The current issue of the Laval News volume 29-18 published June 16th, 2021.
Covering Laval local news, politics, sports and our new section Mature Life.
(Click on the image to read the paper.)
Laval News Volume 29-18
SWLSB flags kept at half-mast for 215 hours in memory of Indigenous victims
Following the devastating discovery of 215 Indigenous children buried on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board (SWLSB) kept its flags lowered to half-mast at all schools, centres and at head office in Rosemère since June 2.
The flags were flying at half-mast until June 11, for a total of 215 hours, in memory of each life lost, the SWLSB said in a statement.
“Some of the children were as young as 3 years old,” said Paolo Galati, chairperson of the SWLSB. “It’s hard to believe and to understand. It’s even harder to explain to our children the atrocity these children went through.
“This tragedy has caused the issue of residential schools to resurface, as well as the wounds from this genocide towards Indigenous people. Thousands and thousands of children died in residential schools.
“As Canadians, as a school board, as educators, as parents, as caregivers, we have a critical role in facing the truth, educating ourselves and teaching our youth about First Nations in Canada, about Truth and Reconciliation.”
In 2018, the SWLSB established a First Nations, Métis and Inuit Committee (FNMI Committee) to represent the school board’s interests in Aboriginal education.
The mandate of the committee is to ensure integration of First Nations awareness into the educational process, on the premise that with better education there is better understanding and improved acceptance.
The SWLSB says the FNMI Committee which is part of the SWLSB’s Pedagogical Services Department, will continue to find ways to ensure that the school board can support, reach out and assist its schools and centres so that everyone gains a better understanding about Indigenous peoples’ culture and history.
“Our school board is located on the territory of the Kanien’keeha:ka Mohawk nation and we also have students of Indigenous culture within our schools and centres,” added Galati. “It is crucial for us to reach out to these communities and continue building relationships.”
Calling arrest ‘unjustified,’ UPAC apologizes to Chomedey MNA Guy Ouellette
UPAC, Quebec’s anti-corruption police force known for sometimes dramatic tactics while executing its mandate, issued a formal apology on Thursday to independent Chomedey MNA Guy Ouellette who was arrested by UPAC in 2017.
Ouellette was arrested after UPAC came to believe he was involved in a leak of information from inside UPAC.
At the time, UPAC investigators used a tactic that involved sending a text message to Ouellette over a cell phone that belonged to a suspect.
When he responded, they arrested Ouellette, subjected him to a lengthy interrogation, but never filed charges.
As part of an agreement between UPAC and Ouellette with the apology, Ouellette is dropping a lawsuit he filed against the anti-corruption agency.
(The Laval News will be following up at length on this developing story in our next print edition to be published on Wednesday June 16.)
Man arrested following 10-km. chase on Autoroute 13
A twenty-something man was placed under arrest by the Sûreté du Québec during the early morning hours of Thursday June 10 after he led officers on a 10-kilometre chase on northbound Autoroute 13, ending near the Sainte-Rose exit.
Around 2 am, the SQ decided to flag down the Audi 3 he was driving after witnessing a routine highway code violation.
Although he stepped hard on the gas for a good stretch on the A-13, he pulled over as he approached the Sainte-Rose exit onto the service road.
After being taken into custody, he was released pending court arraignment on a charge of fleeing the police.
According to the SQ, he was also issued a ticket for speeding and his car was impounded.
INRS study links prostate cancer to obesity
Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer among Canadian men and the third leading cause of cancer death. Abdominal obesity appears to be associated with a greater risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer.
This link was demonstrated in a study led by Professor Marie-Élise Parent of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (which has a campus in Laval) and published in the journal Cancer Causes & Control.
Over the years, several studies have shown that obesity is a major risk factor for prostate cancer. To further explore the link between disease incidence and body mass, the research team studied data from a survey conducted in Montréal between 2005 and 2012. Researchers observed that abdominal obesity was associated with an increased risk of aggressive cancer.
“Pinpointing the risk factors for aggressive cancer is a big step forward in health research because it’s the hardest to treat,” said Prof. Parent. “This data creates an opportunity to work preventively, by monitoring men with this risk factor more closely,” she added.
Abdominal and general obesity
The actual distribution of body fat appears to be a significant factor in the development of the disease: the impact on a person’s health can vary depending on whether the fat is concentrated around the abdomen or distributed throughout the body.
According to Éric Vallières, a Université de Montréal student conducting his doctoral research at INRS and the study’s main author, “Abdominal obesity causes hormonal and metabolic variations that can promote the growth of hormone-dependent cancer cells.
