Montreal’s OCPM recommends ‘back to the drawing board’ for east end container yard expansion

Montreal’s Public Consultation Office (OCPM) released a report on March 13 recommending that the city go ‘back to the drawing board’ to completely re-evaluate the expansion of the Ray-Mont Logistiques (RML) project in Hochelaga.

Spokesperson for Mobilisation 6600, the group spearheading opposition to the project, Anais Houde, says the report is “great” and that many residents don’t want an expansion.

“It was really our small paradise, urban paradise because we don’t have cars,” said Houde. “Having access to nature is really hard.”

For ten years, Houde has been pushing back in lockstep with RML’s advances on what she considers a “reclaimed wasteland” for the community. 

“Here in Hochelaga, [our lifespan is six years below the city average] and it’s not that we don’t take care of ourselves,” said Houde. “It’s about the environment, it’s the port, it’s the industry, it’s the highway, it’s the pollution.”

Houde is worried about the request RML made in 2024 to Quebec’s ministry of environment asking to extend their hours of operation to 24/7–which is still under evaluation. 

RML arranges transportation of freight and cargo around the world.

The company’s future project includes adding buildings, outdoor storage, and a grain elevator.

In 2017, the City of Montreal shot down a construction permit request but in 2018, Quebec’s Superior Court sided with Ray-Mont and found that the company was allowed to build on the site, later upheld by the Court of Appeal.

RML then sued the city for $343 million in damages. They settled for $17 million and part of that settlement was holding an independent public consultation. 

Philippe Bourke, OCPM president, said they reached a “middle ground.”

“On the one hand, it would be very unfortunate to reject the agreement between Ray-Mont and the city–we’d be essentially saying the citizens of Montreal should pay the quarter billion in damages,” said Bourke. “That’s not reasonable, but on the other hand, to accept the agreement, that wouldn’t respect what local citizens expressed. Either way it would be unacceptable. The middle ground is to say: let’s go back to the drawing board.”

It was a sprawling space when she first moved to the neighborhood more than a decade ago but has been reduced to a strip of land.

In 2024, The city managed to save an area called the Steinberg woods.

Apartment buildings are located about 100 metres from the site.  

The OCPM also recommended that the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement be tasked with assessing the environmental impacts.

RML president Charles Raymond said in a statement:

“We see this consultation exercise as an opportunity to improve and better understand the concerns of local residents. Ray-Mont Logistiques is committed to analyzing the report seriously and proposing concrete measures to respond to the recommendations raised.”

In a statement to CityNews , borough Mayor of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Pierre Lessard-Blais, said: 

“The city alone does not have the power to unilaterally postpone the out-of-court settlement; this must be done in collaboration with RML. We welcome the report, and our goal is to sit down quickly with the company and the various partners identified in the recommendations to respond to the benefit of the neighboring population. Our aim is to close this chapter for the lasting peace of the people of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.”

“Since forever, the east of the city was always the industrial part, but then there was the in de-industrialization and an abandonment of the people here then the nature was back here, and it was great for the first time in forever,” said Houde. “And then they want to destroy it.”