in homelessness in five years and 500 households left without a lease last moving day. The effects of the housing crisis have cascaded across all Canadian society. 

Women, who are at an economic disadvantage, are impacted more than most—with single mothers being 38 per cent more likely to spend more than a third of their income on rent. The result of this is that women having experienced abuse have to make a choice: remain with their abusers on whom they depend for housing, or face homelessness. 

The housing crisis is putting women in a double bind, forcing them to make impossible decisions, and exacerbating it will only put more strain on already scarce resources. Like living in any other city, being in Montreal brings you face-to-face with certain social realities. 

Advocates and experts say that lease transfers are one of the mechanisms that keep rent controlled, and in addition, the Coalition Avenir Québec’s (CAQ) bill would allow for the selling off of much-needed social housing. Given that Montreal is the only city in Canada with more renters than owners, this is especially dangerous.

Throughout Canada, the story is the same. There is  a simultaneous rising of rents and domestic abuse. Women’s shelters have lost $150 million in federal funding and face high staff turnover due to their inability to pay them. One woman, interviewed by the CBC, said, “I can’t try to find a job, I can’t better myself, I can’t be safe if I don’t have a home.” 

What is a woman to do? Some have even attempted suicide to escape this double bind. 

This is not hypothetical. The strain of the housing crisis on domestic violence survivors has already been seen as they lose alternatives to living with their abusers. In Montreal, the women’s shelter Chez Doris was forced to shut down temporarily because it could not feed everyone nor did it have the staff to keep up with demand. This drives women to other shelters, putting more strain on them in turn. A conservative estimate places the number of women turned away from Canadian shelters because of a lack of space at 19,000 per month.  

Wait lists for social housing in Canada can be a years long wait, and even the (relatively) fortunate women who can find a bed in a shelter may be unable to find a long-term place to go afterwards, leaving them to spend up to a year in the transition homes. At every stage, the housing crisis means abused women are left with no place to go to get away from their abusers. 

Stories from women in this situation are stark and display the impossible situations that they face. Women’s experiences include fearing losing custody of their children because they lack a stable home, spending weeks in abusive homes waiting for calls from shelters, or making the decision to return to the men abusing them. Living with their abusers means forfeiting full participation in society, as explored in Kylie Cheung’s book Survivor Injustice, including losing control over their ability to vote, reproductive system, and too often escalating to losing their life.  

The CAQ’s policy makes all this worse. By increasing rent, more people will be made unhoused, and this will put even more strain on the shelters that are available now. More women will be unable to leave their abusers. This comes in the aftermath of a rising tide of domestic abuse, just one sordid result of Legault’s COVID-19 policy.  

Perhaps all of this is easy for Legault to ignore, but it is impossible for women who have become ensnared in it. If the state fails to provide alternatives, it is complicit in this abuse. Legault should obey the will of Montreal renters and rescind Bill 31 immediately. 

Bill 31 will mean more impossible choices for Montreal women Read More »

Legault’s failure to protect public transit: Quebec’s resistance to fund public transit is detrimental for riders and climate

Local Journalism Initiative / / / ,

Bus stops have longer wait times caused by public transit issues. Graphic Olivia Shan

Genevieve Sylvestre
Local Journalism Initiative

Every day, I leave my apartment in the freezing cold to queue up and take a bus, followed by the metro, followed by another bus, or, God forbid, the Concordia shuttle. The problem: as I approach my bus stop, I notice the line is unusually long on a daily basis.

The bus I was supposed to take is late, as are all the ones after it, which seems to be the new norm. Instead of a bus passing every five minutes, three to four busses pass every fifteen to twenty minutes, and they are all filled to the brim with passengers.

If this sounds all too familiar, it’s not just you. According to data from the Sociéte de Transport de Montréal (STM), around a quarter of all buses are late. On average, only 78.3 per cent of all buses were on time in 2023 so far, and 74.9 per cent were on time in the month of September. Overall, buses this year are consistently more likely to be late than at the same time in 2022, and the yearly average has not been this low since 2019.

The potential reduction in the STM’s services came after Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault announced that the province’s capital would only fund 20 per cent of the cost of public transit in Montreal. Since this, Guilbault has agreed to cover 70 per cent of the cost, but that is still less than what the city asked for. 

Indeed, the ten regional transit agencies had asked for $300 million dollars, but the Quebec government is only offering to pay $265 million dollars, with $238 million dollars going to the city of Montreal. That is $35 million dollars less than what public transit agencies requested.  

The number of people using public transit in the city has not gone back to pre-pandemic levels, a huge blow to the STM budget. Even with the new offer from Guilbault, the STM still has a hole in its budget. If the STM cannot find the money, it will have to cut back on services, although the transit provider claims that it should not impact buses or the metro. 

For people who have to take multiple forms of public transit back to back, this tardiness compounds. A few minutes means missing a metro or maybe even the next bus, leading to even more wasted time and an increased risk of being late.

It is true that passengers can always leave earlier, but doing so can add 15 to 20 minutes to one’s daily commute, which can add up to two hours every week.  As someone who already spends around three hours commuting to Loyola campus every day, I would much rather spend those two hours sleeping or doing literally anything else besides waiting. 

This decrease in quality is especially frustrating considering STM fairs are rising rapidly. The cost of a monthly pass jumped from $94 to $97 in July 2023—a three per cent increase—while single passes jumped from $3.50 to $3.75. 

These hikes put additional pressure on commuters amidst a cost of living crisis, especially as the quality of services goes down. And with the news that the metro could begin closing at 11 p.m. and start opening at 9 a.m. on weekends, the future is looking bleak for those who rely on public transit. 

While these changes are not guaranteed, it is not uncommon for people who work in healthcare or in the service industry to leave or come back from work at that time.These changes could force people to use their car, pay for a taxi or an Uber just to get to work, or quit their job altogether. Indeed, if people are forced to pay to get to and from work, it might no longer be financially viable to keep that job. 

The reliance on cars over public transit also contributes significantly to the climate crisis. According to the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) environmental plan, Quebec’s transportation sector accounted for 42.8 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in 2020, with light vehicles accounting for 60 per cent of those emissions. 

Public transit is essential to decreasing GHG emissions, with the STM reporting that public transit in Montreal helps avoid the emission of 2.3 million additional tonnes of greenhouse gases.

If the CAQ governments directed even a small amount of funds into public transit, it could help increase the number of buses on the road, increase the metro’s punctuality and could even lead to it closing later rather than earlier.

Legault’s failure to protect public transit: Quebec’s resistance to fund public transit is detrimental for riders and climate Read More »

Students voice concerns over Quebec’s newest financial barriers

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Graphic Sara Salsabili

Safa Hachi
Local Journalism Initiative

In the echoing halls of McMaster University, Nathalie White, a fourth-year psychology student, saw her grad school ambitions clouded by the news of a tuition increase, emphasizing the intersection of academic dreams with financial barriers.

“I had a list of graduate schools that I wanted to apply to next year,” said White. “I initially heard about the tuition increase briefly on the news and was immediately disheartened. I knew that I could simply not afford tuition fees.” 

“This may be a bit jaded, but it seems like they’re saying you’re not welcome unless you can afford it. I understand wanting to preserve French culture […] but that just means that whoever has the money can come,” she added. 

On Oct.13, Coalition Avenir Québec’s (CAQ) Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry disclosed that the province intended to increase tuition fees for students from outside of Quebec. The new cost would rise from $8,992 to approximately $17,000 per year, starting fall 2024. Additionally, an established minimum tuition of $20,000 per year was stipulated for international students. For those who are already enrolled, they must remain in their current program for a maximum of five years, rendering deferrals and part-time studies more complicated.

This tuition hike hits Quebec’s English universities the hardest—Concordia, Bishops and McGill. Despite claims from Dery stating, “I’m not closing the door to any anglophone student,”  doubling out-of-province tuition undeniably imposes limitations.

Quebec French-language Minister Jean-François Roberge expressed in an interview with La Presse that, “We’re fed up with managing the decline, protecting the language, curbing the erosion of the language; these are all defensive terms. It’s time to regain some ground.”

In May 2022, Québec’s National Assembly passed Bill 96. The bill is designed to bolster the use of French in the province. The law spawned various initiatives, including Francisation Québec. Introduced by the CAQ on June 1, 2023, this initiative aims to centralize French learning services for immigrants, contributing to Quebec’s needs through temporary or permanent candidate selection, according to information taken from the Quebec government’s website.

During their first six months in Quebec, new immigrants are entitled to services in English. However, after this period, they are expected to handle services in French as effortlessly as resident speakers. This is despite the fact that the government’s own internal report on the feasibility of the acquisition of French within a six-month timeframe deemed it nearly impossible.

According to Julia Balot, a McGill student, there seems to be a lack of clarity between citizens and the government in regards to what Quebec is aiming to achieve. 

“It really makes me feel unwelcome here, especially by the government. Which is weird, because my day-to-day interactions with [Quebec-born francophones] tend to be pretty positive,” said Balot. “I’m happy to be able to go to a school like McGill […] but I definitely worry that the culture on campus might change. Amplifying this division between anglophones and francophones seems like a step in the wrong direction.” 

Students with a French citizenship or a francophone Belgian citizenship will be able to avoid the tuition increase. However, many Middle Eastern and North African international students speak French, but are subject to pay international fees. Yasmina May Hafiz, an international student from Morocco, called out the Quebec government’s double standard when it comes to French-speaking immigrants.

“I am already paying $24,000 a year,” Hafiz said.  

Hafiz comes from a country colonized by France, where French is a major part of her life. She speaks it fluently, both back home and here. 

“So why can’t I get lower tuition rates like French or Belgian citizens?” she continued.  “I moved here, pay rent here, work here, speak French here, I add to the so-called fortification of French, but I am no longer a desirable immigrant because I am North African,” she added.

Students voice concerns over Quebec’s newest financial barriers Read More »

Gatineau teenager injured in car surfing incident

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Photo: Emergency services attended an incident in Gatineau, Quebec, highlighting the dangers of reckless driving behaviours. (TF) Photo: Tashi Farmilo

With notes from Mary Baskin, Marie-Eve Turpin and Lily Ryan

A 16-year-old teenager from Gatineau suffered injuries following a dangerous car surfing stunt, leading to a strong admonition from local authorities against such reckless behavior.

On Sunday, November 19, shortly before 11:00 am, Gatineau Police responded to an emergency call at the intersection of Rue de l’Oasis and Impasse des Vents, near Boulevard la Vérendrye Ouest in Gatineau. Upon arrival, officers found the injured teenager, who had regained consciousness and was receiving medical attention from paramedics.

Investigations revealed that the teen had fallen from a moving vehicle while engaging in “car surfing”, a hazardous act where an individual rides on the exterior of a moving vehicle controlled by another person. The teenager was rushed to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

In a concerning turn of events, the driver of the vehicle, a 17-year-old, faced immediate legal repercussions. The vehicle was seized for seven days, and both the driver and the injured teenager had their driver’s licenses suspended for the same duration. Additionally, each will incur a $1,000 fine and receive 12 demerits on their driving records.

Section 434 of the Quebec Highway Safety Code explicitly prohibits such actions, stating: “No person may hang on to, or be pulled or pushed by a moving road vehicle, and no driver may tolerate such a practice.” This incident underscores the serious risks and legal consequences associated with car surfing.

The Gatineau Police emphasized the importance of public awareness regarding the dangers of such activities. They strongly discourage this behavior and advocate for open dialogue between parents and their children about the risks and legal implications. The incident serves as a stark reminder of the potential hazards of reckless driving behaviors and the importance of adhering to road safety regulations.

The police department remains on standby, monitoring the situation for any indication that this might be part of a larger trend among local youth. However, there is presently no evidence to suggest that this is the case. The focus remains on education and prevention to ensure the safety of all road users in Gatineau.

Gatineau teenager injured in car surfing incident Read More »

Peace – Oneness Conversations 2023: fostering global harmony

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Photo: Capturing the spirit of tranquility and unity, this image represents the essence of ‘Peace -Oneness Conversations 2023’—a global dialogue dedicated to fostering harmony and gratitude. (TF) Photo: Tashi Farmilo

With notes from Mary Baskin, Marie-Eve Turpin and Lily Ryan

In the midst of global unrest and societal challenges, the “Peace – Oneness Conversations 2023” emerges as a pivotal event, scheduled for December 22, at the Outaouais Wellness Learning (OWL) Centre in Gatineau. This initiative, running from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm, aims to bring together diverse traditions in a unique celebration focused on gratitude, peace, and unity.

The event will feature notable speakers such as Judith King Matheson, a well-regarded SpiritualDirector and Elder; Kim Lyday, a renowned Holistic Healing Coach; and Joseph Marti, an expert Emotional Healing Practitioner. These speakers are bound by a shared vision of awakening humanity to the profound joys of life, encouraging a collective embrace of dance, music, and love as transformative forces.

Joseph Marti, known for his expertise in Contemplative Psychology and emotional healing, will discuss the critical role of addressing emotional issues in achieving lifelong well-being. Marti’s contribution extends to curating content for the Oneness Conversations on the OWL website, ensuring each session is deeply relevant to participants’ experiences.

Kim Lyday’s involvement goes beyond hosting and recording the events. She plays a vital role in disseminating these spiritual dialogues to a broader audience through the OWL YouTube channel. Her collaboration with Judith King Matheson is particularly notable, especially in their monthly meetings, which have evolved into a significant source of spiritual nourishment and growth. This partnership gained more importance after the passing of Matheson’s husband in September 2021, highlighting the healing power of community support.

Judith King Matheson, a prominent figure in Aylmer’s spiritual community, has been instrumental in fostering a culture of peace and understanding. Her journey as a Celtic Mother and Universalist, combined with her diverse cultural experiences, has been central to the inclusive nature of this event. Her various initiatives in Aylmer, such as the ACE Agent of Conscious Evolution and her involvement in spiritual care at the Ottawa Hospital, have played a significant role in creating platforms for spiritual dialogue and peace advocacy, notably influencing the Algonquin Anishinabe Watershed and the broader community.

The “Peace – Oneness Conversations 2023” is more than just an event; it symbolizes the collective spirit and commitment of Aylmer in addressing global challenges. Open to global participation via Zoom, the event extends Aylmer’s message of peace and unity far beyond its local borders. Additionally, the OWL YouTube channel offers a comprehensive archive of these conversations, ensuring the shared insights and wisdom remain accessible to a worldwide ​audience.

To join the event and be a part of this global harmony initiative, participants can use the following Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8451… .

Peace – Oneness Conversations 2023: fostering global harmony Read More »

Gatineau Chamber of Commerce: winners of 27th Excelor Awards

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Photo: Finalists of the 27th Excelor Awards: The Gatineau Chamber of Commerce unveiled the 2023 Excelor Award finalists, presented by Gazifère, at the Maison de la culture de Gatineau. (TF) Photo courtesy of the Gatineau Chamber of Commerce/ Morgan Marketing

With notes from Mary Baskin, Marie-Eve Turpin and Lily Ryan

The Gatineau Chamber of Commerce (CCG) proudly announced the winners of the 2023 Excelor Awards at the Hilton Lac Leamy. This year’s event, sponsored by Gazifère, marked the 27th edition of the prestigious awards, drawing over a thousand attendees from the local business community.

