Pointe-Claire city council seeks ministerial help for city functions

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Seven Pointe-Claire city councilors who oppose Mayor Tim Thomas approved a resolution Tuesday asking the Quebec Department of Municipal Affairs for help in restoring order.

Bruno Tremblay was the only dissident council member who, along with Thomas, voted in vain against the resolution at the special council meeting. The mayor called it “another unnecessary political tactic” by his adversaries that will undermine the credibility and autonomy of the city.

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The motion, introduced by Councilwoman Kelly Thorstad-Cullen and seconded by Councilman Paul Bissonnette, calls for the assistance of the municipal affairs department to “identify the nature of the problems and propose an action plan to improve the overall functioning of the city.” .

“It’s basically just saying we’re not functioning optimally and we would like help from the minister, an outside source, to give us the tools so we can function better for the rest of the term,” Councilor Tara Stainforth said. she said in response to a question from a citizen who wondered why the public was not allowed to see the resolution before the meeting’s public question period.

“Maybe it’s a good thing after all,” the citizen responded to Stainforth, “if they (the ministry) can follow our bylaws and when developers get permits, they will be forced to follow the bylaws. That could be a good thing.”

“The only thing we want is transparency, which has not been here in this supposed resolution,” said another citizen.

“It has been obvious that there has been a lot of dysfunction on this council. And please can they just respect each other and us and work together and not gang up on each other? That’s all I ask. Transparency, please. Because this is really nonsense.”

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The council has been divided since the November 2021 municipal election, in which Thomas defeated incumbent Mayor John Belvedere, while six Belvedere-aligned councilors won their seats. Thomas soon introduced a temporary freeze on development projects and refused to exclude plans to redevelop Cadillac Fairview next to the Fairview shopping center.

Erin Tedford, who along with Tremblay was one of two councilors elected in 2021 and not aligned with Belvedere, resigned from her seat after just over a year in office. She cited, in part, “a disturbing level of anger and division.”

The by-election to fill his seat was won by Claude Cousineau, the incumbent whom he had defeated in 2021.

The next general elections are scheduled for November 2025.

On Tuesday, Cousineau and council members Eric Stork, Cynthia Homan and Brent Cowan joined Thorstad-Cullen, Stainforth and Bissonnette in voting in favor of the resolution to convene the municipal affairs department.

A few months ago, Cowan wrote an open letter calling for Thomas to resign as mayor for allegedly abusing his power as council president by rebutting Stork during the latter’s allotted speaking time at a council meeting. Thomas’s opponents on different occasions walked out of council meetings and asked him to resign.

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“I support this resolution because over the last two and a half years we have tried many different ways to work together and it has been a great struggle,” Homan said at the meeting, adding that “there is a lack of respect, there is a lack of leadership.”

“This opportunity, through the government, will help provide us with the guidance that we are struggling with right now,” Homan said.

Thomas, for his part, urged the public to watch archived videos of past council meetings “and see the conduct of people at council meetings.”

“The current resolution by the ruling majority on the council is consistent with many of their previous tactics, including voting to form a communications committee to censor my interviews and social media posts,” Thomas said.

“A member of this council went to the trouble of texting my partner to suggest that he was having an affair, not once but twice, with two different women. These antics are juvenile even in high school. “These types of disruptive and intimidating tactics and the hostile and inappropriate language used by the ruling majority on the council and their supporters at council meetings make our city seem out of control.”

“This resolution is a symbol of the political culture that reigns in the Pointe-Claire city council,” Tremblay said, adding that the political culture is a legacy of the previous mandate or mandates.

“Having lived in this environment for over two years, I simply cannot believe that this resolution has been put forward in the interest of peace, love and understanding. This is brute force given the sequence of events I have witnessed and seen in the past. “It is a cannon shot to end the political opposition and affect the 2025 elections.”

One citizen asked if seeking advice from the municipal affairs department could end with Pointe-Claire being placed under conservatorship.

“We don’t know what they are going to do because they have to come, observe and evaluate the situation and then they will decide what tools, what mechanisms, etc. They must be implemented to help us move forward. move forward in the best way possible,” Stainforth said of the ministry. She called it a “stage one intervention.”

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