The natural area adjacent to the Rivière des Mille Îles at 10th Avenue, in Fabreville, was reduced to nothing at the beginning of November.
Illegally, the deforestation work was carried out mainly on two lots belonging to Gazaille Construction, whose president Claude Gazaille did not return our call or respond to our emails.
Alerted in the early morning of Friday, November 4 by worried neighbours, the City dispatched an urban forestry inspector before demanding that the work stop, without success.
“No certificate of authorization for the felling of private trees has been requested or issued by the City”, affirms by email the head of Public Affairs, Anne-Marie Braconnier.
The following Monday, the owner, “convinced of being within his rights”, once more refused to cease his interventions, forcing the Municipality to turn to the courts.
Injunctions
Six days following the first cuts, the municipal administration obtained from the Superior Court a provisional interlocutory injunction, aimed at stopping all land development work without a permit, including the cutting of trees.
Then, on November 15, a safeguard order was issued, extending the effects of the initial injunction for 15 days.
Requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals, a neighbor whose backyard overlooks the woods witnessed, powerless, the first operations of the clearing operation using chainsaws and a mechanical shovel.
“It was not long, informs the one who placed a first call around 7:30 am to Service 311 to denounce the situation, on November 4. [L’opérateur] leaned his mechanical shovel on the top of the trees and laid it down one following the other”.
With the exception of a few trees along the river and waterfront properties, everything would have been razed, he continues, pointing out that “every day people used the path to walk their dog or to access the river”.
Among these regulars, Michaël Paquette. “Me and my spouse used to go for walks with our 4-year-old daughter and now there is practically nothing left,” he laments.
Damage extent
In his email, Mr. Paquette argues that “nobody wanted it to be destroyed”, including the municipal authorities who planned to acquire the wooded land to make it a park with access to the river. The citizen supports this assertion with a public document – submitted as part of the consultations on the City of Laval’s Urban Planning Code in the summer of 2021 – that the Mail Laval was able to consult.
As for the extent of the damage, the Municipality estimates the deforested area at some 12,500 square meters, or nearly 75% of this natural space located north of Sainte-Rose Boulevard between 9th and 11th Avenue.
“On the bank and in the area of influence of the wetland of interest, it would be regarding 955 m² of deforestation,” notes Ms. Braconnier.
As of November 9, the partial inventory taken in the field reported at least 77 trees over 10 centimeters in “height-chest diameter”, 775 trees over 2.5 centimeters and approximately 240 trees under 2.5 centimeters in diameter, details the City’s Legal Affairs Department in a document filed in court to which the Mail had access.
Repair
In its application for a permanent injunction, the City of Laval is asking Gazaille Construction to be ordered to restore the wooded area before the massive felling by minimally replanting the 1,092 trees of comparable size to those that were razed.
“We intend to give priority to restoring the shoreline and the protective strip of the wetland of interest,” adds the spokesperson for the Municipality in an email exchange.
For its part, the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight once morest Climate Change will carry out an inspection next week to “determine whether there has been a breach of the Environment Quality Act”, explains the communications advisor and regional spokesperson, Frédéric Fournier. “The Ministry will not rule out any recourse to ensure a return to compliance if there is a breach,” he specifies.
Fines
The file is still under analysis at the City, which has various levers to crack down on the offender.
This one is indeed exposed to fines for having defied the regulations
municipal in connection with the Tree Code and the regulatory provisions concerning the protection of wetlands of interest.
In addition to a fine of $200 to $2,000, a company caught at fault is also liable to a fine of between $5,000 and $15,000 for each hectare illegally deforested. In this case, the area cleared is estimated at 1.25 hectares, the equivalent of nearly two soccer fields.
Revised zoning
It should be noted that Gazaille Construction had acquired this land in 1998 in the hope of building single-family residences and semi-detached houses, what the zoning allowed until the coming into force last week of the Town Planning Code. Since then, these two lots have been subject to protective zoning which greatly restricts their development potential. Clearly, only isolated single-family homes are authorized on large lots, ie 15,000 square meters or more.
During public consultations last year, the owner had tried in vain to convince the City to review the zoning in order to allow him to carry out his housing project of 33 “semi-detached” residences on two floors.
