(TLN) Laval mayor Marc Demers has announced that two city councillors will henceforth be representing the city on committees at meetings of the Union of Quebec Municipalities (UMQ).
Aline Dib, Laval City Councillor
Dib and Tassoni
Saint-Martin city councillor Aline Dib and Laval-des-Rapides city councillor Isabella Tassoni were selected for the task of interfacing with other member municipalities at UMQ meetings.
While Dib will be sitting on the UMQ’s Commission for Culture, Leisure and Community Life, Tassoni will be on the UMQ’s Commission for Women and Governance.
Isabella Tassoni, Laval City Councillor
Representing Laval
“I am very pleased to see that the respective competencies of Mrs. Dib and Mrs. Tassoni have been recognized within the UMQ,” said Mayor Demers. “They are certain to do an impeccable job while positioning Laval and its large projects among those of the major cities in Quebec.
“Our accomplishments could serve as inspiration for the ways things are done elsewhere,” added Demers, “while we in Laval will be profiting from the exchanges to add to our expertise.”
Laval well represented
Laval is well represented on the UMQ, with Mayor Demers being a member of the governing board, as well as vice-president of the UMQ’s caucus for major cities.
The mayor also sits along with Laval city councillor Stéphane Boyer on the UMQ’s commission for intelligent cities. In the meantime, Councillor and Laval executive-committee member Sandra Desmeules sits on the UMQ’s committee for its annual assizes.
Set to retire from politics in June when he’ll be stepping down as MP for the riding of Outremont, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says he’s feeling confident about his future on the faculty of one of the country’s leading universities and as the head of an environmental group that organizes Earth Day in Quebec.
In an interview with Newsfirst Multimedia last week, Mulcair – who first entered politics in 1994 as the Liberal MNA for the Laval riding of Chomedey – said he will be teaching political science beginning this summer.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair, seen here in his Outremont constituency office, will be teaching political science at the University of Montreal starting this summer.
New horizons for Mulcair
On Friday last week, the University of Montreal announced that Mulcair is joining their political science faculty as a visiting professor in the newly-created Master’s degree program in environment and sustainable development. Jour de la Terre had previously announced that Mulcair was taking on the leadership of the organization as volunteer board president.
“I can say that I’m in a very good place in my career right now,” said Mulcair. “I’m very satisfied that the number one job that Jack [Layton] and I had set for ourselves we were able to accomplish – which was breaking through in Quebec for the NDP.
Thomas Mulcair running in Chomedey for the Quebec Liberals in 1993.
Proud of NDP’s achievements
“We still have 16 outstanding MPs. And I’ll be leaving at the end of the spring session, but I’m convinced that the party is going to be able to find an excellent candidate to replace me and they’ll be able to take that into the next election and I’m sure that things are going to go well.”
The year 2015, a federal election year, was momentous not only for Mulcair, but for the two other party leaders vying for the country’s top elected position. For the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau, it meant becoming the country’s leader, while for the incumbent Conservatives’ Stephen Harper the election brought about the end of his political career.
June 2006, Betty McLeod of Agape awarding Thomas Mulcair for his continuous support.
A setback for the NDP
As for fate of the NDP, Mulcair said, “We were always very prudent, and I was always very prudent never to get ahead of ourselves. Polls would go up and be in our favour and then they’d go back down. We were convinced we had a good offer on the table.
“And, in any event, we slid back to our third-party position that we’d been in before. But I am proud of the fact that I got the second-highest number of seats in the NDP’s history: 44 seats is the second-highest that we’ve ever had. And it’s second, of course, to the fabulous Orange Wave of 2011.”
A letdown after election
Mulcair said he underwent a period of feeling disenchanted following the election. “You feel a great deal of disappointment that the great ideas we had put forward are not going to come to pass,” he said. “So knowing that Canadians were going to be stuck with the Liberals again, and knowing those Liberals from my 40 years in government, I knew what was going to happen.”
Although he hasn’t been the NDP’s leader since last October when the party’s new leader, Jagmeet Singh, succeeded him, Mulcair remains outspoken in his criticism of Justin Trudeau, whose 2015 sweep set back the NDP and thwarted any ambitions Mulcair might have had to be in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Thomas Mulcair presenting Quebec’s government sustainable development new policies as Minister of Environment.
