By Trevor Greenway
The MRC des Collines has $1.2 million to spend on creating a climate action plan – and Prefect Marc Carrière promises that the plan will be more than just a plan.
“It’s fun to have a plan. But if it doesn’t have action with it, it’s useless,” Carrière told the Low Down “We wanted to do some action throughout the MRC because it’s for every citizen. It’s quite an issue when you see winters like this and fires and flooding and so on. We need to act now.”
Carrière said that action will come in the form of an overhaul of the region’s public transit system, Transcollines. The public transportation system uses taxis for on-demand service, and Carrière said he wants to improve and increase public transportation in the region to put less cars on the road.
“We will be very active with Transcollines to find a way to reduce our carbon footprint,” he said. “The first thing we will do is a diagnostic of the MRC to see what our reality is. After that, we will be meeting with many specialists to see what we can do. Is it to plant more trees in the villages? It’s too soon to know exactly, but, for sure, transportation will be an issue that we will work on.”
The MRC just released its annual report and in it the regional government talks about some upcoming projects for the region, including a new Eco Centre at the corner of highways 366 and 307, where residents will be able to drop off construction materials, large bulky waste and dangerous goods. Carrière said the MRC will build several satellite depots throughout the region.
“There will be a regional centre but maybe two satellite depots, one in the east and west. We will be working with Pontiac and the City of Gatineau to see if we can work together.”
Another project for the MRC, according to Carrière, is a big awareness campaign on recycling, garbage and compost, namely to educate residents on what goes in each bin.
Carrière said homeowners are still putting the wrong items in the wrong bins; batches of compost or recycling can be tainted with garbage and the whole batch goes to the dump, he explained.
“If you were putting the right stuff [in] the right place, like compost in compost and recycling in the recycling, we would probably, collectively at the MRC, save at least half a million dollars,” said Carrière.
Carrière also said the MRC spent the last year focusing on public security and will launch another nautical safety campaign for water users this summer.
He also said the MRC was happy to agree on a new contract for MRC des Collines Police. The MRC des Collines and the union representing police officers in the Gatineau Hills – the fraternité des policiers – reached a new agreement last November, which will see officers receive a wage increase of 17.6 per cent over five years.