One year after the publication of a very critical report on the City of Montreal’s management of the issue of Aboriginal homelessness in the Milton-Parc district, the city’s ombudsman, Mr.e Nadine Mailloux notes that the progress made in this file is insufficient.
As part of his annual report tabled Monday at the city council, Mr.e Mailloux returns to the results of the survey that she had published in May 2022. She then referred to a “humanitarian crisis in the heart of the metropolis” and made five recommendations to the City, one of which related to the establishment of a “stable and safe” emergency accommodation resource for this Aboriginal population in distress.
The ombudsman notes that one of the five recommendations has been implemented, namely the funding of non-profit organizations working in this field, and that another is “on the right track to being satisfied”, namely the creation of a good neighbor committee. On the other hand, the sustainability of the refuge located at the Hôtel des arts on rue Saint-Dominique is still not assured.
“We have a lucid and cautious optimism”, underlines all the same Me Mailloux, during a telephone interview. “Things are progressing. We really feel that the City has heard the call and received the emergency signal that we had. We will continue to pursue it. »
Still, there is a lot of work to be done. Me Mailloux believes that the City and its partners should improve the reception of these Aboriginals in Montreal to prevent some of them from becoming homeless. “I believe that the Inuit community arriving in Montreal has much more to offer than what we currently see. It is a very rich culture. »
However, she recognizes that the City is not alone in this file and that the federal and provincial governments must also act.
Controversy around alleys
Among the cases handled by the ombudsman’s office in 2022, two of them concern alleys in the borough of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (MHM). In two separate alleys, one of the accesses was closed without consultation with the residents. In fact, noted the ombudsman, the borough decreed these closures following a single citizen request without carrying out traffic studies.
The ombudsman therefore suggested that the borough review its procedures and draw inspiration from the rules applied in other boroughs, namely conducting a survey of residents and carrying out an impact analysis of the closure of an access. The borough, however, rejected these suggestions and maintained the closure of the blocked accesses.
The ombudsman finds it difficult to explain the borough’s refusal and points out that it is rare for the City or the boroughs to reject his recommendations. “What we recommended are things that are done in other boroughs. Among other things, the Borough of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie has best practices for closing access [de ruelles] “, underlines M.e Mailloux.
The borough retorts that alley access closures are decreed to prevent motorists from using them as a shortcut. Surveying the citizens beforehand would delay the securing of these alleys, indicates the press secretary of the mayor Pierre Lessard-Blais, Victor Wong Seen-Bage. “Safety first, before fluidity. He recalls that citizens can request a consultation afterwards if they want to reopen access.
MHM is also the borough that was the subject of the greatest number of complaints and requests for information and inquiries from the ombudsman last year. Nadine Mailloux specifies, however, that this does not mean that the borough has a management problem.
The office of the ombudsman has also had to deal with complaints of discrimination. In one case, however, he ruled that the one filed by a citizen wearing the veil and the burkini and who refused to wear a mask during the pandemic at a public swimming pool in Ville-Marie, was unfounded. “During the pandemic, the health instructions, including the wearing of a mandatory mask when leaving the swimming pool, were strictly applied to everyone”, underlines the report.
Parking in Old Montreal
The ombudsman’s office has also looked into the shortage of parking spaces in Old Montreal, where residents are struggling to park their cars despite their parking permit.
The reasons are multiple, observed the ombudsman, who cites the endless construction sites as well as the sidewalk cafes and Bixi stations that encroach on parking spaces during the summer.
After investigation, the ombudsman suggested that the borough of Ville-Marie favor off-street locations for Bixi stations, conduct tight inspections to ensure that permits for temporary occupation of the public domain are respected , and finally to think about ways to encourage the managers of public service sites — who do not pay fees for occupying the public domain — to vacate the premises quickly after the end of the work or in the event of a prolonged interruption.
Moreover, this recommendation is in line with the decision of the Plante administration to impose strict rules on contractors who leave sites inactive.