Having environmental ambitions is one thing, sacrificing the quality of life of your fellow citizens to achieve them is quite another. Montreal has for several years entered a desire to make the city more user-friendly, green and safe. This ambition can be seen with the construction sites which are constantly increasing in the four corners of the city.
Unfortunately, a surprising choice was made to carry out this policy, it is to ignore collateral damage. Thus, if citizens are victims of pollution linked to the realization of a construction site, it is not important for the persons in charge of the construction sites, only the result counts. Montreal in 2021 looks a lot like the oil or tobacco industries of the 1980s, where only profit mattered, no matter how people get sick or the soil is polluted.
To illustrate this ubiquitous situation for the year 2021, I would like to cite the example of the work carried out on avenue des Pins, in Montreal. In the Plateau Mont-Royal, a major project was announced by the municipality: “The future avenue des Pins has been redesigned to improve safety, comfort and the experience for all. “
A priori, these are only good qualities that are integrated into this project. However, its realization is done according to the guiding principles of the City, that is to say that only the achievement of the result counts, whatever the number of victims.
Thus, the work started at the start of the 2021 school year around the school in Pied-de-la-Montagne. That an unbearable level of noise inflicted on students and their teachers during school hours has never seemed disturbing enough for something to be proposed. For several months now, construction machinery and jackhammers have become the background noises in which school teachers try to ensure their school days as efficiently as possible for the students.
Short-lived joy
We succeeded, at the cost of a great effort and after long negotiations, to convince that the living conditions within the school are not acceptable. Thus, we have obtained that the work is done partly outside school hours. It seemed like a victory for us, because we thought we had succeeded in reminding the municipality that education and school life are important in a city.
But our joy was only short-lived. Today, as the work begins to move away on the avenue, dust from weeks of work has infiltrated the entire building. We then turned to the City to clean the school relatively expensive. The response was clear and quick: “Helping you is out of the question. »While in the business world, a company is obliged to restore any building or land it may have polluted to its original state, the City of Montreal considers that this moral duty does not fall on it when a construction site did damage. It will therefore be up to the school system and the population to find solutions.
It is essential that the School, with a capital letter, regain its letters of nobility and be able to offer quality education to children. This cannot be done as long as elected municipal officials consider that the school and its population are secondary to the project to green an avenue. In conclusion, we can summarize the City of Montreal’s public works policy as follows: “Where the City passes, the environment dies. ”
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