If, if, if

This week’s start of service on the REM’s Deux Montagnes line begs the question of when Vaudreuil-Soulanges residents will be able to access the l’Anse a l’Orme terminal the other side of the Ile aux Tourtes bridge.

Six months ago, we were promised a hard start on Monday, Sept. 29. That came and went. A month ago, we learned a new soft date — Spring, 2026 — would coincide with a major overhaul of exotrain and shuttlebus service, with new routes and stops added to the network in anticipation of the opening of the regional hospital in Vaudreuil-Dorion.

For Vaudreuil-Soulanges residents and stakeholders desperate for better public transit, it’s typical of the failed undertakings from our provincial, regional and municipal governments, starting with the CAQ government’s promise of a light rail system on the new bridge.  

Example: with the bridge two years from its promised opening, the provincial transport ministry (MTQ) refuses to discuss dedicated lanes for shuttlebuses and school buses.  

Who to blame for this basket of bullshit? It’s nearly impossible to find out who is driving the bureaucratic bus. Is it exo? The MTQ? An MRC operational committee? Is the primary purpose to transport a labour force from Montreal to fill the region’s manpower shortage — or to offer off-island residents faster, more convenient public transit to the metropolis and the bus and metro network paid for by our taxes?  

Then there’s the awkward question of whether the opening of the new regional hospital nearing completion off Cité des Jeunes will be at the mercy of the impasse between the CAQ government and Quebec’s medical professionals. Earlier this year we learned the 404-bed facility won’t open by the end of 2026 as promised. In the best-case scenario cited by the Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI) the $2.6M project would open in the summer of 2027, six months after the regional health and social services agency (CISSSMO) was supposed to take delivery. In the worst case, it would not be operational before the fall of 2028.

It now appears the official handover has slipped to Winter, 2027; no date has been advanced for the start of operations.

Despite the sketchy SQI timeline, Quebec’s tighter immigration policies and a growing exodus of fed-up doctors and nurses, CISSMO maintains its optimism about being able to attract and keep staff — although at the expense of the greater healthcare network. Qualified immigrants are still welcome to apply. The Vaudreuil-Soulanges MRC will readjust its master development plan as soon as the Montreal Metropolitan Community adopts densification changes to prod towns like Hudson to approve more affordable housing. 

If, if, if.

Less than two weeks before Hudson’s Sunday, Nov. 2 municipal elections, I’m not seeing much enthusiasm for what should be an important decision. Politics is a contact sport; there’s been almost none of that, which says to me that turnout for the 2025 exercise in municipal democracy will be lower than it was in 2021.

Without delving into personalities, the last four years have seen a steady push away from residential development, a rejection of affordable housing for young families and seniors. This council has persisted in its single-minded goal to acquire Sandy Beach, albeit without a plan for its conservation or the means for controlling the flood of visitors. It narrowly failed to pass a tax grab on new builds and renovations only after residents pushed back. In any other municipality, residents would be howling.

In those four years, Hudson’s annual budgets have skyrocketed along with year-over-year surpluses. Services continue to deteriorate, possibly because of near-constant staff turnover and bad-faith labour relations. Instead of expanding the trail network, this council has made paving streets their path to reelection. 

With a total valuation roll in excess of $1.5 billion, Hudson isn’t about to go bust, but taxpayers are going to feel the burn when the cost of servicing $36B in long-term debt will increase to 16% of the total budget by 2030 (data from the RCGT fiscal portrait on the town’s website).

Given what’s at stake over the next four years, public discussion has been a soft mix of real and virtual town halls, meet & greets and private appearances. District 1 candidates Bob Johnson, Shawn Murphy and Youri Rodrigue are  planning the closest thing to an actual debate, but have only one date nailed down, at Como’s Creative Hub Sunday, Oct. 26. District 2 hopefuls Luc Dionne and Matthew Stenberg are talking but I’ve not seen anything concrete other than a blanket invite to an most-candidates meet & greet at the Cardinal Brew Pub.  

As for the two mayoral candidates, a debate is off the table. Hutchison has released a full schedule of meet & greets on social media, but at no point does it appear she and challenger Chantal Perreault will be in the same room together. Perreault is holding her own town hall on Wednesday, Oct. 30 at the Creative Hub.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

If you share the belief that acclamation is evidence of democracy’s failure, Hudson’s ongoing record of uncontested seats is also disturbing. In 2021, three seats were uncontested. This year, four councillors saved themselves the hassle of campaigning. Disturbing, yes, but acclamation (4,500 candidates in this election cycle) is the new Quebec norm.

Participation in the last election was 46% of Hudson’s 4,465 qualified voters. Outgoing mayor Chloe Hutchison got 49.44% of that. In other words, she was elected by a quarter of the eligible vote.

It’s far from the first time Hudson councils were acclaimed. In 2005, the only contested seat saw Bob Parkinson defeat Germain Laporte in District 2. From the Nov. 9 Hudson Gazette: “Parkinson received 61 per cent of the District 2 vote against Laporte in an election that left both men marvelling at the outstanding voter turnout of 44 per cent. The big story that year was St. Lazare’s catastrophic experiment with voting machines as the excuse for the lowest voter turnout in the county.

In 2009, former mayor Michael Elliott and four of six councillors were acclaimed. Voter turnout for the two contested seats was 40.7 percent, with 512 of the 1,274 eligible voters casting ballots for Tim Snow in District 2 and Diane Piacente in 5.

The 2013 election, the first since SQ investigators revealed the extent of fraud at town hall, pitted duelling slates in an epic battle replete with mud-slinging. From the Nov. 6 Hudson Gazette: “Mayoral candidate Ed Prévost walked out of Hudson’s Stephen F. Shaar Community Centre the victor on Sunday night after winning 75% of the votes against opponent Jacques Bourgeois. With 47.4% of eligible residents voting, it was the largest turnout in the region, and one of the largest in Hudson’s history.”

The 2017 exercise was another high-turnout (57.4%) slog between Jamie Nicholls and Bill Nash, both of whom had regularly attended Prévost’s council meetings prior to his death in the final months of his term. Nicholls won handily with almost 74% of the popular vote. Turnout hit 57.4%, a high point. 

If there’s anything to take away from these stats, it’s that voters turn out only when they’re polarized. Conversely, they stay home when there’s no debate. 

Clearly, the incumbent mayor doesn’t want an authentic political debate, especially when she has managed to dump the only two councillors who gave her a fight in the last term. Barring a miracle in the dying days of this campaign, I predict more of the same in mayor Hutchison’s second term. 

w that we’ve read the text of the proposed $9.6M loan bylaw to buy out the owners of Sandy Beach, I’ll repeat the questions I asked at the Sept. 11 special meeting where the notice of motion and tabling of draft were approved unanimously. (Final adoption of the loan bylaw is scheduled for another special meeting this evening.)

Can council guarantee taxpayers will be able to afford this purchase? 

Even those passionately in favour of the Sandy Beach buyout have voiced their concerns over the lack of financial details. The text of Bylaw 782-2025 doesn’t address those concerns. Most of it is a lengthy preamble, citing studies, reports and legal actions taken in the 25-year history of the proposed residential development. 

Financial details are as follows:

— The Town and owners of the land have reached agreement on the sale of seven lots comprising the proposed development for $8,750,000, excluding taxes and costs. The town does not have the necessary funds to acquire the lots. 

— The draft bylaw authorizes council to spend the sum of $9,648,136, including incidental expenses and net taxes, $2M of which will come from the town’s unallocated surplus. An additional $2M grant from the Montreal Metropolitan Community (CMM) remains a possibility. (“We want to keep that door open,” mayor Chloe Hutchison told residents at the Sept. 11 meeting.)

— The remaining $7,648,136 will come from a loan, which like all municipal borrowing requires the approval of taxpayers and the provincial municipal affairs ministry as well as a five-year rollover structure based on prevailing interest rates.  

— Borrowing and repayment costs will be charged to the owner of every taxable immovable in Hudson for every unit they own. The bylaw defines a suite thus: serving or intended to serve as a residence for one or more person and where one can prepare or consume meals, sleep and includes a sanitary facility. It may be occupied by either an owner-occupant or rented. 

The only exclusion are bi-generational accessory dwellings occupied by or destined to be occupied exclusively for persons having a family, marital or common-law relationship to the second degree with the occupants of the main housing unit. 

Commercially, a unit is defined is defined as a space accommodating or intending to accommodate commercial, industrial or craft activities such as the sale of goods or services, either owned by an owner-occupant or rented. 