The gala celebrated the remarkable achievements of individuals and businesses across various categories. The “Social economy enterprise of the year”, sponsored by the Outaouais Social Economy Cluster, was awarded to the Outaouais Intercooperative Housing Federation – FIHAB.

The “Investment project” category, presented by Brigil, honoured The Hull Sporthèque. In the “Young Entrepreneur of the Year (under 39)” category, sponsored by Desjardins Entreprises Outaouais, Charles-Antoine Hallée of Learn & Undertake claimed the title. Marie Careau of Maceca was named “Micro-entrepreneur of the year”, an award presented by Énergie 104.1 and 94.9 Rouge.

The “SME of the year – 1 to 15 employees” accolade, presented by the Regroupement des CPAde l’Outaouais, went to Mini Teepee, while Spiria Digital Inc. – Gatineau/Ottawa bagged the “SME of the year – 16 to 49 employees” award, sponsored by Marcil Lavallée. BBL Construction received the “Prize for Philanthropic Commitment” from the Choquette-Legault Foundation. The University of Quebec en Outaouais presented the “Exceptional Project – Innovation” category award to Les Jardins du Souvenir.

OrthoCanada was recognized in the “Eco-responsible Exporter Project” category, an award jointly presented by Export Outaouais and Investissement Québec. The “Woman of influence” category, sponsored by Accompagnement des femmes immigrantes de l’Outaouais (AFIO), was won by Yolande Tchitchi of BMO.

The Mentoring Program’s “Mentee of the Year” award was given to Lissa Moore from Shop me this, and the “Mentor of the Year” accolade, presented by The Mentoring Cell, went to Richard Martin from Pixel. The prestigious “Personality of the Year” award, presented by Scotiabank, was bestowed upon Sylvain Bertrand of BBL Construction.

In a touching tribute, the CCG also introduced “The Great Missing” segment, sponsored by Les Jardins du Souvenir, to honour the memory of Malcolm Corcoran and Bruno Charron, entrepreneurs who passed away in 2023. This segment underscored the enduring impact of their contributions to the business community.

Stéphane Bisson, President of the CCG, emphasized the significance of the event, noting, “The ​Excelor Gala is the largest event for the business community in the region and among the largest business galas in Quebec. We are witnessing a time of rapid change, global challenges, and endless opportunities. But I am convinced that our business community has the resources, know-how, and creativity necessary to meet them.”

Jean-Benoit Trahan, President of Gazifère, expressed his pride in supporting the CCG for five years as a main sponsor, highlighting the importance of mutual support among local businessesfor the region’s development. “Congratulations to all the finalists!” he added.

Gatineau Chamber of Commerce: winners of 27th Excelor Awards Read More »

Pontiac public service workers on strike

Local Journalism Initiative / / /
Sophie Kuijper Dickson, reporter
Funded by the Local Journalism Initiative

Nancy Dufault has been working as a medical secretary at the Pontiac Hospital for 34 years.

Her work involves a long list of responsibilities, including booking appointments and making sure the doctors have all the documentation, like bloodwork and X-rays, that they need for seeing their patients.

She said it is work she feels is valued by her co-workers and the doctors she works for, but not by the provincial government.

“When I started here 34 years ago I had a beautiful paycheck. It was something to be proud of. Now, our salary hasn’t evolved with everything else,” Dufault said.

In her three decades of work, her pride in the service she provides has not wavered, but she said her pay no longer reflects her value.

Today, she makes $25 an hour, a wage bracket she attained years ago and that has not budged since.

Dufault, and about 300 other healthcare workers employed by CISSSO in the region, including cleaners, technicians, and personal support staff, stood outside the Pontiac Hospital for three days last week, trying to change this.

They were among the 570,000 educators, healthcare and social service workers on strike across the province last week, demanding higher wages and better working conditions.

Healthcare workers and teachers represented by unions in the Common Front alliance were on the picket line from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23.

On Thursday, nurses from the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) joined those already on picket lines for their own two-day strike, and teachers represented by the FAE union began an unlimited strike, bumping the number of workers on strike from 420,000 to 570,000 province-wide.

In a statement issued by the Common Front on Thursday, the unions said that day’s labour action was the largest in this country’s history.

Their statement also noted that 450,000 of the 570,000 people on the picket lines were women.

While all workers represented by unions with Common Front returned to work on Nov. 24, including CISSSO workers and most Pontiac teachers, the 66,000 education workers represented by FAE are continuing their indefinite general strike this week.

Emergency services
not affected

In an email to THE EQUITY, CISSSO said emergency and intensive care services were not affected by the strike, but that the strike would “undoubtedly slow down certain services.”
According to CISSSO, several appointments had to be postponed, including imaging, blood collection and vaccination appointments.
The healthcare provider also said the nurses’ strike postponed 18 surgeries across the Outaouais and delayed the scheduling of 12 surgeries.
Teachers and education workers with both English and French school boards in the Pontiac region were also on strike, shutting down all schools in the region for three days last week.
The walk-out followed a one-day strike on Nov. 6, which was planned to signal to the province that unions were not satisfied with the offers the provincial government was bringing to the bargaining table in contract negotiations that have lasted months.
“That didn’t seem to make any effect so we are in the middle of a three day strike,” said Thomas Pace, the delegate representing health care and social service workers with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) union in the Pontiac region.
He works in the kitchen at the Pontiac Hospital when he is not tied up in union duties.
“This strike can realistically be called off at any moment if the government is willing to give us a fair offer,” he said.
Part of the frustrations felt by the healthcare workers on strike last week was that they do not feel they have been adequately compensated for the services they provided throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Throughout the whole covid we were here, just like the nurses and housekeeping, but we weren’t considered essential. It was only the nurses,” Dufault said.
“We love the nurses, definitely, but we’re all a team. Everybody worked through it. Everybody got up in the morning and did what we had to do. And the government never even acknowledged that.”
Wanda Lance, from Calumet Island, works as a medical secretary for the hospital’s surgeons. She echoed Dufault’s frustrations.
“I don’t think people realize how hard we work. We work hard, and I don’t think we’re paid enough for what we do,” she said.
Province asks for flexibility
On Thursday, Premier François Legault told reporters in Montreal that his government would consider increasing wages if, in exchange, unions would support more staffing and scheduling flexibility, the Montreal Gazette reported.
“There’s no way we can improve efficiency or services to the population if we don’t get this flexibility,” Legault said.
At the time, the province’s offer sat at a 10.3 per cent salary increase over five years. Added benefits, as well as a one-time $1,000 payment to each worker in the first year of their contract would bring this increase to 14.8 per cent over five years for some workers, but not all.
This offer was first made at the end of October, and has not changed since.
Alfonso Ibarra is president of the Conseil central des syndicats nationeaux de l’outaouais-CSN, the local chapter of one of the unions representing public sector workers across the province including the CISSSO workers on strike in the Pontiac.
“It’s an offer we salute. It’s great to see the government finally improving its offer, but the offers are still not good enough, in our opinion, because there’s a big salary catch up to be done,” Ibarra said.
He said the unions will not consider an offer that does not keep purchasing power in line with inflation, which he said would mean a 20 per cent wage increase, almost twice as high as what is currently on the table.
“So we’re still far from what we’re looking for as a union,” he said.
Ibarra said he is not trying to be alarmist, but knows there are many members waiting to see the results of the negotiations to decide whether or not they will leave the public sector.
“If we don’t get a significant increase, a lot of workers will leave the service,” he said, adding that while doctors and nurses are often considered essential, the medical secretaries, cleaners and cooks that power the hospitals are also critical to it’s operation.
“Without these people the system could not work.”
Ibarra said if there is no agreement in the coming weeks, members of the Common Front union alliance will move to an unlimited general strike, but did not indicate when exactly they might do this.

Pontiac public service workers on strike Read More »

Mayors approve a slightly larger 2024 budget

Local Journalism Initiative / / /
Charles Dickson, editor
Funded by the Local Journalism Initiative

A slightly bigger budget for MRC Pontiac was approved by the county’s 18 mayors at their monthly public meeting last week.

The 2024 budget, presented to the meeting by MRC accountant Annie Vaillancourt, is for $9,858,724, an increase of $354,666 over the budget for 2023.

Forty-three per cent of the 2024 budget – $4,206,500 – will come from municipal shares.

As Vaillancourt explained to THE EQUITY, the share each municipality contributes to the MRC budget is determined essentially by total property valuations in each municipality, to which a multiplier is applied.

While the total contribution of all municipal shares to the 2024 budget represents an increase of $54,396 (1.31 per cent) over 2023, the multiplier being applied is decreasing from $0.1329 to $0.1047 per $100 of property value, indicating a general increase in property values over the past year.

Forty-five per cent of the 2024 budget – $4,437,956 – will come from grants.

The balance of the budget is made up of $1,069,375 (11 per cent) composed of revenue derived from leasing of public lands, bank interest and payment for services provided, plus $144,897 (1 per cent) in the form of surplus revenue accumulated in 2023 and carried over to the 2024 budget.

Full details of the budget can be found on the MRC Pontiac website.

Mayors approve a slightly larger 2024 budget Read More »

MRC Pontiac consults on five-year agricultural development plan

Local Journalism Initiative / / /
Sophie Kuijper, reporter
Funded by the Local Journalism Initiative

Pontiac farmers and people otherwise invested in the region’s agricultural industry crowded into the Little Red Wagon Winery on Thursday morning to share their vision of how to grow the industry and support the region’s current producers over the next five years.

MRC Pontiac invited interested residents to participate in a three-hour consultation session to launch the development of a new PDZA, a planning model created by the provincial ministry of agriculture to be used to guide development of agricultural zones in the province.

“We don’t want a book that just sits on a shelf and isn’t used, so that’s why you’re all here,” said Shanna Armstrong, the MRC’s economic development commissioner for agriculture. “We’re going to bring all of our ideas to make agriculture in the Pontiac beautiful over the next five years.”

Attendees were organized into discussion groups and invited to highlight current strengths of the region’s agricultural industry, and paint a picture of their ideal vision for the industry.

Sitting at one such table was Dave Ingalls of ELI-DA Jerseys, Scott Stephens of Cloverleaf Farms, Kristine Amyotte of Ferme Familial Beck, Mariane Roy of La Fée des Bois, and farmer wellness worker Gabriele Côté-Lamoureux from the organization Écoute Agricole.

Together, they decided the region’s assets included the abattoir in Shawville, the Shawville Fair, the region’s three farmers’ markets, the agricultural courses offered through Heritage College in Campbell’s Bay, and the presence and strength of local dairy, beef and grain farms.

The discussion around local strengths also included ideas about what more could be done and concerns about how new agricultural development initiatives might leave certain farmers behind.

“Often, in these plans, conventional agriculture is not included,” Amyotte shared with the group. “I’m very supportive of artisan agriculture, and I think there’s room to include conventional production.”

Ingalls, who owns a 55-jersey dairy farm, agreed.

“I have nothing against other productions but there’s a lot of emphasis on small-scale, vegetable, and organic. That’s important, but it can’t be a ‘one or the other’. We need balance. The dollars from the cash crops, the beef and the dairy industry, if those disappear, there’s no services here.”

Ingalls moved here from Montérégie because the land was more affordable.

He said since starting his farm, he has felt supported by programs coming out of the MRC, MAPAQ, the SADC, and the province’s agricultural Financière.

“I don’t know if I feel there’s anything missing for me,” he said, but added he fears being left behind as the MRC moves forward with a new plan.

“I don’t want the conventional agriculture that built this region to be left on the sidelines to favour other ones that may or may not have a great future here, I don’t know.”

For her part, Mariane Roy of Fée des Bois emphasized the need to develop and market agritourism in the region to better connect small-scale farmers directly to their customers.
Roy said her apothecary business draws many people directly to property in Greermount where she sells her products, but rarely does she meet people who happen upon her farm because they were passing through the area.
She would like to change this, and imagines doing so through developing a network of farms that could organize a farm hop, moving tourists from one farm to the next.
We really want to know what producers and stakeholders involved in agriculture see as priorities in terms of where they want to see agriculture go in the Pontiac,” Armstrong said. “There’s always aspects that are regulated provincially and federally but there’s a lot of play in there.”
The last time this MRC designed a PDZA was 10 years ago.
After what will be a lengthy consultation process, the final PDZA guide will be presented to the public in the winter of 2025.

Snapshot of the local industry

Armstrong’s opening presentation at the consultation included statistics on MRC Pontiac’s farming industry.
According to the 2021 census, there are 239 farms in the MRC Pontiac.
Of these, 88 are beef, 47 produce hay, 31 produce cash crop grains, 19 are dairy, and the remaining 35 are a combination of mixed farms, market gardens, sheep and goat farms, greenhouse farms, poultry farms, and fruit and nut farms.
Clarendon is home to 96 farms, which make up 40 per cent of farms in the MRC Pontiac.
There are 325 farm operators, 240 of whom are men, and 215 of whom are over the age of 55.
Only 20 of these 325 farmers are under 30 years old.

MRC Pontiac consults on five-year agricultural development plan Read More »

Bill proposes overhaul of healthcare system

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Camilla Faragalli, reporter

Funded by the Local Journalism Initiative

Quebec is pushing to pass a major healthcare reform bill before the end of this year’s parliamentary session on Dec. 8.
Bill 15, tabled by Minister of Health Christian Dubé, calls for the creation of a province-run corporation called Santé Québec – a centralized healthcare agency that would oversee all activities relating to the public healthcare system, including everything from its services to its access committees.
Santé Québec would become the sole employer of the province’s healthcare workers, essentially replacing regional health agencies, integrating the CISSS and CIUSSS.
“[Dubé] has indicated that what he really wants here is top down decision making,” said André Fortin, provincial member for Pontiac and the health critic for the Liberal Party of Quebec, during an interview with THE EQUITY. “[This] would leave very little room for innovation on the part of healthcare professionals.”
Fortin said he has spent close to 200 hours in committee meetings with the health minister in an attempt to “improve” the bill, even though he believes it to be “deeply, deeply flawed.”
“It would leave very little room for local adaptation to local realities,” he said, “and, there are a growing number of healthcare professionals who speak of a very tangible risk of it de-mobilizing their workforce.”
Josey Bouchard, spokesperson for an official citizen group called Pontiac Voice, said the “mammoth” size of the bill makes it difficult to assess all of its implications.
Bill 15, which is over 300 pages long and comprises over 1,000 different articles, is notably the second largest ever to be presented at the National Assembly.
“It’s hard to see if it’s going to be as decentralized as they say it will be, but it’s like the government wants to put an arm’s length between developing policies and who’s going to make those policies happen,” Bouchard said.

According to Bouchard, this is problematic because it makes it harder to hold the government accountable when things aren’t going well.
“It sort of washes off a little bit of the [government’s] responsibility,” she said.
Bouchard maintains that if the bill is passed, whatever kind of committee is offered to give voice to the people of the Pontiac, “people have to be there.”
“We can’t leave an empty chair,” she said.
“An empty chair doesn’t speak out. Only a person does.”