Still critical of Justin Trudeau
“This is the first sitting Prime Minister in Canadian history to break the law,” said Mulcair, referring to the Parliamentary Ethics Commissioner’s ruling that Trudeau breached the country’s Conflict of Interest Act when he vacationed at the Bahamian home of the Aga Khan.
“Watching Mr. Trudeau be found guilty by the ethics commissioner has an effect on all of us, because it’s a question of ethics. He’s often very flippant when he reacts to that. He tries to pirouette away from it, saying ‘I won’t do it again.’ … A Prime Minister has to show ethics at the highest level. He has to be a model. And Justin Trudeau’s ethics have been shown to be totally lacking.”
Tom’s new book “Strength of Conviction”
A passion for politics
With politics clearly still very much in his blood, Mulcair said it his intention to have his university students benefit from his four decades of political experience as well as his views on future political developments in Quebec and Canada.
“You can be sure that the 40 years of experience I have in government will allow me to inspire them to get involved publicly to make sure that workers’ pensions are protected and the environment is protected for future generations,” he said. “These are all things that I believe in passionately and that won’t change when I leave politics.”
Feb 9 – Laval police are asking for the public’s help in locating 47-year-old Mario Mousseau, who is suspected of at least 8 offences of the same nature. Authorities have connected Mousseau with a string of break-ins that occurred in Laval, and suspect he is still in the area.
He is described as a white male, about 5’8″ tall and 160 pounds.
Laval police are asking for the public’s help in locating 47-year-old Mario Mousseau.
Anyone with information about Mousseau’s whereabouts is asked to contact Laval police via the info-line at 450-662-INFO (4636).
A 69-year-old man was injured after a tractor trailer ran over a car on Highway 440 in Laval Tuesday February 13, morning.
The incident happened around 11 a.m. and ended with the jackknifed trailer on top of a small car, with both vehicles on the median near Curé Labelle Ave.
The driver had to be extricated from the tangled mess and was then rushed to hospital. While his injuries were considered very serious at first, his condition has since improved.
The truck driver was treated for shock.
Police closed all lanes on the westbound highway, and the delays led to two other crashes near Chomedey Blvd. and Highway 15 as drivers tried to exit the highway and avoid a traffic jam.
The cause of the collision is under investigation.
Feb 17 – What began as an argument in the parking lot between an exotic dancer and a 26-year-old patron of the Salon Bleu strip club could have turned deadly as the man ended up being dragged beneath the woman’s car nearly half a kilometre down Boul. Curé-Labelle.
The verbal altercation was reported to have started at about 3:30 a.m. Whether she hit him with the car first, and how he became entangled up beneath the car, is still a mystery to investigators.
The victim was dragged 400 m before passing motorists noticed the heinous situation and managed to immobilise the woman’s car by blocking it with their own.
According to police, the man was lucky to have suffered only minor injuries, cuts, and burns. He was transported to hospital for treatment and is expected to recover.
The 27-year-old dancer was arrested and questioned. She faces charges of criminal negligence and dangerous driving, as well as possible armed assault charges if the investigation points to deliberate malicious intent on her part.
Police confirmed the dancer was not intoxicated at the time. Investigators will be reviewing video surveillance footage to determine the cause of the incident.
Demers says Ottawa won’t forget cities in 2018 budget
After participating last week in a meeting of the Mayors’ Caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Ottawa, Laval mayor Marc Demers said he feels confident the federal government will be paying attention in its 2018 budget to municipalities’ needs, including social housing, infrastructure, mass transit and the local impact of legalizing marijuana.
Asked about marijuana revenues, Demers said he was confident the provincial government would take its responsibility seriously in seeing that sums which are supposed to be reaching municipal governments will be doing so. At the same time, he noted that the FCM’s next board of directors meeting will be taking place in Laval from March 6 – 9.
Laval mayor Marc Demers said he feels confident the federal government will be paying attention in its 2018 budget to municipalities’ needs.Mayors’ Caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Ottawa
On Sunday Feb. 11, the City of Laval’s elected officials played exhibition hockey matches against students from the Souvenir and Horizon-Jeunesse schools, with Mayor Marc Demers, as well as Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board chairwoman Jennifer Maccarone and Commission scolaire de Laval president Louise Lortie.
“By getting involved in this cause, the city wants to contribute to the development of a feeling of collective responsibility with regards to school perseverance and the importance of pursuing those efforts in order to encourage educational success among Laval’s young people,” said Demers who did the honours dropping the first puck on the ice.
