Litchfield

Damages claim over Litchfield property dispute goes to court

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

A lawsuit filed against the Municipality of Litchfield had its first day in court last Thursday at the Campbell’s Bay courthouse. 

The three plaintiffs, siblings Colleen McGuire, Michael McGuire and Mary Ellen McGuire, are suing Litchfield for nearly $15,000 in damages they claim arose over the course of a property dispute with the municipality that began in 2015. 

The conflict can be traced back to 2007 when a land surveyor listed a lot as belonging to the Municipality of Litchfield which the plaintiffs believed to belong to their father, Aloysius McGuire. 

The McGuire’s statement of claim submitted to the court states that in 2015, when they learned of the municipality’s “intent to sell or grant servitude” to the lot to neighbouring property owners, the McGuires tried to prove to the municipality, using deeds and other legal documents, that this property should still be under their father’s name. 

The claim says that this, and every subsequent attempt to prove ownership of the lot, was rejected by the municipality. 

In the spring of 2021, after many years of back and forth over opposing claims as to who is the rightful owner of the lot, the cadastral registration division of Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests (MERN) prompted the original surveyor to revisit the survey report he did in 2007. 

According to the plaintiffs’ statement of claim, this reconsideration found Aloysius McGuire to be the rightful owner of the lot. In June 2021, following the municipality’s appeal of this finding, it was reconfirmed that Aloysius McGuire was the owner, which effectively ended the dispute. 

The McGuire siblings, represented in court by Mary Ellen McGuire, are now claiming $14,780.30 in damages attributed to legal fees associated with proving the property did indeed belong to their father, as well as other expenses associated with repairing a pump house building on their property they say was damaged over the course of the dispute. 

The plaintiffs are also claiming moral and exemplary damages to the family over the years of the dispute.

“This claim arises from the undue hardship, stress, and inconvenience caused to our family between the years 2015 and 2023, during which time the Municipality, acting in bad faith, refused to acknowledge our rightful ownership of lot 3 685 570,” the McGuires’ statement of claim reads.

The statement introduces an almost 300-page file prepared by Mary Ellen McGuire that includes email correspondence obtained through an access to information request, involving municipal director general Julie Bertrand, Mayor Colleen Larivière, and several of the owners of the properties adjacent to the lot in question.

None of the plaintiffs’ allegations have been proven in court. 

For its part, the defendant, the Municipality of Litchfield, represented in court by Director General Bertrand, denies the allegations and says its actions were based only on information it had that indicated it was the owner of the lot. 

“The defendant had no reason to question the validity of the cadastral plan and the presumption of ownership subject thereto,” Litchfield’s statement of defence states. 

“The defendant cannot be held responsible for the error and the resulting alleged prejudice, caused by the [ . . . ] surveyor, acting on behalf of MERN during the cadastral renovation given that the law explicitly provides that it is MERN’s responsibility to revise and amend the cadastral plan,” the statement continues. 

“Thus, since the defendant has no jurisdiction in matters of cadastral renovation, its inaction, as alleged by the plaintiffs, cannot be held against it as a cause for prejudice to the plaintiffs.” 

Litchfield has also called in the Attorney General of Quebec, representing MERN, to intervene in the case and to “to indemnify the Municipality of Litchfield for any condemnation that may be pronounced against her,” according to a document submitted to the court by Litchfield. 

At Thursday’s first sitting at the courthouse in Campbell’s Bay, the municipality presented evidence that the entire case might in fact be inadmissible. 

Bertrand said code 1112.1 of the municipal act states “No action in damages may be instituted against a municipality unless [ . . . ] the action is instituted within six months after the date on which the cause of action arose.” 

Bertrand held that as the plaintiffs only filed their claim more than six months after what Bertrand considered to be the date of harm, on Aug. 10, 2021, when the municipality’s lawyer stated it would not contest the MERN decision, the case should not be considered. 

For her part, McGuire disputed the Aug. 2021 date of harm identified by Bertrand. She said that for her family, this case was not only about the question of who owned the lot, a dispute resolved on Aug. 10, but also about the ways in which the municipality, in her opinion, abused its power and breached its code of ethics, the harm from which lasted beyond Aug. 10, 2021.

The judge, Honourable Serge Laurin, said it will likely take him several weeks to consider the submitted material and decide whether or not to admit the case to the court. He noted that if the case is admitted, proceedings would likely take several days.

