Martin C. Barry

It says something about how far the City of Deux-Montagnes has come in the last five years that in Maclean’s latest edition Deux-Montagnes outranks the prestigious City of Westmount in the national magazine’s evaluations of municipalities across the nation.

That accomplishment was near the top of the agenda when Mayor Denis Martin delivered his monthly report on new developments during the latest city council meeting on Aug. 8.

Chalk one up for DM

Deux-Montagnes was ranked 36^th out of more than 4,000 municipalities evaluated across Canada, and 1^st among those in Quebec. Meanwhile, the City of Westmount came in as No. 51 in the overall rankings.

According to a statement issued by Deux-Montagnes city hall, the grading took a number of criteria into account, including economic health, demographic data, taxation, accessibility to healthcare and public transit.

Affordable housing

The last criterion made Deux-Montagnes stand out, followed by its low crime rate and the affordability of its housing. (The average home in Deux-Montagnes is now evaluated at $286,000, placing the city’s residential real estate among the most affordable and attractive in the region of Montreal.) Deux-Montagnes ranked 13^th across Canada in this regard.

“This is thanks to the participation of everyone,” the mayor told the relatively sparse crowd attending the mid-summer council meeting.

A continuing effort

“This is more or less the goal we had set when we first went out door-to-door during our first electoral campaign. I would say we had set the bar high at that time, but now we find we’ve gotten somewhere with it. We don’t intend to sit around. We will continue doing things such as investing in our parks for families.

“Of course, there are still a lot of dossiers and a lot things remaining to be fixed in Deux-Montagnes, for example the dike and the floods and the REM. We will continue to be present and to defend the interests of Deux-Montagnes.”

Renovation materials

During the public question period, Ginette Clairoux of Croissant Brown criticized the City of Deux-Montagnes’ strict regulation of exterior renovation materials, which she said sometimes impose uneven standards for the selection of colours.

As the mayor explained, the colours of materials are expected to harmonize with those on nearby houses and buildings. Clairoux, who lives a short distance from the school grounds of Polyvalente Deux-Montagnes and has complained at past council meetings about night-time disturbances there, suggested the situation is still not in hand.

PDM belongs to CSSMI

Mayor Martin pointed out that the PDM grounds are in the jurisdiction of the Commission scolaire de la Seigneurie-des-Mille-Îles and that the City of Deux-Montagnes has no little or no authority to regulate what goes on there.

During the meeting, Mayor Martin also revealed that CDPQ Infra, which is building the REM train that will be passing through Deux-Montagnes, has agreed to schedule shuttle buses between Deux-Montagnes and Montreal to replace the commuter train service which will end while the REM system is under construction.

Shuttle buses for REM

While service won’t be available during peak commuter travel periods, there will be shuttle service from Deux-Montagnes’ Grand Moulin station to downtown Montreal at several other times during the day. The service is expected to begin in January next year when the old train service shuts.And as he told several residents who came to the meeting to find out, construction on a new permanent dike along the waterfront has started. The remains of a temporary dike that was put up last spring as flood waters rose are now being removed. “They’re cleaning the area and getting the materials ready for the new dike, and it should be completed for November,” he said.

(NSN) The Town of Rosemère, in collaboration with the Rosemère Business Association (AGAR), is proud to unveil a new and eye-catching style of planter that will help put local storefronts in their best light.

Great idea, says mayor

The idea of coming up with a striking decorative element to call attention to the town’s businesses arose during the annual Rosemère in Bloom competition.

“These illuminated planters are great for showcasing our businesses in an attractive and consistent way,” said Rosemère Mayor Eric Westram.

Keeping traditions

“But they also represent the beginning of a tradition among our merchants to reinforce our reputation as a proud, green and prosperous community, while still maintaining our small-town charm.”

The town has made funds available for businesses that wish to purchase these special planters and fill them with flowers. The undertaking has been made possible through the support of AGAR and its efforts to promote the Rosemère business community.

Local businesses pleased

“We are delighted by the wonderful partnership that has formed between AGAR, Fleuriste Foliole and the town,” said AGAR Vice-President Jessy Turcot. “This initiative will enable merchants and office buildings alike to join in this turnkey project to enhance the look of their exterior.”

So far, close to 10 merchants have embraced this new concept and obtained planters to put outside their establishments. It is hoped that more and more members of the business community follow suit in the years to come to light up the town’s main streets for everyone to enjoy.

