Martin C. Barry

Laval’s four Liberal Members of Parliament gathered together recently to announce a federal program that will allow small businesses in Laval to obtain subsidies for the hiring of students 15 to 30 years of age this summer.

Jobs doubled

“We are currently working together to place the largest number of students in our four ridings,” Yves Robillard, the MP for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, said during a press conference held by the four to announce the program.

“This isn’t just a question of repeating something that’s already been done in the past,” added Alfred-Pellan Liberal MP Angelo Iacono. “Our government, our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has decided to double the number of jobs and to show an even greater sense of openness towards young people who are our future.

Groups and businesses

“During the summer of 2016, more students and more organizations will be able to benefit,” he continued. “What is also great is that we will be helping businesses with fewer than 50 employees to get started at the same time. This is an initiative that will be helping a lot of people, many of whom are in Laval. That’s why our hat is off to our government.”

Iacono said the new Liberal government decided to double funding for the program taking into account the high level of unemployment among young people today. “If you look at the amount of unemployment among those 15 to 24 years today, which for 2015 is more than 13 per cent, it is more than double the rate for those 25 years of age and older,” he noted.

Gaining experience

According to Vimy Liberal MP Eva Nassif, those applying for the grants will have to meet criteria established by the federal agency handling the program: Service Canada. “These opportunities will give a chance to students to enter the workforce while gaining confidence in themselves and learning about work environments,” she said.

“By investing in our cultural industries and the creative sector in order to create employment while reinforcing our rich Canadian identity, we can also build the strength of the summer employment program in these key sectors which are becoming increasingly important in the economy for young people,” said Nassif, while adding that the program will also be taking into account the 150^th anniversary of Canadian confederation in 2017.

Money for studies

As part of the program, the federal government will be paying up to 100 per cent of the salaries of students employed by non-profit organizations and 50 per cent for those employed by businesses, said Laval-Les Îles Liberal MP Fayçal El-Khoury. “Youths sometimes have trouble saving money for their studies,” he said.

“This program should help them. We have two goals: helping more students to acquire work experience in their chosen field, while providing support to non-profit businesses and small businesses which need workers for the summer. We believe that this is one of the most beneficial programs around.”

How to apply

Applications for the program are being accepted from Jan. 4 to Feb. 26, with decisions from Service Canada expected to be announced by early May. Additional subsidies will also be paid to non-profit groups and businesses that hire students who are handicapped. Additional information and application forms can be viewed and downloaded from the Service Canada web site: https://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eec.

Martin C. Barry

Contemplating the advances and changes made by his administration in the past two years to encourage real estate development in Laval, Mayor Marc Demers compares the city to an ice-clogged river in the springtime.

“Ice jams accumulate,” he said in an address at the Château Royal on Nov. 24 for the opening of a day-long real estate forum at which hundreds of developers and consultants were the guests. “In the case of the city, instead of ice let’s just say it was problems,” he added.

Rebuilding confidence

In Demers’ opinion, the biggest problem contributing to the jam was that “Laval lacked political leadership for many years.” While former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt and a host of accomplices now face long, drawn-out criminal trials on charges of corruption, the new mayor’s task is to rebuild a bond of confidence between the city and property developers.

“We need your help,” he told the developers. “The City of Laval will be built collectively by the people who are present in this room. Your success is our success. We are absolutely certain of this.”

The city is obviously aware of some of the key issues that developers are complaining about regarding their interaction with the municipality. The forum’s organizers placed cards on each of the tables where the developers were seated, calling to their attention such problems as “long delays in construction permits being issued.”

Streamling the system

That alone is one of the most frequently-heard complaints in almost any municipality – not just Laval. But it could easily be worse now in Laval, given various precautions and safeguards municipal administrators have had to put into place in the wake of the corruption scandal.

In his speech, Demers said the forum was being held largely to unveil to the developers the end result of a year of work and consultation by a city council committee mandated to find solutions to problems like the one just mentioned. “But this is just a first step,” he added.

“It’s not the end, not the conclusion, and we have to be in continuous movement to improve ourselves, to remain adept and to be a municipality that works with people who are building the city … Our goal, as I said, is that everyone in the room here can say at some point or another that things have become faster and more efficient to do business with the City of Laval. Because in business time is money.”