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Ottawa Riverkeeper concerned Samonix project could have harmful impacts for waterway’s organisms

K.C. Jordan, LJI Journalist

In July, THE EQUITY reported that Litchfield’s Pontiac Industrial Park could become the home of a land-based salmon farm sometime in the near future. (Litchfield may become home to salmon farm, THE EQUITY, July 3, 2024)

Samonix, the Outaouais-based company that is proposing the project, intends to use innovative technology to farm Atlantic salmon in land-based saltwater pools instead of in natural bodies of water.
Using technology to raise the salmon would allow them to more closely control their environment. In an interview earlier this summer with THE EQUITY, Samonix’s senior director of business development Rémi Bertrand said salmon require very specific conditions to thrive.

“It’s the fish that’s the most vulnerable to its environment, so a dramatic change in temperature will affect its life cycle, and a variation in any of its environment could alter its life cycle,” he said.

The project would fill the pools with water sourced from the Ottawa River, and then add salt to it.

Any wastewater would be treated at a plant before being released back into the river.

But one local organization is concerned that the wastewater might have harmful impacts for the river and the organisms that inhabit it.

On Monday, Larissa Holman, Director of Science and Policy with Ottawa Riverkeeper, answered our questions about the organization’s concerns.

What are the primary concerns with this new project when it comes to the Ottawa River?

With the effluent that could be coming from the facility, and the fact that the facility requires a seawater environment for [the salmon] to be able to mature. And the fact that [the Ottawa River] is a freshwater environment raised some questions for us around what does that affluent look like from the site?
Our concerns are really aimed at the effluent and the fact that there will be chloride from the salt that is required to create the environment for these fish.

What could be the impact of saltwater entering the freshwater system?

Road salt, when it becomes dissolved in water, has two main components, but it has a chloride component to it. And chloride is toxic to aquatic environments, and that’s why we focus on chloride itself, and through our work over the last five years understanding the impact of road salt that’s being used on city streets, and through that work have learned the implications for the aquatic organisms that are present in those streams.

It’s written on your website that the Samonix project should aim for an “effluent release target of less than 120 mg/L of salt.” Can you explain to our readers how you arrived at that number?

The Council of Canadian Ministers of the Environment have created a document that outlines the scientific criteria for chloride. So in that document they discuss at what point the concentration of chloride becomes harmful, either chronically toxic or acutely toxic.

For acute toxicity, an aquatic organism only has to be exposed for a brief moment of time to have a permanent impact on their ability to survive predation, reproduce, generally grow. It can have a very significant impact over a very short exposure time.

Chronic toxicity means that it has to be exposed for a long time, but the same types of things can occur, and can affect the organism’s ability to breathe underwater, but also to reproduce. And so that’s one of the reasons that we looked at that lower threshold.

The facility would operate throughout the year, and so it would be releasing affluent every day of the year, and that’s why the chronic toxicity is the one we’re using as a threshold for what we feel should be considered acceptable for this facility, because any of the species that live in the area where the effluent is going to be released, they’re going to be exposed to it ever day of the year.

Have you heard from Samonix about whether they intend to aim at or below this number?

We’ve had some really wonderful conversations with Samonix and they’ve been very open about what they’re hoping to develop in the Pontiac region and the facility itself. They did a presentation directly to myself and my colleagues about what their plans were, and we were able to ask lots of questions.

I think the next step is: we discuss with them our concerns around chloride being released in the effluent and how that will likely have a negative impact on that part of the river. A salmon farm is not present currently, there is clearly some things to take into consideration about how this will have an impact on the river.

Whenever a new industry is being introduced to an area, we do really need to think of what is the impact on the ecological health of the river, and does that negatively impact it? And so we’ve had that additional conversation with them, and we remain in contact with them. I don’t know what the final plans for the final project look like or how close they are to getting there, but we were clear about what we would like to see.

Other than the salt content, what other concerns do you have about the project?

Because it’s a land-based project there are certain aspects of this type of fish firm that would be different than one that is in a natural environment. Some of the concerns have to do with antibiotics that might be given to the fish.

Since it’s a closed system, there’s a lot more controls over any possibility of disease or different pathogens coming in so they can have a lot more control over the environment that the fish are raised in, as well as around the sludge that might be coming from the facility in terms of fish excrement, which will be able to be removed in a way that is not possible in the natural environment. So those are some of the concerns we’ve talked about.