When asked how the per-unit assessment would affect the Manoir Cavagnal and its 90-something units, the mayor said the administration was working on it. A similar response dealt with questions about the cost of securing the beachfront and adjacent forests once it’s open to the general public.

Residents attending the Aug. 27 information meeting were told the term of the loan will be spread over 40 years to minimize the fiscal impact on taxpayers. Although the figure of $121 per unit was given at the Aug. 27 session, the draft loan bylaw doesn’t provide a number. Instead, it  entertains the possibility of that $2M grant from the CMM (reducing the annual cost per unit by $35) with the proviso that any “contribution, donation and subsidy” will be used to reduce the loan or defray debt servicing costs.

Simply put, the draft bylaw holds out the hope that federal, provincial or regional governments and NGOs such as Save Sandy Beach will ride to the town’s financial rescue if the tax burden becomes more than Hudson taxpayers can stand.

What the bylaw doesn’t include is the real cost of borrowing $7,648,136 based on a 40-year amortization schedule with five-year resets. Based on an average interest rate of 3.25% for the entire 40-year term, the total cost to taxpayers would be $13.71M, with $6.06M of that in debt interest.

How will it affect the Town of Hudson’s long-term debt?  For that, residents can turn to fiscal consultant RCGT’s Cadre financier 2025-2030, an analysis of Hudson’s fiscal roadmap for the next five years. 

The RCGT portrait begins with revenues ($14.1M in 2025), more that 80% of it generated by property taxes. Revenues are projected to grow by an average of 4.8% annually, reaching $17.8M by 2030. Most of that growth is generated by real estate transfer taxes, which the town tends to underbudget as a guarantee that Hudson’s annual budgets generate surpluses instead of deficits.

RCGT predicts an average annual budget increase of 4.4% to $21.9M in 2030. 

Meanwhile, Hudson’s net debt will reverse a decade-long reduction trend, rising from $22.4M in 2025 to $41M in 2030, a 13.8% increase representing 16% of the 2030 budget — an annual jump of 9.4%. Debt service charges will grow by 10.6% and the debt/revenue ratio ranging between 120% and 155% as the town incurs new debt faster than it can write off old debt. 

To soften the annual hit, RCGT advised the town to extend the Sandy Beach loan to 40 years from 30 and to delay construction of a new town hall by two years (2028 instead of 2026) and delaying major reconstruction of a portion of Lower Alstonvale now that preliminary studies show it wasn’t as far gone as first feared. 

RCGT predicts Hudson’s debt servicing charges will remain stable through 2027, increasing to $3.6M in 2030 as the town incurs the costs of a new municipal garage and the repaving of Main between Beach and Quarry Point. 

Even so, the cost of servicing Hudson’s long-term debt will increase by a third, from $2.2M in 2025 to $3.3M in 2030 — representing 16% of the town’s total 2030 budget.

Asked at the Aug. 27 public information meeting what constraints Quebec might place on Hudson’s long-term debt, RCGT’s Nicolas Plante told the room it was up to taxpayers, not the government. 

 

Here’s my translation of RCGT’s conclusion: 

“With a 40-year amortization period, the additional debt related to the Sandy Beach acquisition does not have a significant impact on the debt service ratio in 2030. However, the level of the debt balance increases, and the net debt-to-revenue ratio reaches 166% in 2030.

With this in mind, the City should adopt certain guidelines to control its debt level, such as prioritizing projects (by limiting the maximum borrowing amount per year), using future surpluses to prepay or avoid debt, or implementing a cash payment program for capital assets. These measures will enable the City to maintain an adequate level of debt in line with the challenges of renewing its assets.”

Does any of this matter to Hudson residents? We won’t know until the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 24, the one-day register for those opposed to the bylaw. A referendum would require at least 491 signatures on the register.

Is there a viable opposition? Not from potential mayoral candidates I’ve spoken to. Residents venturing an opinion say they’re of two minds — glad to see an end to a 25-year squabble over plans to develop the 60-acre parcel, concerned by the impact of the loan bylaw on the town’s finances and the lack of clarity on how the town proposes to manage the acquistion.

A big concern is whether the Sandy Beach purchase will tie the hands of future councils. With a 30% increase in Hudson’s long-term debt by 2030 and a 33% hike in debt servicing costs, it’s easy to see how the town might find itself strapped for cash for emergency expenditures, such as replacing a major artery washed away by torrential rains.

 

One of the presentations at the Aug. 27 info session was how tax revenues generated by Empero’s proposed Pine Beach development would offset Hudson’s growing debt/tax revenue ratio and help pay for future capital works projects. It was dismissed without discussion. The current council has not shown itself interested in densifying the urban perimeter despite threats by the federal and provincial governments to withold funding. 

Instead of looking at ways to grow Hudson’s tax base, the current council has spent the past four years looking for legal ways to block Empero’s June 2020 proposal to build 214 residential units on the 24-hectare parcel of land between Jack Layton Park and Quarry Point. 

Originally approved as a zoning change by 72% of those who voted in October 2001 referendum, the project has evolved over the years as the result of changes to provincial and regional environmental protection laws and regulations.

Notwithstanding this council’s use of development freezes and bylaw revisions, the town’s legal advice was that the province and the courts will recognize the owners’ right to develop — and to block public access to the town’s beachfront servitude. Mayor Hutchison was left with difficult choices — get Quebec’s approval for new lakefront access or shut down the beach and trail network for the time it took to cut a deal with owners Nicanco Inc. and their partners.

The momentum to buy out the developer began with the August 18 special meeting, where council voted unanimously to authorize town clerk Melissa Legault to sign an offer to purchase seven lots from their current owners for $8.75 million plus taxes. Unlike regular council meetings, the special was not streamed online.

This was where Hutchison told residents a loan bylaw was the fairest way to spread the cost, with $2 million from the town’s accumulated surplus and another $2 million available from the Montreal Metropolitan Community, conditional on equal access to all Greater Montreal residents. Instead of being collected as a membership or assessed by mil rate, a fixed cost per address would present as a line item on tax bills. 

This was where we learned the bylaw would be subject to approval by referendum, depending on whether at least 491 eligible residents signed a Sept. 24 registry. There would be an August 27 public information session, where the mayor promised a “respectful, fact-based” process. 

The buildup to the Aug. 27 info session included a card in the mail, urging residents to reserve seats if they planned to attend in person where they would learn how the purchase will be financed, its impact on property taxes, conservation and community benefits and the steps in the approval process. 

Those who managed to book seats were handed Save Sandy Beach pamphlets at the door to the Community Centre, where it became clear most of the 250 in attendance were there to celebrate their long-awaited victory rather than to ask probing questions about the financials and explore alternatives. A video loop featured drone footage of the beach, the Viviry Creek estuary, wetlands and forests — most of it land already ceded to or controlled by the town. The evening’s introductory slide was entitled Conservation and Access to River’s Edge, setting up the current administration’s contention that those 60 acres can somehow be protected while open to all. 

But it became obvious from the outset that even if they are not mutually exclusive, there must be limits. This emerged during citizen exchanges with Nicolas Milot, the CMM’s director of ecological transition, who later explained that if the town were to accept the $2M MCC grant, all four million of its residents would enjoy the same access as Hudson residents — including the beach.

The mayor set up the financial discussion with a more precise cost to taxpayers —$9.6 million, taxes in — and the results of an October 2024 assessment of the land’s market value by real estate assessors LB (you’ll find this and other supporting docs on town website). 

LB’s assessment set a fair market value by setting a realistic price per unit, based on the developer’s 2020 plan for 214 units — reduced by subsequent floodplain maps — and other real estate projects such as St. Lazare’s Place du Parc and high-end residential development on Mont Rigaud. It also considers the cost of constraints — interim control measures instituted by Hudson and the MCC, acreage listed on the province’s contaminated-soil register, contested bans on wetland backfilling and treecutting. LB’s final tally of projected profits: $11.5M for the 214-unit 2020 plan, $10M with all those constraints.

Earlier this year, the town made the owners a lowball offer of $5.5M. It was refused, but the partners countered with the $8.75M response. Why were they ready to sell for so far below market value? 

Among the supporting documents is a draft transaction discharge signed this past August 15 by all parties. Once the sale becomes final sometime next year, the discharge ends all legal constraints and seemingly endless litigation by both sides. If the bylaw drive fails at any point in the process, if this council is voted out of office and the deal is killed by the next council, everything reverts to the standoff which has existed for the past 25 years. LB uses the term “best and most profitable usage” to describe any path out of this quagmire. If ever there was such a thing as a legal document with emotion, this is it. They want the endless war to end.