Abdominal obesity is believed to be associated with a decrease in testosterone, as well as a state of chronic inflammation linked to the development of aggressive tumours.”
General obesity did not show the same correlation as abdominal fat. This may result from a detection bias and possible biological effects.
“In obese people, the protein used to detect prostate cancer at an early stage, prostate-specific antigen (PSA), is diluted in the blood,” Mr. Vallières says. “This hemodilution makes cancer more difficult to detect.”
The research team believes that studies on the timing of obesity exposure over a lifetime should be prioritized, and that a more in-depth analysis of body fat distribution could provide greater insight into the risks of developing prostate cancer.
About the study
The article “General and abdominal obesity trajectories across adulthood, and risk of prostate cancer: results from the PROtEuS study, Montreal, Canada,” by Éric Vallières, Miceline Mésidor, Marie-Hélène Roy-Gagnon, Hugues Richard and Marie-Élise Parent, was published in Cancer Causes & Control in April.
The study received funding from the Canadian Cancer Society, the Cancer Research Society, Fonds de recherche du Québec–Santé (FRQS), Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Alleged leader of new biker gang is a Laval resident
A Laval man who was deported from Canada seven years ago, and whose home was raided by organized crime investigators last week, is believed to be a member of a new and Quebec-based motorcycle gang known as the “Moors,” presenting a potential rivalry to the long-established Hell’s Angels.
According to the Montreal daily news site La Presse, Richard Goodridge was once a street gang leader and was deported from Canada in 2014, but later returned after receiving Canadian citizenship. La Presse says two of the Moors’ members were arrested several weeks ago.
The Montreal daily says the motorcycle gang’s philosophy is based on “inclusivity,” in contrast to the Hell’s Angels who historically have usually had an all-white membership. Goodridge, 52, is from Guyana in South America. La Presse says he was deported there but returned to Montreal two years later.
The news site claims that Woodridge’s Laval residence was raided by organized crime investigators from the Montreal Police Department last week, who were looking for evidence related to their investigation into an attempted murder in Montreal’s Little Italy neighbourhood in April.
While they say he wasn’t charged, they add that cell phones, clothing and a Moors motorcycle gang jacket were seized as potential evidence useful to the investigation. The two motorcycle club associates, identified by La Presse as Patrick Gilbert and Steven Thérien, were also arrested and charged.
The paper says that at Thérien’s Blainville residence, the investigators found two handguns, and a Moors club jacket. He was charged with unlawful firearms possession and breach of court-imposed conditions. La Presse maintains that Goodridge has a long biker gang history going back to the 1990s, including membership in several Hell’s Angels affiliate gangs.
LPD says image of officer’s ‘salute’ is out of context
A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it? Not so, say the Laval Police, noting that a recent photo of an LPD officer posted on social media by an irritated Laval resident grossly distorted the picture’s true meaning.
According to the LPD, the image of an unidentified LPD officer went viral. The person who took it had just been stopped after he was walking past a police car and gave the officers inside a middle-finger salute while allegedly also mouthing off an obscenity at them.
Since deliberately being disrespectuful towards officers of the peace is a ticketable offence, the officers issued him a $78 ticket. While questioning the officers about the offence he had committed, according to the LPD he video-recorded one of the officers as she held out her hand to demonstrate the offending gesture.
The LPD maintains the image circulated on social media, which appears to show the officer being disrespectful to a citizen, is out of context and doesn’t tell the truth.
Laval Fire Dept. puts out blaze at Bo-Bi-No Marina
On June 6, a boat fire at the Bo-Bi-No Marina along the waterfront in Sainte-Dorothée caused minor injuries and property damage.
According to information on the Association des Pompiers de Laval’s Twitter feed, three persons suffered minor burns in the incident. In addition to the boat that was destroyed, two other small vessels were also damaged by the intense blaze.
Fewer complaints to ombudsman blamed on COVID and staff vacancy
Laval’s new ombudsman says she will be catching up this year on a backlog
The Laval ombudsman’s office managed to process 467 complaint files in 2020, regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in spite of the departure of former ombudsman Nadine Mailloux, the city’s new ombudsman says in the latest report.
Office was vacant
Ombudsman Nathalie Blais tabled the 2020 report in Laval city council on June 1. It was the eighth annual report to come from the city ombudsman since the office was first established in 2013. The new report documents case files up to last Dec. 31.
Following Mailloux’s departure to take on a similar position with the City of Montreal, there was no ombudsman in Laval beginning last August, says Blais. With the 467 dossiers opened in 2020, that raises the total number of complaints processed by the ombudsman over the past seven years to 3,361.
