Civic Alert: Taking care of our own garbage?

This would end the present, morally questionable system where our garbage ends up in a rural landfill, almost certainly being unwelcome to the neighbouring population.

It is also an example of the radical re-thinking of the municipality now being led by Marks in Westmount City Hall.

With the other suburban mayors, Marks was invited to a closed-door meeting of the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) environment commission last week. They discussed their roles in the regional waste management plan — the one that calls for 60 per cent diversion by 2008 (although 2011 is more likely).

Suburban mayors were sceptical of Big Montreal’s attempt to take over all garbage operations. This is a huge, new contentious agglom issue which the demerged cities have only recently taken up.

“I was asked if Westmount was willing to have its own landfill. I said ‘no,’ but that I envisaged ultimately dealing with 100 per cent within our borders,” said Marks.

“There is a reasonable possibility that new technologies will emerge that smaller municipalities could use. Who can predict when that will be? But if we are locked into a giant regional scheme, it would not happen. We need flexible approaches”

New techniques in June

CMM staff are currently investigating new techniques that may be possible for disposing of waste, and promise a report by June.

“We should await that before committing to any long term plan,” said Marks, “but Montreal wants to go ahead with several schemes.”

The CMM has the responsibility for developing the regional plans for dealing with garbage, including enhanced methods like recycling and composting so that it meets government diversion targets.

Responsibility for the operation of the plan was given to the boroughs in the PQ’s forced merger law. The Liberal demerger reform split the responsibility between the centre city and the reconstituted cities and boroughs.

Polluter-pay funds

Substantial funds are already at stake. The Quebec government, driven by pressure to operate polluter-pay schemes, now collects fees from the packaging industry and other short-life products. The funds raised are to be used to halve municipalities’ expenses for blue-box type recycling.

Since June last year there has also been a $10 per tonne surcharge on all garbage (municipal, industrial and construction) going to landfill. Municipalities were to receive funds to support new initiatives — like Westmount’s green waste collection, introduced last year and just resuming for 2007.

Central Montreal has claimed all these funds, although it is the cities and boroughs where innovations are carried out.

“For us it’s a local responsibility to motivate citizens and help change their habits,” said Marks. “That cannot be done centrally.”

Only four other suburbs joined Marks at the meeting — Mayors John Meaney (Kirkland), Vera Danyluk (TMR) and Campbell Stuart (Montreal-West) — as well as Janet Ryan, the councillor responsible for the environment in Baie d’Urfé.

Disappointing response

It was very disappointing that there was not more interest. The transfer of responsibility from suburb to centre did not meet with much opposition from the Transition Committee. By not making it an issue until now has allowed Montreal to get a foothold on what should be suburban responsibilities.

“I think the reason only a few cities were represented is the sense of frustration over having so little say in any of Montreal’s decisions that affect them,” said Marks.

“Besides, most suburbs are way ahead of Montreal in many waste and other environmental issues, so we are not going to take kindly to their making decisions for us.”

The CMM commission is chaired by Pierre Boileau of Laval and members include the representatives from Châteauguay, Longueuil and Terrebonne. The reconstituted cities have two seats on the CMM council — Meaney and Bill McMurchie (Pointe-Claire), but are not represented on any commission.

Like dogs and cars, garbage never goes away, although we think that garbage does. It is out-of-sight, out-of-mind at best. Local authorities continue to ignore it and it comes back to haunt succeeding generations of mayors, councillors — and taxpayers.

Fifteen years ago it was the suburbs’ great incinerator fiasco. This $1 billion project was conceived because Montreal wanted to close the Miron landfill which was the home of most independent cities’ waste.

Now garbage has become another of the many agglom disputes between Big Montreal and the suburbs.

Back to the polls next year - Chagnon

We may be back in the voting booths next spring. That is the likely outcome of the present three-party split of the National Assembly, Jacques Chagnon, Westmount’s re-elected MNA predicts.

“I feel honoured that the people of the riding have sent me back to Parliament, but I don’t think it will be for more than a year or 18 months,” he told me this week. “With the make up of the parties so close, it will not last long.”

Chagnon will be sworn in this (Thursday) morning at the National Assembly by François Côté, its Secretary-General. Next week, he plans a golfing break with fellow Montreal MNA’s Russell Copeman and Geoff Kelley.