With barely six months left in this Hudson council’s mandate (last council meeting Oct. 1, with provincewide municipal elections Sunday, Nov. 2), the focus shifts from what it hopes to accomplish to what’s possible with the resources available. 

More than three years in, council solidarity is showing serious stress cracks. Dissident councillors Doug Smith (District 1) and Benoit Blais (District 2) said last fall they won’t seek re-election, Blais because he calls it a waste of time, and Smith — no longer welcome at caucus meetings — because he’s rumoured to want the mayor’s job. 

Mayor Chloe Hutchison has said she will need a second term to finish what she set out to do. Councillors Reid Thompson (District 4) and Mark Gray (District 5) both said they’re planning to run again. Peter Mate (District 3) told me he hasn’t decided. District 6 councillor Daren Legault, the only holdover from the previous administration, is mulling a third term.

Here’s a partial list of wins, misses and chronic problems: 

Staff shortages

A big factor in a town’s success in getting things done is administrative capacity —bureaucratese for being able to hire and motivate competent staff. Hudson’s personnel situation is precarious and depends on stopgap workarounds. The town lacks a full-time director-general since Phil Toone left in May, 2022. Toone’s successor, on medical leave of absence for the past year, got bought out for an undisclosed amount approved at the March meeting, where council also okayed a resolution hiring a headhunter to find yet another candidate. In the meantime, interim DG Martin Houde and assistant DG Susan McKercher will continue to run the town.

Hudson town hall’s infamous revolving door continues to claim treasurers — by my count, seven since the Villandré scandal a decade ago. The last permanent treasurer was shown the door last year. A replacement barely had the time to fill out paperwork before he was canned in favour of a CPA originally hired on a consulting contract to mentor him. The March council meeting renewed that contract, billed between $7,000 and $15,000 a month since the fall.

Contracting out continues at the chronically short-staffed urban planning department, where the turnover has been fierce among inspectors. Gestim, UP’s outsourced permits and inspection contractors, bill between $8,000 and $14,000 a month depending on workload. It appears that Gestim and other contractuals set their own schedules, whereas full-time employees don’t have that luxury. 

Hudson’s unionized workers have been without a contract since 2022, yet there seems to be no hurry to sign a new deal despite growing frustration within the union rank and file. Depending on who one talks to, contracting is either more efficient or a waste of money hiring outsiders for work that could be more cheaply done by staff. 

Another management letter

Management letters from external auditors became a big deal in Hudson, where letters alerting previous councils to serious financial irregularities were shoved into a drawer at town hall. So it’s not good news when BCGO, the town’s external auditors, listed two significant internal control deficiencies and a number of lesser concerns in their 2023 audit: 

— journal entries were not routinely approved, potentially allowing unauthorized entries;

—monthly bank reconciliations showed several months of unexplained discrepancies;

— a new information technology policy didn’t include procedures on how often passwords should be changed or how to make them less vulnerable to hackers;

— the town hasn’t published on the provincial contract-management (SEAO) website a list of contracts under $25,000, nor has it updated calls for tenders once they are awarded;

— no GST or QST claims were filed since July 2022, raising the possibility the town might be unable to recover tax credits. 

The SEAO contract-management issue was addressed with the deposit of the overdue report at the March meeting, but in Hudson’s fragile human-resources environment, the letter demonstrates how lapses are inevitable. Was actual harm done? We don’t know what we don’t know.    

Flood zones

As water levels rise in the Lake of Two Mountains, Hudson’s lakeside homeowners are getting antsy about how the town is dealing with the environment ministry’s revised flood zone maps (geoinondations.gouv.qc.ca).

The revisions raised the number of flood-prone properties in the province from 22,000 to 77,000 and led to generalized panic among waterfront municipalities. In Hudson alone, the number of properties facing some degree of flooding risk jumped from 36 to 61 and the total area affected increased from 96 hectares to 155. 

Neighbouring municipalities Rigaud, Vaudreuil-sur-le-lac, Terrasse-Vaudreuil and Vaudreuil-Dorion have thrown their support behind a second petition asking Quebec to delay application of the new maps to satisfy a recommendation from the provincial ombudsperson for a simplified process to apply for a revision. Sponsored by Vaudreuil MNA Marie-Claude Nichols, the Révision de la cartographie des zones inondables petition also seeks to modify the risk assessment protocol and give residents and municipalities options to lower their risk rating. As of March 26, it had 1029 signatures. Signatures close May 19.

A previous petition gathered nearly 2,400 signatures when on Jan. 30, it was killed in committee by the CAQ government. Marilyne Picard, the caquiste MNA for Soulanges whose riding includes Hudson and Rigaud, told Neomedia her government had no choice but to push ahead with the revisions as is, given the increase in catastrophic flooding due to climate change.

Quizzed at the Dec. 16 meeting about what steps Hudson is taking on behalf of the owners of those 61 affected properties, Hutchison said the town’s responsibility is limited to enforcing Quebec’s maps. 

The only recourse for those 61 property owners? “Contact the provincial government,” the mayor responded. One gets the impression that Hudson property owners whose residences fall within the environment ministry’s new red zones will have to figure out their financial and legal exposure for themselves.

Baked-in surpluses

Why do Hudson’s budgets increase year over year at more than double the rate of inflation? Since it took office in late 2021, this council has voted to increase cumulative spending by $6.8M —  ($10.8M in 2021, $13.7M in 2022, $16.3 in 2023, $16.9 in 2024, $17,687,200 for 2025). 

The 2025 budget is the first using the 2025-2027 valuation roll, which raises Hudson’s total worth by 40%, but that only drives assessment-based downloads from other levels of government such as policing and public transport. The 2025-2027 triennial capital investments program (PTI ) wish list accounts for $10.35M over those three years ($5.9M in 2025) but one must seriously wonder how much of that will actually get spent — and on what. 

What is unclear to many residents is why the town doesn’t prioritize infrastructure investment. Historically, Hudson’s major discretionary expenses have involved essential infrastructure, such as last year’s $627K upgrade to the Hudson Valleys drinking water network. 

Is repaving all of Hudson’s 80-plus kilometres of roads without fixing what’s underneath an essential capital investment? As we learned at one council meeting, 11 kilometres, representing 14% of Hudson’s streets, have been repaved at a cost representing 16% of the budgets for the past three years. At the current rate, it will take four electoral cycles to repave all of Hudson’s streets at the rate of 18 kilometres over four years. 

Residents ask me why the repaving program isn’t combined with infrastructure upgrades such as sidewalks, drainage ditching and sewer system extensions — coupled with better policing of failing septic tanks. In a damning January 2012 report on the status of Hudson’s private wastewater treatment systems, consultant Hemisphere concluded that 51% of all septic tanks predate provincial regulations and are at risk of non-conformity; more than 200 installations, representing 11% of the total, pose a significant threats to wetlands, water table and shorelines. To put it bluntly, Hudson’s wastewater treatment stinks.

The four-year push to widen and drain Lakeview is finally about to happen, with a resolution adopted by council at the first meeting of 2025 to authorize the expenditure of $4.532M, a necessary preamble to calling for tenders. The invoices for previous major projects paint a bleak picture of what it really costs. Essential structural repairs, repaving and a sidewalk on Selkirk between Lakeview and Main cost more than $750,000, not including engineering and inspection.

Much of what is contained in the current PTI is wishful thinking, beginning with the decade-long dream of replacing Hudson’s inefficient, decrepit town hall, built as a community centre at the turn of the last century and just reopened after yet another makeshift patch job. Town employees play musical chairs, moving between makeshift offices in half a dozen unsuitable town-owned buildings. The old firehall and public works yard, built on some of the town’s most valuable real estate, remain an eyesore in the centre of town; plans to move Public Works across the tracks next to the sewage treatment plant are on indefinite hold. 

Certainly not because the town is broke, which touches on another resolution adopted at the March meeting. Hudson, currently sitting on somewhere north of $8 million in accumulated surpluses (another $1.3M from 2024) has come under the scrutiny of Quebec’s Municipal Commission (CMQ) for how it racks up surpluses year after year.

Hudson was one of three similar-sized Quebec towns (together with Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier and Saint-Roch-de-l’Achigan) flagged last May for in-depth audits to determine why they were piling up cash reserves instead of providing residents with services, leveraging infrastructure improvements or paying down long-term debt (Hudson’s stood at close to $23M at the end of 2023).

