To prevent intrusions on their land, owners in the Village sector, in Ville-Marie, have equipped their fences with barbed wire. Among them, the Fédération interprofessional de la santé du Québec (FIQ), which occupies a building on Avenue Papineau. However, this type of device is prohibited in the Ville-Marie district, noted The Duty.
Cohabitation is not easy in the Village, a neighborhood that has struggled for years with problems of homelessness and drug addiction. At least two owners in this area have installed barbed wire on their property, TVA revealed last Thursday.
At the rear of its building on Papineau Avenue, the FIQ grounds are jealously protected by a high Frost-type fence topped with three rows of barbed wire. Posters also remind cyclists not to tie their bikes to the fence.
Municipal regulations
“Owners are within their right to use the means at their disposal to prevent intrusions on their private land,” Mayor Valérie Plante’s office declared last week.
Barbed wire is, however, prohibited in Ville-Marie under its Fence Regulations. “A permit [un certificat d’autorisation] is not required for the installation of a backyard fence in this sector of the borough. However, the installation of barbed wire is prohibited,” confirms Gonzalo Nunez, public relations officer at the City of Montreal, in an email.
Do we intend to enforce the regulations and order the removal of the barbed wire? “To date, the district has not received any complaints regarding this installation,” simply specifies Gonzalo Nunez.
However, the Ville-Marie borough was criticized for its zeal recently, when one of its employees showed up in businesses on Sainte-Catherine Street East, in the middle of the Montreal Pride Festival last August, to conduct checks on the terraces. The district had notably criticized a merchant for the size of his plants, considered too tall.
The FIQ, which did not specify when its barbed wire was installed, was stingy with comments. “We are ready to collaborate with the City of Montreal to ensure the compliance of our installations. We will make necessary improvements as needed,” the organization said.
Mayor Plante’s office declined our request for an interview with Robert Beaudry, councilor for the Saint-Jacques district and responsible for the homelessness issue on the executive committee. As the file is “administrative”, Mr. Beaudry will not comment on it, it was argued.
Anti-homeless picks
This story is reminiscent of the episode, ten years ago, of the “anti-homeless peaks”. Two rows of picks installed along the window of a bookstore, on Berri Street, at the corner of Sainte-Catherine Street East, caused an outcry. Outraged, the mayor at the time, Denis Coderre, went to the scene and made it known that no such device would be tolerated. The woodpeckers immediately disappeared from the downtown landscape. “This is not the kind of town I want to live in,” he said.
Valérie Plante, who was an advisor in the sector at the time for Projet Montréal, described the presence of these peaks as “unacceptable”.
Without wanting to criticize the use of barbed wire, Daniel Matte, member of the board of directors of the Citizens’ Association of the Village of Montreal, believes that their appearance on the fences is a symptom of the evil that has been gnawing at the Village for years. “Is this too much?” I don’t have the answer, but I can understand how it could come to this. »
The area is plagued with seemingly endless safety issues despite the City’s attempts to remedy them. “It’s not going well at all. It’s worrying. It seems that what is happening in the Village is insoluble,” underlines Mr. Matte, who criticizes the authorities, the City of Montreal and the government of Quebec, for passing the buck in this matter. “When a human being thinks that there is nothing to be done and that elected officials can do nothing, he tells himself that he will do it himself. »