Martin C. Barry

In spite of assurances by Mayor Marc Demers that changes he is seeking for Laval’s municipal charter won’t lead to abuses by his administration, a group of opposition city councillors is urging Quebec not to allow the changes – even though the government already has for five other large municipalities.

Councillors’ denunciation

In their letter addressed to Quebec Municipal Affairs Minister Andrée Laforest, Laval city councillors David De Cotis (Saint-Bruno), Michel Poissant (Vimont), Isabella Tassoni (Laval-des-Rapides), Aglaia Revelakis (Chomedey), Paolo Galati (Saint-Vincent-de-Paul) and Daniel Hébert (Marigot) said they were “denouncing” Mayor Marc Demers’ attempt to modify two clauses from Laval’s charter.

Although four of the group are disaffected former Mouvement Lavallois members, Revelakis is the sole remaining elected member of Action Laval on city council.

‘Too much power’

“While analysts of municipal politics agree that the present Charter of the City of Laval gives too much power to the executive-committee, the new version which allows the executive-committee to make its own internal rules will go even further,” they said, noting that the City of Laval was placed under trusteeship six years ago as its political and administrative situations spun out of control.

“When the city was placed in trusteeship, the trustees saw that this Charter had allowed Gilles Vaillancourt to act outside the scrutiny of the municipal council. It should be recalled that the executive-committee is presided by the mayor and that the councillors who sit on it are appointed by him. He could thus govern without the Council intervening.

No to additional powers

“It is for all these reasons that we are asking you to take a stand against any modification of the City of Laval’s Charter which would give additional powers to the executive-committee, some of which already caused considerable harm to Laval residents in the past,” added the councillors.

In a statement responding to the letter, Mayor Marc Demers maintained that there appeared to be confusion as to the extent of the impact the requested changes would make.

“At this time, these powers are delegated through the adoption of a by-law by a vote of simple majority,” said Demers. “The proposed modification would be such that this delegation by by-law would require a vote by 2/3 of the members of the municipal council. This would not significantly increase the powers of the executive.”

Other cities have the same

According to the mayor, the change the city wants made to its charter would allow the executive-committee to pass an internal by-law delegating certain powers to senior administrators. At the same time, he noted that some of this power currently exists in the municipal charters for the cities of Montreal, Longueuil, Lévis, Gatineau and Québec.

While pointing out that officials with the City of Laval are currently working on a new version of the municipality’s charter, Demers said that in the meantime city council needs to be able to pass internal by-laws allowing it to delegate certain powers.

In an interview with the Laval News, De Cotis, who publicly split last year from the mayor and the Mouvement Lavallois, said the dissident group’s current demand comes following a refusal by Demers to explain the charter amendments during the last city council meeting.

‘Blank cheque,’ says De Cotis

“He’s asking for a blank cheque, asking the Legault government to approve modifications to the charter that would allow executive-committee members to really pass any by-law they want, and in a sense create their own government within the executive-committee,” claimed De Cotis.

Although De Cotis didn’t know of any administrative abuses committed in the five other cities since they received the powers being sought by Laval, he said the city’s well-documented history of corruption and administrative abuse should serve as enough of a warning to refuse the charter change request.

For her part, Aglaia Revelakis told the Laval News she agreed with the other councillors that Demers was being unreasonable by not disclosing exactly what changes he wanted to make to the city’s charter. “We don’t know what they’re planning to change,” she said. “So why would we vote for something when we don’t even know what we’re going to be voting for?”

Martin C. Barry

While a political battle rages on in the United States over whether to build a massive wall along the U.S-Mexico border to contain the flow of irregular migration, there will be no question of a similar barrier along the Canada-U.S. boundary, says the Canadian federal minister responsible for security along our border.

“I don’t believe a physical barrier is either practical on a 9,000-kilometre border or necessary,” Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair told Newsfirst Multimedia in a recent interview.