The audit singled Hudson out for special mention on issues dating back to 2013, including:

— taxing property owners before the enabling loan bylaws were approved by Quebec or shifted from bridge financing to long-term debt, then failing to compensate them for the excess collected;

— failing to make clear the funding source for spending bylaws until the end of the fiscal year, long after decisions had already been made;

— shifting funds between earmarked surpluses without enabling resolutions.

Many of the allegations were the subject of previous management letters from the town’s external auditors. The overtaxing of property owners connected to the municipal sewer system  has been resolved (the town paid down $585K in long-term sewer debt at the end of 2024), although the overtaxees have yet to be compensated. 

At the March meeting, council kept its promise of a response to the CMQ audit by tabling an action plan to implement Quebec’s recommendations. One hopes residents can see the surplus management plan as of the April 7 meeting.

Expertise on call

This council perpetuates the Hudson tradition of hiring outside expertise whenever there’s a decision to be made or defended, like last year’s ill-advised — and ultimately rejected — tax grab to fund greenspace acquisitions.

The 2025 budget earmarks $357,700 for professional services, a $260,000 jump over last year’s line item ($98,400) for inspectors, urban planners, lawyers, engineers, biologists, assessors and other professional service providers.

Monthly disbursements bear out that dial-a-consultant reflex. For example, December’s meeting approved a disbursement of $11.5K to study the cost of moving the Community Centre generator from the front to the back of the building. That doesn’t include moving it, which hasn’t happened yet. 

Some, like last August’s $55,000 bill from Habitat/Eco2Urb for an updated conservation plan, are in keeping with the priorities of this and the preceding council. BC2’s $24,000 bill for a parks and greenspace master plan resulted in such decisions as moving the town rink to St. Thomas Park. There’s no followup yet on an $19,000 charge from BC2 for a cost-benefit analysis for the purchase of a lot that would give the town access to Sandy Beach. (More on that below.)

Then there’s the Enclume file. Council paid this strategic-management consultant at least $8,500 to sit in on negotiations with the owner/developers of properties next door to the old Viviry at 498 Main, next to the SAQ at 514 Main and on the site of the old Medi-Centre at 98 Cameron. The town’s goal — to convince the owners to make concessions on what could be built — appears to have had mixed results. At the March meeting, council approved a $32K cash-only parks and greenspace assessment in exchange for greenlighting a previously submitted 20-unit condominium project for 98 Cameron. I was told the project requires no further approvals in order to submit a request for a building permit. Meanwhile, 498 Main is back on the market for $1.8 million, while there’s no word on an already-approved 18-unit condo next to the SAQ. I’m guessing it’s because the developers pushing ahead with their threat to sue the town.

After strangling the Villa Wyman 18-unit continuing-care project with administrivia, this council ended up buying the land from the non-profit and beginning a multi-year process to obtain the funding to do what the original owners had intended at no cost to the taxpayers. Although the town will eventully get its $750,000 back, the project has been taken over by Toit d’Abord, a non-profit regional housing authority to which Hudson will pay an annual assessment. 

At the March 10 council meeting, what were supposed to be final draft modifications to zoning bylaw 526 were adopted, subject to public consultation. One revision would have allowed council to exempt any building permit application for a redevelopment project or the intensification of existing activities on a piece of land, from the obligation to to transfer land or pay for park, playground or natural area purposes. At the public consult, residents voiced concern that without guidelines and guardrails, the revision opened the door to a double standard or other abuses. The mayor agreed to further modifications to allay concerns.

RCI freeze ends 

The Interim Control Measure was finally lifted this past January, ending a three-year struggle to draft, modify or replace existing land-use regulations, first with draft bylaws 767 and 768 — and when higher levels of government had their say — with replacement bylaws 767.1, 767.2 and 772.

The RCI was adopted in December 2021 as a 90-day subdivision and construction freeze on lots within wetlands and woodlots characterized in the 2020 Eco2Urb conservation study. Residents were sold on the need of the freeze to buy the time to revise Hudson’s planning program. 

The delay froze most new multi-unit residential development, including subdivisions approved by previous councils (Willowbrook, Hudson Valleys) and triggered an undisclosed number of lawsuits. In adopting the freeze, Hutchison conceded that hundreds of lots would be impacted, although construction on many has since been approved following third-party analyses of their ecological value.

Originally, the mayor had expressed hopes the RCI could be lifted last August, but short-staffing issues delayed presentation of draft bylaws 767 and 768 until January 2024. (Although not subject to approval by referendum, they required public consultation.)

Those consultations swere carried out over three events in January 2024: open houses Thursday, Jan. 25 and Saturday Jan. 27 and a Q&A Wednesday, Jan. 31. Residents had two weeks to submit their observations and suggestions. Final adoption was scheduled for April 2 before being submitted to the Vaudreuil-Soulanges MRC to ensure they didn’t clash with SADR3, the MRC’s master development plan, by extension, the Montreal Metropolitan Community’s PMAD. The MRC had 150 days to respond.

Bylaw 767 amended sections of existing bylaws without replacing the bylaws themselves. Parts of zoning bylaw 526, subdivision bylaw 527, permits and certificates bylaw 529 and architectural control bylaw 571 were replaced with new definitions and tighter rules on everything from tree protection and replacement to the acquisition and sale of private and town-owned greenspace.

Bylaw 768 imposed tighter development constraints on the four largest parcels of undeveloped land in the urban perimeter: Willowbrook (R-7, R-15); Sandy Beach (R-22, R-24); Charleswood/Côte St. Charles (R-55) and a site on the north side of Main Road opposite Somerset.  Regarding the proposed 214-unit Sandy Beach development, 768 held out the possibility the town could approve single-family, semi-detached two and three-family dwellings with an gross density of 17.5 to 35 units per hectare. 

For both R-55 and Sandy Beach, 768 had proposed the creation of residential sectors where people would not need cars. “The comprehensive development plan […] is close to the village core and at a short distance from the Hudson train station…Therefore particular attention must be paid to reducing facilities favouring automobile use, both in housing offerings and outdoor facilities.”

Neither bylaw received MRC approval, forcing the town to split 767 in two. Bylaw 767.1 contained only those elements that passed the MRC, while 767.2 contained revisions to bring them into concordance with the MRC’s master plan and the CMM’s PMAD. Major changes to 767.2 reduced the impact of conservation-area designation in a dozen zones and added requirements for tree felling in wooded areas and forest corridors identified by the CMM.

Bylaw 768 required extensive surgery in order to conform. Rather than rewriting it to fit, the town replaced it with a new bylaw, 772, which exempted part of Willowbrook and the site of the proposed seniors campus off Charleswood. The new bylaw also increased average densities in parts of the urban core and added traffic-calming, housing diversity and agricultural-use criteria. The changes were presented at a public consultation in November and approved by the MRC on Jan. 15, 2025, when Hudson’s RCI was lifted.

Sandy Beach

Elected on a platform which included the conservation of Sandy Beach, the current council will have achieved its goal without dipping into the town’s accumulated surplus, thanks to the Montreal Metropolitan Commmunity’s 2022 RCI which will remain in effect for an indefinite period. 

For beach lovers, the downside is that access will remain closed indefinitely. At the December meeting, Hutchison made it clear the footbridge connecting Jack Layton Park and Sandy Beach would not reopen, given the challenge and cost of authorizing an alternate route on public land. Instead, the town’s efforts will focus on acquiring public access from the eastern end of Beach Road. 

Pressured by buy-the-beach activists to commit to the purchase of all or part of Sandy Beach, the mayor’s response made it clear the town will maintain a neutral stance. “We must continue to be very pragmatic,” she told Save Sandy Beachers at the October meeting. 

When one questioner insisted it was council’s job to front a fundraising campaign, the mayor responded by asking whether they had set up a legal entity or fundraising structure.

A longtime friend, now part of Ottawa’s diplomatic community, married into a family of lawyers with an established practise in a central Mexican city. Life was good until the family was approached by an underworld cartel looking to acquire a property the family owned.

It might be for sale, the family said.

No, we don’t wish to buy it, was the response. You will sign it over to us for nothing. The ‘or else’ didn’t need saying.

At first their targets ignored the extortionists. But the threats (including photos of my friend and her infant daughter) escalated to the point that the young familt decided to flee — first to an American border city where they knew they wouldn’t be safe — and then to Canada,

I was reminded of their story by Trump’s rantings to the Davos crowd vis-a-vis Canada becoming the 51st state. There’s no distinction to be made between #47 and a Mexican cartel boss. “Nice little country you got here…a shame if something would happen to it.”