Martin C. Barry

Despite a setback for Rosemère’s town manager whose legal appeal to dismiss an investigation by the Quebec Order of Engineers was recently rejected, Rosemère mayor Eric Westram says he continues to have full confidence in Guy Benedetti.

The Order of Engineers has accused Benedetti of tolerating and participating in collusion when he was director-general of the City of Longueuil from 2005 to 2012.

Had worked for Longueuil

According to news reports last year and more recently, a former director of engineering with Longueuil testified to the OIQ that Benedetti had asked him make sure the municipal services sub-contractor CIMA+ received a certain contract in 2009.

The OIQ maintains that a system of collusion existed in Longueuil from 2002 to 2009 with the approval of senior bureaucrats and two politically-influential individuals.

Appeal to Superior Court

When charges against Benedetti were tabled in early 2019, long after he had started working for Rosemère, he appealed to the Superior Court of Quebec to order the charges dropped.

He did this after asking the OIQ’s disciplinary tribunal three times to drop the accusations since they were taking so long to process, and the details on which the charges were based were too vague to take seriously, claimed Benedetti.

Mayor Westram reacts

Earlier this week, Rosemère’s mayor told the North Shore News he has long been aware of the charges hanging over the town’s current director-general, but that he supports Benedetti.

“I’m very well aware of it,” said Westram, who was elected in 2017, while maintaining that the previous mayor, Madeleine Leduc, whom he had defeated, would also be aware since, according to Westram, she hired Benedetti.

Says Leduc hired him

“She’s the one who hired him. And she knew about the complaint that the Ordre des Ingénieurs had lodged. She knew about this in 2016, and I knew about it a few weeks after I was elected.“My position is very clear,” he added. “It’s not because somebody is accused that they should be considered guilty. So I told Mr. Benedetti then and I told him again that he had my trust and that otherwise he is my general manager.”

(NSN) Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard issued a statement earlier this week saying that will soon be tabling new legislation to deal with theft of personal information through widescape computer hacking.

The move comes following the theft of personal data from Quebec’s Caisses Desjardins.

Initially, according to Girard, the proposed legislation would improve the protection of personal and financial information belonging to citizens.

Safeguards to increase

He noted that as things stand now, personal financial assets are guaranteed in instances where fraud is committed. He suggested that credit tracking agencies such as Equifax are playing an important role in providing stronger security. Girard said Desjardins reacted quickly to the situation it was faced with.

“It is our intention to put into place measures aimed at increasing the protection of the financial information of all Quebecers,” Girard said. “The incident at Desjardins is regrettable and I understand that Quebecers are worried. We are aware that they are waiting for improvements from the government.”

Martin C. Barry

Several vehicles and officers from the Régie de Police du Lac des Deux-Montagnes converged at the corner of 21^st Ave. and Montclair St. in Deux-Montagnes during the early evening of Thursday Aug. 8 in response to a report of a “road rage” incident involving two cars.

“In general it was a just a case of road rage that had taken place,” said RPLDM community relations officer Christopher Harding. According to Harding, one of the vehicles involved cut off the other, following which there was an impact between the two.

Road rage incident

“The person who got cut off got out of their vehicle to get the license plate number of the other vehicle,” he continued. Because one of the individuals involved was a young adult, that person’s father turned up at the scene, said Harding.

“When she went out to get the license plate number of the other vehicle, the driver of the other vehicle pushed her. The father then showed up on the scene, and as you may well imagine that didn’t go over well.”

Police reacted

According to Harding, the heated nature of the confrontation prompted several police cars to respond to the scene. “I think the officers were also responding in order to locate the suspects,” he said. “They rounded them up. This was all about road rage.”

In the end, a male occupant from one of the vehicles was detained by police and taken into custody in a police car. While the sight of multiple police vehicles responding to an incident may seem unduly alarming, Harding said staff at the RPLDM were following procedure.

A different approach

“Sometimes a certain incident may bring a lot of vehicles but not that much personnel,” Harding said. “Because in the smaller towns, in order to be able to cover a larger territory all of our vehicles are solo. So the moment you need, say, two officers to intervene, automatically you’re going to get two cars. And then, of course, the supervisor’s van will arrive as well.”

For that reason, he said sometimes seemingly innocuous incidents like shouting matches between neighbours or relatives can potentially result in three or four police cars converging on the scene.

Martin C. Barry

A perfect ten. If the people of Deux-Montagnes were scoring the Canada Day they had this past July 1, that would almost certainly be the number.

For not only was the weather sunny, but there wasn’t even a hint of the mid-afternoon thunderstorm activity that has plagued many a Canada Day celebration in the North Shore region in the past.