QCGN petition

The Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), a not-for-profit organization linking English-language groups across the province, has posted a petition on its website demanding the provincial government put an immediate hold on Bill 15.
QCGN president, Eva Ludvig, urges all Quebecers to sign. “The government wants to ram the 300-page bill through by December 8, so quick action is required,” she says in a letter sent to publications throughout the province.
According to Ludvig, experts participating in a recent QCGN webinar on the subject say “the bill will do nothing to address the crises in our emergency rooms, delays in surgeries or the lack of family doctors. What it will do is centralize government control under an umbrella organization called Santé Québec, while abolishing the boards of local institutions, and eliminating any role for patients, families, volunteers, and communities – people the health-care system exists to serve.”

Bill proposes overhaul of healthcare system Read More »

4-H celebrates another year of learning and leadership

Local Journalism Initiative / / /
Sophie Kuijper Dickson, reporter
Funded by the Local Journalism Initiative

Youth of all ages left their barn clothes at home, dressing instead in their finest formal wear, and filled the Jack Graham Community Centre on Saturday evening for the Shawville 4-H club’s year-end awards banquet.

Members and families of Quebec’s largest 4-H club arrived carrying steaming pots filled with the likes of meatballs, lasagna, scalloped potatoes and pasta salads, all contributions for the potluck dinner.

But before attendees could fill their plates, the club’s vice-president Rebecca Nugent had a few words for the parents who supported the members throughout the year.

“To the parents, thank you for all your support and encouragement. Thank you for always going above and beyond, whether that be driving members to meetings or shows, or even staying up late to help us get ready for a show,” Nugent said. “We appreciate you more than you’ll ever know.”

Following dinner, club president Laura Mayhew offered a few reflections from her 11 years with the club.

“That is probably the thing I love most about 4-H, is that we’re constantly learning,” Mayhew said.

“No matter if it’s your first year in 4-H or your twelfth, there’s always something to learn and there’s always something to teach.”

Then began the most anticipated portion of the evening – the awards ceremony.

Club leaders took to the stage to announce the long list of awards and trophies that had been collected by members throughout the year, as well as a handful of awards that had not yet been announced.

Following the awards, DJ Josh (Lafleur) took over the sound system, playing country and square dance tunes for the rowdy crowd into the wee hours of the night.

One notable hit was the Virginia Reel line dance number, where “everybody just joined in,” according to Nugent.

Tales from the Royal Winter Fair

Three club members were fresh off the heels of showing at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto, one of the largest agricultural fairs in the country. They were Kasey Lafleur of Mansfield, Rebecca Nugent of Luskville, and Reese Rusenstrom of Bristol, who was unable to attend the banquet because she was in Alberta showing at another fair.

For Lafleur, showing beef at the Royal had long been a dream, but not one she thought she would realize so quickly, and at such a young age.

Last year she made the trip to the Royal to watch from the sidelines and get a sense for what it was all about. It was then she decided she wanted to have a go at it.

Lafleur said stepping foot in the big arena for the first time “was very scary,” but that another competitor at the fair gave her a chance to practice showing their Angus in the junior Angus show.

“It gave me a chance to take a breath and calm down in the ring,” Lafleur said. “And then when I was showing my heifer, my goal was just to make it out of one class, which I did.”

She did more than that though. Lafleur made it to the finals, where she received honourable mention, which is third place out of 140 or so competitors.

“I was so happy. It was really nice to see all the work I’d put in this year pay off.”

Lafleur is 14 years old, has been a 4-H member for only a year, and already she is stepping into the role of president of the club for the 2023-2024 season.

“It’s exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. It’s a big role to fill,” she said, adding that she’s comforted by knowing the leaders of the club will support her.

“I’d really like to bring the club closer together. In our club there’s a lot of cliques. Different people have their groups. I’d like to have one big team all working together,” Lafleur said.

She already has plans in the works for various team-bonding activities for members, including escape rooms, axe-throwing and soap-making workshops.

She said in all the early mornings, long travel days and competition pressures that filled her last year, she’s never once second guessed her commitment to the club.

“It teaches kids responsibility, and about agriculture, that their food does not just come from a store, that it’s actually from a farm and you have to work to get it.”

Rebecca Nugent, outgoing vice president of the club and veteran at the Royal Winter Fair, showed a dairy calf at the fair for the last time this year.

This past year was also her last with the local club.

At 22 years old, she is no longer eligible to compete in Ontario. While she could compete in Quebec for another year, she said she was ready to step away.

“It’s my tenth year in 4-H so I thought it would be cool to end on year 10,” Nugent said, admitting it was not an easy decision.

Nugent grew up on her family’s beef farm in Luskville. She said she surprised many when she decided to show dairy.

“Beef are nice but they’re obviously bigger, so they’re a little harder to train,” she said.

She’s been showing at the Royal since 2017.

“At other little fairs you’re in the ring with 15 people. But at the Royal there’s heats,” she explained, adding that there were 120 or so seniors she was competing against, so each heat had around 30 people in it.

“There’s a lot of pressure. The judge only picks six or eight people to make it out of your heat into the final.”

Nugent said this year she did not make it out of her heat.

“The competition is just so stiff you have to do everything perfect,” she said. “But it was still good. My calf walked good, so I couldn’t have asked for better.”

Creating leaders

Nugent said when she first started with the club a decade ago she tended to keep to herself.

“Whenever I first started at 4-H I was one of those shy kids that would never say anything and just stand there at the meeting and just listen and observe everything, but was never really able to speak up and talk,” she remembered.

But over the years that has changed. Her experience with the club has helped her develop strong communication skills, and improved her own self-confidence.

Now in her third year of a commerce degree at Carleton University, she is beginning to apply for jobs, and the years she spent as a leader in the 4-H club improve her chances.

“When people look at my resumé and they see 4-H, and that stands out to them as a really good background to have,” she said.

Outgoing president Laura Mayhew echoed this appreciation. She, like Nugent, was a shy kid, uncomfortable with public speaking, and most other leadership roles that drew attention to her.

None of that was evident in the speech she gave on Saturday evening, where, with great charisma, she highlighted the power of the 4-H community, and thanked all those who supported the club.

Lafleur, Nugent and Mayhew all highlighted the important role the club plays in connecting younger generations to Pontiac’s agricultural community.

Each in their own way, they admitted that, while the work of showing animals was not easy, involving many late nights and early mornings, they were motivated by the team and the community to which the club connected them.

Nugent said she sees the club as important to promoting agriculture to younger generations.

“Over the years [farming] has been going down a lot, a lot of people have moved away from it,” she said. “Some people haven’t had that experience to grow up on a farm and learn all these skills that you don’t learn anywhere else. I find it’s really important for the youth to have that too.”

Mayhew said sharing agricultural skills and knowledge with younger generations was central to her role as president.

“It’s important for the children in the community, because soon we will be the community,” she said.

4-H celebrates another year of learning and leadership Read More »

Join the movement: 12 days of action to eliminate violence against women

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Photo #1: Riantsoa Andriamasy and Claudia Fradette in the AGIR office (109 Wright
Street). The two women and their respective organizations have partnered to organize 12
days of actions to eliminate violence against women. They invite the Outaouais to join them
in large numbers. (DD) Photo: Djeneba Dosso

Djeneba Dosso

AGIR is collaborating with Maison d’Ingrid to invite the Outaouais to join them for 12 days of

action from November 25 to December 6 to address violence against women. Beginning on

November 25, the National Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the dozen days

will be filled with programming, sensibility training, conferences, and information sessions. It

will come to a close on December 6, which marks the anniversary of the 1989 École

Polytechnique massacre.

Claudia Fradette, general manager of the shelter for women victims of domestic abuse, Maison

d’Ingrid, emphasizes the importance of this mobilization.

“On a daily basis in our shelter we see that these women are numerous and how they are still

very much affected by the violence they have suffered in the context of their domestic

relationships,” she said. “Concrete actions like these send women a clear message that they are

believed, that they are supported, that they are accompanied and not alone.”

The Ingrid shelter opened its door in July 2023 to offer housing, prevention and youth services to

women and children. The house now has seven spaces that can be occupied by three women and

up to four children. The house, which has been a resource in the community, is often in high

demand, but it is only a temporary placement while a bigger shelter is built in Cantley to

accommodate more women.

Beyond receiving emergency shelter, each woman has a weekly one-on-one assessment to find

out what their needs are and to establish an action plan. This is done individually as each

woman’s needs vary and therefore need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Riantsoa Andriamasy, head of communications and popular education for AGIR, says

participating in the 12 days of action is a great way to show support to these women.

“There are a lot of people who either don’t recognize that there is violence, think they are not

affected by the violence or believe that it is not their problem, when in reality, violence against

women, domestic violence is everyone’s problem—it is not a private matter.”

Speaking about violence against women is essential to ensure its prevention. According to the

latest report from the Ministry of Public Safety, published this year, the biggest increase in

domestic violence-related offences this decade was recorded in 2021, affecting mainly women

(76.4% of victims). In Quebec to date, there have been nine femicides in 2023 in the context of

domestic violence.

Andriamasy added, “Violence does not have a face and you never know who may be affected by

it. We often tell ourselves that it is none of our business, but my wish is for people to become

aware of the scope of this challenge.”​She invites everyone to join the movement and educate

themselves on the matter, stating that they can get involved in three steps. The first being

supporting Maison d’Ingrid. Donations to their financing campaign are poured into the building of

their new shelter in Cantley. Next, Andriamasy invites people to sensitize and educate themselves

through free training and information sessions across Gatineau. The last step is to get involved in

any way possible. Shelters and women’s organizations offer an array of conferences, workshops,

and information sessions year-round, and many of them will be in attendance at various kiosks

throughout the 12 days. The mobilization will end with a large march and vigil on December 6. The

march will begin at 11:00 am at 255 St-Antoine Street (Arena Pierre-Lafontaine) and will be

followed by a vigil in memory of missing and murdered women at park Mémoire d’Elles in front of

the Jeannine Boissonneault monument. A full schedule for the information sessions, conferences,

kiosk locations and workshops can be found at agir-outaouais.ca.

Andriamasy and Fradette say they hope that, above all, people gain awareness of this issue in the

span of the 12 days of action through their programming.

“Addressing domestic violence is the responsibility of us all,” added Fradette. “These women are

someone’s sisters, mothers, neighbours and work colleagues.” ​

With notes and edits from Mary Baskin and Lily Ryan

Join the movement: 12 days of action to eliminate violence against women Read More »

Will they strike a deal?

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Common Front public sector unions to strike again Dec. 8 – 14, local teachers’ unions react

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

The Common Front public sector unions (CSQ, FTQ, CSN and APTS) announced Nov. 28 that they plan to strike again from Dec. 8 – 14; their last strike lasted from Nov. 21 – 23. If this new pressure does not result in an acceptable agreement with the government at the negotiating table, a future unlimited strike is expected. A separate teachers’ union, the Fédération Autonome de L’Enseignement (FAE), has been on an unlimited strike since Nov. 23, affecting the functioning of three Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) schools: Sutton Elementary, Massey-Vanier High School, and Campus Brome-Missisquoi, a vocational training centre.

“For teachers it only means five days,” said Brigitte Robert, Champlain Lennoxville SECCL union president. Teachers don’t have classes on the weekends, but other members of the Common Front are working, like healthcare workers, she noted. Nearing the end of the term, two days of classes are being lost: Friday, Dec. 8 and Monday, Dec. 11.

The English Exit Exam was scheduled for Dec. 13 and must now be rescheduled. Dec. 14 was meant to be an exam day and will also need to be made up for. Any future changes to the calendar would be decided upon by the CEGEP’s governing board, but teachers are available between Christmas and New Year’s, or after the holidays, she explained. Robert speculated that make-up nights and weekends could also be an option.

Robert emphasized that this new seven-day strike sequence was to “put pressure” on the government at the negotiating table to reach an agreement before Christmas. A future unlimited general strike could take place in January. They wish to be “flexible” and give the government time to consider its options.

Champlain teachers are paid $120 per day they are on strike, which comes out of the union funds constituted by union dues automatically taken out of their paycheques. They have been saving money for “quite a while”, Robert said, but their fund is depleting quickly. She does not think this will be a mobilization obstacle for union members; members of other Common Front unions have no strike-related income at all.

“We are using the strike as a means to our ends,” she said, but the sacrifice is worth it to ensure good public services for their students, whose success they have at heart.

The three ETSB schools disrupted by the FAE strike, because they share campuses with a French service centre, the employees of which are FAE members, are dealing with the situation as ETSB Appalachian Teachers’ Association (ATA) President April Blampied predicted last week: students are staying home and teachers are “tele-working” – emailing, talking to parents and posting online workbooks. There are no real alternative options for students without internet access.

The ATA is part of the Common Front, so its teachers will also be on strike from Dec. 8 to 14. “There is no talk of adding extra days,” Blampied said, to make up for this lost week. ATA teachers have no strike-related income. An unlimited strike, therefore, would be quite economically disruptive. She says she can feel the tension and the worries teachers are having, especially losing pay so close to the holiday season. Because the ATA is part of the Common Front, they do not have the option to not strike when everyone else does. Blampied is not sure if teachers are allowed to work another job while they are on strike.

The timing of the week that will be missed makes things complicated, she acknowledged, but she does not think students will ultimately lose much “content”. It would have been better if it were the week right before the holiday break.

Blampied wished to remind the teachers that they should support each other, though they may differ in their opinions on strike days. In the long run, she continued, every single strike their union has ever had has added money to their salary, which affects their entire career’s earnings. “This is for the long term.”

Will they strike a deal? Read More »

Canadian Emergency Business Account: Salaberry-Suroît businesses are on the brink

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Sarah Rennie – LJI reporter

Area businesses are under pressure as the deadline to repay federal emergency loans without losing a forgivable portion is now fast approaching.

During a November 16 press conference, Salaberry-Suroît MP Claude DeBellefeuille was flanked by the heads of the local chambers of commerce and industry as she called on the Canadian government to extend the repayment period while demanding greater flexibility for small businesses.

Accompanied by Mathieu Miljours, the director of the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Vaudreuil Soulanges (CCIVS), and Éliane Galipeau, the director of the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Beauharnois-Valleyfield-Haut-Saint-Laurent (CCIBVHSL), DeBellefeuille insisted that an extension to the repayment period is necessary to avoid putting businesses in her riding at risk.

“The federal government’s inaction is weakening many of our businesses,” said DeBellefeuille, who noted the lack of flexibility while alleging there are errors within the program that are not possible to correct. “At the moment, there is no direct contact with the ministry, and companies are unable to speak to anyone. There is no one to talk to about specific issues with the program,” she lamented.

Introduced in April 2020 to help businesses and non-profits that were forced to close during the height of the pandemic, the federal government’s Canadian Emergency Business Account (CEBA) offered interest-free loans of up to $60,000 through the program. Up to one-third of the loans are eligible to be forgiven if businesses can pay back the outstanding amount by January 18, 2024. Businesses that are not able to make this deadline will lose the forgivable portion, and the debt will be converted into a three-year loan with five per cent annual interest.

The government has offered an additional extension to March 28, 2024, for those businesses who refinance their debt to remain eligible for the forgivable portion of the loan.

Nearly 900 small businesses and non-profits across Canada took out loans through the program. In Quebec, a total of 182,923 businesses were approved for CEBA loans, for a total of over $10 billion in funding. Between 85 and 90 per cent of small- to medium-sized businesses in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges area benefitted from the CEBA program. Miljours explained that the immediate repayment of these loans, or the conversion to interest-bearing loans, would have a negative impact on the regional economy.