Like that Mexican family, the initial reaction is one of indignation. Greenland, the Panama Canal or Canada aren’t for sale. But the threats continue, the hostility ramped up. Anxiety builds among those targeted. But unlike my friends, there’s no escaping to a safe haven.

Canada isn’t dealing well with Trump’s megalomania, but I don’t suppose anyone else is. A big problem is the power-sharing agreement between Ottawa and the provinces. Gray areas abound on the jurisdictional map. Energy was a federal competency; it has been steadily eroded by provincial pressure depending on whether it involves fossil fuels, electricity or nuclear — or whether it’s a have or have-not province in the Canadian interprovincial wealth-transfer system, with or without a carbon-compensation structure. Regardless of which political party wins the spring federal election, the winners will get to work with a gridlocked confederation crippled by interprovincial trade barriers and jurisdictional spats.

…which brings me back to how best to deal with Trump. Is he corruptible, ready to drop this lunacy if the price is right? Or should Canada address the list of pretexts Trump plopped in front of Justin Trudeau at that Mar-a-Largo dinner? Trumpian grievance creep is notorious; what was a GDP two-percent NATO contribution in Trump’s first term was more than doubled to five in his Davos call.

Other U.S. pet peeves — security and fentanyl — are issues Canada should be dealing with long before we were forcibly reminded of having swept them under the rug for far too long. What have been justified as progressive policies, such as allowing needle centres in residential neighbourhoods and homeless encampments in our city centres are already generating pushback throughout the country. Shouldn’t we have been dealing with these surface-level issues, along with homelessness and ruinous cost of living increases?

Over the past months I’ve been reading up on what Canada has been up to in addressing some of the more glaring shortcomings, such as our subpar NATO commitments. Halifax Shipyard has just launched the last of six ice-capable warships. Lauzon’s Davieship is preparing to cut
metal for 10 icebreakers, including three medium and one polar-class ship to replace our ageing fleet. Military equipment specialists, like Rheinmetall Canada in Brantford, Ontario, are pioneering new generations of materiel inspired by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

What irks me is the absence from the leadup to next March’s federal election of authentic discussion about Canada’s role on a planet where America, Russia and China are jockeying for world supremacy. Do these bubble dwellers think Canadians can’t handle reality? I’ve tuned out of the major parties’ juvenile attacks on their opponents, knowing that Justin Trudeau and his inner cabinet remain in power during prorogation. I don’t know many Canadians who like the idea of a government they don’t support making daily decisions that will bear on Canada’s future as a nation, but without Parliament’s counterbalance.

I lie awake nights knowing that Canada is a rudderless ship in stormtossed, reef-strewn seas. This worldscape we’re living in has no spectator seats, nowhere to take shelter except for the ultra-rich. And as my Mexican friends learned, the rest of the world may sympathize, but don’t expect them to rush to your rescue. They have their own problems with America’s extortionist-in-chief.

We need to trust our journalists and community

Geoff Sharpe
18 Jan 

For too long, local news and the people behind it, have been hidden away. Readers very rarely understand the how or why of the stories they read. 

Our series Editor’s Notes explores issues in local news, our cities and society, the ideas we’re exploring and a look at our team and what we’re up to, to increase transparency with our community of readers.

Like many people, I spent the holidays reading books. Unlike most people, I couldn’t stop thinking about local news. 

The book I spent the most time reading was called Filterworld: How Algorithms Flatten Culture by Kyle Chayka. 

It’s a detailed dissection of how algorithms shape the world around us, by pushing and tugging in certain directions based on digital signals, essentially destroying the very uniqueness of what we seek out and like, in favour of the sameness of the algorithm’s recommendations. 

Ever wondered why many coffee shops look the same in every city? Blame the Instagram algorithm, as coffee owners herd towards uniform and “popular” designs in order to drive more visitors.   

He writes how Spotify, the popular music service, doesn’t actually recommend music based on your interests but focuses on a small sliver of songs, making it harder and harder for people to discover new things and develop their own tastes.  

As we’ve hit the ground running this year here in Ottawa, I can’t help but think about how Filterworld algorithms are shaping local news.  

Take, for example, discovering a new local restaurant. Owners have to shape their restaurant design and food to quickly catch attention when scrolling social media. Media outlets frame a story around a viral dish. The quality of the food? Forget about it. Good places without a strong Instagram feed are ignored.   

Local journalism stories skew more towards what drives clicks and eyeballs, funded through banner ads. That means viral headlines, quick hit pieces and a shift away from longer, in-depth stories that actually explore and shape important issues. Publications need traffic, and the algorithm delivers. 

The media industry has substituted journalist tastes — their insights, on-the-ground research and hunches that shape what gets written — for some vague algorithmic sugar fix, focusing on the stories that get shared and less on the stories that shape lives in Ottawa. 

The journalists get this. But many of the companies they work for don’t. Fighting the algorithms isn’t easy. But local news especially has to resist the urge to become like the same coffee shops in each city. 

As the Lookout begins 2025, with our first full-time employee and a vision for what we want to cover, I’m keeping Filterworld in the front of my mind.  

We’ve resisted the urge to offload our editorial direction to the whims of the algorithm. Charlie pursues local Ottawa stories that he thinks readers need to know. Ralf reviews restaurants based on the quality of food, not what the Instagram algorithm prefers. And I never look at page views or virality to determine if the Lookout is successful. 

We let the tastes and interests of our writers and journalists, the feedback from our readers, and the problems of our city, shape what we cover at the Lookout. We can do this because we’re mostly reader-funded, not based on whim of traffic from an algorithm.

I won’t lie — forsaking the algorithms is the right decision, but it’s risky. We’re missing out on visibility. We’re cutting off certain revenue streams. Fewer people see our stories. And we can’t grow as quickly as we want, even though we’d love to hire even more journalists. 

But Filterworld’s world impact on local news offers a cautionary tale of what can happen when we get too far away from journalism. Just look at the layoffs and shuttering of local outlets across Canada. Sure, other things are to blame, too. But algorithms and lack of trust in journalists are a big part. 

Publications put algorithms in charge when we forget that at its heart, journalism is about people, the reporters who write stories, the locals impacted by those stories and readers like you wanting to be informed. These can’t be flattened into an algorithm. 

I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. It’s hard to radically change your trajectory with a promise at the beginning of the year, committing to a big change to improve everything. 

Luckily, we’ve been charting a path without the algorithms since we started the Lookout. So, I will break my rule about not making resolutions by making a promise to all of you. 

Our promise is this — this year, and every year after, we won’t be tempted by the algorithms, clickbait stories or viral restaurant reviews, and we’ll trust journalists and team members to tell you the local stories that matter. 

The siren song of the algorithms is real. But we’re able to ignore them because we’re mostly reader-funded by readers like you. It means we don’t need to chase viral stories, but focus on the deeper, more in-depth journalism. 

If you believe in what we’re doing, and are tired of the algorithmically driven news, than consider becoming a Lookout Insider member. Your support ensures our team has the resources to pursue real journalism, not clickbait content.

Less than a week in, 2025 is setting itself up to be a pivotal year for the planet. Be it the Liberal leadership meltdown in Ottawa, the MAGA/Musk reality show south of us, Europe teetering on war’s brink, a hair-trigger Middle East or southeast Asia set to explode, far too many hours of our days are spent consuming mostly bad news, driven by a combination of curiosity and dread.

What we don’t hear or read about is the rapidly evolving collection of crises much closer to home, a conflation of feuding bureaucracies and complacent elected bodies and their failure to react to an array of old problems and new challenges — beginning with mobility and public transportation.

According to Quebec’s Institut de la statistique’s 2025 forecast, our county — the regional municipality of Vaudreuil-Soulanges —will have close to 200,000 residents by 2036, but without a coherent plan for a regional public transportation system. Worse, there is no indication the four layers of government we subsidize feel any responsibility to come up with a plan. 

Major factors:

— the Bridge. As the transport ministry (MTQ) announced last fall, the replacement Ile aux Tourtes bridge will open in stages, with five temporary lanes moving traffic by the end of 2026, followed a year later with the opening of the six permanent lanes. Until then, residents will continue to face unpredictable traffic jams as a direct result of the MTQ’s improvised fixes, detours and emergency closures to keep the the 60-year-old structure safe for more than 80,000 daily users.

— REM inaccessibility. With a soft opening date in the third quarter of 2025 but no parking for off-island users, Vaudreuil-Soulanges residents won’t be able to access the Anse a l’Orme Réseau express métropolitain (REM) terminal the way they can now find park-and-ride facilities for existing exo train and express bus service at the Vaudreuil station. Of even greater concern to those who depend on Vaudreuil-Hudson train service, exo’s cash-strapped parent Authorité régionale de transport métropolitain(ARTM) has indicated there won’t be money to maintain exo service on any line where a REM option exists.

