Fairview parking lot.

By Chelsey St-Pierre
The Suburban

A special public consultation meeting was held in Pointe-Claire last week to discuss the future of Fairview Forest and the height of the buildings planned on the Fairview parking lot. Tensions rose high as the majority of City Councillors say that they were not consulted on the proposed meeting or advised with proper notice.

“To this I can only respond that council has known this resolution vote was coming for a long time and that I had no way of bringing it forward other than at a special meeting, since they would not have allowed it to be introduced at all if I had tried to bring it through caucus to a regular monthly council session. The administration received notice early last week and notified council within a normal timeline for a meeting to be held immediately after our regular Tuesday caucus. Furthermore, councillors have called three extraordinary meetings similar to this one themselves,” Pointe-Claire Mayor Tim Thomas explained to The Suburban.

“Had the Mayor seriously wanted the consultation; he could have asked for it to be added to a caucus agenda for discussion. He never did this. His motivation was clearly not altruistic,” Pointe-Claire City Councillor Tara Stainforth told The Suburban.

“The special meeting was called by the Mayor for the sole purpose of having council vote down a resolution he wanted voted down. He wanted to be able to spin it to the population that council voted against public consultations. So in addition to having the resolution call for them, he also packed it with a preamble that he knew council could not allow to become the official position of the city. It was 100 per cent political theatre and an abuse of his position,” Pointe-Claire City Councillor Brent Cowan told The Suburban.

Thomas says that council removed multiple properties from the development freeze that was established in 2021, intended for public consultation prior to moving forward, to allow for condo projects and that they sought to do so with the Fairview parking lot. “Their plan to remove it from the freeze and put it in a comprehensive development plan would have put no restrictions on what Cadillac Fairview could build, since this legal structure would remain subordinate to our existing by-laws and special planning program,” Thomas wrote in a public statement.

City Councillor Kelly Thorstad-Cullen responded to that portion of Thomas’s public post, “it is getting more and more difficult to convince citizens of the facts and the truth. When so much misinformation is being thrown out there you can see why there is so much distrust — it is heartbreaking. But every vote that the current council has done with respect to development projects has been in the best interests of taxpaying citizens. The specific vote to ask our DG to meet with Cadillac Fairview was done with the very purpose of healthy negotiations and collaborations to get the best out of the entire land space owned by CF.”

Pointe-Claire City Councillor Eric Stork told The Suburban that the councillors are not against public consultations, especially on such a important issue. “Where councillors’ differences lie with the Mayor is that the Mayor chooses to incite the public, when the majority of councillors choose to inform the public. The citizens of Pointe-Claire need the know all the facts with relevant and pertinent information, allowing them to make an informed decision which may require a city-wide referendum to reach a consensus.” n