“If government assistance was greeted with relief during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, it must be said that this massive injection of money into the Canadian economy accentuated the inflationary crisis we are currently experiencing, not to mention the labour shortage that is forcing our companies to increase the wages paid to their employees. These are just some of the challenges to which the addition of further financial pressure could have serious consequences on our businesses,” said Miljours.

Galipeau agreed, while suggesting that at a time of economic stagnation – when the cost of living is putting pressure on businesses from all directions – the inaction and rigidity on the part of the government will create additional pressure. “This will undoubtedly force many companies to take drastic measures, such as shutting down their operations for good – either voluntarily or as a result of bankruptcy,” said Galipeau.

Similar calls for an extension have now come from all 13 Canadian premiers, as well as the federal NDP, Bloc Québécois, and Green Party. Over 50,000 small business owners have signed a petition by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses calling on the government to extend the deadline.

“We intend to continue to pursue the government, and to use every means at our disposal to obtain an extension. The survival of many businesses in my riding and in the rest of Quebec depends on it,” concluded Claude DeBellefeuille.

Canadian Emergency Business Account: Salaberry-Suroît businesses are on the brink Read More »

Average Laval property tax bill to be 4.8 per cent higher next year

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Martin C. Barry

Although Laval mayor Stéphane Boyer announced the 2024 property tax rate last week while emphasizing that the hike is less than the rate of inflation, there’s no getting around the fact it’s a whopping 4.8 per cent increase, even though that should only translate into $162 more on a house worth $440,742.

Costs to be cut

In order to make ends meet next year, some serious cost-cutting lies ahead, according to a statement issued by the mayor’s office. To get there, Laval will be seeking new sources of revenue and ways to streamline operations.

The administration maintains that a few dozen millions of dollars in savings have already been achieved through close scrutiny of the city’s expenses, without cutting into residents’ services at this point.

Laval mayor Stéphane Boyer.

Although the 2024 budget will only be tabled next month, the mayor has already revealed that one way to keep expenses down next year will be “greatly limit” new employee hirings, following up on a policy the city followed last year.

$300 mil. project axed

The city isn’t concealing that a major casualty of the cuts is the cancellation of a biomethane waste processing plant project that had been scheduled to start next year. The City of Laval won’t have to worry for now about the $300 million cost, even though that probably would have been paid out gradually over many years.

“Our administration made every effort to make sure taxes were under inflation, but without compromising services to citizens,” Mayor Boyer said. “We are proud of the rigor shown in this budgetary exercise and the efficiency ever since our arrival in 2021. Once again this year, we were able to find a responsible equilibrium to maintain taxes at their lowest, without having to cut services all the same.”

Some budget highlights

  • A special tax on water infrastructure will increase from $72 to $73;
  • The tarif for water service will rise from $321 to $337, representing a $16 increase for all households;
  • A tax will be introduced to help for the City of Laval’s contribution to the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM). The average household will pay $232 for this.

At least one of Laval city council’s opposition parties, Action Laval, reacted negatively to news of the city’s latest budget.

It’s all about taxes

Action Laval’s interim-leader Achille Cifelli, as well as councillors Aglaia Revelakis (Chomedey), David De Cotis (Saint-Bruno), Paolo Galati (Saint-Vincent-de-Paul) and Isabelle Piché (Saint-François) noted the Boyer administration had chosen to peg the ARTM tax to property values, bringing $52.6 million in revenue to the city.

“When the mayor talks about diversifying sources of revenue, what you need to understand is that he’s talking about new taxes,” said Cifelli. “Regardless of what shape the tax comes in, it will always come out of the same pockets, those of the citizens.” In the meantime, he municipal services and the city’s priorities “are abandoned,” said Cifelli.

Debt service costs up

“The citizens are already up on anger over services they are not receiving from the city,” said Galati, adding that he receives calls daily on that issue. He said the 4.8 per cent increase won’t go over well, “especially during an economic slowdown,” according to Galati.

Action Laval pointed out that the new budget increases the cost of debt servicing for capital works projects substantially.

“While we are currently undergoing a housing crisis, and our sewers need an investment of $600 million, and while the population are demanding services nearby in their districts, the mayor persists with projects downtown which don’t meet the needs of citizens,” they said. “The mayor’s choices are disconnected from the reality of the citizens,” said De Cotis.

Average Laval property tax bill to be 4.8 per cent higher next year Read More »

Pink in the City’s Denise Vourtzoumis awarded National Assembly Medal

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Martin C. Barry

Pink in the City founder Denise Vourtzoumis was recently presented with the Quebec National Assembly Medal by Fabre MNA Alice Abou-Khalil.

Denise started the non-profit Pink in the City with her family 17 years ago, and has worked tirelessly since then to help support research and provide care for people affected by breast cancer.

She is also an ambassador and volunteer for the #FedExCares community programs, having organized and participated in countless projects with local FedEx teams over the years.

Pink in the City started as a single event in 2006. Denise’s young son decided that he wanted to shave his head in support of breast cancer patients. That event created an awareness about breast cancer in the community and the need to support those who had been impacted by this insidious disease.

It also served to demonstrate that every selfless gesture of support makes a difference. From this first experience, it was clear that there was much more to do and the entire family were able to create new opportunities to support this important cause.

Having been raised with a strong belief in volunteerism and giving back to the community, Denise said she felt it was important to rally likeminded people to the cause. That meant people who cared and wanted to make a difference.

Over time, Pink in the City’s dedicated volunteers, sponsors, partners and medical advisors allowed the organization to attain and exceed its goals. They reached out to others to make the team stronger, more dynamic and diverse.

Community partners also played a key role by supporting and attending Pink in the City’s various functions and events. “Their contributions are invaluable,” said Denise.

Partnerships extended to leadership programs in Laval’s high schools, through the Model the Way program. Model the Way assures that the commitment to the cause will be carried forward by young people in the future, according to Denise.

Pink in the City’s Denise Vourtzoumis awarded National Assembly Medal Read More »

Dignitaries pay their respects at Laval Cenotaph on Remembrance Day

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Martin C. Barry

Members of the Canadian Forces, including soldiers from the Royal 22nd Regiment’s Fourth Bataillon, as well as Air, Sea and Army Cadets and Royal Canadian Legion members, joined dignitaries and citizens at Laval’s War Cenotaph near city hall on Saturday Nov. 11 for a ceremony marking Remembrance Day.

Deposit of wreaths

Among the dignitaries depositing wreaths at the base of the monument on Souvenir Boulevard were Liberal MPs Annie Koutrakis and Fayçal El-Khoury, Quebec Liberal MNAs Sona Lakhoyan Olivier and Virginie Dufour, and CAQ MNAs Céline Haytayan, Valérie Schmaltz and Christopher Skeete.

Laval city council president Cecilia Macedo and councillors Christine Poirier, Yannick Langlois and Paolo Galati deposited a wreath on behalf of the municipality.

Paying their respects

Representatives of the Canadian Armed Forces, the 4th Bataillon Royal 22nd, Legion Branch 251, the Navy/Army/Aviation Cadets, the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board (SWLSB) and the Centre de services scolaire de Laval (CSDL) deposited wreaths to pay their respects.

This year’s Silver Cross Mother was Susan Bergevin, representing mothers who have lost a son or daughter, be it in action or over the course of military duty.

Towards the end of the ceremony, a special recognition was paid to 98-year-old Henri Rousseau. He was a World War II anti-aircraft gunner and is believed to be one of the last surviving Second World War veterans in Laval.

Dignitaries pay their respects at Laval Cenotaph on Remembrance Day Read More »

Sherbrooke’s quantum leap

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Espace Quantique 1 inaugurated in DistriQ’s Quantum Innovation Zone, Premier talks future

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

Sherbrooke’s Quantum Innovation Zone witnessed a significant advancement Nov. 24 with the opening of Espace Quantique 1 (EQ1) and the Quantum Technology Development Laboratory (DevTeQ). As a hub of innovation and a global showcase, EQ1 aims to be the forefront of Sherbrooke and Quebec’s quantum technology sector, extending its influence across Canada and North America. This development closely follows the introduction of IBM Quantum System One by PINQ2 last September. Quantum technology uses the findings of quantum science, which studies the fundamental building blocks of nature, and applies it to a wide range of areas, including computing, defense, and communications. Premier Francois Legault spoke at the inauguration and detailed its significance for Quebec’s future.

EQ1 spans 50,000 square feet, and is exclusively devoted to quantum technology. EQ1 offers a collaborative environment for startups, companies, and other entities in the field, with private offices and co-working spaces. A prominent feature of the facility is the 20,000 square foot DevTeQ, a shared world-class laboratory. This unique space will host around fifteen companies and partners, bringing together over a hundred top-tier professionals. EQ1 not only facilitates access to cutting-edge lab equipment for quantum technology development but also accelerates its industry adoption.

The Quebec government has significantly backed this initiative, contributing over $28.77 million towards the total $40.8 million investment. EQ1 is set to play a pivotal role in advancing this specialized field, easing the transition from research to commercialization and generating employment opportunities. Additionally, Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED) and Desjardins have contributed $5.2 million and $1 million, respectively.

Martin Enault, General Manager of DistriQ, Quantum Innovation Zone, expressed his excitement about uniting quantum companies in one place. He highlighted the collaborative environment that EQ1 offers, aiding in the establishment of quantum companies within the Zone, and signaled readiness to welcome more quantum enterprises.

The Zone continues to bolster Sherbrooke’s growth and positions Quebec as a key player in quantum science and technology on the global stage. This is further reinforced by PASQAL’s (a leader in quantum computing) announcement of a $90 million investment over five years, promising over 50 new jobs.

Raphaël de Thoury, CEO of PASQAL Canada, underscored the decisive role of Quebec’s financial support and unique vision for DistriQ in their decision to expand their industrial strategy globally. He emphasized that EQ1 is a significant opportunity for companies in the quantum field, fostering collaboration among various stakeholders, from researchers to industrial application specialists. This synergy is expected to lead to significant innovations and high economic value in the future.

“There are challenges in Quebec that we also see in France,” Legault said, after emphasizing the importance of Quebec and France working together. There is a big debate between those who advocate for fundamental scientific research and those who advocate for research into its applications. Quebec is first in fundamental research, but last in developing its applications, he continued, which is something they are trying to change.

“What can we do to inspire zones of innovation in Quebec?” Legault said. Everyone tries to copy California’s Silicone Valley model, where universities like Stanford and local businesses work together to “commercialize” innovation.

Legault said he has been accused of being “utilitarian” for trying to bring universities and businesses together, but doing so is good for all Quebecers. Businesses make money and pay taxes that are put towards society as a whole. This is exactly why this inauguration is so important, he insisted. It is not an accident that it is being founded in Sherbrooke to partner closely with Sherbrooke University (UdeS), for UdeS has been working closely with the business world for decades.

“I find this extraordinary,” Legault continued; what they are working towards is developing the technology of the future. It is no exaggeration to say that Quebec is at the forefront of this movement, and Quebec’s economy is in the middle of being transformed. These are steps towards creating employment for Quebec’s children and grandchildren – our future generations. “Bravo! I am very proud.”

Sherbrooke’s quantum leap Read More »

LPD publishes 15th annual Dog Calendar for Fondation Martin-Matte

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Officers with the Laval Police Dept. are seen here with representatives of the Fondation Martin-Matte during the recent launch of the 2024 LPD Dog Calendar. (Photo: Martin C. Barry, Laval News)

Martin C. Barry

Dog lovers – especially those with a fondness for German Shepherds – will be able to indulge their appreciation once again over the coming year as the Laval Police Dept. has released the 2024 version of its ever-popular Dog Calendar.

The proceeds of its sale are going to the Fondation Martin-Matte, which raises money to help persons who’ve suffered head traumas.

It has been 15 years since the LPD first published the calendar, which features photos for all the months with police dogs posing with their human handlers.

Since 2009, sales of the calendar have managed to raise more than $550,000 for the foundation. The money helps pay for respite and leisure activities for persons who’ve been diagnosed with head trauma resulting from accidents and other causes.

The LPD has been supporting the cause since the untimely death of Constable Éric Lavoie, who was a dog handler with the police force. He died of a head trauma following a road accident which happened when he was on duty and responding to an emergency call.

During a recent launch at LPD headquarters for the new calendar, a cheque for $33,132 was handed over to officials with the Fondation Martin-Matte, representing the proceeds from the sale of the 2023 calendar.

The Laval Police Dept.’s 2024 Dog Calendar is available for $5 at the LPD’s east-end Laval station at 3225 Saint-Martin Blvd. East, as well as at LPD headquarters at 2911 Chomedey Blvd. in Chomedey.

It’s also available at the following website: https://www.fondationmartinmatte.com/calendriers-des-maitres-chiens.

LPD publishes 15th annual Dog Calendar for Fondation Martin-Matte Read More »

LPD Blue

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Martin C. Barry

The Laval Police Dept. says it has identified a white powder found in envelopes mailed to several Laval homes as a harmless substance, although they are still advising residents to remain on the alert should more of the envelopes be received.

The LPD opened an investigation after several residents were seemingly chosen at random by an unknown perpetrator to receive mailed letters containing white powder along with extortion threats.

A spokesperson for the LPD said that at least 10 residents had been identified as having received the mailings. The spokesperson said samples of the powder were sent for analysis to a lab where the substance was eventually declared harmless.

“The results of the analyses conducted on this substance revealed that it was a non-toxic product, non-lethal, and which posed no danger to health,” the LPD said in a statement.

That said, the police warned that persons receiving similar envelopes would be best not to handle their contents and to call 9-1-1 immediately. The LPD said their investigation is still underway to identify who the perpetrators are.

The LPD first became aware of the envelopes on Nov. 13 when a number of Laval residents contacted the police. All the envelopes contained the powder, as well as a letter with threatening statements, and extortion being the perpetrator’s apparent motive.

The LPD is advising anyone who believes they may also have received one of the envelopes to handle it cautiously, to call the police and to wait for officers to arrive. The LPD can be contacted through their special hotline at 450-662-INFO (4636).

SQ catches up to Laval truck thief in Saint-Esprit

A 56-year-old man will be facing charges of vehicle theft and refusing an order to stop from police after he allegedly stole a truck in Laval but only surrendered after a long drive up to Saint-Esprit in the Laurentians.

Around 4:45 pm on Nov. 16, officers with the Sûreté du Québec who were stationed along Autoroute 440 in Laval received a call for assistance from the Laval Police to pursue the grey truck which was reported stolen.

According to a spokesperson for the SQ, officers put down a nail strip on the A-440 near Curé-Labelle Blvd. in an attempt to stop the driver. Despite that, the truck continued eastward.

The vehicle then pursued its route onto the A-25 northward, passing over two more nail strips along the way, eventually getting onto Route 158 and ending up in Saint-Esprit. He was arrested by the SQ and turned over to the Laval Police for the processing of charges.

Laval Fire Dept. calls

November 19: The LFD reported a commercial building on fire on des Laurentides Blvd. in Laval’s Pont-Viau district. Firefighters quickly brought the blaze under control, although there was one unusual development. While carrying out the intervention, they encountered a homeless person in a room of the building.

November19: The LFD responded to a fairly serious two-car collision at the intersection of Jolibourg Blvd. and Avenue des Bois in Laval-sur-le-Lac. Four persons sustained injuries in the accident described by the LFD as involving “high impact velocity.” Firefighters as well as ambulance personnel were summoned to the scene.