New procedures coming

In an interview with the Laval News, Demers said: “We’re going to have new procedures, new rules for the issuing of different permits, and this should allow us to react faster. When people want to have a permit to build something, we should be able to deliver that permit in a much faster time – in half the time it used to take.”

Demers said the city is also working to make the rules simpler than they were before. “Before when you wanted to build something, you had to get one permit at engineering, another permit at environment, another at urban planning.

“But now we will gather all of them in one permit,” he continued. “And if you have a big project, there will be somebody at the city who will take your case in charge and help you with all the procedures. Our main goal is to make it much easier and much faster to deal with the City of Laval than it was before.”

According to Laval executive-committee vice-president David De Cotis, the City of Laval now feels confident enough to offer developers a pledge that on average within 30 days of applying for a permit “there will be an official answer from the city,” he said. The policy came into effect on Dec. 1.

Five-year-long backlog

At the same time, though, De Cotis acknowledged that the city has a backlog of permit applications which in some cases stretch back as long as five years. “We’re promising that within the next six months the backlog will be reduced to 50 per cent and we’re hired additional employees for this purpose,” he said. “This is very promising and part of Mayor Demers’ vision for Laval to grow into one of the most prominent cities within Quebec.”

Perhaps because it’s still too early to see much improvement, one Montreal area real estate development consultant who attended the forum was sceptical of the city’s efforts. “It’s painful and tortuous, or at least it has been for the past few years,” said Robert Libman who has witnessed the issue from two angles. A former mayor of the City of Côte St. Luc, Libman also sat on the City of Montreal’s executive-committee with responsibility for urban planning, before Côte St. Luc demerged from Montreal a decade ago.

Former mayor now consultant

Libman, who now works in Montreal as an architectural and real estate development consultant, said he was “very hopeful and optimistic that this new process will start to streamline and improve the efficiency of project approval” in Laval.

All the same, according to Libman, his client is still waiting for approval for a 500-unit condo project on Souvenir Blvd. at the corner of Ampère in Pont-Viau after four years, as the city tries to decide whether to extend Souvenir Blvd.

During the forum, an example of the sort of development the city hopes will become more commonplace in Laval was unveiled. The project is the result of a partnership of financiers and developers that includes Claridge Investments, Montoni Development and the Quebec Federation of Labour’s Solidarity Fund.

‘Espace Montmorency’ project

Set to rise next to the 10,000-seat Place Bell in Laval des Rapides, Espace Montmorency, costing an estimated $420 million, will have 10 buildings as high as 20 storeys, with shops, offices, a hotel and entertainment facilities. It will be constructed on a 277,000-square-foot property near the Montmorency Métro to which it will also be connected.

“Espace Montmorency fits right in with our vision of a modern project that creates a genuine living environment and that has the potential for tremendous spinoffs,” said Pierre Boivin, president and CEO of Claridge. On the Montoni web site, the company says Espace Montmorency will be 20 minutes from downtown Montreal and “will help create a new downtown in Laval.”

Laval city councillor for Souvenir-Labelle Jean Coupal, who was elected with the victorious Mouvement Lavallois in the 2013 municipal election, has decided to leave the governing party.

Coupal joins the ranks of a growing number of disaffected city councillors who prefer sitting as independents rather than with the council majority or the official opposition, which is perceived by some former members and critics as ineffective.

Critical of ML

In a statement Coupal issued last Monday, he said he has been sitting as an independent since December. He said he did this “in order to better represent the interests of the residents” of his district, as well as the interests of all Laval residents, and “not just from behind the closed doors of the Mouvement Lavallois caucus.”

Coupal said what ultimately made him decide to leave the ML was Laval city council’s recent awarding of a sole bidder computer services contract to an IT consultant who will be receiving nearly $3,000 a day for a total of more than $400,000 for 1,000 hours of work.

History repeating?

“In the beginning, the Mouvement Lavallois was created to oust Mayor Vaillancourt’s PRO des Lavallois,” Coupal said, referring to the former mayor’s defunct municipal party. “This was carried off with brilliance in November 2013.