Different approach

Although U.S. President Donald Trump remains transfixed on building a wall along that country’s southern border to fulfill one of the Republican president’s most cherished electoral promises, Blair sees Canada taking an entirely different approach to the security of its border.

“Let’s keep in mind that even on irregular migration we’re talking about a 9,000-kilometre border, and perhaps 30 to 40 people each day are presenting themselves to cross irregularly,” he said.

Says system now works

“It’s manageable. It’s not preferable. Our preference is that people would go to the regular point of entry and that we would manage it there. But for those who are crossing irregularly, the numbers are still within our ability to manage. And I’m confident that we are maintaining the safety and security of our country.”

Blair said that Canada hasn’t much need to even think of having a border wall, since control of the boundary the country shares with its southern neighbour is based on “the collaboration and cooperation of law enforcement on both sides of the border. We are applying our laws and we are deploying our resources in a way that maintains security.

Using the law

“In other jurisdictions, in other areas of the world – not between Canada and the United States – there may be other challenges with maintaining the integrity of their border – and in those circumstances and in some areas some have found it necessary to have a physical barrier,” he continued.

“But we manage ours with law. It’s a filter. And we will absolutely keep out people who represent a danger or criminality in this country. But we also apply our laws for people who are entering. By international convention and under Canadian law if someone is seeking asylum, then they are entitled to due process. But there’s a right way of doing that.”

(TLN) On Jan 15, Laval city council adopted a by-law that included $1 million in spending for a program, in conjunction with the Quebec government, to give subsidies to owners of houses whose foundations have been damaged by settling of the soil.

Laval residents who are owners of such buildings have until March 18 to apply for financial assistance of up to two-thirds of the total cost of repairs for a total of $35,000.

Financial relief

“This subsidy will make it possible to offer some important financial relief to Laval residents who are going through difficult times due to damage to the foundations of their property,” says Sainte-Rose city councillor Virginie Dufour who also sits on the executive-committee.

“We are certain that the allotted sums will allow the greatest number of citizens possible who must restore the integrity and security of their building,” she adds.

The Criteria

To qualify for the program: you must be the owner of a residential building with 1 to 4 units; you must have had the necessary work done no more than 1 year before the coming into effect of the present by-law, or you anticipate getting the work done following acceptance of your application and issuing of the construction permit; you must have spent or anticipate expenses of at least $5,000 for the work; you must have installed or foresee installing at least 1 stake; you must have applied for a construction permit.

The top 3 Laval real estate agents for 2018 were announced last month by Rate-My-Agent.com. The review site compiled and published the list of top rated Laval agents based on ratings and reviews received during the past year.

In ranked order, the agents are:

1. Voula Kottaridis
2. Gabriela Jonas
3. Wassim Ibrahim

Unlike other agent ranking sites, agents can’t pay to have negative reviews removed or hidden and cannot pay to be included on the list of top-rated agents. The company says the reviews are verified through a process they wouldn’t disclose in order to protect the integrity of the process. When asked if they’ve had agents try to cheat, a spokesperson confirmed, “Yes, there have been many attempts by agents to game the system and rankings, which is why we keep our algorithms a closely held secret.”

The list will be published annually based on that year’s verified reviews. Rate-My-Agent.com is a rating and review website for Canadian and American markets. It’s free for the general public and real estate professionals. The company pledges 50% of profit to worthy causes.

Martin C. Barry

As the federal minister responsible for the implementation and enforcement of Canada’s new marijuana legalization and regularization laws, there’s no mistaking the fact Bill Blair stands one hundred per cent behind the Trudeau Liberal government’s groundbreaking policy.

If anybody might be in a position to question the government’s stance, it could easily be Blair. The veteran policeman and former chief of the Toronto Police Service spent years fighting on the front lines against drug-related crime as a narcotics squad officer.

Former narcotics cop

“As a police officer for 40 years, I was involved in drug enforcement,” Blair, who is Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, said in an interview with Newsfirst Multimedia while on a ministerial stopover in Montreal.

