The 700th was built in front of the La Source school and the l’Étincelle building, on the 15th Avenue, in Fabreville, on Nov. 24.

It was one of the last speed bumps of a first phase of implementation, around 67 schools and 139 parks in the territory, launched in the fall of 2020.

“Laval wants to encourage drivers to adopt safer behaviour, reduce their speed and be more attentive to their environment,” said Ray Khalil, municipal councillor of Sainte-Dorothée, vice-president of the executive committee, and responsible for the files of public works.

Second Phase

A second implementation phase of speed bumps in residential streets is being developed, reports the Municipality.

Those actions are part of a series of “traffic calming measures” that have been deployed since 2017, to which are added, for example, road markings, pedestrian crossings, sidewalk overhangs, raised intersections, one-ways, as well as the installation of speed displays and fixed photo radars at some red lights.

As for speed bumps, they’re preferred when “the speed practiced at the 85th percentile exceeds by at least 10 km/h” the speed limit on a local residential collector street.

In addition to forcing drivers to slow down, those speed bumps have the advantage of reducing through traffic, i.e. the traffic created by drivers not living in the neighbourhood.

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L’article 700 Speed Bumps Installed in Two Years est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

Illegally, the deforestation work was mainly carried out on two lots, belonging to Gazaille Construction, whose president, Claude Gazaille, didn’t return our call, or respond to our emails.

Alerted on Nov. 4 by worried neighbours, Laval sent an urban forestry inspector, before requesting the work to be stopped, without success.

“No private tree felling authorization certificate has been requested or issued by the City,” affirmed Head of Public Affairs, Anne-Marie Braconnier, by email.

The following Monday, the owner, “convinced of being within his rights”, refused once again to stop his interventions, forcing Laval to turn to the courts.

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L’article A Wooded Area Disappears in Just a Few Days est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

A manufacturer of kayaks and other water sports equipment, Pelican was one of the 12 winners honoured at the 30th edition of the Salon sur les meilleures pratiques d’affaires, held on Nov. 24 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. The Laval company thus earned a regional distinction, at the Prix performance Québec (PPQ).

Entrepreneurship Model

“It represents an exceptional entrepreneurship model, contributing to the economic influence of our region,” said the Minister of Economy, and Regional Minister of Laval, Christopher Skeete.

Skeete obviously praised the “ambition”, and the “desire for surpassing” of each of the winning companies, which “make them true models for our ecosystem of entrepreneurship”.

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L’article Pélican international Among the Best est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

In absolute numbers, it’s a “significant drop” of 1,501 sales, according to the Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers (QPAREB).

The 2,770 sales, listed in the Centris provincial database of real estate brokers, are representing the lowest level of activity recorded since 2014 for the month of October.

General decline

Although below the average for Montreal’s CMA, Laval is still behind by 29 per cent, its sales having dropped from 407 to 289 in 12 months.

Of all sectors, the North Shore is the one that’s doing the best, despite a 26 per cent decline in transactions.

Analyzing

“The rise’s amplitude in interest rates in the space of a few months, and the inflationary context eating into the purchasing power of households are obviously the main causes,” explained by press release director of the market analysis service of the QPAREB, Charles Brant.

Brant also noted “a more cautious attitude of households and investors, who would have the financial capacity to make their purchase project possible, but prefer to wait for a stabilization of the situation, and a market conditions that will be more favorable to them”.

Registrations Up

In this context of a more significant slowdown in sales, the increase in the number of active listings continued for a sixth consecutive month across Montreal’s CMA.

Registrations reached a total of 16,269 in October, up seven per cent from the previous month. Compared to the 10,840 properties on the market at the same date last year, the increase is around 50 per cent.

In Laval, registrations increased by 45 per cent between October 2021 and 2022, going from 903 to 1,310.

However, when comparing the first 10 months of the current year with the same period in 2021, the inventory’s increase is rather 10 per cent in the whole metropolitan area, and three per cent for Laval’s territory.

