The mayor of L’Île-Bizard-Sainte-Geneviève, Stéphane Côté, was furious at the funding problems threatening his district and faced rising waters every spring. He appeared in the Montreal City Council plenary session on Tuesday and announced that his district might be better off relocating outside the city if it doesn’t get more resources to deal with flooding.
Posted yesterday at 7:47pm.
“I wonder if staying in Montreal is a good thing for my district. We don’t have enough funding. I really ask myself that question,” he said.
“Do you want L’Île-Bizard–Sainte-Geneviève to stay in Montreal, or do you want us to leave altogether? »
Mr. Côté intervened as part of a discussion about the sum of 16 million that the city will spend on its dike program. This funding will allow the fifteen permanent levees that protect the island of Montreal from flooding to be maintained and expanded – located at Pierrefonds, Ahuntsic and L’Île-Bizard.
“These 16 million are a start, but they don’t even cover a dike. “The reality is I don’t have a penny to run this district,” he lamented. And against climate change, I have nothing to fight for except arm juice. Our fight against flooding returns every year, but we have only archaic means. »
“It was a cry from the bottom of my heart”
In an interview after his speech, Mr. Côté stated that he had no real intention of splitting up his district. “I just wanted to shake up the administration, it was a cry from the bottom of my heart,” he explains.
He claims that the city refused to provide him with additional sandbags during the floods that spring, saying he had reached his “quota”.
“If a dike collapses in front of you and you’re told that… Besides, I don’t have the money to equip myself for the coming floods,” he laments.
According to him, his district needs new permanent levees in certain places where sandbag walls need to be erected each year. “The construction with around thirty workers takes a week,” said the district mayor.
The problem is that there are too many jobs in the city center, to the detriment of the districts. “We need to change the way we run this city because climate change is far from over,” he says.