The team from Souvenir Elementary School, along with members of the team from the City of Laval, played a hockey match for school perseverance on Sunday Feb. 11.
Showing support
“This is also a symbolic way to show children and adolescents that their elected representatives are present and that they can on them for support, as well as from the community and their families, to develop their full potential,” added deputy mayor David De Cotis, who has been organizing the event for the past four years.
Laval’s elected officials were put to the test during the two matches, which saw them play against grade five and six students from Souvenir Elementary, who beat the Laval officials by a score of 3 – 1. The second match saw the team from the city play against the Faucons, made up of secondary five students from the CSDL’s École Horizon-Jeunesse. This game proved more exciting and ended with a shootout and a score of 3 – 2 for the Faucons.
The head of the province’s largest association of retail merchants issued a stark warning to cities last week, saying they could end up becoming the biggest losers in the growing shift to online sales when property and business tax revenues bottom out.
“It’s fine to have a retail store, but you have to start thinking at the same time beyond those borders and go on the web,” says Deputy Mayor David De Cotis, who is responsible for the city’s economic dossiers on the executive-committee.
Tax revenue losses
“As I’ve said before and as I say everywhere I go, the first losers in the shift towards the web if they don’t join forces is going to be the cities,” said Léopold Turgeon, president of the Conseil québécois du commerce de détail.
Speaking at the City of Laval’s first annual Forum Innovation Commerce at the Château Royal on Feb. 15, Turgeon pointed out that “the less there are businesses, the less there will be fiscal revenue” for municipal governments.
Go with e-commerce
While most people are aware by now of the impact that web and online marketing are having on the real-world retail landscape, this is the first year that the City of Laval decided to organize a half-day seminar dealing specifically with the problem.
“The new wave in the future is really e-commerce,” Laval executive-committee vice-president David De Cotis, who gave the opening address, said in an interview with the Laval News.
Laval’s deputy-mayor and executive-committee vice-president David De Cotis (from row, third from right) is seen here with city officials and guest speakers during the first annual Innovation Commerce held at the Château Royal last week.
Get on the web
“In order to succeed, they will have to become increasingly aware of the e-commerce concept, get on the web and to do business on the web as well,” he added. “It’s fine to have a retail store, but you have to start thinking at the same time beyond those borders and go on the web.”
According to De Cotis, there are 38,000 small and medium-size businesses in Laval, “and we want to encourage them all to have an online presence,” he said. De Cotis was asked by the Laval News about the extent to which online retailing is affecting the retail presence in Laval.
Small business suffers
“It’s not only affecting Laval, it’s also affecting the greater Montreal region,” he said. “The Amazons and the Alibabas of this world are taking, like it or not, business away from small business entrepreneurs whether it’s in Laval or Montreal and so forth. And, you know, when there are empty businesses there is less employment. And that’s why we want to encourage as much as possible our businesses to stay in business and employ people while being successful at what they’re doing.”
In his speech, De Cotis noted that retailing and wholesaling today account for a quarter of all jobs in the Laval region. Last year, that number equalled 38,292 jobs. Many of these are in key locations throughout Laval, such as the Carrefour Laval, the Centre Laval or any of the eight other major retail malls on the territory. In addition, there are many hundreds of other retail hubs all over Laval.
The need to go digital
In 2016, there were 1,669 retail businesses in Laval, he continued, and 830 wholesale enterprises. He pointed out that from this perspective, Laval is increasingly a magnet for businesses of this type seeking to set up in proximity to the Montreal region’s international airport (which is only a short distance from Laval).
“As deputy mayor and being responsible for economic dossiers with the City of Laval, I can only insist on the importance, even the urgency, of doing digital,” said De Cotis. “The numbers demonstrate it clearly.”
Consumers headed online
While studies suggest that the retail sector is holding up on its own, De Cotis noted that they also indicate that more and more consumers are buying online, and these are local economic losses which are going to the advantage of major online retailers such as Amazon and Alibaba.
“There is no question of giving up,” he continued. “To the contrary, we must face up to this challenge with confidence and by rallying four forces. We are convinced that the capacity to adapt and to innovate by the players involved in commerce in Laval and their partners will make all the difference.”