“Since then, unfortunately, the Mouvement Lavallois has been determined to repeat the era of one-party rule in council,” he added, “by means of money which allows it to eliminate all opposition and to manage public funds without having to worry about the capacity of taxpayers to pay and the equity between them and public servants.”

Martin C. Barry

Martin C. Barry

With Canada’s marijuana laws seemingly about to be relaxed and sales of the currently illicit substance possibly also about to go mainstream, a Laval Police constable told a public gathering of Chomedey residents last week that law enforcement professionals like him have almost given up the war on drugs.

Chomedey to Pont-Viau…

“Drugs, honestly – let’s talk realistically – it’s a war that we’re not going to win,” Laval police constable Jimmy Mourelatos told a meeting on Feb. 24 of around 20 residents who were invited to Centre du Sablon by Councillor Aglaia Revelakis to talk about neighbourhood security issues.

“Even when you focus on one group or in one sector, Chomedey,” continued Mourelatos, “all it does is it does is it switches – it’s going to go from Chomedey to Pont-Viau. And when you put concentration in Pont-Viau, it’s going to go to Duvernay. That’s all it does.

“Drugs is something that’s so big anywhere you go, whether it’s Laval or Montreal, it’s so big I mean trying to legalize it, that even the government itself sometimes must realize that it’s so out of control they’re trying to get a piece of the pie as well,” Mourelatos added during an interview with the Laval News following the meeting.

Only displacing the problem

“For us, we try to control it in our area, in Laval. In most cases what happens is it displaces. That’s all it does. And even with small, minor possession charges, we don’t want them: we want the big fish. So for us even when we catch the small ones, it’s more to start an investigation that leads us to the big one.”

This was on the same day that Liberal MP and former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair stated in Ottawa that Criminal Code provisions on marijuana must be upheld and enforced even as the government considers legalizing marijuana. Blair has been appointed by the Trudeau government to lead a federal-provincial task force to create a plan for the legalization of cannabis across the country.

“The laws that currently exist, exist in this country and we are a … nation of laws,” Blair said. “Quite frankly, until those laws are repealed by Parliament through the appropriate processes, they should be upheld, they should be obeyed.”

His views, not police force’s

Mourelatos admitted that the views he expressed were his personally and not a reflection of the Laval Police Department’s overall drug enforcement strategy. “We’re never going to give up,” he said. “Even if it’s a war that we think we’re not going to win, we’ll never give up. Ever. We’re always going to be there.”

Mourelatos was responding to comments and complaints from some at the meeting that the Laval Police don’t always seem to respond to calls from residents reporting unusual activity in their neighbourhood. Mourelatos, who was at the meeting along with the Laval Police’s Lieutenant Jean-François Girard, insisted that all calls are in fact taken seriously.

“Even if it’s nothing, they’re going to come and identify them,” he said of the importance of reporting any suspicious occurrences so that the police can at least develop a portrait of activity in an area and build a data base of information containing the names, descriptions and addresses of potential suspects. “That’s how it works – you are there for us. We have to work together. We need you to call us.”

Youths loitering in cars

Another complaint came from longtime Chomedey resident Constantine ‘Gus’ Milonopoulos who said he noticed a lot of drivers lately who drive right through stop signs on thoroughfares like 100^th Ave. as well as Souvenir, Normandie and Elisabeth boulevards. He said he also noticed a good number of people lately who spend hours parked while inside their cars near his home.

Mourelatos explained the latter phenomenon as “kids who are looking for places to park” when the municipal parks are closed for the winter “and they want to be together.” Still, he acknowledged, “you always have to be vigilant, right. You never know. But personally I can tell you from experience it’s just kids looking for a quiet street for them to park and have a cigarette or even have a joint.”

RevelakisMeeting1: Drugs “it’s a war that we’re not going to win,” says Laval Police constable Jimmy Mourelatos.

RevelakisMeeting2: Seen here with Chomedey city councillor Aglaia Revelakis (far left) Laval Police Lieutenant Jean-François Girard and Cst. Jimmy Mourelatos provided residents with information on security in their neighbourhood during a meeting at Centre du Sablon on Feb. 20.

Martin C. Barry

Within 200 feet of the corner of Guénette and l’Écuyer in Laval’s Saint-Martin district early one Thursday afternoon recently, the street was littered with bits of trash here and there and hastily discarded garbage pails – the aftermath of a snow removal crew’s visit just a few minutes earlier.