November 13: Fire broke out in a home on Fauteux St. in Laval’s Chomedey district. Flames were apparent when the firefighters arrived on the scene. They called in a code 10-09, meaning rescue operation underway with possible aggravating factors.

November 10: Fire reported by the LFD at one-storey home on Salois St. in Laval’s Auteuil district. Firefighters reported seeing flames inside one of the building’s rooms. They called a code 10-07, meaning intervention was necessary.

LPD Blue Read More »

Never again? Second World War did not end anti-Semitism

Local Journalism Initiative / /

According to Statistics Canada, there are about 877,000 people living in this country who are between the ages of 85 and 100. Whoever they are, wherever they live now or lived in the past, they all have one thing in common: They lived through the six years of the Second World War.

Of that number, several thousand are among the approximately one million Canadians who enlisted to fight what was generally accepted to be a direct and real threat to the lives and liberty of freedom-loving people all over the world. Canada’s population was 11 million in 1939. Do the math.

Hundreds of thousands more took on civilian tasks in the all-out war effort, from women working in factories to families growing Victory Gardens.

Of the one million in uniform, 45,000 died and 55,000 were wounded in the wars in Europe or Asia and even close to these shores.

Remembrance Day is the time when people, while honouring the war dead, perhaps should be seized with the fact that living among us today – our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents – are people who endured what was undeniably the worst of all human times. They remember. How could they forget?

It’s also worth remembering that, were it not for a few twists of circumstances, such as the steely and canny resistance of the Brits in the Battle of Britain, the United Kingdom could well have been an early and special prize for Hitler – and then what?

Eighty years ago, the tide was turning on what had seemed a near-hopeless situation in Europe. By the spring of 1943, the Allies had gained the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic, opening the passage of troops and munitions from Canada and the United States to Europe.

Until then, Nazi submarines had even roamed into the St. Lawrence River and Gulf, torpedoing ships and claiming the lives of hundreds of Canadian and Newfoundland seamen and civilians.

With the Americans now engaged in the war in Europe as well as the Pacific, the Allies pushed the Nazis from North Africa, then in July 1943 began the long and bloody battle to liberate Italy in which Canadians played a key role. That campaign weakened the Nazi fortress and set the stage for D-Day in June 1944.

On the eastern front, Hitler’s assault on former ally Russia ended in catastrophe in the frozen hell of Stalingrad and drained Nazi forces for the defence of western Europe.

The Nazis were defeated and with the liberation of Europe, the vast horror of the extermination camps was revealed to the world.

Eighty-four years after the start of the Second World War and 90 years after Hitler seized power in Germany with his plan to rid the world of Jews, there’s another assault on the Jewish people, this time in their own state.

The perpetrator this time is Hamas, and its members are less discreet than the Nazis were in their ambition to wipe out Jews. Though word leaked out about the Nazi death camps, they were operated in secret, to the extent that the locals could claim ignorance of what was going on with all those trains full of people passing by and the smoke from the crematorium stacks.

How times have changed. Now the modern exterminators of the Jews proudly post videos of the horrific slaughter on Oct. 7 on social media for all to see.

Those who really remember on Remembrance Day, those who were there and knew firsthand the unimaginable pain and sacrifice of the Second World War, may have thought the disease of anti-Semitism had been stamped out for all time.

Never again, they may have thought. Those defiant words come from a 1927 poem about the suicidal Jewish resistance to the Roman siege at Masada more than 2,000 years ago. It next appears on signs scrawled by liberated death camp survivors in 1945.

Never again? More like again and again, always.

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Never again? Second World War did not end anti-Semitism Read More »

Heavy snow blamed for widespread power outages

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Sunnyside braves the cold, serves up hot chocolate

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

On the morning of Nov. 27, many in the Townships woke up with no electricity after the first substantial snowfall of the season. From Stanstead to Georgeville, Richmond to Ayer’s Cliff, spots of power outage dotted the region in darkness. Rolling with the punches, Sunnyside Elementary held special activities and a creative lunch for the students that braved the slippery Stanstead roads to attend school.

“It was a mix of heavy snow and rain that was a little all over the place,” said Sébastien Martineau, Hydro Quebec’s Community Relations Advisor for the Estrie region. There are outages everywhere, he continued, caused by the wet snow weighing down branches and touching or breaking the power lines underneath. Some whole trees came down.

For some outages, it is easy for Hydro Quebec to predict when they will be fixed. When the outage is merely caused by a branch temporarily touching and shorting out the line, they have a method of restoring power “long-distance”. If a branch continues to touch the line, or has broken it, flesh and blood workers need to be sent to fix the problem. Sometimes that means lengthy repairs, including managing the offending branch or tree or even changing the utility pole.

Once the workers are on the scene, which takes time in and of itself, they can assess the situation and predict a likely time that power will be restored. Each outage will have a different cause and a different remedy.

Between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. of Nov. 27, Hydro Quebec had re-established power for 3,000 Estrie residents. 40,000 homes in total were initially without power. They will continue to work until everyone regains electricity, Martineau insisted.

“Because we were unable to have hot lunch today… we decided to do something special for the kids,” said Sunnyside Secretary Heather Stratton. They barbecued hotdogs and had a wealth of other snacks, including watermelon, sweets, and veggies and dip. A large communal pot of hot chocolate was brewed on the grill and distributed. “It was really party time.”

Some 15 students attended school in the circumstances. Because the roads were bad and there was no power, many parents decided to keep their children home. The school stays open, even with no electricity, and regained it around noon; the buses still all ran their regular routes.

The morning’s activities included an extended recess, and some classes began decorating for Christmas. “We did fun things,” Stratton said with a chuckle.

Heavy snow blamed for widespread power outages Read More »

Tramway costs soar to $8.4 billion, but Marchand still ‘all in’

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Mayor Bruno Marchand announced the revised cost of the tramway system at a Nov. 1 news conference at City Hall.

Photo by Peter Black

Though the projected $8.365-billion cost is more than double the initial estimate five years ago, Mayor Bruno Marchand has said the city is still “all in” on the tramway project.

The mayor, in often impassioned language, unveiled the updated cost of the system at a Nov. 1 City Hall news conference, just days after being informed the only consortium bidding for the infrastructure contract, Mobilité de la Capitale, was unable to meet the deadline or guarantee financing.

Marchand said the city would now pursue the Plan B that’s been in the works for months, whereby the municipality itself would take over the infrastructure component of the system, acting as project manager and hiring the expertise to do the job. Marchand said the in-house management would save billions.

“We are not looking for profit and not dealing with the same risks as consortiums [so] we are able to reduce the price, and reduce it to a level which is acceptable in the context,” the mayor said. The budget projected with a consortium handling infrastructure could have reached $13 or $14 billion, he said.

According to a city release, the infrastructure work is essentially the entire design and construction of the 11.9-kilometre tramway line, including “tram platforms; stations; interchange hubs; the tunnel; the operation and maintenance centre; modal, operation and mobility systems; as well as certain municipal infrastructure, including underground networks, roads and urban developments.”

The mayor said the city has taken on multiple complex projects in the past, such as water treatment plants, the biomethanization plant, the new police station and even the Videotron Centre.

“Our employees are good. They’re at a high level. We have a lot of expertise. We have people who are very efficient. We have other companies that are ready to bring to the table what they offered us to do. We have the knowledge; we are able to do it, to deliver it on time and [on budget]. We think it’s the right amount of money to put in this project.”

The mayor said the Quebec government has known about the backup option since July, when the city presented a business plan. He said he plans to meet with Coalition Avenir Québec government ministers in the near future to discuss the project. Asked whether he believes he can convince the Legault government to get on board, Marchand said, “I hope so.”

He said he had spoken with Jean-Yves Duclos, the federal minister for procurement and MP for Québec, the morning of the announcement and was assured of the Liberal government’s commitment to fund 40 per cent of the project. Duclos said in a media report from Ottawa that there is money on the table to go toward the tramway’s increased cost, but if Quebec City doesn’t take advantage of it, other cities will.

Marchand played a video during the news conference which laid out the vision of the next phases of the tramway project, including routes serving the Charlesbourg and Lebourgneuf areas. It noted that by 2041, the city is projected to have 75,000 more residents making 100,000 additional trips around the city.

The mayor said the tramway would be built in three stages, the first and most complex being the section between Université Laval and the Le Gendre terminus in Cap-Rouge. The service garage is already under construction at the western terminus. About $500 million has been spent to date on tramway preparatory work and installations, the mayor said.

The subsequent phases would be the Saint-Roch to Université Laval line and then the Saint-Roch to D’Estimauville stretch.

Marchand said it is possible people will be able to use the first stage of the tramway line while the two other stretches are still under construction. He said the first phase of the project could be completed before the current target date of 2029.

Asked whether he was confident the project would come to fruition in the next decade, he said, “I am totally confident that this is the project we need. This is a solution to our challenges, so we need to do it, and it’s the only one we can do.

“It’s not a matter of months, it’s a matter of years if we wait or if we build a new project. We take the pragmatic solution. We build a good project, the best project we could build, the project that the federal [government] is into and we need the government of Quebec to be into it as much as we are and to start it as soon as possible.”

Tramway costs soar to $8.4 billion, but Marchand still ‘all in’ Read More »

Not your average smoker

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Local man builds Texan smoker from scratch

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

Matthew Patton, a resident of Lennoxville, has successfully built a massive 500-gallon barbecue offset tank smoker, a type uncommon in the area and originating from Texas. This smoker, which he named “the Franklin” after influential American pitmaster Aaron Franklin, was the result of many weeks of work and customization. Although Patton does not run a restaurant or sell his food publicly, he is celebrated in the community for his scrumptious cooking, having mastered everything from briskets to whole hogs and smoking over 500 racks of ribs.

Patton’s passion for cooking began at age five, and he has honed his skills over the years, paying close attention to dietary preferences and restrictions while cooking for his family. His cooking stands out because he only uses fire as a heat source, requiring a high level of attention and care, leading to a unique bond with the element.

In addition to smoking meat, Patton is meticulous in the preparation process, which can span months. This includes selecting the perfect meat cuts, brining or injecting them, grinding his own spice mix, and preparing sauces. He also ages meats, sometimes up to 17 days, and butchers his own pigs, turkeys, and chickens for a farm-to-table experience. His respect for the animals he raises for food is evident, as he ensures they are raised with care and gratitude.

“I got into barbecuing about 15 years ago,” Patton said; he decided he would take it a little more seriously. Locally, there is not much “action” for barbecuing. Electric pellet smokers, for instance, are “glorified air-friers”. He has always loved the traditional, woodfire, Texas-style method.

Initially, he used cinder block pits to grill his meat, until he saw an old tank in a farmer’s field while he was out at work. It was eventually arranged that he buy the old tank, which he picked up on a trailer “and the project began”.

Getting all the material he needed lined up to make his new smoker was “an absolute nightmare”; it was hard to find the parts he needed at a fair price. For the inside liner of his firebox, which keeps the fire semi-insulated from the outside air temperature, he bought a piece of steel, cut it to the right size and then got it rolled into the right shape using machinery at Lennoxville’s Pro-Par. He could not find the ten-inch smokestack he needed anywhere – sellers being unwilling to sell him anything less than longer pieces for upwards of $1,500 – until he found what he needed at Cookshire’s Dolbec. Upon buying the tank, the smoker was completed within a week.

“The pit cooks like an absolute dream, beyond my expectations,” Patton said. The smoker is on wheels, so it is easier to transport around to the different events he is thinking of doing. He has made ribs, chicken, and sausage on it so far, for his large family gatherings of 30+ people. The recent Sundays have been pleasant, which has made things a little easier. The smoker is so big he says he could make 80 racks of ribs at a time. “It’s a huge device.”

Not your average smoker Read More »

Local asylum seeker gets reprieve

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A Cowansville woman who was facing deportation to Nigeria earlier this month has been granted a last-minute reprieve, according to a community organization that had been assisting her with her case.

Philomena Williams arrived in Canada in 2018 via the now-closed irregular border crossing at Roxham Road and applied for asylum, arguing that her religious beliefs put her safety at risk in her home country. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, under most circumstances, foreign nationals in Canada can apply for refugee status if they have “a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group” or “would be subjected personally to a danger of torture, a risk to their life, or a risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment if they were returned to their home country.” The Roxham Road crossing has been barricaded since March 2021, but at the time, many of the several thousand people who crossed the U.S.-Canada border via that route were allowed to apply for asylum.

Applying for asylum is a complex process involving several rounds of hearings where asylum seekers must prove that their safety is in danger if they return to their home countries. Canada ultimately accepts about 68 per cent of asylum applications, including 64 per cent from Nigeria. In Williams’ case, her appeals fell on deaf ears – “her [initial] application, her appeal and even her pre-removal risk assessment [a last-ditch application for a stay of deportation aimed at preventing deportation to an unsafe environment] were refused” – according to Micaela Robitaille, a support worker at the Centre Femmes des Cantons who helped Williams with her case. Robitaille argued that Williams was “afraid because, in addition to the critical political, economic and social situation in Nigeria, she is part of a religious minority that is persecuted in this country. It was the death of her daughter, murdered because of her religious affiliation, which pushed her to try to find refuge in Canada in 2018.” During her five years in Cowansville, Williams got a job and put down roots in the community and at the Centre Femmes des Cantons.

The women’s centre held a vigil earlier this month and made a last-minute appeal to elected officials, including Brome-Missisquoi MNA Pascale Saint-Onge, Shefford MNA Andréanne Larouche and Immigration Minister Marc Miller, to ask that Miller use his discretionary power to suspend the deportation. Cowansville mayor Sylvie Beauregard also wrote a public letter of support. Miller ultimately took action, giving Williams a one-year reprieve to apply for permanent residence based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

“Everything happened at the last minute – I think she got a phone call [from the minister’s office] at about 8 p.m. on the day before she was supposed to leave for the airport,” Robitaille said. “The support [from the community] allowed the right people to realize how well integrated and appreciated she was. The day she was supposed to leave, instead of taking the plane, she came here, and there was so much joy, so much relief.”

The BCN tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with Williams via the Centre des Femmes. Robitaille said she is “working and moving on with her life,” and beginning the long process of applying for permanent residence. “She’s very touched by all the support,” Robitaille said.

Robitaille said the last few weeks have shown a lot about the power of community mobilization. “A lot of the time, people sign petitions and mobilize and go to protests and think it won’t change anything, but this time it did,” she said. “It’s a great story that ends well.”

Local asylum seeker gets reprieve Read More »

Mayor announces tramway lines to Charlesbourg, Lebourgneuf

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

In revealing the revised cost of the current tramway project, Mayor Bruno Marchand also set a target of 15 years for building tramway lines to the northern crown of the city.

As presented in a video, the first line would run to Charlesbourg, presumably along a route which had been part of the initial tramway proposal under the administration of Marchand’s predecessor, Régis Labeaume. At the insistence of the Coalition Avenir Québec government, that leg was changed for the line to the Beauport district of D’Estimauville.

The other line would pass through the Vanier district, with a hub at Les Galeries Fleur de Lys, and then head off to the Lebourgneuf sector and terminate at the Galeries de la Capitale.