— broken political promises. In March 2019, then junior transport minister Chantal Rouleau told a closed MTQ briefing of elected officials and concerned citizens the Ile aux Tourtes bridge replacement would be strong enough to carry a light rail transit (LRT) system to the Vaudreuil-Dorion side. (V-S REM: Stupid not to extend, www.thousandlashes.ca; March 11/19) Six months later, the MTQ denied any knowledge of plans to include an LRT right of way (ROW) on the new bridge. Instead, plans show a future ROW running parallel to the new span — in the air.

Did the CAQ or their Liberal predecessors ever intend to bring the REM to Vaudreuil? During the leadup to the October 2022 Quebec election, former Liberal finance minister Carlos Leitao — who oversaw negotiations with Quebec’s Caisse de dépot to enable the creation of the REM — told us plans to bring the REM across the water had already been refocused on running the line across Ile Perrot, then crossing the St. Lawrence to Les Cèdres.

— unjustifiable cost increases. Given the daily chaos on the Ile aux Tourtes, the public had hoped to convince the MTQ to force through transport truck traffic to use Highway 30 and remove tolls for off-island residents. Apart from a few emergency-closure exceptions, neither happened. Effective Feb. 1, tolls on the 30 will rise to $4.60 for most passenger vehicles and $3.45 per axle for anything larger or higher. The rationale? Under the deal with the A30 consortium, the MTQ gets a bigger slice of the take when traffic volume and debt service costs increase (electric vehicles will continue to enjoy free passage). 

Effective Jan. 1, there’s also a $100 public-transit surtax on off-island vehicle registrations. Under pressure from the cash-strapped ARTM, the Legault CAQ allowed the SAAQ to levy a $100-per-vehicle increase on annual registrations for residents of the 83-municipality Montreal Metropolitan Community. As I’ll explain below, this has a direct bearing on the future of the new Vaudreuil-Soulanges regional hospital.

Collateral damage

We’re already seeing knock-on effects. Most of us know people who are reluctantly planning the move back to Montreal Island (or have already made the move) because they can no longer cope with epic traffic tieups and have no faith in a better quality of life once the new bridge opens. Other less obvious effects:

— On Dec. 11 we learned the 404-bed Vaudreuil-Soulanges regional hospital won’t open by the end of 2026 as promised. In the best-case scenario cited by the Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI) the $2.6M project would open in the summer of 2027, six months after the regional health and social services agency (CISSSMO) takes delivery. In the worst case, it would not be operational before the fall of 2028. The aim had been to open the ambulatory care pavilion while work on the main tower continues, but according to CISSSMO this isn’t practical and would only delay completion.

Neither Ile aux Tourtes bridge congestion nor the lack of regional public transit were blamed for the delay, but there are indications they were among the factors as the regional health and social services authority struggles to recruit some 4,000 employees in a region without convenient public transit.

Tasked last summer by the CISSS de la Montérégie-Ouest to propose a reorganization of existing public transit resources to serve the new hospital, an exo team presented a proposal centred on increased shuttle service between the Anse a l’Orme REM station and intermodal hubs at the Vaudreuil and Dorion exo stations where riders would transfer to and from existing CIT bus routes. However, the proposal included this caution: Given the fiscal context and the outlook for 2025, exo has developed a baseline scenario which respects the current budget in trying to meet the reorganization’s original orientations. The scenario remains to be confirmed [depending on the budgetary constraints].

Given the ARTM’s $563M 2024-25 shortfall, will there be new money for a convenient regional public transit network? Quebec’s contribution — $200M to compensate all Quebec municipalities — clearly isn’t enough, so the question becomes what can be cobbled together with the money available.

Surprises

With any major project, surprises are the worst enemy. Montreal’s REM was delayed for months by the discovery of century-old live explosives in the Mount Royal tunnel. In the case of the $2,6B Vaudreuil-Soulanges regional hospital, it was the discovery that there isn’t enough pressure in the existing potable water network to ensure pressure to reach the hospital’s 12th storey. Plans had predicted the need for six new wells to supply the complex, but it will require a new pumping station to ensure adequate pressure. How will that affect St. Lazare’s water supply, drawn from the same aquifer? We won’t know until the hospital opens for business.

What should concern us isn’t that our region faces these challenges, but that they’re not being dealt with by those we pay and elect to deal with them. In 2007, the MTQ assured us the existing Ile aux Tourtes span would be good for 70 more years; 10 years later, it was under emergency repair which will continue until its replacement opens. The REM, originally promised to our region, won’t have parking for off-island users; there may not be adequate funding to maintain existing train service. And yet we face exponential increases in fares, tolls, fees and taxes, all without our approval or consent. Like far too much in Canada, this isn’t working.

Adopted at a special meeting Monday (Dec. 16), Hudson’s 2025 budget pushes spending over the $17 million bar — but without significant impact on residential homeowners despite a 40% increase in residential property evaluations in the latest three-year tax roll.

The $17,687,200 exercise pegs the total 2025 tax bill (including water and three-bin waste collection) at $3,938 on the average Hudson home, a 1.92% increase on a property worth $635,650 in the new three-year roll. (That same home carried a $450,000 assessment in the 2022-2024 roll.) Residential properties of similar value capable of connecting to the municipal sewer system will see their tax bills increase to $4,334 (+2.61%). 

A residential property with water and three-bin waste pickup currently evaluated at $617,300 will pay $5,189, a 2% increase on a revised evaluation of almost $872,000. Adding a sewer connection will raise the bill to $5,585, a 2.53% increase. 

A million-dollar home in 2024 is now a $1.4M home, but the tax increase remains below 2.5%.

Next year’s budget is the first based on the 2025-2027 valuation roll presented in September. Based on real estate transactions over the last three years, Hudson’s total valuation increased by 40%, from $1.6 billion to $2.2B, so to maintain tax revenues at the current level, the administration had to cut tax rates. 

Draft Bylaw 774, tabled as a notice of motion during Monday’s two-part budget adoption process, reduces next year’s residential rate from 64.2 cents per $100 evaluation to 46.6 cents. There’s less of a drop in the commercial rate — from 65.4 cents to 55 cents per $100. The mil rate on serviced vacant land — the town’s highest tax rate — goes from 81.7 cents per $100 to 59.4 cents. Farmland and woodlot owners will see their tax rates reduced to 46.6 cents from the current 64.2. The surtax on long-term debt bylaws drops from 9 to 6.2 cents per $100. 

Tariffs listed in Bylaw 774 will increase across most categories, some significantly. 

— Drinking water remains unmetered, at a $240 per address base rate. 

— the base rate for residences connected or able to connect to the municipal sewer system rises from $360 to $396. 

— Household green bin pickup increases $3 to $128.

— Blue-bin residential pickup is now free, financed by the recovery and sale of recycleables at the provincial level.

— Brown bin composting pickup, currently $120 per household, increases to $139.

— Eco-centre use, currently free, will cost $68 per household.

Mayor Chloe Hutchison and CPA Serge Courchesne, the town’s latest consulting fiscalist (absent a full-time treasurer) tag-teamed the presentation before a sparsely attended meeting, where the sole surprise was councillors Doug Smith and Benoit Blais voting against the budget’s adoption for the second year straight.

Explaining his dissent, Blais noted that Hudson’s budgets have increased steadily since this council took office ($10.8M in 2021, $13.7M in 2022, $16.3 in 2023, $16.9 in 2024). Blais, who railed constantly against the last council’s lack of fiscal discipline, confirmed he won’t be seeking re-election in next fall’s municipal elections, as did Smith, who last year wondered why successive administrations don’t consider zero-based budgeting — starting the drafting exercise from scratch instead of adding onto the previous year’s exercise.

“I’m tired of wasting my time,” Blais said following the meeting. 

Municipal tax bills, now mailed at the end of March, will be sent before the end of January, with the first payment due in March. Second and third payment deadlines will remain the same.

“This is now common practice in many municipalities,” the mayor told residents.

Briefing keynotes included confirmation that the town is carrying over a $1.3M surplus from 2024, the result of:  

— $301K more in property/services tax revenues than budgeted; 

— $153K more than budgeted in welcome tax revenues;

— $33K more in interest;

— $34K in additional grant revenues;

— $600K+ less than budgeted for snow clearing ($408K), fire safety, water treatment, waste collection, urban planning, culture and recreation.