Two for one

But what the Laval News just missed witnessing first-hand by a few seconds, according to nearby resident Natale Polito, was how the snow crew went about combining their usual job blowing the white stuff from the street curb into trucks with a second not so usual task – taking away the garbage – which is a job normally handled by the trash collectors.

Polito agreed that if the City of Laval has decided to save money by doing two things at once, this would certainly seem to be an original if rather odd example of it. “Two in in one,” he said, laughing. “Welcome to Laval: where the snow gets picked up along with the garbage.” Nonetheless, Polito recorded the scene from beginning to end with his smartphone.

Trash blown into trucks

While according to Polito the snow crew left the garbage pails behind, they damaged them. But he insisted that entire bags of garbage, which had been put out for collection by the trash crew, were blown, along with snow, into the rear bins of snow removal trucks to be transported (presumably) to a snow dump.

While noting that some of the bags were pushed to the curb by a snow crew member, “most of them were going inside the dump trucks to be brought to wherever they dump the snow, around Daniel-Johnson and Saint-Martin (boulevards),” added Polito.

Not the norm, says resident

But then, recycling bins were another matter. Referring to another employee, he said “that poor guy had to come out of the truck and place them – because they were all over the place.” Polito said it’s the first time he’s  seen anything comparable happen, even taking into account that garbage collection and snow removal operations were taking place around the same time.

“Usually when there is snow removal the day of garbage collection, when it’s on either side, the crew usually comes before they plow the snow and they push the bags and the garbage pails into the centre or on the sides so that the plows don’t touch the garbage.”

Local councillor’s reaction

Laval city councillor Aline Dib, who represents Saint-Martin district, said she wanted to view Polito’s still photos and video footage before deciding along with public works officials just what happened. “We will do what we have to do and check what is wrong and what is going on in this situation,” she said.

Martin C. Barry

Taking part in the CRC Robotics Competition, a team from Laval Senior Academy won third place in the robot game category of the three-day event held in Laval last weekend.

Collège Montmorency first

The Overall Champion Trophy awarded by Hydro Quebec for best combined score in all categories was won by Collège Montmorency, with Macdonald High School and Marionopolis College placing second and third respectively.

The 15th annual CRC Robotics Competition, which included 24 schools from the Montreal region, took place from Feb. 25 to Feb. 27 in the gymnasium at Collège Montmorency in Laval. The event’s top teams were graded on their overall performance and not just on the robots they build and operated.

More than 500 students

Lake of Two Mountains High and Laval Senior Academy were two Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board schools among the participants which included secondary and post-secondary institutions. More than 500 high school and CEGEP students took part in the 2016 competition.

The CRC Robotics Competition is believed to be the only educational robotics contest where all the work is done exclusively by students. Teachers, engineers and outside specialists are welcome, but for advice only.

Work done by students

Apart from a motor and a control box that each team receives, everything about the robot, the kiosk, the video and the website is conceived and built by the students. Where language is necessary, both French and English must be used. The event was open to all. You can also find out more about the competition by visiting www.robo-crc.ca/en.

Photo: Members of the Laval Senior Academy robotics team use their skills to control their robot during the 15^th annual CRC Robotics Competition held at Collège Montmorency.

Martin C. Barry

Political leaders from three levels of government joined members of Laval’s Syriac Catholic community at St. Ephrem Church on Cartier Blvd. on Feb. 27 for a religious service marking the enthronement of Monsignor Paulos Antoine Nassif as the new Apostolic Exarch for Canada with his official seat in Laval.

A papal appointment

On Jan. 7, it was announced in Rome that His Holiness Pope Francis had created an Apostolic Exarchate for Syro-Catholics in Canada and that the Pope had appointed Reverend Father Nassif (who was previously Rector of the Patriarchal Seminary of Charfet in Lebanon) as Apostolic Exarch.

The ceremony was presided by His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East in the Syriac Catholic Church. The event, which was attended by Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion, several local Liberal MPs and members of Laval city council, was followed by a banquet that evening at the Centre communautaire syriaque on Edouard-Montpetit St. in Laval.