The mayor’s first public commitment to the next phases of the tramway vision comes on the heels of a poll showing the tramway is far from popular in the suburbs. In Charlesbourg, according to the Leger poll, only 35 per cent of respondents had a position view of the plan; in the Les Rivières district it was 29 per cent.

Transition Québec Leader and Limoilou Coun. Jackie Smith said in a Nov. 3 release the city needs to get moving on the next phases. “We cannot wait for the tram to roll to D’Estimauville before starting to debate what happens next. Our city is in transition and this must include all boroughs as quickly as possible. The tramway is not just a toy for people in the city centre.”

Smith has launched an online survey to gather opinions on four scenarios for the Phase 2 line, all of which would connect with the hub in Saint-Roch. Last year, she urged the city to establish a project office to begin planning for the next phase of the tramway.

Marchand echoed the urgency, saying, “We have to think about this right now. If we wait, we’re going to hit a wall.” He noted the lines would be built to address an anticipated demand for transit based on population projections showing some 75,000 more residents by 2041.

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This map shows possible routes for Phase 2 and 3 of the Quebec City tramway plan, with one line running to Charlesbourg and one to Lebourgneuf.

Image from Ville de Québec

Mayor announces tramway lines to Charlesbourg, Lebourgneuf Read More »

Shopping centre project in Eastman inspired by local history

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A local real estate development company is moving forward with plans to build a combination shopping centre and office building with a historic twist on the site of the former Bovila restaurant in Eastman.

The building has been named La Gare after the train station that stood on the spot in the 1880s. According to plans shared with the BCN, it will feature several architectural references to the Victorian station, inspired by archive photos; a historic wooden barn on the site will be preserved. La Gare will house the offices of Habitation KYO (about 4000 square feet) and 7500 square feet of office space to be leased to local businesses. La Gare is the first foray into commercial development for Habitation KYO, which has spearheaded residential projects in the region for about 15 years.

The site is located near a roundabout at the entrance to the village and is also accessible via a local bike path. “Near Highway 10, a bit outside the village, there was a lot of space that was more or less used” for development, explained Jannick B. Duval, director of sales and marketing at Habitation KYO. “We bought the land and we thought, why not do a commercial project to attract more businesses? The space was a blank canvas. We needed commercial space for ourselves, and there’s a lack of space for services in the municipality. This is our first commercial-only project.”

Duval said the company had received the necessary approvals from the municipality for the building, although the configuration of the parking lot has not yet been finalized. She said the company hoped to start construction before the end of this year, depending on the weather, aiming to complete the project in summer 2024. Geneviève Lapalme, culture and communications co-ordinator for the municipality of Eastman, said the project was “following its course.”

Duval said that although the company did not have a specific number of renters or shops in mind, “very stimulating” conversations had already taken place with local entrepreneurs.

“A lot of the time, people in Eastman will do their shopping in Magog or in Sherbrooke,” she said. “I hope that [through this project] we’ll be able to encourage people to buy local, and people will be able to access more services without leaving the municipality.”

Shopping centre project in Eastman inspired by local history Read More »

Revised tramway cost draws mixed reaction

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Quebec City’s tramway plan is at a crossroads. That’s the consensus after last week’s announcement by Mayor Bruno Marchand of the revised cost of the system and the city’s decision to manage construction itself.

As the city put it in a press release, the ball is now in the court of the federal and provincial governments. The federal government, via MP and minister Jean-Yves Duclos, is “all in” according to Marchand, but the support of the Coalition Avenir Québec government is less certain.

Premier François Legault, asked about the new cost shortly after Marchand’s announcement, said, “That’s a lot of money. It’s worrying. It’s expensive, very expensive.”

According to Marchand, the Quebec government has known about “Plan B” and its $8.4-billion estimate since July. Legault said he and his relevant ministers, notably Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault and Infrastructure and National Capital Minister Jonatan Julien, need to meet with the city to discuss the way forward.

As for the potential future federal government, Charlesbourg MP and Quebec lieutenant Pierre Paul-Hus repeated Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre’s vow to not put any extra funding into the tramway. “Pierre Poilievre was clear that we would not pay any cost overruns.”

At the Conservative convention in Quebec City in September, Poilievre said he would not spend “billions on projects mismanaged by incompetent politicians” if he became prime minister.

At city hall itself, the revised plan earned the support of Claude Villeneuve, leader of the Official Opposition party, Québec D’Abord, the successor to the party of former mayor Régis Labeaume that first proposed the current plan six years ago.

Villeneuve told reporters there didn’t seem to be much communication between the city and the Quebec government. “You’re adults. Talk to each other.” He said if the project does die, the mayor needs to reconsider his political future.

For Patrick Paquette, interim leader of Équipe Priorité Québec, which has always opposed the tramway, Marchand has already failed and should resign. Paquette said the project should be halted immediately to “stop the bleeding.” In an open letter, Paquette said his party favours an improved system of electric buses.

Transition Québec Leader and Limoilou Coun. Jackie Smith said she would have preferred Plan B to Plan A to begin with. “At some point we have to move forward, have a vision and continue with a project that is already too late,” she said.

Donald Charette, spokesperson for the Québec Merite Mieux group opposed to the tramway, told Radio-Canada, “If consortia withdraw because they are not capable of delivering at a reasonable price, I don’t see how the city can do it. The CAQ must draw the right conclusions.”

Christian Savard of Vivre en Ville said in a statement, “Finally, we have the facts on how we can succeed with the tramway project in Quebec. The route that had been taken through the call for tenders was not the right one. We see that the prices would have been much higher.”

For François Bourque, veteran city hall columnist for Le Soleil, the wavering of the CAQ government’s support for the tramway, “makes the question unavoidable: Is this the end of the tramway?”

He wrote in a Nov. 3 analysis of the status of the project: “For a government that has often felt uncomfortable with the tramway project in recent years, the excuses to get out of it are piling up … explosion of costs, insufficient social acceptability, decline in public transit ridership since the pandemic, withdrawal of the only consortium still in the running for the major tram infrastructure contract, complexity of management if the city becomes project manager instead of a consortium.”

Bourque asks, however, if it kills the current tramway plan, “Will the Legault government have anything else to offer? A more unifying, less expensive project, achievable within a reasonable time frame and with financial support from the federal government?”

30

Premier François Legault’s immediate reaction to Mayor Bruno Marchand’s revised tramway cost estimate of $8.4 million was, “That’s a lot of money.”

Photo from National Assembly website

Revised tramway cost draws mixed reaction Read More »

Transgender community and allies gather for trans remembrance march

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , ,

People march down the streets in support of the transgender community. Photo Andraé Lerone Lewis

Leo Litke
Local Journalism Initiative

On the evening of Nov. 20, over 100 transgender people and allies gathered at the George Étienne Cartier monument to commemorate this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The vigil, spearheaded by trans activist Celeste Trianon, comes as one iteration of a yearly event commemorating members of the community who have lost their lives from transphobia. The first Transgender Day of Remembrance was held in 1999, and was created to avoid forgetting those lost to transphobic violence. 

“People have told me the importance of remembering people’s lives, remembering those lost,” Trianon said.

This event comes two months after the pro-trans counter-protest on Sept. 20. Though playing a key role, Trianon was not the sole organizer. “A lot of times when I organize protests, there is this false impression that it’s just me.” 

Throughout the event, Trianon spoke about the importance of community and collective action. “If there is one organizer you can pinpoint here, it’s the community.”

Attendee Lucille Sullivan said that due to the stark increase in anti-trans legislation in the United States and Canada, it is “a difficult time for trans people […] [It’s happening] in 49 states, so it’s not just in the south, it’s everywhere.” 

Sullivan said that the visibility of holding an event like this was important for those who wouldn’t otherwise interact with the community. “I hope people take a look and maybe see it and if they don’t know a lot about trans people educate themselves.”

“A lot of the time there’s kind of misconceptions. People don’t really know much about trans people and like to spread hateful rhetoric without knowing anything about us,” said Sullivan. 

Many volunteers helped contribute to the successful running of the event. Rajendra Kapilabandestio, a cisgender volunteer who acted as a traffic marshall, said that “[he acts] in solidarity with the transgender community.” 

“Trans rights are human rights and I think they need to be protected,” he said. “Slowly human rights and trans rights are being eroded throughout the country and we need to protect trans people and trans rights.”

Kapilabandestio said that it was important for him to be there, “to remember the trans activists and trans people who have died in the struggle to secure these fundamental human rights.”

Before speeches began as attendees gathered around the base of the monument and the steps below, organizers encouraged people to take candles and food they had prepared in advance. Concordia group The People’s Potato was handing out carrot and ginger soup, blueberry muffins and tea to attendees.

Trianon addressed the crowd, speaking to the importance of community and the resilience of trans people. She then held a minute of silence to remember those who have passed in the past year before inviting two speakers to join her at the base of the monument.

One organizer read tributes to a few transgender people lost in the past year that had been submitted prior to the event, and another speaker who was with Queers for Palestine (a new organization run through Mumbaadarat, Helem Montréal, and P!nk Bloc Montréal) stepped up to the monument. They spoke about the importance of liberation for all queer people worldwide.

Trianon then instructed the crowd to gather in the street in preparation to march toward La Fontaine Park. The large trans flag was removed from the monument and brought to the crowd, where attendees held on to the edges and carried it between them as they walked.

Chants such as “trans rights are human rights,” “we’re sexy, we’re hot, genocide is not,” “bottoms, tops, we all hate cops,” and “À qui la rue? À nous la rue!” began as the march started and made its way down the streets. 

At one point, an attendee’s electric candle was thrown into the trans flag and was bounced around by those flapping their portions to create waves across the surface, resulting in many candles bounding on the surface of the flag.


The group marched from Parc Avenue down Mont-Royal Avenue, where Trianon stopped the group in front of the Mont-Royal metro station and instructed marchers to participate in a die-in, a form of protest where participants occupy an area and pretend to be dead in order to call attention to unjust death caused by social or systemic issues, if they so wished.

Most marchers laid down, and Trianon continued speaking. She condemned transphobic violence and the complacency it was acknowledged with, asking rhetorical questions about how many more trans people must die before systemic issues were acknowledged. “We are not expressing any demands. We are marching first and foremost for ourselves, for the people who need it,” she said.

The group then continued until it reached La Fontaine Park, where Trianon spoke again. “If you have trans people in your lives right now, try and check in on them. The last few months have not been easy for trans people anywhere and I believe it is our civic duty to make sure that they are doing well,” she said.

Trianon closed by thanking everyone for their presence and encouraging attendees to bond with each other.

Transgender community and allies gather for trans remembrance march Read More »

“Us! With one voice!”

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Estrie Region witnesses massive public sector strike and demonstration

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

In a significant show of solidarity, the Common Front public sector unions organized a major demonstration on Nov. 23 in Sherbrooke, which commenced at 10:30 a.m. This event marked the culmination of the recent three strike days and saw a large turnout (numbering in the thousands) from both the striking workers and the wider Estrie community.

The provincial government faced significant pressure as over 420,000 workers from the Common Front, comprising CSN, CSQ, FTQ, and APTS, with 25,000 members in the Estrie region, went on a three-day strike from Nov. 21 to 23. This collective action highlighted the mounting tensions in public sector negotiations.

Key figures such as Nathalie Arguin, General Secretary of CSN, Richard Bergevin, President of the Syndicat de l’Enseignement de l’Estrie (CSQ), Éric Bergeron, Union Advisor for SCFP (FTQ), and Danny Roulx, National Representative of the APTS, led the march that began from Cégep de Sherbrooke. The procession wound its way through the city streets, culminating in a series of speeches at the intersection of Wellington and King Streets.

The demonstration was not just a display of unity but also an educational platform, with statistics shared to better understand the stakes of the ongoing negotiations:

1) The average salary of Common Front public sector employees stands at $43,916.

2) They face a salary gap of -11.9 per cent and an overall compensation gap of -3.9 per cent.

3) Notably, women constitute 78 per cent of the Common Front’s membership.

The strike and demonstration were part of a broader movement by the CSN, CSQ, FTQ, and APTS, representing a considerable number of state workers in Quebec’s public sectors, including education, health, and social services, and higher education.

Nov. 23 demonstration

Speaking first to the massive crowd in the heart of Sherbrooke, and perched on a mobile platform parked in front of La Maison du Cinéma, Bergeron said, “all of Quebec is behind you!” We are fighting for better working conditions, he insisted. He led a chant of the Common Front’s official slogan: “Us! With one voice!”

“420,000 times ‘hello’!” Arguin shouted to resounding cheers. We are having the biggest chat with Premier Francois Legault that Canada has ever seen, she went on. “Legault is hearing our demands but is he listening?” she asked rhetorically. The 78 per cent women and the rest of the public sector employees, she said, exude professionalism and expertise, and are engaged.

The public sector is not an expense, but an investment, and the road to proper investment is at the negotiating table. They and the public deserve Legault’s full attention. Good public service begins with good working conditions, and they will continue in solidarity to make sure that happens.

Today we must recognize the part women play in the public sector, Roulx said. He works with women every day in a female-dominated occupation and sees the high quality of service they provide to the public, which must also be recognized. They occupy thousands of professions, they are everywhere. “We are all united… and will go until the end.”

Bergevin began by acknowledging the impressive turnout for the event. “Respect” should be cashed out in concrete terms, he said, like better pay and being paid for every hour worked. He emphasized that Legault needed them during the pandemic and “loved them a lot” during that time, but now considers them an expense. “What do you call someone who likes you just as long as he needs you?” Bergevin asked rhetorically, “I’ll let you decide.” Laughter rippled through the gathering. The public understood how important they were during the pandemic, he added, and 71 per cent of them support the Common Front now. “Solidarity!”

FAE union strike to cause local English school disruptions

In related news, the Fédération Autonome de l’Enseignement (FAE), a separate teacher’s union representing 65,000 members who work in the French school system, began an unlimited strike Nov. 23. The FAE includes the Centre de Services Scolaire Val-des-Cerfs, which jointly administers Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) schools Sutton Elementary, Massey-Vanier High School, and Campus Brome-Missisquoi Vocational Training Centre. ETSB staff have stated they will not cross the picket line at these schools, leading to additional service disruptions at these three locations.

“The FAE negotiates their own collective agreement,” said ETSB Appalachian Teachers’ Association President April Blampied. She noted that they are all teachers and share the same objectives, so they do not want to disrespect their fellow union and cross their picket lines. If they join the FAE strike out of solidarity it would be considered an illegal strike action, for which they could receive a hefty fine.

They are trying to come up with some creative ideas so the ETSB teachers can still work during the FAE strike. The ETSB teachers will still show up for work with the intention of working, she explained, but upon arriving will receive a directive from their leadership as to what other location they can work from.

Nov. 24 has recently been determined to be a “planning day” for the ETSB schools, making the FAE strike easier to deal with in the short term, since students will be staying home.

Blampied thinks a disruption of a week could be handled well through “tele-working”: emails, contact with parents, posting online activities for students all would continue. There is no time to prepare for online face-to-face teaching, she said.

If the strike continues past next week, she says ideas about relocating students are on the table. “I would not like to have to logistically take care of that,” she said, since finding an alternative appropriate spot for nearly 800 students would be very difficult to organize. Any extra childcare needs due to the disruption will be up to parents to deal with in whatever way they see fit.