Some of the other parameters that would be present within the effluent such as phosphorus, pH and temperature, these can also have an impact on a natural ecosystem, and there’s a lot that can be done to help to regulate that before it’s being released.

But the piece we haven’t had the same assurance from is the chloride levels, because it’s more difficult to remove it once it’s introduced into an aquatic environment, and it also persists for quite a long time, it doesn’t naturally get eaten up by something else.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

There’s innovative projects that are being developed, and these can be really exciting and there’s lots of interesting industries that can be established in different parts of the watershed. But for us as an organization that is really trying to understand what is best for the river, I think whenever there is a new innovative industry that’s coming in, it requires a bit more consideration and trying to understand its full impact on the overall health of the river system and all of the organisms that live there.

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Volunteers begin clean-up of new Litchfield conservation area

Sarah Pledge Dickson, LJI Journalist

A small group of volunteers gathered near Lawless Lake in Litchfield on Saturday morning to begin clean-up efforts on a piece of land that was recently donated to Nature Conservancy Canada (NCC).

The property, located off Route 301, is about 80 hectares large and the latest addition to a new protected site that will be managed by the conservation organization.

Marc-André Poirier, project coordinator for NCC’s Ottawa Valley chapter, was organizing the volunteers at the entrance to the property. He said the entire protected site in Litchfield is now upwards of 180 hectares, which he likened to the size of 267 soccer fields.

Poirier said that there are three main reasons land in the Pontiac needs to be protected: to conserve natural habitats for biodiversity, to protect species at risk and to ensure the creation of ecological corridors for species movement.

Portage-du-Fort resident Barry Stemshorn was one of the volunteers. He used to work as an executive at Environment Canada and has worked to help NCC acquire land in Quebec, including the land in Litchfield he was cleaning up on Saturday morning.

He has also donated land to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, which, while not connected to the land being cleared on Saturday, happened to be just across the street. He said it was an easy decision to donate his property to the cause.

“I was happy to be able to do it, and that they were interested and were willing to take responsibility for managing the property.”

One of those responsibilities includes what the volunteers were working on this weekend: cleaning up waste.

Poirier said that on many of these pieces of land that have been donated, there is a lot of human garbage. Sometimes, they even have to bring electric saws to cut through large pieces of metal so they can transport them out of the forest.

Poirier noted that the conservation efforts on this new property are focused on cleaning up, but also on protecting its diversity, the first step of which is cataloging an inventory of the wildlife found there.

He said that often, animals use these protected properties as corridors for travel. When a corridor is recognized, the NCC tries to ensure its protection so animals can safely move about their habitat.

“This effort is important when it’s for diversity and protecting vulnerable species and allowing species to travel through their habitat,” he said.

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Jardin Éducatif celebrates 35th year giving youth a chance to flourish

K.C. Jordan, LJI Journalist

The Jardin Éducatif du Pontiac hosted a community BBQ to celebrate its 35th anniversary on Friday night at its gardens just outside Campbell’s Bay.

The community organization, which helps youth in need by giving them a summer job on a farm, fed the hundreds of attendees a BBQ spread of hot dogs, hamburgers, and corn on the cob.

Some of the youth prepared salads with homemade vinaigrette dressings and an array of fresh vegetables picked straight from the gardens, only metres away from where the BBQ was held.

There was also music courtesy of DJ Erica Energy, a bouncy castle, and fresh vegetables for sale at the garden’s farm stall.

This year the BBQ, an end-of-summer tradition at the Jardin Éducatif, was an opportunity to recognize the founding and legacy of the organization that has become a staple in Pontiac life.

Litchfield mayor Colleen Larivière presented director Martin Riopel with a plaque celebrating the organization’s 35th anniversary at their Litchfield farm.

Riopel, who has been with the Jardin for eight years, said kids need to be given a chance, no matter their situation in life.

“All young people need help at one time or another. All young people have personal situations or familial situations. We are there to support them as much as possible,” he told THE EQUITY in French.

He said it’s important for kids to have a place to learn that is not a classroom.

“Yes, academic achievement is important, but it’s also important to have personal successes in life in general.”

After thanking some of the founders, the sponsors and the volunteers that made the BBQ possible, Riopel handed the mic over to the Jardin’s youth workers to give awards to some of the youth who this year, for the first time, were paid to work in the gardens.

Addison Williams received the leadership award, Landon St-Cyr the future entrpreneur award, Cameron Crawford the personality award, Mickaël Molnar-Belley and Gaïa Riopel the awards for best gardeners, Alex Bélair and Rylan Lévesque the awards for best cooks, and Laydon Lavigne the most improved award. Each award-winner received a small potted plant to symbolize the hard work they put in over the course of the summer.

Sylvie Landriault and Claire Taillefer, two of five founding members of the Jardin Éducatif, said they always gave the youth end-of-summer awards.

“We made trophies in the shape of tractors,” Landriault told THE EQUITY in French.

At the time, both women worked for readaptation centres for Outaouais youth in need. They saw that Pontiac kids they were working with had nothing to do in the summer, and they wanted to give them a positive activity to participate in.

Taillefer had somewhat of a green thumb, and pitched the idea of a garden.

“Gardening was a medium we could use to bring them together, and then to teach them,” she said in French, recalling her rationale at the time.

So, with $2,300 given to them by a community fund, and a piece of land gifted to them for $1 a year by a local farmer, they started the garden.

They used some of that money to hire a summer employee, and another chunk to purchase a bus, which they used to pick up the kids if they didn’t have transportation.

Taillefer found the youth took to gardening well, in part because agriculture was already part of everyday life.

“In the Pontiac, people are cultivators, so it was a medium that wouldn’t intimidate anybody,” she said.
Landriault said she figured the work was rewarding because the kids got to feel a sense of accomplishment.

“It was an activity that wasn’t expensive, and what’s more, you walk away happy because you can bring vegetables home with you as well.”

In addition to the annual end-of-summer celebration, which often featured a theatrical performance produced by the youth, the founders also took the youth on excursions, including snowshoeing and canoeing.

Taillefer said she has seen the positive impact the garden has had on youth. At least one former garden participant has progressed up the ranks to become a director of the garden, and a number of couples have also met in the program over the years.

Riopel said the work is rewarding, especially when he runs into former participants later in life and they tell him how helpful the program was to their development.

“Sometimes I’ll run into one of them at the Shawville Fair, or in Ottawa, and they’ll say ‘thank you, Martin!’ [ . . . ] I’ve got a job and a girlfriend now.”

All the proceeds from the BBQ will go toward Bouffe Pontiac.

Jardin Éducatif celebrates 35th year giving youth a chance to flourish Read More »

Litchfield may become home to salmon farm

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Reporter

The Pontiac may become home to Canada’s largest land-based Atlantic salmon farm in the next five years, if its proponent is granted the permits it needs to run the facilities.
Outaouais-based business Samonix is hoping to build the fish farm at the Pontiac Industrial Park in Litchfield, the former site of the Smurfit Stone mill.
Samonix’s president is Mathieu Farley, also co-owner and president of Chelsea home building company Exo Construction.
Rémi Bertrand, former director general for MRC Pontiac, joined the company as senior director of business development in the fall of 2023.
Bertrand explained the farm will produce 12,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon a year, with an average fish size of 5 kg.
“We’re doing everything 100 per cent inside buildings, which there is nobody in Canada who does it now,” Bertrand said.
The farm will raise the fish entirely indoors, in large pools of treated water that is drawn from the Ottawa River.
“The salmon is the holy grail of raising fish. It’s the fish that’s the most vulnerable to its environment, so a dramatic change in temperature will affect its life cycle, and a variation in any of its environment could alter its life cycle,” Bertrand said, explaining that an indoor facility that uses treated water allows for total control of the environment.
“There’s no pathogens, nothing that can come in or out of our building without us knowing. This basically allows us to raise salmon that will be vaccine free, with no treatment or medications that will ever be given to the salmon.”
Bertrand explained that a small water plant will sterilize and neutralize the water from the Ottawa River before it is used to fill the pools.
The facility will then use a method called the recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) which treats and recirculates 99 per cent of the water used to hold the fish.
In an article published in the Journal of Cleaner Production in May 2021 [link for web: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652621008246], lead author and research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada Nesar Ahmed suggests RAS farming as an option for increasing the environmental sustainability and climate resilience of Canada’s fisheries.