City Council authorized the acquisition of part of a lot (owned by Gestion Gilles Laurence) of approximately 28,468.4 square meters. This parcel of land has been evaluated at $2,992,144.04. In exchange part of a lot with an area of approximately 10,436.1 square meters and a municipal evaluation of $ 1,554,978.90 as well as an offer of $1,437,166.14 cash will go to the vendor. The land acquired by the City will allow for the creation of Cousteau Park. City council also voted to increase the Green Space Land Acquisition Program for 2018 included in the three-year capital program to from $1,800,000 to $3,450,000. This program allows the municipality to purchase lands with which they can develop environmentally friendly projects that will add to the city’s inventory of outdoor environments for the use of Laval’s residents.
Support to the Laval Chamber of Commerce and Industry
As part of the 2015-2018 triennial agreement between the Laval Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIL) and the City of Laval, the municipal administration has pledged financial support to this organization (CCIL) in the amount of $ 250,000 annually. An annual rent subsidy of $ 37,000 is also part of the addenda adopted over three years which also modifies and brings clarity to the terms of the agreement between the two parties. City Council also received a report of the CCIL’s activity for the period from September 1, 2016 to August 31, 2017 and as a result authorized the payment of the grants provided for in the agreement for the third year of the agreement.
Floods: no fees for permits and certificates until December 2018
As the result of the exceptional spring floods affecting the Ottawa, Prairie and Mile River rivers on May 19th 2017 and the ensuing damage to property that resulted Laval’s municipal administration took steps to ease the financial and technical obstacles affecting owners. The Executive Committee passed a resolution providing among other things, that no tariff be imposed on the issuance of permits and certificates prior to any renovation, repair, demolition, reconstruction or connection to municipal services necessary for the repair of damaged buildings, provided that the complete applications to this effect have been filed with the appropriate municipal department before December 15th 2017. However, in order to harmonize the City’s rules with the Government of Quebec’s decree, which will be in effect until December 19th 2018, the Executive Committee has agreed to amend the original resolution to extend the date for depositing applications from December 15th 2017 to December 19th 2018.
Authorization to allow U-Turns on Robert-Bourassa Boulevard
On the recommendation of Laval’s Police Service, the Executive Committee accepted to rescind the order to not allow vehicular traffic in the area to execute u-turns. Therefor the public works service was mandated to remove existing road signs on Robert-Bourassa Boulevard prohibiting this activity. This modification will not only facilitate access to businesses in the area but will also reduce the increased transit traffic through the local area parking lots.
Seniors-Friendly Municipality Committee (MADA)
The Executive Committee has forwarded a recommendation for city council ratification appointing Gilbert Dumas and Christiane Yoakim both city councilors as members of the MADA Partners Committee for a three-year term. Laval received its MADA (MUNICIPALITÉ AMIE DES AÎNÉS) accreditation in 2014. This program aims to recognize municipalities that adapt their services and structures to the needs of seniors. These adaptations make it possible to counter the discrimination that seniors may experience in terms of housing, recreation, urban development, transportation and safety, while highlighting the full potential of these people. The MADA Partners Committee has been set up to ensure the preparation of the action plan addressing issues in Laval and the monitoring of its implementation.
Renewal of the agreement for football activities
Since 1998 the City of Laval has had an agreement with the Regroupement du sport in Laval and the Laval Regional Football Association concerning the transfer of certain responsibilities fro the organization and execution of a football program and activities in Laval. This partnership allows for efficient and simplified management of schedules, the hiring and management of required on field and off field officials as well as the annual registrations for the diverse activities. The City of Laval has agreed to renew this long standing agreement. A maximum of $26,229 in financial support will be granted to the organization for the realization of football activities in Laval for the year 2018.
Hiring an expert consultant in library construction
The Executive Committee has authorized the hiring of an expert library construction consultant to assist the City in identifying and refining the functional requirements for the future central library.
Managing the operations of Laval’s Maison des Art
The Corporation of the Salle André Mathieu ([co] motion) will continue to manage the day-to-day operations of the Maison des Arts (MDA) in Laval and the specialized equipment park. The corporation will be reimbursed a maximum amount of $ 901,111.96 (taxes included) for these services. The service offer includes the administrative management of the day-to-day operations related to mobile specialized equipment, the administrative management covering the various aspects of operation, management and animation of MDA programs and the permanent staff dedicated to operations and maintenance and programming of the Maison des Art.
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