“Changing our working conditions changes our students’ learning conditions,” Blampied stressed. No teacher wishes to be on strike, she insisted, and “put a pause on their students’ learning”. The alternative is losing teachers to burnout and stress-leave, and there is already a teacher shortage. “At this point, something needs to be done.”

“Us! With one voice!” Read More »

Appeal filed in Sandy Beach case

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

Legal wranglings that will likely decide the ultimate and twisted fate of the proposed 214-unit Sandy Beach housing development in Hudson now appear will push into next year, as officials with the province’s administrative tribunal have acknowledged receipt last month of a notice of appeal contesting the Quebec Environment minister’s revocation of the permit to backfill part of the wetlands at the waterfront site.

Although the provincial Environment Ministry has not been formally notified of the appeal, officials with the Tribunal Administratif du Québec have confirmed reception of what it calls an “introductory appeal” of the minister’s Oct. 4 decision to pull the permit.

The tribunal received notice of the appeal from site owner Nicanco Holdings on Oct. 18. But as of earlier this week, officials were still awaiting supporting documents that outline the basis for the appeal.

“To date, the tribunal has not held any jurisdictional proceedings, since it is awaiting reception of the administrative file,” communication officials stated in response to inquiries made by The 1019 Report.

See SANDY BEACH, Page 4.

SANDY BEACH: Next steps
still to be determined

From Page 1

Once the awaited documents are received, “the parties will be convened for a management conference,” the tribunal officials said, where the next steps in the appeal process will be outlined and deadlines set.

The meeting could lead to a conciliation session, the officials explained, which could also lead to

an agreement between the parties or a withdrawal of the appeal.

If there is no agreement or withdrawal, and the appeal proceeds to a hearing. The date for this process will be determined by the parties, the officials said. Once the appeal is heard, the tribunal would then have up to three months to render its decision.

News of the notice of appeal did not come as a surprise for residents who have opposed the housing development.

“This is their last kick at the can,” said Rob Horwood, a spokesman for Nature Hudson, a grassroots environmental group fighting the housing project, referring to Nicanco Holdings.

But he does not believe there is much hope the permit to backfill parts of the wetlands on the site will be reinstated.

“I remain optimistic that the order will be upheld,” Horwood said. “The facts of the case are compelling. The law now has specific protections for wetlands and bodies of water.”

Earlier this month, Hudson Mayor Chloe Hutchison said if there were no appeal and the Environment minister’s move to revoke Nicanco’s permit stands, the town would be willing to discuss options. What those options would be, however, remains unclear.

The landowner could submit plans for a scaled down development plan for the site or possibly sell the land. Hutchison said the town has already looked into the possibility of obtaining a grant to cover about 65 per cent of the purchase price for the site.

Appeal filed in Sandy Beach case Read More »

More lanes on Île aux Tourtes could be closed: Ministry

Local Journalism Initiative / /

As Transport Quebec continues to officially evaluate whether it will reopen a third lane in the direction of rush-hour traffic on the Île aux Tourtes Bridge after abruptly closing it last Friday as a new crack on the eastbound side of the span was discovered, a department spokesperson yesterday warned that more lanes could be closed.

“It cannot be ruled out that other traffic lanes may have to be closed,” said Transport department spokesperson Sarah Bensadoun in response to questions from The 1019 Report.

The discovery of the crack last Friday was made after regular inspections that followed the first freezing and thawing cycle of the season.

The closure means there are now only two lanes open in both directions on the span, down from the regular three.

Although Bensadoun said yesterday morning the situation remains unchanged, she warned more drastic closures could be in the offing that could lead to more traffic mayhem.

Commuters who regularly use the bridge suffered through months of traffic delays this year, as the bridge was narrowed to two lanes in each direction in December of 2022 to accommodate ongoing work on the span. At that time, Transport officials said a third lane would reopen in spring. That timeline, however, kept being pushed back until last month, when a third lane was finally opened.

Bensadoun said yesterday that it is not known when Transport officials will address next steps in light of the new crack that has been discovered.

Last Friday, the Transport department stated: “Traffic on the bridge remains safe and that in the case of doubt, the ministry will not hesitate to close the structure.”

The cost of the ongoing work on the aging structure has now been pegged at $376.7 million. That figure includes the nearly $176 million spent before the beginning of this year on safety and repairs of the two-kilometre bridge. The earlier work, carried out from 2020 to 2022, include reinforcement of the bridge supports, replacement of the central mall and relocation of the lighting.

The latest $43.7-million contract was awarded to carry out work that will continue into 2025, which includes beam and slab repairs, installation of a waterproofing membrane, asphalt replacement and other related work.

Transport Quebec in January of this year confirmed that the bridge will never fully reopen. Work will continue until the new span is put into service at the end of 2026.

More lanes on Île aux Tourtes could be closed: Ministry Read More »

Modern replica will replace old house in St. Lazare

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

JOSHUA ALLAN
The 1019 Report

It’s out with the old and in with the new for a lot in the heart of St. Lazare’s village, as the town’s council last week voted in favour of tearing down a house on Ste. Angelique Road that dates back to the 1870s and allowing a modern replica to be built in its place.

The two-storey house, which has been vacant for the last four years, is located on the north side of the street, directly across from the St. Lazare city hall. Once it is removed, it will be replaced with a new building that will almost look identical, municipal officials said. The building will have a mixed residential and commercial zoning.

The plan, according to councillor Richard Chartrand, a member of the town’s urban planning advisory committee, provides what he called a “copy-paste” approach, where the heritage look of the original building will be maintained.

Chartrand admits the current building has seen better days, having experienced water damage and showing cracks in several areas.

“It was judged that it was in a rough enough shape that renovating the building wasn’t an option,” said town spokesperson Christelle Paré, adding that in 2022 the provincial Ministry of Culture and Communications ruled it did not meet the criteria to be considered a heritage building.

Paré said a medical aesthetic clinic will be housed in the new building once construction is completed. The demolition permit for the existing building has been issued, but it is not yet know when work will begin to tear it down, she added.

Cutline:

St. Lazare council last week voted to allow this old house, which dates back to the 1870s, to be torn down and placed with a similar looking building.

Modern replica will replace old house in St. Lazare Read More »

New, modern church to be rebuilt on Côte St. Charles site

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

Work is set to begin to build a new Côte St. Charles United Church in St. Lazare now that the old building has been torn down.

A demolition crew removed most of the old building, which dates back to the early 1900s, last Friday, leaving just the stone façade of the entrance of the original building and the foundation.

“Basically, it’s going to look the same as before,” said John Pichovich, a church trustee and treasurer while he was visiting the site Monday to see how work was progressing. The new building will be slightly longer than the original, he added.

The church, which is now home to the congregation of the former Wyman Memorial United Church in Hudson, which was sold in the fall of 2020, opted to build a new structure after discovering a number of issues as it attempted to renovate the old building, Pichovich said.

The stone façade of the front entrance of the building will be incorporated into the design of the new church, as well as stained glass windows that were removed from the old structure and stored before the demolition crew moved in.

The 100-member congregation is expected to begin holding services in the new church next May, when work is scheduled to be completed, Pichovich said.

New, modern church to be rebuilt on Côte St. Charles site Read More »

Fight to against massive hospital parking lot plan taken to Quebec City

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

JOHN JANTAK
The 1019 Report

Vaudreuil-Dorion Mayor Guy Pilon and representatives of the grassroots environmental group Mères au Front were at the National Assembly in Quebec City yesterday to formally submit a petition calling on the provincial government to abandon its plan to build a 14-acre parking lot at the new Vaudreuil-Soulanges Hospital.

The petition, signed by 2,362 residents of the region, was initiated by Vaudreuil MNA Marie-Claude Nichols after provincial health officials announced it was shelving the initial plan to build an underground lot or a multi-level structure at the new hospital. The change, which would see a surface parking lot stretch over 14 acres, was announced earlier this year by Health Minister Christian Dubé in order to save $50 million on the $2.6-billion hospital project.

“This about-face is incomprehensible and unacceptable,” Pilon said in June when Quebec Health officials announced the change in plans. “The Quebec government’s decision to build a surface parking lot runs counter to municipal, regional and provincial environmental policies and objectives.”

In an open letter published in The 1019 Report earlier this month, Mères au Front said: “We demand that the ministry of health and Social Services plan the construction of the Vaudreuil-Soulanges Hospital in accordance to sustainable development principles.”

Several municipalities in the region along with the MRC of Vaudreuil-Soulanges have condemned the new parking lot plan.

Despite widespread local opposition, Soulanges MNA Marilyne Picard, a member of the CAQ government, supports the surface parking lot plan.

The hospital, currently under construction, is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.

Fight to against massive hospital parking lot plan taken to Quebec City Read More »

New plan hatched to attempt to complete abandoned arena project in Pincourt

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

JOHN JANTAK
The 1019 Report

After 20 years, several attempts and a few lawsuits, the four municipalities on Île Perrot are joining forces to once again attempt to complete the abandoned arena project that sits as an eyesore on 5th Avenue in Pincourt.

Notre Dame de l’Île Perrot Mayor Danie Deschênes said her town along with Île Perrot, Pincourt and Terrasse-Vaudreuil are all on board and ready to move forward with the project. To that end, they have applied for a provincial government grant to help fund the initiative.

“We never disagreed on the fact we need an arena on Île Perrot,” Deschênes said in an interview. “We’re just following through on previous discussions we’ve had over the past eight years.”

The grant application will be submitted to the provincial financial assistance program for recreational, sports and outdoor infrastructures.

“We have until Dec. 15 to submit the grant request,” Deschênes said. “We will be ready by then.”

Neither Deschênes nor Pincourt Mayor Claude Comeau were able to provide a dollar figure on how much money the four municipalities would request, but the amount will be determined by the time the grant application is submitted.

“We should have an amount ready by the time we submit the grant application,” Comeau said, adding the subsidy would cover two-thirds of the cost of the project.

“The first step right now is to see if we’re eligible for the subsidies,” Comeau said.

A decision on whether the government will accept the grant application will be made by next spring.

“We need a facility on the island,” Comeau said.

Last month, three of the four towns on the island entered into a three- to five-year agreement to manage an arena in neighbouring Vaudreuil-Dorion in order to provide ice time for youth who live on Île Perrot. It is viewed as a temporary solution to the growing demand for ice time by youth leagues on the island.

“We’re moving forward and, hopefully, if the government supports us, we’ll have a facility for the kids to skate on the island,” Comeau said. “That’s our goal. It’s a win-win situation.”

If the municipalities receive a grant next year to complete the indoor arena complex, it could be ready by 2025. The four participating municipalities will also create a new board to take charge of the project. 

Construction of the now abandoned arena complex began in 2003, which marked the start of a saga that has lasted two decades.

In 2004, with costs rising and a dispute erupting with the contractor, the agency created to oversee the arena declared bankruptcy. The contractor sued the town of Pincourt and the agency. The case lingered in court for about seven years before the town of Pincourt purchased the property in 2012.

A plan put forward by a private company owned by ex-Vancouver Canuck winger Alexandre Burrows at that time aimed to see the arena completed, but quickly fell apart. In 2014, Pincourt sold the property to another private firm, but legal disputes entangled the project.

The town bought the property again in 2018, announcing plans to complete the arena. But those plans fell apart, too.

In 2019, the town announced it would demolish the unfinished building. But that plan was delayed. In 2021, the town announced it would sell the property again. No buyer, however, was found.

A study conducted shortly after Comeau was elected mayor in 2021 concluded that completing the arena was a viable option. “This is why we decided to move forward with the project,” he said.

New plan hatched to attempt to complete abandoned arena project in Pincourt Read More »

Pressure on MRC to reconsider site for compost plant mounts

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

JOHN JANTAK
The 1019 Report

Residents opposed to the MRC’s choice of location for a $20-million open-air compost processing facility in St. Télesphore are seeking help from municipal councils across the region – and they are gaining support.

On Monday evening, members of Vaudreuil-Dorion city council were asked to question Mayor Guy Pilon’s vote on the MRC council in support of the purchase of a seven-hectare site in St. Télesphore, which residents say covers crucial underground water sources that could be put at risk of contamination by the facility.

Last week, the growing group of residents opposed to the project – the largest in the MRC’s history – were in Pincourt, urging elected officials there to do the same. Including in that group was the former mayor of St. Télesphore, Claude Cyr, who now lives in Pincourt.

So far, three municipal councils in the region – St. Polycarpe, Ste. Justine de Newton and Coteau du Lac – have adopted formal resolutions in the last month urging the MRC to reconsider its choice of locations for the plant. These towns have asked the MRC to consider an industrial site for the facility.

The pressure campaign to convince members of the MRC council to reconsider the site location is expected to continue later today, as the MRC hosts its regular public meeting at 7: 30 p.m. at the MRC offices, 208 Harwood Blvd. in Vaudreuil-Dorion.

Next week, residents from across the region are invited to attend an information session to learn more about the project, an event that some Vaudreuil-Dorion councillors said Monday they would attend to get answers to the questions they have about the project. The information sessions will be held Nov. 29, from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m., at the Centre Socioculturel de Très St. Rédempteur, 808 Principale St.

To register, go to MRC’s website at https://mrcvs.ca/.

Pressure on MRC to reconsider site for compost plant mounts Read More »

Anglophone Montrealers rally against Bill 96

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , ,

Task Force president Andrew Caddell speaks to the crowd at Sunday’s rally. Photo Russell Tellier

Russell Tellier
Local Journalism Initiative

On the afternoon of Nov. 19, 300 people assembled in Trenholme Park in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce to protest Bill 96. The protest was organized by the Task Force on Linguistic Policy, which launched a lawsuit against said bill in May. 

“Today we are obliged to take the Quebec government to court to ensure our constitutional rights are protected,” said Marc Perez, a member of the Task Force’s board of directors. Task Force secretary-treasurer Dale Weber, meanwhile, described Bill 96 as both “illegal” and “mean-spirited.” 

The Task Force, which does not receive financial assistance from the government, is funding its lawsuit through individual donations.

In addition to other changes, Bill 96 further restricts access to English services in Quebec, increases French-language instruction in English CEGEPs, and imposes francization requirements on businesses with 25 to 49 employees. The bill was implemented by Minister François Legault’s government in May 2022 ostensibly to protect French throughout the province. 

“What we see also is that the percentage of people, especially on the island of Montreal, speaking French is decreasing. So, French will always be vulnerable in North America,” Legault said in September.

“French is not in decline in Quebec, no matter what the Premier may say,” said Geoffrey Chambers, the former president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, while addressing the crowd at Sunday’s rally. “The story of French in Quebec is a massive victory, a success. And we fully support and applaud that fact. This new piece of legislation does not protect the French language; it attacks the English-speaking community.”

Likewise, protesters Danielle Carter, Irwin Rapoport and Sharon Schmerer rejected the argument that French is in danger. 

“I think there are 1,000 or 2,000, at most, fluent Mohawk speakers. That’s a language that’s in danger,” said Rapoport. “There are about 6.9 million French speakers in Quebec. The language is not in danger. They’ve got thriving media and entertainment and publishing.”

According to Statistics Canada, 237,420 Indigenous people in Canada reported in 2021 that they could speak an Indigenous language well-enough to conduct a conversation. This constituted  a 4.3 per cent decline from 2016, and the first decline since this specific data collection started in 1991.  

