Pierrefonds development recalls Cliche’s Ste-Anne involvement
It was a bit surprising to discover in a recent West Island Gazette article that David Cliche, the former Parti Québécois environment and wildlife minister (1996-’97), is the “spokesman for the developers in Pierrefonds West.”
Cliche is lending his credibility as an ex-minister to steer a large residential development project through a minefield of administrative, legal and public obstacles.
The last time I (as mayor of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue) met him, he was on the other side of the fence. He came to our town hall in 2008 with a mandate from the Montreal parks department. Our council were the bad guys because we had unanimously adopted a controversial development plan for land adjacent to a newly identified ‘eco-territory’ and he was the green knight representing Montreal.
His employer at that time, Montreal, wanted Ste-Anne council to change its development plan to reduce its impact on this eco-territory. The council was being asked to effectively expropriate land using municipal legislation to make parkland. He wanted us to reduce the size and scope of our development. In return, he would draw up an agreement which would guarantee certain benefits for the town, including the construction of a Nature Interpretation Centre in the eco-territory, bike paths and nature trails, with public transport guaranteed. Montreal would also settle outstanding service problems for Ste-Annede-Bellevue.
On the other hand, our council of that period thought that there should be some form of compensation for the loss of future revenue. Under Cliche’s proposal, the opportunity cost for saving more green space would be paid exclusively by the small town of Ste-Anne.
Cliche was a skilled negotiator, charming and extremely articulate. We met several times and he drew up an agreement which I realized, at the end of the process and after careful consideration and consultation, we couldn’t sign because it would probably involve the town in what is called a ‘disguised’ expropriation of a large area of privately-owned land which was already designated residential.
The current members of SteAnne council have adopted a different legal position: namely, that more recent legislation and court decisions allow towns to be more active in the defence of the environment.
But my question to Cliche was simple: why couldn’t Montreal just buy whatever it wanted for its parkland as it did to settle an issue of the woods on the l’Anse-à-l’Orme road? It would have made things much simpler for everyone if Montreal had exercised its right to purchase or expropriate land for parks. But would the Montreal and its agglomeration council have agreed to such a purchase in the West Island? As far as I was informed, at no time did Montreal offer to buy the contested land.
I also didn’t see how former Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay and his executive committee could make future financial and planning commitments for the agglomeration. As a member of the agglomeration council as Ste. Anne’s mayor, I couldn’t see that our future mayors would be under any obligation to accept such an agreement between Montreal and Ste-Anne.
We would have had an agreement which we couldn’t enforce and the probability of a legal action on our hands for disguised expropriation which is what the landowners in Ste-Anne have recently been threatening the current council with.
Now here comes Cliche, in 2017, making the arguments to justify the development of up to 6,000 housing units in a large green area of Pierrefonds West. It’s a very hot topic, as these zoning and environmental topics tend to be. And political people are all hoping for an official approval by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal to cover their backs.
I suppose that most people would be generally happy to preserve as much green space as is still available — even if their own houses were recently built on it. Because even with a magical electric train floating into our area, it’s hard to sell the idea of transit-oriented density (TOD) to people living in our suburban communities. Didn’t we buy our houses to get away from density? If I’d wanted density, there’s lots of it downtown. I don’t need more of it in the West Island, do I?
So here comes Cliche to make the case for the landowners and apply pressure to the Montreal administration to let the development begin.
But, of course, there’s really no reason why a skilled environmental negotiator, who once executed a mandate with SteAnne for Montreal to indirectly create parkland, shouldn’t show up on the side of the big bad developers. You need clever professionals to argue both sides of an argument and that’s all Cliche is doing: promoting his clients’ interests.