The Mobilité Infra Québec agency will have the power to expropriate “any building it deems necessary,” but people affected by a seizure will not have the power to contest it before the Québec Ombudsman. A shortcoming that deprives the population of a recourse “of considerable importance,” according to the latter.
In a letter addressed, among others, to the Minister of Transport Geneviève Guilbault, the Québec Ombudsman is asking to amend Bill 61 establishing Mobilité Infra Québec to grant it “jurisdiction over complaints specifically related to the expropriation powers” of the future agency.
“In the context of transport projects, [Mobilité Infra Québec] may acquire a building, by mutual agreement or by expropriation, and will have to interact with citizens, writes Marc-André Dowd. These acquisitions can greatly affect the people affected and require non-judicial recourse, in particular to avoid the costs and delays of the courts.
In its current form, however, the agency will escape the supervision of the Québec Ombudsman since the hiring of its staff is done outside the Public Service Act.
“In itself, the Québec Ombudsman is not overly concerned about this lack of jurisdiction to handle complaints against Mobilité Infra Québec,” writes Mr. Dowd. The expropriation power vested in the agency, however, “changes the situation in this regard.”
Article 8 of Bill 61 provides that Mobilité Infra Québec may “acquire, by mutual agreement or by expropriation, for its own account or for the account of one of its subsidiaries, […] any building that it deems necessary in the context of planning or carrying out a complex transport project entrusted to it”.
The agency would thus be able to intervene “directly” in the lives of the population, believes the Québec Ombudsman. Even if the Act respecting expropriation already outlines the procedure and “would in principle be applicable to Mobilité Infra Québec,” writes Mr. Dowd, he remains “convinced that it would be beneficial, not only for the expropriated citizens, but also for Mobilité Infra Québec, for a non-judicial recourse such as recourse to the Québec Ombudsman to be accessible.”
His office already handles complaints made by the population to ensure compliance with the procedures in place, to call public authorities to order when processing times become unreasonable, to support a citizen when he has difficulty reaching the person responsible for his file and to intervene with the government if it finds that the citizen has suffered an injustice in the calculation of his compensation.
“Although they are not very frequent,” the Ombudsman specifies in his letter, “these complaints can be of considerable importance to expropriated citizens. […] I believe that the citizens concerned should be able to have access to a non-judicial, simple, free and informal remedy, which has proven its worth.”
Marc-André Dowd is asking that Bill 61 include a clause that guarantees that Mobilité Infra Québec falls under its jurisdiction. “It is in the public interest that citizens have access to accessible remedies,” concludes the Québec Ombudsman. “I will therefore follow the progress of Bill 61 with interest.”