While 41 per cent of the files in 2020 concerned public works, engineering and urban planning issues, the figure last year was 57 per cent. Although Mailloux left in July 2020, a press release from the ombudsman’s office says that Blais didn’t fill the post until this past March.
2020 was a slow year
Blais says in her report that in 71 per cent of cases, the ombudsman’s office was able to resolve and close dossiers by providing residents with information on their options and rights, by putting them in touch with the city administration, or by intervening on their behalf and following up on their requests.
She said that since arriving in office after her predecessor had been gone for months, she saw that a significant number of dossiers hadn’t been dealt with in the intervening period, either because the office was understaffed at that point or certain city departments hadn’t replied.
According to the new ombudsman, the number of dossiers this year is significantly lower than in 2019, which she attributes to an impact from the pandemic and the possibility that many Laval residents had other things on their minds.
Catching up to do
But she also attributed the lower numbers to the fact there was no ombudsman for months, and an assistant in the office could only take up part of the slack. She said the ombudsman’s office will be spending valuable time this year catching up on the backlog.
In a seeming acknowledgment of the rising number of English-speaking people who now live in Laval, the ombudsman’s 2020 report includes some content written in English – although it consists entirely of comments submitted by anglophone Laval residents that are overwhelmingly flattering to the ombudsman’s department.
“I really appreciate that you actually listened to what I had to say and gave me time to explain the situation,” says one respondent. “I truly appreciate your commitment and your efforts to ensure that the issues raised in my complaint are being addressed by the respective departments,” says another.
Non receivable issues
Of the 467 complaints, 66 were dealt with quickly: they were simply directed to another level, because the ombudsman doesn’t deal with issues which should be addressed by other specific city departments, including the Laval Police, the Société de transport de Laval (STL), the city’s executive-committee and city council.
Laval’s last ombudsman left last summer, but no one replaced her until this past March
By district, the most complaints received were from Chomedey (54), followed by Laval-Les Îles (32), Souvenir-Labelle (31), Fabreville (23), Renaud (23), Saint-François (22) and Sainte-Rose (22). The ombudsman’s office received the least number of complaints from Saint-Martin (8).
Quick to respond
The ombudsman says that most dossiers (73 per cent) were dealt with in five days or less, 58 dossiers took from six to 15 days, 14 took from 31 to 60 days, and 10 dossiers (2 per cent) took up to three months.
The office said that 19 dossiers (4 per cent) remained unresolved at the end of the reporting period. Of all the complaints, the most common (12.2 per cent) concerned whether by-laws were being enforced, stated the report.
The next most common (40 complaints – 8.6 per cent) were about snow removal, a problem reported year over year by many Laval residents.
Many files were also opened and processed on issues that included damage claims, noise, property taxes and road repair work.
Curé Labelle/Notre Dame street repairs on track, say workers
Busy intersection now partly open, after being shut to traffic
Despite what appeared last week to be a work slowdown on road, sidewalk and sewer reconstruction taking place at the corner of Notre Dame and Curé Labelle boulevards, workers at the scene have reassured the Laval News that the project is moving steadily forward and is on schedule towards completion.
Traffic delays
The work, which has led to some traffic bottlenecks and inconveniences for local services and businesses, includes the replacement of a 200-mm drinking water main with a pipe measuring 400 mm to allow better water flow in the neighbourhood, and the addition of a second sewer drain to provide greater protection against sudden and extreme storm flooding.
Councillor Vasilios Karidogiannis told the Laval News previously that the intersection could be closed as late as June 24, although as of last week the intersection was partly open again and traffic was flowing north and south along Curé Labelle.
Area is growing
In the meantime, Notre Dame Blvd. immediately east and west of Curé Labelle remained closed, as the epicentre of the work shifted onto that street.
Work on this stretch is expected to be completed as the summer progresses.
The infrastructure work is necessary partly because of two major housing projects now underway.
One is on the north west corner of Curé Labelle and Notre Dame where the Récréathèque once stood, and a second around two blocks east where the Val-Martin social housing project is being rebuilt by the city.
The work will also be helping to alleviate sewer and water supply issues elsewhere in the district of l’Abord-à-Plouffe.
Laval’s surface tram project recalls abandoned ‘elevated’ tram plan
City once flirted with the idea of a suspended tramway in downtown core
A recent news report highlighting a long-term plan by the City of Laval to create a surface tramway along Saint-Martin Blvd. recalled that a former city administration once entertained the idea of an elevated tramway being built along a different route, also in Laval’s downtown core.