As chair of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s Organized Crime Committee, he said he was “well aware of the impact that illegal drug trafficking as controlled by organized crime was having in all of our communities.”

Drugs and violence linked

While noting that the link between organized crime and illegal drug trafficking had a lot do with an escalation of violence in Canadian cities these past few decades, Blair also pointed out that organized crime was earning billions of dollars in profits each year being the sole purveyors of a range of illegal substances that included marijuana.

Since the only means of controlling the situation available to society was criminal sanction, young people got swept up in the overall enforcement of the country’s drug laws, “which was disproportionate,” added Blair, “and was actually causing in many cases more harm. We wanted to discourage their use of the drug. But we also did not want to saddle that child with a criminal record for the rest of their life.”

Approached by Trudeau

According to Blair, all of this transpired long before he was asked by Justin Trudeau to run in the suburban Toronto riding of Scarborough Southwest in the October 2015 election. Blair and the future Prime Minister discussed the possibility of radically changing Canada’s cannabis laws.

“We talked about Canada’s control of cannabis. And he said ‘What do you think of legalizing it?’ And I said if we lift the criminal prohibition it gives the opportunity to get the situation back under control. Because currently the situation we were in was we had the highest rates of use among our kids in the world. And this is a dangerous drug for children. This is a drug that can have very serious implications for children.”

One third were breaking law

Leading up to the changes last October by the Liberal government to the country’s longstanding prohibition on cannabis, more than a third of Canada’s population had been breaking the law, Blair added. As such, “we began the process of looking at how do we reduce the harm of this drug.

“Some people say to me, ‘Well you’ve legalized cannabis.’ And I say no – we’ve regulated the daylights out of it. We’ve brought in all sorts of new rules – enforceable, proportionate, sensible rules – that control every aspect of its production, its sale and its consumption.

Says no to other drugs

“Whereas before we had only one tool and it was like a sledgehammer and we were trying to drive a nail. And no one wanted to swing the sledgehammer. But now we have the right suite of tools to control the system. And I believe it’ll result in a healthy situation for our children and a safer situation for our communities.”

Blair insisted that neither he nor the Liberal government would ever consider going down the same route with other street drugs as it has done with marijuana. “Cannabis is not a drug that kills people,” he said.

“But unfortunately with other more serious drugs which are deadly – the opioid crisis, for example, crystal methamphetamine, which is ravishing some of our prairie and northern communities – those drugs represent such a significant risk. And we don’t have a system of regulated production and control.

Meth and fentanyl out

“There is no alternative. We can go to a Health Canada-regulated production facility for marijuana, for cannabis. But we’re not going to create a similar thing for crystal methamphetamine. So there will be no other source other than the criminal source.”For drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl, Blair said an important of the approach for dealing with them is to “interdict the supply to keep those drugs out of our country. We need to be very effective at restricting the supply. But we also have an enormous amount of work to do – and we have embarked as a government on this – to reduce the demand for those drugs. And that’s to prevent people from beginning to use them in the first place.”

(TLN) At noon last Jan. 21, a group of around 60 people, mostly elected officials and other dignitaries, paid homage to Quebec’s Fleur de Lys flag in a ceremony which took place outside Laval city hall.

All had accepted an invitation from the Société nationale du Québec to mark the 71^st anniversary of the flag. The flag was first unveiled on Jan. 21, 1948 by the government of Premier Maurice Duplessis. It first flew on the flag pole at the Quebec Parliament building in Quebec City, replacing the Union Jack.

Fleur de Lys origins

Gilles Desroches, a historian, gave a presentation on the origins of the flag, with particular emphasis on the Fleurs de Lys. He suggested these elements of the flag were inspired by details which originated on a banner belonging to Clovis, king of the Franks during the 5^th century.

Despite the cold, the flag in which millions of Québécois take pride was raised on the main mast outside Laval city hall while a musical piece paying tribute to the flag was played by musicians and accompanied by song words. The event culminated with a wine reception inside city hall courtesy of the mayor.