Chagnon doubts that there will be a new cabinet formed until April 17 or 18, because of the intervening Easter break.

The assembly will reconvene on May 8, where will be a throne speech, budget and the annual estimates.

“I expect it will be a short session with little time for anything else,” Chagnon forcast. “The three parties will be looking closely to discover where everyone stands on all the issues including the agglom.”

He will be resuming his fortnightly Examiner articles in April. Like me, he sometimes has to struggle with deadlines. “Occasionally, it is midnight and I realize I have to deliver my article next morning. However, the sheet of blank, white paper is a strong discipline!”



Suffering in silence

When registration for the rec’s summer programmes closed last week, 152 children were on the waiting-list for the soccer programme, director Rosalind Davis told the WMA board on Tuesday.

Yet we don't hear an outcry from the parents, some of whom joined the line five hours before the 6 p.m. opening of the registers. The proposed artificial turf is meant to provide more soccer facilities.

“I don’t know why they don’t speak out,” Davis said. “We hear a lot from the ‘Save the Park’ people and of the environment issues, but there are several sides to this story.”

I have written previously about the missing voices from the sports users of the proposed artificial turf. Who will step up to air their views? “Not me,” said Davis, “although I would be willing to help.”



Getting to the answer

Council is talking of a public consultation and it is past time they defined what they have in mind.

The objectors seem to be getting themselves a lot of attention with not too many facts. The protestors say they have done a lot of environmental research and have facts. Why are they sitting on them?

The city has made various studies and commissioned its own environmental report. Why is council sitting on theirs?

As Martin Barry reported last week, Mayor Marks said that she envisages a questioning approach to the consultation. That is fine as long as it is only one part of the hearing.

There should be a multi-stage process based on the principles of hearings by BAPE —Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement, a Quebec government body which reports on all sides of an issue, social, financial and industrial, as well as environmental.

Cheap at $1 million

The suburbs’ controversial Incinerator project was resolved by public hearings which cost $1 million - and saved municipalities from becoming responsible for a flawed $1 billion project!

The Westmount Park project should have a similar, but slimmed down version to suit the size of the project and Westmount’s budget — using the same principles, even if they seem initially expensive.

There should be an independent chairman acceptable to all sides and two key stages — one to determine the facts unemotionally and the other for opinions.

Harmonious end

Its purpose would be to discover the most harmonious solution possible from the many views an installing artificial surface in the Park. Its report would aid council on the decision to go forward or not.

It will have to break precedent with how information has been distributed in the past because today more transparency is demanded in many walks of life, and certainly in a municipality.

There are undoubted risks and drawbacks, as well as advantages, in the project. Every citizen should be engaged in determining the correct path. Afterall, the Park is forever.

One councillor, who was not willing to chair the commission, told me “I am not going to do hours of work so that I can be victimized by gratuitous pot-shots.”

Westmount deserves a better treatment than that for its main park.

Civic Studies

Vacancy Westmount is looking for a City Clerk. This week, the city advertised the vacancy which has existed since Lucie Tousignant left last summer. Since then, most of the duties have been undertaken by Nancy Gagnon, the Deputy Clerk.

Arterial Big Montreal has public hearings next Wednesday (City Hall) about its plans to call “arterial” all streets that are bus lines. A forced merger under another name?

Loan-ly Only one person signed up to object to the city’s multi-million dollar borrowing by-law. At least 500 signatures were needed to require a referendum. Next, council will seek approval from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

Schedules The spring bus schedules were introduced on Monday. Timetables for all lines serving Westmount are available at City Hall reception — in its temporary upstairs location

Recycling1 Westmount’s pioneering Wednesday collections of green waste for composting resumed yesterday. “If it came from the earth, send it back to the earth,” was the slogan used by Councilor George Bowser, Public Works Commissioner.

Recycling2 Bowser and new Public Works Director Jacques Lahaie visited the JC Fibres recycling plant in St Henri last Wednesday.

Recycling3 “Ville-Marie Mayor Benoit Labonté says his green boxes only last three or four years. I had my blue box for 16 years!” Gazette columnist Henry Aubin on Tuesday unwittingly revealed more evidence of Westmount doing it better!



Community activist Don Wedge can be reached at calert@web.net. His columns are archived at www.westmountexaminer.com, go to Opinion.