The town’s capital-expenses program (PTI) adopted Monday proposes to invest $23.4M over the next three years on a wish list which includes $3M for a new town hall, $3.6M for a new municipal garage, restoration of the existing town hall, essential repairs and upgrades to the Community Centre and firehall, repaving of Lakeview ($4M) reconstruction of the Viviry Creek culvert under Cameron ($645K) and a slew of smaller — but potentially more pressing — priorities. 

Despite an ambitious list of capital improvements, council intends to whittle away at a long-term debt load which peaked at over $35 million a decade ago. By the end of 2023, it stood at $23.4M, with most of the new debt incurred by repaving projects on Main and Bellevue. A year later, long-term debt stood at $22.6M despite the repaving on Main in the east end ($232,000) and the replacement of a filtration membrane in the wastewater treatment facility serving Whitlock West. The 2025 budget projection pegs debt at $21.7M.

Witnesses Say Shots Fired at Kanesatake Dispensary

Police claim a man crashed a stolen car into the pot shop but deny any shooting took place.

The Sweet Lodge with windows boarded up on Thursday, November 21, 2024. PHOTO: Éanna Mackey

By Christopher Curtis

Kevin* was working at his desk when he heard the first burst of gunfire.

“It sounded like an automatic weapon, small caliber, just a quick brrrrrap!” said Kevin, who did not want his real name published. “There was a pause and then, a couple seconds later, I heard this bang, bang, bang. Sounded like a different gun this time.

“This guy who lives (nearby), he just lost his dad to cancer. I thought maybe he was just sad, got drunk and fired a few shots to blow off steam. People have guns here, sometimes they do that. 

“Not this time, though.”

Four sources in Kanesatake say they heard shots fired outside the Sweet Grass Lodge around 5:30 a.m. Thursday. They say the driver of a black car pulled into the dispensary’s parking lot, slammed down on the accelerator and crashed into the building, destroying its wooden porch.

Police confirmed that a stolen black car did, in fact, ram “a pot shack” near Nelson Rd. in the predawn hours on Thursday, but they categorically deny there was gunfire.

“That could have been the sound of airbags bursting,” a spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec said. “We’ve reviewed security footage and no shots were fired. The driver got away.” Another police source, who reviewed the footage, said the collision did not appear accidental.

Two sources — including one who drove by the area as it was happening — say an armed man chased the driver away and fired at the car. They claim the driver, who was not Mohawk, rammed his car into the building, pulled out a gun and began firing at the front windows. They say he was surprised by an armed security guard who fired at the driver before he escaped through the parking lot of High Times, a dispensary next to Sweet Grass.

Normand Théoret, who owns the Sweet Grass Lodge, flatly denies this.

“Drunk driver,” he wrote in a message to The Rover. “Why don’t you get a real job and stop spreading rumours and lies like a little bitch.”Support Little Bitches

Théoret is one of 17 people on trial for his alleged role in an illegal dumping scheme that contaminated entire sections of the Mohawk territory. 

Though most of his co-defendants are elderly and appear to be minimally involved in the scheme, Théoret’s property was one of the largest dumping sites in Kanesatake. That is, until the practice was shut down by court order last month. 

He is accused of accepting contaminated soil on his land, pushing soil directly into the Lake of Two Mountains, and two other violations of provincial law — charges that have not been tested in court. Alongside co-defendants Robert Gabriel and Barry Bonspille, Théoret is one of the few suspects who also happens to be a player in the territory’s lucrative cannabis trade.

The alleged car attack is the latest in a series of violent incidents plaguing Kanesatake’s cannabis industry.

Earlier this year, an arsonist tried to set the Golden Star Oka dispensary on fire with an incendiary device but failed. A police source says it was the third time someone tried to burn down the dispensary, which opened earlier this year on a plot of contaminated land owned by Barry Bonspille.

When asked if these arson attempts were the work of Mohawks or outsiders, one source laughed.

“Did the building burn down? No? Well, then it was outsiders,” he said. “When Mohawks set out to burn a building, the building burns.” 

Mohawk Council of Kanesatake Grand Chief Victor Bonspille. PHOTO: Chris Curtis

Mohawk Council of Kanesatake Grand Chief Victor Bonspille said regardless of whether shots were fired during Thursday’s incident, people on the territory are fed up. Since their police force was dissolved in 2004, Kanesatake has been patrolled by a small Sûreté du Québec detachment about five kilometres away in Oka. Bonspille says there’s minimal police presence at night.

“All I know is that an incident happened up the bay, a car was involved and security chased this person off,” said Bonspille. “Just last week I met with the regional chief of police and the SQ’s local chief and just said enough is enough. Just last week a drunk driver hit one of our youth, and the students at our high school say they don’t feel safe.

“I demanded more police presence, whether community members agree to it or not. We need something here. And the SQ has been mandated to patrol our community. I understand they’re afraid to come here at night. But at the very least, they can patrol here during the day and patrol undesirables.”

Both Théoret and the police say they’re certain no shots were fired Thursday. When presented with this, each of the four sources who claimed to have heard gunshots stood by their initial statement.

“Listen, I grew up around guns, I know the difference between an airbag popping and the rattle of gunfire,” said Jane*, who did not want her real name published. “I was getting ready for work and I heard what I heard. It was gun shots followed by a pause and more gunshots.”

Another source said, “I am a licensed gun owner, I know what guns sound like. Those were gunshots.” 

Finally, The Rover reviewed security footage from Thursday morning that includes audio of two distinct bursts of gunfire. 

“So if all that happened was a car ramming into the porch then why are windows on both sides of the front door smashed? And I ain’t never heard of airbags going off and then going off again seconds later,” Kevin said. “They’re trying to say it was ‘some drunk Black guy’ but that’s not what happened.”

The Rover drove by Sweet Grass on Thursday and inspected the damage. While the wooden steps at the front of the building were clearly broken, the remainder of the porch, bannister and front door did not appear damaged. But the large windows on either side of the stairs were boarded up.

The Sweet Grass Lodge with windows boarded up and apparent damage to the wooden stairway leading to the entrance, on Thursday, November 21, 2024. PHOTO: Chris Curtis

If the theory is that the impact of the car against the building — and not bullets — that smashed three windows, there’s little other damage to the storefront. 

Unlike some of the more problematic dispensaries, Sweet Grass is in a small aluminum shack and doesn’t incentivize customers to stay and hang out. 

At places like High Times — which police say belongs to Robert Gabriel — buying cannabis is just one in a litany of pleasures one can enjoy.

During a walk through the dispensary Thursday, non-Indigenous vendors were seen selling pre-rolled joints, magic mushrooms and THC-infused desserts as people walked around smoking pot in the store. At the back of the room, a large man sat by the bar and kept watch over the front door, occasionally glancing up at a 10-foot television screen projecting hockey highlights.

Over a dozen sources on the territory say alcohol is served 24 hours a day at High Times. Alongside the Green Room — owned by Robert’s brother Gary — it attracts people with connections to organized crime, according to police. One patron stumbled out of the bar a few months ago and drove his Mercedes into a steel pole along Route 344, narrowly missing someone’s home.

Last week, a drunk driver crashed his pickup truck into a Mohawk family’s vehicle. The driver was arrested and the family taken to the hospital. Residents took his truck, which police had left by the road, smashed it beyond recognition and spray painted the words “enough is enough” onto it. They then planted two Mohawk flags in the vehicle and dragged it to the band council office to protest inaction against the criminals using their land as a playground.

The first cannabis shops opened in Kanesatake just months before the substance was legalized across Canada in 2018. Initially pitched as medicinal cannabis dispensaries, the first shops were family-owned businesses that tried to establish a self-regulating industry on Mohawk land. They even partnered with an Indigenous laboratory to test each gram of cannabis for contaminants.

That year, they reached out to Serge “Otsi” Simon — who was grand chief at the time — and asked for the band council to work with dispensaries and draft regulations to keep gangsters out of the business. Though Simon was adamant that the industry would lead to the sale of hard drugs in Kanesatake, his council did not take action to oversee the industry.

Within months of the first dispensaries opening, some of Kanesatake’s less scrupulous residents partnered with outsiders to turn cannabis into a regional attraction. At the Green Room, opened in late 2018, customers could buy alcohol, gamble on slot machines, get a haircut and eat fast food. 

It was during a raucous Green Room party that Montreal gang leader Arsène Mompoint was shot to death on July 1, 2021. Witnesses say the shooter then got into a truck, cut across the pine forest and escaped Kanesatake through the back roads. Police later found the stolen car torched in a cornfield a few kilometres away, suggesting this was a professional hit.