Schmerer said: “The first language anywhere in the world is English. What’s wrong with two languages?” 

Both Chambers and Carter said that the Quebec government is trying to get rid of Quebec’s anglophones. “[Bill 96] has a devastating effect on the education system,” Carter said. 

“People are losing their jobs because they don’t speak French. Already we know that anglophone Quebecers are the poorest demographic in Quebec,” Weber said.

A recent study conducted by the Provincial Employment Roundtable (PERT) found that the provincial poverty rate for anglophone Quebecers (10 per cent) is almost twice as high as it is for francophone Quebecers (5.8 per cent). PERT also said that anglophone Quebecers are more likely than their francophone counterparts to be unemployed. 

Whilst Perez predicted that Bill 96 will eventually be overturned, Rapoport also expressed optimism, predicting that most of the legal challenges against the law will succeed.

Concordia student Robert Toto described the fight against Bill 96 as “a long uphill battle.” “I think the best thing to do is just continue fighting and keep going at it and simply not give up,” he said. 

The rally, which drew a small police presence, occurred between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. amidst cold weather. Cars that drove by honked in support of the protesters, many of whom were holding anti-Bill 96 signs. 

The Task Force organized a car procession that started at the Walmart on Decarie Boulevard before the rally and ended at Trenholme Park. 

Task Force president Andrew Caddell said that more anti-Bill 96 demonstrations will be held.

Anglophone Montrealers rally against Bill 96 Read More »

Subsidy for L.A. Kings games draws political backlash

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

At a press conference on Nov. 15 announcing plans to stage two Los Angeles Kings preseason games at the Videotron Centre in October 2024 (see article in this edition), Martin Tremblay, chief operating officer of Quebecor Sports and Entertainment and president of Gestev, said the Kings’ visit would be a “festival of hockey.” However, opposition parties across the political spectrum are not celebrating.

La Presse revealed on Oct. 17 that the subsidy of up to $7 million provided to Gestev by the provincial government to stage the event was taken from a regional development fund overseen by the province but normally managed by the Ville de Québec and surrounding regional county municipalities – without consulting the city. “There’s no more breathing room in the state’s coffers [but] this morning, we learn that to subsidize two NHL games in Quebec City, the government is using a regional development fund for local businesses and nonprofits,” interim Liberal leader Marc Tanguay tweeted Nov. 18.

“In order to give a gift of $5 to $7 million to hockey billionaires, the government used a fund intended for local nonprofits … and bypassed the fund’s rules of operation. Is this a prudent use of public funds?” tweeted Parti Québécois MNA Pascal Paradis, the party’s point person for the Capitale- Nationale region. Québec Solidaire, for its part, announced plans to ask the province’s auditor general to investigate, with Jean-Talon MNA Étienne Grandmont saying a local food bank needed the money more – a suggestion echoed at the municipal level by Limoilou Coun. Jackie Smith.

Quebec Conservative Party leader Éric Duhaime called on the government to cancel the subsidy, saying, “I understand the CAQ is trying by all means to win back Quebec City voters … but it’s not by trying to buy them with tickets for a preseason Kings game that it will succeed.”

Mayor Bruno Marchand has said his administration “wasn’t involved” in the province’s decision.

Quebec City has been without an NHL team since 1995. “We lost our team and we’d like it back one day,” Lévis MNA Bernard Drainville told Radio-Canada. He said he believed the government had made the right choice to invite the Kings “to send a signal to the NHL” that Quebec City was ready for a team, but that the “timing wasn’t ideal.”

Subsidy for L.A. Kings games draws political backlash Read More »

Get up-to-date vaccines before holiday season, Boileau advises

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

As the holiday party season approaches, Quebec public health director Dr. Luc Boileau is advising people in high-risk groups to get updated COVID and flu vaccinations.

“The situation is different from previous years, and that’s for the better, but there are a few worrisome elements,” Boileau said at a press conference on Nov. 15, pointing out that COVID, seasonal flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – the “cocktail” of viruses which filled emergency rooms last winter – are still circulating in Quebec. He mentioned that data indicated that seasonal flu infections are likely to peak around Christmas. “We’re not in flu season yet, but it’s inevitable, it’s on its way and it might be on its way quickly … it’s better to get vaccinated now than to wait for the wave to come,” he said. He added that RSV infections are also on the rise, although a wave of infections on the scale of last year is not expected.

“Then, of course, there’s COVID,” he said. “It is still around and circulating very actively in the community … we’re not in a wave, but we’re in a period of relative stability. It’s still here.” He said about 100 Quebecers are being hospitalized for the virus every day, and 50 – mostly seniors – are dying every week.

Boileau specifically encouraged people 70 and older, health workers, people with chronic illnesses, pregnant women and people who share a home with someone in a high-risk group to get up-to- date vaccinations. He pointed out that a flu shot given to a pregnant woman also provides some protection to the newborn baby. Boileau said vaccination was available to everyone in the province, but particularly recommended for people at high risk. He said over one million Quebecers have received a COVID booster this fall.

“It’s getting colder outside, there are going to be more and more gatherings and crowds in shops and so forth, and we’re heading for a time of year where, every year, there are a lot of infections,” Boileau said. He encouraged people to wash their hands frequently, stay home when sick and wear masks if they must go out while experiencing cold- or flu-like symptoms, even if they have tested negative for COVID. He noted that getting vaccinated reduces the risk of complications leading to hospitalization, helps prevent premature deaths and reduces the burden on the province’s health-care system. “Vaccines don’t prevent us from getting sick, but they prevent us from having to deal with the heaviest [consequences] of an illness, and avoid us having to go to hospital, or to the funeral home,” he said.

COVID and seasonal flu vaccinations are available at health clinics and at most pharmacies, and can be given at the same time. Anyone who wishes to get vaccinated can make an appointment online on the ClicSanté portal or call the province’s bilingual vaccine hotline at 1-877-644-4545 (from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.). Those who have recently had a COVID infection or been vaccinated are advised to wait three to six months before getting a new shot.

Get up-to-date vaccines before holiday season, Boileau advises Read More »

Local CQSB schools to close for three-day strike

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

All English public schools in the Quebec City region will be closed from Nov. 21-23 as members of the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers (QPAT) and unions representing support staff carry out a three-day strike.

Through their union federations, the striking unions are members of the Front Commun, a negotiating bloc which represents more than 400,000 public sector workers in health and education – all of whom are expected to take part in the strike.

“We respect the right to strike, and unless we advise you otherwise, we are inform- ing you that all our establishments will be completely closed during these three days of strike action. Therefore, no unionized employees, no parents/guardians [and] no students will be allowed to enter our schools and centres during this strike,” Central Québec School Board (CQSB) director general Stephen Pigeon and assistant director general Nancy L’Heureux wrote in a message to parents.

CQSB schools in the Quebec City region will also close Nov. 24 for a scheduled pedagogical day.

QPAT president Steven Le Sueur said teachers were striking because of longstanding concerns about pay, work-life balance, support for students with disabilities and staff shortages. “There is a teacher shortage, and the shortage is for a reason – it’s not a very attractive profession at the moment,” he said.

Le Sueur said he understood the strike created some difficulties for parents, but that “patience would be appreciated” under the circumstances. He added that teachers would not assign homework or extra work over the strike period.

The Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE), a union federation which represents over 60,000 teachers at French-language public schools around the province including in the Quebec City region, has announced plans to begin an unlimited general strike on Nov. 23. Le Sueur said an unlimited general strike could also be in QPAT’s future. “The way things are moving at the [negotiating] table, that’s a possibility. It would be a disappointment, but we have to do what we have to do. These issues have been on the docket for many years and it’s time to do something.”

“We have a great relationship with our staff, but what can you do, they’re in negotiations. We’re getting close to Christmas, inflation and interest rates are high. We have great sympathy for our teachers and staff and wish them well,” CQSB chairperson Stephen Burke told the QCT.

Education Minister Bernard Drainville has said the school year may be extended in the event of a long strike.

Local CQSB schools to close for three-day strike Read More »

CSL allowing tempos throughout city this winter

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Joel Goldenberg – The Suburban LJI Reporter

The City of Côte St. Luc is tolerating tempos, temporary car shelters erected during the winter, throughout the city with some exceptions, it was revealed on social media.

CSL and many other municipalities have resisted, or still don’t allow, tempos because they are not aesthetically pleasing.

Resident Orel Zipper asked on Facebook, “how do we get some action to unban tempos from those select streets [where it is] arbitrarily not allowed to put them up? Ridiculously unsafe, especially for older residents or those with mobility issues. More so for those with an inclined driveway. I have brought it up before, but if there’s anything one can do would be great to know.”

The city’s Facebook administrator responded that “for the 2023-2024 winter season, the city will tolerate tempos in areas where they are not zoned. Here’s what this means in practice:

“If you live in an area where tempos are allowed, it is business as usual,” the message adds. “If you paid the one-time fee, you can erect the tempo again this year. If you live in an area where tempos are allowed, and have never applied for a permit, you need to do so. Then you pay the one-time fee. Then you can erect your tempo.”

In areas where tempos have not been allowed up to now, “you can erect a tempo this season. No permit is required and no fee is required this season. You must follow all the installation rules and the tempo must be removed by April 15, 2024.”

As well, “tempos are never allowed at townhouses, apartment buildings, or condo buildings.”

The city posting added that CSL is “considering standardizing the tempo rules across the city as part of the Master Plan and Zoning Bylaw Revision.”

Councillor Dida Berku explained to The Suburban that “when we did the tempo bylaw, we did it by zone, and in certain zones, 12 residents signed a register, and we decided not to proceed with referendums zone by zone.

“Over the past few years, we’ve realized that the tempos have not proliferated like mushrooms, they’re very few and far between, and in those zones where we don’t have tempos, there are residents in very precarious situations, they have steep driveways or have medical conditions, so we tried to find a way to introduce it in the zones, where they’re not allowed, for a year, on a pilot project basis. At the end of the year, we’ll evaluate it.”

We also asked about the fact those who can put up tempos where they have not been allowed do not, right now, have to pay the one-time fee, while those who have yet to put up tempos where they are allowed do have to pay.

“It’s only a one-time payment anyway, so eventually if it does become a permanent situation, they will have to pay,” Berku explained. “In the end, everyone [who wants a tempo] will have to pay. For this year only, they don’t have to pay because it’s a pilot project, and we can’t introduce a fee for something that’s not in our fee schedule.”

CSL allowing tempos throughout city this winter Read More »

St. Laurent Mayor calls for creation of large solar park

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Joel Goldenberg – The Suburban LJI Reporter

St. Laurent Mayor Alan DeSousa called on the business community to create a large solar park in the borough, an electricity generating system connected to a utility grid.

DeSousa spoke Nov. 2 at the annual meeting of the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Saint-Laurent-Mont-Royal. He also told La Presse such a park could be installed quickly, as opposed to dams and wind turbines.

DeSousa pointed out in his speech that 70 percent of St. Laurent’s territory is “dedicated to professional, retail, manufacturing and industrial activities, thus presenting a unique landscape in the Greater Montreal Region.”

He added that in 2019, “this led to the roofs on St. Laurent businesses and parking lots being identified as the two main culprits responsible for the major urban heat island phenomenon experienced in Saint-Laurent.”

DeSousa said the borough has worked to alleviate the heat island situation “by adopting a number of programs, bylaws and other initiatives relating to parking lots and roofs. These have generated numerous accolades in addition to creating a snowball effect in other communities.”

The Mayor also pointed out that an assessment conducted in 2018 “estimated the net surface area of some 1,400 industrial and commercial roofs is capable of accommodating solar panels in St. Laurent at 4.5 million square metres, or the equivalent of 850 football fields.”

Also in 2018, “a study was conducted to evaluate the overall potential of industrial roofs in St. Laurent to produce 521 gigawatts-hours of energy, which is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 24,000 households.

“The study concluded that St. Laurent has tremendous solar photovoltaic and thermal potential, and it is an ideal location for the installation of solar setups on roofs, given that the buildings are the same elevation and there are few trees in the areas in question. The same study also revealed that the installation of solar equipment would enable certain buildings to achieve partial energy independence. What’s more, the City of Montreal receives 25 percent more sunshine than Paris, boasting an annual average of 2,051 hours versus 1,662 hours for the European city.”

In light of all this and the existence of the Fermes Lufa greenhouse and IGA Duchemin greenhouses, DeSousa urged the business community to “consider the potential benefits of creating a collaborative project centred on solar energy,” pointing out that “several businesses have already begun experimentation in this respect.

“The pursuit of this solar park project could represent an excellent endeavour for the emergence of an urban solar segment in Quebec, while emphasizing that solar is just one of the solutions that can be developed on-site when it comes to renewable energy – and one that could also include the recovery of waste heat, cooling and geothermic.”

St. Laurent Mayor calls for creation of large solar park Read More »

St. Laurent crime up 22.3 percent from 2022

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Joel Goldenberg – The Suburban LJI Reporter

Crime in the borough of St. Laurent in the first nine months of 2023 increased 22.3 percent from the same period in 2022, from 2,320 to 2,838 incidents, says SPVM Station 7’s June to September 2023 report.

Throughout this year and last, The Suburban and others have been reporting on numerous incidents in St. Laurent, such as murders, arson of businesses and cars, shootings and stabbings.

According to the SPVM statistics, murders decreased from two in 2022 to zero in 2023. However, at the beginning of October 2023, just after the tabulation period, a 23-year-old man died after being stabbed several times in the upper body at his home at Alexis Nihon Blvd. near Côte de Liesse Road.

Attempted murders increased from three to four incidents. Assaults jumped from 377 to 423, a 12.2 percent increase. Instances of discharging a firearm decreased from 10 to four. Sexual aggression decreased from 63 to 54. Robberies jumped from 61 to 76, a 24.6 percent increase. Other violations of the law against people jumped from 156 to 195, a 25 percent increase.

Acts of arson jumped from 14 to 35, a 150 percent increase — some of these are said to be extortion attempts against Arab business owners. Break-ins increased from 174 to 187 incidents. Car thefts increased from 482 to 647, a 34.2 percent increase. Simple theft increased from 571 to 640, a 12.1 percent increase. Fraud jumped from 253 to 346, a 36.8 percent increase and mischief increased from 127 to 201 incidents, a 58.3 percent hike.

Incidents this year included:

• The seizure of contraband tobacco from some establishments.

• Stolen cars, some of which were recovered in searches and for which people were arrested.

• On Sept. 9, the arrest of two individuals for breaking into a vehicle and a break and enter into a commercial enterprise.

During the Nov. 7 council meeting, a resident asked St. Laurent Mayor Alan DeSousa what the borough is doing about the many instances of criminality in recent months, such as shootings in residential areas.

DeSousa replied that he was not aware of any recent shootings in residential areas. However, there have been shots fired in industrial areas in October and May.

The Mayor added that crimes are being investigated and in numerous cases solved by Station 7 and its commander Pierre Luc-Gauthier, who said early this year that St. Laurent is still a safe and secure community notwithstanding the many incidents that took place in 2022.

“What we do is try to make sure through police patrols, information given to our residents, our own urban patrols, that there is a visibility given so that people living in the area feel safe and have a sense of security,” the Mayor explained.

The Commander said DeSousa provided a good summary. n

St. Laurent crime up 22.3 percent from 2022 Read More »

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