Bicycling enthusiasts complain to city about ‘dangerous’ bike paths along Saint-Martin
Laval’s mayor and the two opposition parties were in agreement during the September council meeting last week that the city should take action to raise fines for the illegal cutting of trees.
This was after the developer of a 156-unit residential project in Saint-Vincent-de-Paul reportedly cut as many as 100 trees without a permit from the city.
Located near the bottom of an escarpment on Rue du Barrage south of Lévesque Blvd., all work on the Eaux Vives sur le Parc project was ordered by the city to cease last spring after it was revealed that the developer had been carrying out some preliminary groundwork without a municipal construction permit.
Nearby residents concerned
“Since the announcement of this project, there has been a lot of concern by the citizens who live in the vicinity of this project,” Louise Valliquette, one of the affected residents, said during the council meeting’s public question period.
Jonathan Tremblay, a spokesperson for the Laval Coalition for Mobilization of Citizen Environmental Action, said he was surprised to learn the project was being allowed by the city to continue, while the issue of a deforestation operation on the site had gone virtually unnoticed.
While noting that Mayor Stéphane Boyer reacted a while back to a mass tree-cutting in the west end of Laval by declaring that the fines imposed were inadequate, Tremblay said, “I’m asking myself whether a penalty of around $1,000 really constitutes a just and dissuasive consequence for deforestation carried out on the site?”
(It should be noted that the fine in the City of Laval for illegal tree-cutting is up to $1,000 per tree, although critics of the current system acknowledge that the full amount is rarely collected from offenders by the city.)
$1,000 not enough, says De Cotis
“Maybe a $1,000 fine isn’t enough,” Action Laval opposition councillor for Saint-Bruno David De Cotis suggested, while adding, “Maybe we should make it ten times as expensive – maybe even $10,000, $10,000, $50,000 to dissuade people from disrespecting the law.
“Because $1,000 for a developer is really $1 of his profit,” he continued. “It’s nothing to him because he wants to profit to get on with his project. So, I think your issue is legitimate and we can examine the amount and really make sure that the amount is important enough to discourage developers or anyone else from cutting trees without a permit.”
Parti Laval opposition councillor for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin Louise Lortie agreed the city’s system of fines for illegal tree cutting is inadequate. “I think there’s something needing to be reviewed in the amounts for penalties for the developers – because there is nothing dissuasive when it costs $1,000 to cut trees,” she said.
At the same time, Lortie noted that the area in question had inadvertently become an improvised dumping ground over many decades. She suggested the developer may have needed to cut the trees as part of a process to decontaminate the ground before building.
Fine is on a per-tree basis
Speaking on behalf of the administration, Mayor Stéphane Boyer acknowledged that the current system of fines could be improved.
“I consider that we should be able to go further with regards to the type of fine we hand out, because the developers sometimes will say that financially they’re not bothered by simply paying the fine,” said Boyer.
He said the city has previously lobbied the Quebec government to have the provincial law changed.
“Because as it is now, there’s a law at the level of the government of Quebec, and the City of Laval’s charter limits the amounts for fines,” said the mayor. “And we have been asking Quebec for at least the last three years to allow us to modify our charter and the law to have stronger fines in order to make sure there is respect for our by-laws.”
Saint-Martin bike path complaints
During the same meeting, bicycling enthusiasts complained to the council about the city’s failure to properly secure bike paths along key arteries like Saint-Martin Blvd., where the bike paths are dangerously intersected by rapidly flowing traffic heading onto entrance ramps to get onto the autoroutes.
Replying, Laval-les-Îles city councillor Nicolas Borne, who is a member of the executive-committee with responsibility for infrastructures, apologized for delays in implementing new safety measures.
But he hesitated to call the intersections in question “dangerous,” saying instead that they contributed to a “discomfort” felt by cyclists who use them. He said the city is working with the Quebec Ministry of Transport to remedy the situation.