Will work with refugees

Referring to Mgr. Nassif during a gathering recently, Vimy Liberal MP Eva Nassif called him “a member of the family and we are proud to have him here.” (A member of Nassif’s riding office staff later confirmed that the two are distantly related.) She said “he will be responsible for dossiers involving refugees in Laval” with the assistance of St. Ephrem Church.

Born in Biakout, Metn, Lebanon in 1969, the son of the late Geryes Nehmatalla Nassif and Antoinette Youssef Beylouni, Mgr. Nassif was ordained into full priesthood by Patriarch Mar Ignace Antoun II Hayek in 1992. According to a brochure distributed during the ceremony, a “strong tendency towards the monastic life” led Mgr. Nassif to Naples, Italy to gain religious experience with the Franciscans.

Promoted a Bishop

At a Holy Synod of the Syriac Catholic Church held in Rome in 2014, a request for a new Exarchate in Canada, separate from the United States eparchy, was made to Pope Francis, and a suggestion was offered that it should be Fr. Antoine Nassif. Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan promoted Mgr. Nassif to a Bishop on Jan. 23 in the Annunciation Cathedral in Beirut. The new Bishop has chosen as his motto the words of the apostle Saint Paul: “Charity endures all things,” and he has taken the name of Paul as patron.

Prayers for Middle-East peace

During the service in the church, prayers were said and wishes expressed in readings “for peace and security in the wounded Middle-East. May God put a term to wars and conflicts that still bleed hearts and destroy the humanity. May love and brotherhood reign over hatred. May all people live in reciprocal respect rejecting violence and murder and abide by justice and right behavior.”

During a key moment of the ceremony, senior members of the Syriac Catholic clergy raised Mgr. Nassif several feet off the ground in an upholstered chair, symbolizing his elevation and enthronement as a new Apostolic Exarch.

Only 15 to 20 per cent of middle-income Canadians retiring without an employer pension plan have saved anywhere near enough for retirement, according to a new study from the Broadbent Institute.

These people, now aged 55 to 64, face a dramatic drop in their standard of living in retirement, and many will spend their senior years in poverty, the think-tank says, basing its findings on Statistics Canada figures.

About 47 per cent of Canadians currently have no employer pension, and even fewer younger workers have employer pensions.

That means the number of seniors who slip into poverty will worsen in the decades ahead, according to report author Richard Shillington.

Canadians within 10 years of retirement are supposed to be at their peak savings years, socking away money for retirement.

But Shillington found the median value of retirement assets of Canadians age 55 to 64 is just over $3,000.

They’ll get the CPP/QPP and OAS/GIS in most cases, which brings them to an average of $15,970 annually for singles and $25,746 for couples.

Half have less than year of savings

But they are meant to supplement that income from their own savings or other resources.

As things stand now, half have savings that represent less than one year’s worth of the resources they need to supplement OAS/GIS and CPP/QPP, the study found.

Fewer than 20 per cent have enough savings to supplement their income for at least five years.

Shillington argues senior poverty has been rising since 1995. When taken against the low-income measure, the number living in poverty has risen from 3.9 per cent to 11.1 per cent. And 30 per cent of women living alone in their senior years are poor.

That means 719,000 poor seniors, including 469,000 single men and women.

Rick Smith, executive director of the Broadbent Institute, said he believes Canadians will be shocked to learn how many are facing retirement in poverty.

Bad for the economy

“Even if you assume a decreased need or if you liquidate your home equity, the news is still very grim,” he said “We’re looking at a situation in our country — 10 years down the line, 15 years down the line — where millions of Canadians have very little disposable income and that’s not good for the economy.”

He urged the federal government to move quickly on CPP reform and to think about enhancing the GIS benefit for both singles and couples.

“We’ve been sold this bill of goods over the last few decades that RRSPs and TFSAs can be a sort of replacement for workplace pensions — and that turns out to be untrue,” Smith said.

“These findings raise serious questions about the policy needs for future pensionless cohorts, such as the adequacy of benefits from Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, and the Quebec and Canada pension plans,” Shillington wrote in his analysis.

The Broadbent Institute created by former NDP MP Ed Broadbent, studies Canadian public policy issues with a view to make Canada a more equitable society.