Mayor of Pointe-Claire responds to Pierre Poilievre

The mayor of Pointe-Claire, responded to the Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre after he said that he would penalize cities that did not build enough housing at a press conference Thursday.

Poilievre was outside Fairview Pointe-Claire on Thursday for a press conference on housing.

“It’s a 911 emergency to build more housing right now, and I have a common-sense plan to do it,” Poilievre told reporters.

He emphasized that he wants to offer bonuses to municipalities that build more housing, and to penalise those that build less.

“Why are we here today? Because we should be seeing housing construction here now,” said Poilievre, while pointing to the Fairview parking lot. “But where is the housing? Bureaucracy is preventing the construction of flats for our young people, our seniors and those who don’t want to have a car.”

The Conservative leader’s outburst prompted a reaction from the Mayor of Pointe-Claire, Tim Thomas, who, in a lengthy message on his Facebook page, indicated that “there are certain facts that he may not be aware of.”

The mayor wrote that his city “has done more than its fair share of housing construction,” and from 2017 to 2022, Pointe-Claire “built more than the rest of the West Island of Montreal combined (2055 vs. 1635 units) according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data.”

At the end of 2023, according to Mayor Thomas, there were more condos and flats under construction in his city than in the 14 other demerged suburbs of the Island of Montreal, “which together have six times our population.”

Thomas also claims that “Pointe-Claire has seen the highest increase in rents listed in 2023 of any major cities in Canada, at 25.6 per cent according to Rentals.ca data.”

This data prompted the mayor to say that “given everything we have built and continue to build; I doubt very much that we will be subject to Poilievre’s infrastructure penalty.”

Freeze on property development

However, mayor Thomas is not taking credit for all the new housing built in Pointe-Claire.

Instead, he was elected in 2021 on a promise to put the brakes on certain types of property development.

“I was elected in part because the citizens of Pointe-Claire felt that our development was too great, too fast, and that it did not take sufficient account of traffic, services, infrastructures and the protection of trees and green spaces,” added the mayor in his Facebook message.

He claims that “a development freeze has been put in place in certain key sectors where I wanted citizens to have their say.”

One of the areas targeted by this development freeze is the Fairview Pointe-Claire parking lot, where Poilievre would like to see housing built next to the future REM station.

But “the size and height of 25 storeys desired by the owner (Cadillac Fairview) are unreasonable and greater than anything we have ever had in Pointe-Claire,” said the mayor in his letter.

“This is not bureaucracy or incompetence. This is sensitive and responsible urban planning in a community where developers have too often been given red carpets, not red tape,” concluded the mayor’s message.

This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews.