Strength of Conviction by Tom Mulcair

Author:Tom Mulcair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2015-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Storm Clouds

Rigorous enforcement, irrespective of the size of the business or the influence of the mayor, had been my approach as environment minister. It didn’t sit well with some municipal authorities that had allowed precious wetlands in the Montréal area to be backfilled and developed despite rules that, on paper at least, were supposed to protect them.

On Montréal’s South Shore, the largest city, Longueuil, was no exception. There, local environmental groups had been working hard to protect some of the wetlands that were home to protected species. I remember a very cordial meeting with the mayor, who had been complaining publicly that a lot of development was being held up because the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks was insisting on having a comprehensive plan to protect wetlands. He just saw no reason why the old way of doing things — paying lip service to the rules and developing anyway — shouldn’t simply continue. At the time, wetlands could be bought for practically nothing. Developing them increased their value dramatically, so the charade always began with local officials and developers trying to get permission for their projects, and when that was refused, more often than not they just went ahead and developed the land. Any fine that the developers had to pay was no more than spare change compared to the greatly enhanced value of the property. I made it clear to the mayor of Longueuil that the times had changed and that only some of the projects would be allowed to proceed, on condition that we could agree on an overall plan to protect the wetlands. He accepted my offer, and the plan was prepared and approved. It was a win-win solution, both for the mayor and for the environment of Longueuil.

The biggest challenge came in Laval. From the beginning, the mayor of Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt, and my department were at loggerheads over the definition of what constituted a protected flood zone, as any enforcement of that definition would greatly restrict development in some areas of the island city. Predictably, the protection of these wetlands, which, coincidentally, were situated in my riding of Chomedey, also quickly became a flashpoint.

In 2005 we learned of an illegal development in western Laval, where a developer had gone ahead and developed a large tract of land including clearly protected areas. Instead of fining the developer after the fact, as the department had always done and which we knew would have little effect, I decided that it was time to send a strong signal that this was no longer how things would be done. I consulted our legal team. Did we have a more stringent approach available to us? Our lawyers said we did, but it had never been tried before: I could issue an order forcing the developer to restore the wetland to its original pristine state. So that’s what we did. I issued the order in August 2005.

I had just completed a wide-ranging twenty-one-city tour of public consultations on my

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.