“RAS are eco-friendly, water efficient, highly productive intensive farming system, which are not associated with adverse environmental impacts, such as habitat destruction, water pollution and eutrophication, biotic depletion, ecological effects on biodiversity due to captive fish and exotic species escape, disease outbreaks, and parasite transmission,” Ahmed wrote.
Bertrand said of the remaining one per cent of wastewater that cannot be recirculated, the solids, largely fish feces, will be removed and treated through a process called biomethanization.
The leftover liquid will be processed by a wastewater treatment plant, and then discharged into the Ottawa River as per the parameters set by the Ministry of Environment.
“It’s just like a municipal wastewater treatment plant would do,” Bertrand noted.
He said he saw many projects cross his desk during his time as director general for the MRC, but that many of them were missing critical components needed to succeed in the region.
“I spent a good portion of my career working for the Pontiac, trying to get something going, and this checks a lot of my boxes.”
‘Room to grow’
Samonix bought 85 acres of the Pontiac Industrial Park in 2022, and another 100 acres this year. Bertrand said the main facility will occupy about 14 acres, and the remaining land will be used for auxiliary buildings, parking, and to guarantee the business has room to grow.
“The [land] will allow us the capacity to double the production down the road,” Bertrand said. “But we’ve also been getting a lot of interest from auxiliary businesses that would potentially want to relocate closer to our production.”
He said a Quebec company that transforms salmon imported from Norway and Chile into fish cuts for poke bowls, smoked salmon, and portioned salmon for the restaurants or grocery stores has expressed interest in relocating to the Pontiac to be closer to the proposed fish farm.
Bertrand also noted that as the business grows, it will consume enough fish feed that it could open its own fish feed plant on site, which the 185 acres will allow for.
He said the location of the site within a day’s travel of markets in major urban centres like Toronto, Montreal, New York and Boston means the farm is strategically placed for growth.
“Just to give you a perspective, the market we’ll be selling into is a market of about 280,000 tonnes of salmon a year, and we’ll be producing about 12,000 tonnes,” Bertrand said. “So there’s room to grow.”
A first in Canada
According to Bertrand, there is no other indoor land-based salmon farm in Canada of the size Samonix plans to be.
In fact, a study conducted by economic analytics firm Counterpoint Consulting for the government of British Columbia found there’s no Atlantic salmon RAS farm in steady-state operation in the world that produces more than 3,000 tonnes per year.
As Bertrand sees it, this presents his team with a critical advantage in a moment of opportunity.
In June the federal government set 2029 as the deadline by which open net-pen salmon farming operations in B.C. must shift to land-based methods.
While there is concern this five-year window will be insufficient for transitioning an entire industry, Bertrand figures the sudden need for expertise in the field could position Samonix, which began initial business plans in 2018, as a leader in the land-based farming method.
“By the time we’re built and operational, and we’ve basically developed the expertise, we will own the knowledge and the expertise to export it to B.C.,” Bertrand said.
“We’re early enough in the game to position ourselves [as leaders] in Northeast America, but we’re late enough in the game to be able to rely on proven technology that’s been tried elsewhere, where they made mistakes and corrected it.”
Bertrand said while Samonix’s proposed scale is unprecedented, the technology is not without evidence of success.
He pointed to a fish plant in Japan called Proximar Seafood that uses technology from the same provider as Samonix. It is smaller – producing about 5,000 tonnes of salmon a year – but is on track to complete its first fish harvest in August.
A few hoops yet to jump
Bertrand said there are two major approvals the company needs before it can put shovels in the ground.
The first is the granting of a 12 MW electrical hookup from Hydro-Québec, the application for which was submitted in March.
At last month’s MRC Pontiac Council of Mayors meeting, Samonix received a letter from council supporting this application.
“The second [approval] is to get our certificate of authorization from the [Quebec] Ministry of Environment. From our perspective, it’s not a matter of if we’ll get it, it’s when we’ll get it,” Bertrand said.
“We’re asking specialists to give a permit in a sector of activity they haven’t necessarily had the opportunity to build some knowledge around yet, because it’s such an innovation for Quebec. So it takes time.”
Bertrand said the company has already conducted several environmental impact studies, and will continue to do so this summer.
“We’re conducting a study on mussels, and have already done studies on fauna and flora. The Ministry of Environment even asked us to do a test on the most vulnerable species of the Ottawa River which is a plankton – a microscopic living form that can be utilized as feed for various species.”
He said Samonix is putting in the technological equipment required to treat its wastewater to meet the criteria of the ministry, so he expects environmental certification to be a “non-issue.”
“If everything goes as planned, by the end of 2025 we should have all of that in place, the final engineering completed, and hopefully be breaking ground in 2026.”

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