BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

The town of Hudsonhas extended the deadline to The 1019 Report’s access-to-information request submitted last month seeking the amount the municipality has spent in legal fees in its dispute with resident Trevor Smith since 2014, when the barrier was built.

On Monday, one day before the deadline for the town to respond to the access-to-information request, in a notice from assistant town clerk Renée Huneault, the town invoked its option to extend the deadline by an additional 10 days to provide the information.

The town has been involved in civil litigation for several years, as the case was brought to municipal court and made its way through the Superior Court of Quebec and the Court of Appeals, where judgments were issued in 2022, upholding the town’s stance that the fence contravened its bylaws. An order giving the town permission to remove the fence was issued as part of the judgments.

Smith has also filed complaints over the years with the Commission municipal du Québec and the MRC Vaudreuil-Soulanges. He filed a second complaint to the CMQ last week.

At a council meeting on Sept. 3, Smith stated that so far the dispute has cost him about $80,000. He then vowed to continue his court battles with the town.

Ironically, in a judgment in July 2022 that rejected Smith’s request for an exemption that would have allowed him to keep the fence, Superior Court Justice Christian J. Brossard cited references made by the plaintiff that he did not have the estimated $5,000 it would cost to replace the hedge that he claimed had been damaged by the town that led him to install the fence.