Street-level tram
The report on Montreal’s La Presse news site (and republished by the Toronto-based news service Torstar) noted that although Laval has begun to extensively consult its residents on the future of the downtown area, very little has been said until now about the surface tramway project.
According to La Presse, the plan, if adopted by city council in a few months, would lead to in-depth studies in the next five years. Technical and financial feasibility analyses would be held over a five to 10-year span.
Preliminary work on the project suggests the tramway would allow passengers to board trams at the corner of Chomedey Blvd. on the western fringe of Laval’s emerging downtown sector and travel three kilometres to Laval Blvd., the eastern edge.
Part of PPU plan
The surface tramway plan is described in the special planning program (PPU) now underway for the downtown. Initial designs show the tramway line at the centre of Saint-Martin Blvd., with other lanes set up for automobiles and bicycles.
If the project is taken seriously, it would not the first time Laval has flirted with trams – albeit trams of a different type. Following the opening of Laval’s three Metro stations in 2007, former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt came up with the idea in 2011 of an elevated tramway to reduce road congestion and encourage public transit.
Elevated plan abandoned
At that time, city officials suggested the elevated line would start at Montmorency station and end at Carrefour Laval. Although a feasibility study was commissioned, the project was abandoned when Place Bell was built and the Société de transport de Laval revised its plans. As well, Vaillancourt resigned from office in 2012, probably also contributing to the project being abandoned.
According to the Laval News’s coverage of the elevated tramway’s announcement a decade ago, the Agence métropolitaine de transport (a forerunner to the Réseau de transport métropolitain) and Hydro Quebec also supported the project. A number of major cities in the world – including New York, Portland, Lisbon, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro – all operated cable car systems similar to the one Laval wanted to implement at the time.
Elevated pros and cons
While aerial tramways have certain distinct advantages (they are quiet, operate constantly, are inexpensive to build and don’t need drivers in the individual cable cabins), according to an information handout issued by the STL back then, they also have disadvantages.
Among those, the towers and cables for aerial tramways can be intrusive in neighbourhoods, they are sometimes costly for cities to insure, some transit users shun the cable car cabins because of fear of closed spaces, and they are slower on average than buses for transporting passengers.
Laval’s 2020-2022 Action Plan for Housing
City on track to delivering needed affordable and social housing
The City of Laval says the first year of its 2020-2022 Action Plan for Housing yielded positive results, with a set goal of 1,000 affordable or social housing units being well within range by the time the target date is reached.
According to the city, most of the goals set for 2020 were reached, despite the COVID-19 pandemic which presented many unexpected barriers.
Much to accomplish
“In 2020, 59 actions were carried out or started out of 68 which were planned to take place over three years in the Action Plan of the Policy for Housing,” said Laval city councillor Nicholas Borne who handles housing dossiers.
“Several of these accomplishments are helping to increase the number and quality of social or affordable housing units,” he added. “To date, 497 units have been built or are in progress, and 176 units have received a financial commitment.
Immense needs
“Despite this encouraging report, we know full well that the needs remain immense. That is why we are pursuing our efforts to obtain the necessary government financial support in otder to catch up and to meet needs, which are greater than ever.”
Among the things the city says were accomplished in the housing dossier so far are the obtention of $20 million in subsidies from Quebec’s AccèsLogis program, and the ongoing development of almost 400 new social housing units at the Val-Martin site in Chomedey.
New social housing
The new social housing is to be delivered on this basis: 124 units now delivered and occupied since December 2019/January 2020; 160 units now being completed, with delivery scheduled for early 2022; and 75 housing units and a community centre now under development with no fixed date provided by the city.
‘To date, 497 units have been built or are in progress, and 176 units have received a financial commitment,’ says city councillor responsible for dossier Nicholas Borne
As well, says the city, $3.8 million has been set aside for lands to be dedicated for use to build social housing; the setting up of a new housing search system (SARL) to help Laval residents find non-subsidized housing; support for the implementation of Accès logement Laval, another search service to find subsidized housing; and the creation of a new housing section on the City of Laval website, bringing together comprehensive information on the topic.
Adoption of new policy
The city says it will be prioritizing the adoption of a fiscal policy for housing to allow the establishment of a reserve of lands set aside for social housing while better defining their availability.
It will also be adopting a new urban planning code, which will be contributing to the improvement of the quality of residential projects, while facilitating the implementation of social and affordable housing projects.
At the same time, the city says it is working towards the adoption of several large-scale PPU urban planning programs in Laval’s downtown and in Sainte-Rose, in order to elaborate development in these sectors, which will include more extensive planning for social and affordable housing.