Sources say Gary Gabriel, who was sitting next to Mompoint when the gangster was murdered, was summoned to a community meeting where other dispensary owners berated him. At the time, they tried to get Gabriel to stop serving liquor and attracting outsiders who would linger on the territory, often under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Instead, Gabriel expanded the Green Room even more, hosting bigger parties, mixed martial arts events and drawing huge crowds into a community of just 2,000 residents. The expansion fueled a sort of cannabis arms race, where rival dispensaries got bigger and bigger, gradually pushing the family-owned shops to the margins.

It may have been this push for bigger attractions that led to the dumping scheme, according to police and Mohawk sources. The contaminated soil was brought into the territory from outside construction companies, dumped directly into the lake, flattened by steamrollers and paved over to make new cannabis shops like Golden Star Oka, High Times and Sweet Grass.

So far, at least two of those dispensaries have come under attack.

Sources say these are generally business disputes where owners hire an outsider to vandalize or burn down their rival’s shop to put them out of business. Others have tried slashing their cannabis prices as low as $40 an ounce to draw customers away from their competitors. Three years ago, one dispensary had Hells Angels hang out on their front porch — in full biker regalia — to scare off potential vandals.

Given the violent nature of these incidents, residents of Kanesatake are hesitant to speak out publicly. Even Grand Chief Bonspille was warned, by loved ones, not to come forward for fear that it would put a target on his back.

“I have no choice but to speak out, there’s kids and elders at risk,” Bonspille said. “We need our own police force, we need the federal government to get serious about solutions here.”

Indigenous Services Canada was not immediately available for comment, but negotiations over restarting a local police program have been ongoing for at least four years. Given the possibility for conflicts of interest in such a small community, creating a police force that’s impartial, effective and consistent with Indigenous values has been challenging.

“Something’s going to have to change,” Bonspille said. “I have young women, teenagers, complaining about outsiders coming onto the territory and propositioning them. What’s it going to take for the SQ to do their job?”

With files from Éanna Mackey.

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Christopher Curtis, 3565 Decarie Boulevard, Montreal, QC H4A3J4, Canada

This is my submission to the public consultation (Wednesday, Oct. 23/24) on the Town of Hudson’s proposed parks and greenspaces policy.

With this past week’s indefinite closure of Hudson’s historic steamboat landing at the foot of Wharf Road, residents and visitors lose another window on the Ottawa River. I don’t hold out much hope that it will ever reopen, given the extent of its deterioration.

The preservation of a crumbling 19th-century town wharf may be no big loss for some, but this indefinite-closure thing is becoming a trend, what with the posting of Sandy Beach and now the barricading of the footbridge which used to be the sole public access. Unless you’re a Hudson Yacht Club member, the only remaining public access to Hudson’s 14 kilometres of waterfront is via Jack Layton and Thompson parks.

Hundreds of boaters depend on the JLP launch ramp, dock and the nearby cove. The dock was widened under the previous administration, but the ramp hasn’t changed since Dudley Reid and Lucien Mallette opened a marina on the location of the massive Wilson Company icehouse where Canadian Pacific once loaded blocks of ice from the Ottawa River into reefer cars to transport perishables in the time before refrigeration.

Those of us who use the ramp are immeasurably grateful for the privilege. (Use of the ramp is free because the last council determined that it doesn’t conform to standards that would justify charging people. Instead, we use it at our own risk.) It’s self-policing; people wait their turn regardless of the size and value of their craft.

Hudson worked out a deal with St. Lazare that would allow residents of both municipalities a free annual permit and nearby parking privileges. In return, Hudson residents enjoy free access to Les Forestiers and its well-maintained ski and walking trails. For $125 a year, Vaudreuil-Soulanges residents can buy the right to park nearby; for everyone else, it’s $250 unless they choose to park free at the snow dump, a five-minute walk. Use of the park is free for all.  

Our council looked at Thompson Park as an alternative to JLP for non-motorized craft. The problem is getting one’s boat to the water’s edge, a football field’s distance and a steep hill away, most of it within the 100-year floodplain. We had serious doubts the environment ministry would approve construction of a road, a parking lot near the water and a dock. As well, the sandy shoreline quickly grows an impenetrable thicket of aquatic vegetation that would require regular cutting. We agreed it wasn’t a sustainable solution. 

We took a closer look at the former marina. If mayor Liz Corker’s council made the decisions necessary to begin its transformation, the artistry of landscape architect Brian Grubert and stonemason Bob Houghton turned it into a riverside gem while preserving its vocation as a boat launch with public parking. 

How could we expand its use? Council mandated the parks and recreation department to come up with a survey detailing how other waterfont municipalities manage access to users and residents. A local business proposed a boat rental kiosk similar to the operation at Vaudreuil-Dorion’s Valois Park. Our regional Caisse Desjardins offered to fund a separate launch at the east side of the park where kayakers and paddleboarders could launch and recover their craft without having to queue up with the powerboaters. 

A council majority ended up rejecting all suggestions, based on the probability that the environment ministry would probably says no. End of discussion.

When news broke of the wharf’s closure, Bob Houghton had an interesting suggestion. Why not continue what Mother Nature began, knock down the crumbling concrete and backfill with boulders as he and Grubert did with the icehouse site? It would allow the creation of a waterfront promenade on the footprint of the original wharf, typical of the commonsense simplicity that once graced Hudson’s approach to problem-solving. The environment ministry could hardly reject a project built on what was. 

But would residents support a relatively low-cost proposal that would give us another window on the lake when previous plans to repurpose the wharf went nowhere? A 2019 a Canadian Coast Guard proposal would have seen the wharf turned into a much-needed base on the Lake of Two Mountains. Wharf Road residents objected, council was wary of hidden costs to taxpayers and the Coast Guard went elsewhere. Last year, I wrote about how one of the subcontractors for the new Ile aux Tourtes bridge proposed to assemble components in the town snow dump, transport them to the wharf, and ship them to the site by barge (www.thousandlashes.ca/23/06/06). In exchange, the town would get a rebuilt wharf.

The plan was scrapped because the wharf was too far gone.

Meanwhile, other municipalities recognize the social and economic value of accessible public waterfronts. Pointe Claire has its waterfront walk and pier where the Edgewater Inn once stood. Ile Perrot transformed a crumbling seawall into public access. Les Cedres and Pincourt revitalized their small-boat launch facilities. Oka added small-boat docks to its well-maintained public wharf opposite the Hudson-Oka ferry landing. It’s not the cost, but the political vision required to see the value in expanding public waterfront access.

Why should Hudson maintain, even increase public access to its waterfront? 

Boat ownership is quickly moving away from parking one’s boat in a yacht club or marina. It’s both generational and about how people want to spend their money. Paddleboards, canoes and kayaks are relatively inexpensive, easily moved on rooftop racks anywhere with public parking where they can be launched and hauled out. It’s also a a matter of freedom; boats on cartops or trailers and in pickup beds can be stored on one’s property (with some bylaw exceptions) and driven to any body of water with a public ramp.

In light of the exploding interest in low-overhead boating among enthusiasts who may live nowhere near the water, the Montreal Metropolitan Community is encouraging riverfront municipalities to clean up their shorelines and add launch facilities, preferably with non-motorized boat rentals and maps of local waters registered with the MCC’s aspirational Blue Corridor, the paddle/oar community’s vision of a network of boating routes through the hundreds of islands surrounding Montreal. 

At the same time, more and more waterfront municipalities are restricting access to their launch facilities in response to residents complaining about the small-boat invasion. It boils down to making one’s facilities either pay per use or open only to passholders. Like Hudson, a handful offer launch facilities open to all with restrictions on parking, but all draw the line at overnight camping. I’ve seen waterborne travellers stealth camping at Hudson’s Thompson Park and Lachine’s Stoney Point and there are safe places to pull out if one knows where to look, but municipalities see these outliers the same way they look on homeless encampments — with suspicion. 

The problem with nostalgia is that most Hudson residents have no memory of what was. As kids growing up in Hudson’s waterfront, we grew up building driftwood rafts and poling them with saplings. As we grew older, we acquired our first boats and roamed further afield to Oka Beach and the sandbars off Carillon Island. Most of us learned to swim off whatever wharf or dock we had access to. 

Hudson’s public access to these simple pleasures is under increasing pressure from too many conflicting demands. Rather than accepting their closure, we should be investing in maintaining, upgrading, expanding and exploring alternatives.