Great day for Canada

“A super day,” Deux-Montagnes city councillor Michel Mendes said in an interview with the North Shore News. “Everybody’s in a pretty good mood. Nothing can go wrong today.”

This year the Canada Day festivities organizing committee decided to pay homage to the city’s directors of police (Patrick Denis), fire (Norbert Vendette) and public works (Jean Fayomi) for the key role they played this past spring in saving Deux-Montagnes from a recurrence of the flooding that swept through the area two years ago.

The weather cooperated

It was Deux-Montagnes 48^th annual Canada Day celebration. (Just two years to go before a really big 50^th anniversary bash for the country’s birthday on July 1 2021.) “The weather’s helped out and is looking really good,” said longtime event MC Tom Whitton.

Carly Leblanc, a lifelong Deux-Montagnes resident and recent Lake of Two Mountains High School graduate, performed the country’s national anthem on the steps of city hall, as well as later on stage in Central Park.

Thanks to Parade Marshalls

“Today we are very happy to be able to honour our parade marshals, people from Deux-Montagnes who worked so very hard this past spring,” said Mayor Denis Martin, addressing the crowd in Central Park from the stage at the beginning of the festivities.

“The whole team did a fantastic job on the floods. I think this year we were prepared. And we had a good team to get the job done during 30 days and nights. I can’t say just how grateful we all are.” The mayor noted that the city’s director-general, Benoit Ferland, also played a key role, although Ferland could not be present on Canada Day as he was travelling outside the country.

Martin C. Barry

Lingering concerns about future flooding in Rosemère as well as questions about the town’s new billing system for the water tax were two major issues which emerged during the latest town council meeting on July 8.

Town’s 2020 flood plans

During the open plenary session which takes place prior to the regular council meeting, a resident of Thorncliffe St. asked Mayor Eric Westram what measures the town is planning in case there is flooding next year similar to what was experienced this past spring.

“We have a study going on at the moment,” said Westram. “We’re studying the three dams that we have on our territory to see if they could resist another flooding situation. We’re also looking at the general territory to see if there’s a need to put extra dikes to prevent anything from happening.”

Sandbags no longer do

According to Westram, the idea of using sandbags each year now for the past few years is starting to wear a little thin, considering the flooding situation appears to be getting more serious with the increasing prevalence of environmental warming.

“What we’d basically like to do is stabilize the situation as much as we can,” he said. “Now the problem is that the government has put a stop on all construction and renovations in the flooded areas. So even if I wanted to do something like that tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t be allowed to put it.”

New flood zones in effect

As Westram said, the provincial government has issued a new flood-zone map with greatly extended coverage – and which a number of communities and municipalities on the North Shore, in Laval and in the Montreal region are contesting for what they claim is inaccuracy.

“The cities are contesting the flood zones because the map that came up, to us it doesn’t make any sense. If you look at that map, there are places that were never flooded and that will never be flooded. So there’s a sort of negotiation going on at the moment between the government and the different cities. What we want the map to reflect is the actual reality of the situation.”

Construction freeze in place

Westram said he hoped the matter would be resolved before next spring, “because the problem occurs in springtime.” However, for the time being a general freeze on construction or renovations in the new flood zones is in effect, he added.

The mayor said that two flood-zone maps are currently circulating: one produced by the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, and another issued by the provincial government. He called the former “a good reflection of the situation,” while saying in the case of the other the province “decided to put flood zones almost everywhere – which makes no sense.”

They want map revised

He said Rosemère and other municipalities are asking Quebec to recognize the CMM map, although some corrections might also be made to it. Westram also suggested that what the town also wants is for Quebec to create rules allowing property owners to build flood defences of their own.

As was the situation last month, a number of Rosemèrites came forward at this month’s council meeting to express a degree of befuddlement with the water tax bills they received beginning this spring. Rosemère’s water billing system has been revamped to reflect higher water consumption in the form of a higher tax for those users.

Water bill questions again

However, some residents have complained that they don’t understand why they’ve being billed more when they are not aware of having used more water over the past year. A woman at the July council meeting in this situation was told to cheque for water seepage in her household, including run-on toilets.

“You’d be surprised,” said Westram, noting that he had one faucet in his house that was leaking a drop of water every four to five seconds. He said he left a bucket beneath it, and upon returning in the evening the bucket was overflowing. “It’s amazing how a slight run in a toilet or a leaky faucet can cause water consumption to rise.”