BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1510 West

A request made to Pointe Claire council for a letter to start the process of seeking funding from provincial authorities with the aim of acquiring Fairview Forest was met with support earlier this month, but so far no action.

“We’ve done nothing as a city to advance the Fairview Forest project,” said councillor Eric Stork in an interview Monday. “We’ve done absolutely zero.”

But Geneviève Lussier, the spokesperson for the Save Fairview Forest group, which has been advocating for the preservation of the wooded area west of the Fairview Pointe Claire shopping centre, is still hopeful the city will get on board to request financial support from the provincial Plan Nature 2030, a plan to preserve 30 per cent of Quebec’s natural spaces by 2030. The $922-milliion fund launched last year received an additional $100 million in federal funding last month.

“The purpose of the funding would be in helping to purchase the land from the current owner,” said Lussier in an interview Monday.

Lussier said she requested the letter from the city, along with a meeting with the council to discuss a possible plan aimed at preserving the forest from development at the April 1 council meeting as a followup to council’s move last fall to commission studies to evaluate the land. She has not heard back from any city representative, however.

“I’ll be encouraged when the letter is sent,” she said. “We just need action.”

Council members have not discussed when they would meet with members of the group.

At the April 1 meeting, Pointe Claire council approved a $112,000 eco-systems study of the entire territory of the city, which will catalogue the so-called services natural spaces provide the city in terms of heat-island protection, air quality, noise pollution mitigation and other benefits. A second study that will put together an ecological portrait of both private and public natural spaces is expected to go to tender shortly.