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L’article Real Estate Market: The Fall in Sales Worsened in October est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

Former municipal councillor for Sainte-Rose, responsible for issues related to the environment and urban planning during the two terms of Demers’s administration, Dufour will also act as spokesperson for Laval’s region for Quebec’s Liberal Party (QLP).

During the last campaign, in the wake of the saga surrounding the Cité du Cinéma, Dufour had also pledged, should she win her place at the National Assembly, to do everything possible to amend the Act respecting elections and Referendums in Municipalities, especially Articles 546 and 553, in relation to the procedure for registering qualified voters.

Sona Lakhoyan Olivier

In addition, Sona Lakhoyan Olivier, deputy for Chomedey, was given, by the leader of the official opposition, Dominique Anglade, the function of Liberal spokesperson for the regions of Laurentides and Lanaudière, as well as for the tourism industry.

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L’article Virginie Dufour, Municipal Affairs Watchdog est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

In the riding of Sainte-Rose, the victory of outgoing deputee Christopher Skeete was never in doubt. Re-elected with the strongest majority in the region, Skeete will team up for the next four years with Valérie Schmaltz (Vimont), Céline Haytayan (Laval-des-Rapides) and Alice Abou-Khalil (Fabre), all three elected for the first time in the National Assembly.

Laval’s two other ridings remain liberal, but will be represented by two new deputees in Virginie Dufour (Mille-Îles) and Sona Lakhoyan Olivier (Chomedey).

Laval-des-Rapides

In Laval-des-Rapides, after a hotly contested battle, Céline Haytayan finally got the better of the riding’s outgoing deputee, Saul Polo, who was seeking a third term.

Haytayan received 10,599 votes, winning by a majority of 1,053 votes over her liberal rival. She obtained 31.9 per cent of the votes, while Polo finished with 28.7 per cent.

Josée Chevalier of Québec solidaire (QS) finished third with 16.7 per cent of the votes, followed by Parti québécois (PQ) candidate Andréanne Fiola at 12.9 per cent, Conservative Party (CP) representative Nicolas Lussier-Clément with 8.6 per cent, and Green Party (GP) candidate Zied Damergi 1.2 per cent.

The electoral turnout in Laval-des-Rapides reached 61.5 per cent, down two tenths of a percentage point compared to the 2018 election.

Vimont

Vimont also had a close race until the end, this time between Valérie Schmaltz (CAQ) and Anabela Monteiro (LP).

At the end of the evening, Schmaltz finally won by 1,415 votes over the one who had headed the riding’s office for 10 years, then represented by the deputy Jean Rousselle. This win for the CAQ thus put an end to a sequence of seven consecutive Liberal electoral victories in Vimont.

Stefano Piscitelli (CP) finished third with 12.9 per cent of the votes, in front of Josée Bélanger (QS) at 11.5 per cent, Nathalie Lavigne (PQ) with 10.6 per cent, and Rita Lo Cicero (GP) at 0.9 per cent of the votes in Vimont.

The riding, that counts 46,081 voters, had a turnout of 70 per cent, up 0.8 percentage point from 2018.

Fabre

Alice Abou-Khalil (CAQ) won in what was another tight battle in her riding, against Sonia Baudelot (LP). That puts an end to a 19-year-long liberal reign in Fabre. Abou-Khalil won with a majority of 302 votes.

Abou-Khalil and Baudelot totaled 21,522 of the 34,328 validated ballots.

The other votes went to Stéphane Turmel (CP) with 5,216, Jessy Léger (QS) with 3,822, Catherine Dansereau-Redhead (PQ) with 3,348, and Lynn Buchanan (GP) with the last 420.

The electoral turnout in Fabre was 62.6 per cent, which is up 1.4 percentage point compared to 2018.

Sainte-Rose

Re-elected in Sainte-Rose, Skeete registered the strongest majority of the six candidates elected last night in Laval, ahead of Michel Trottier (LP) by 5276 votes.

Skeete’s 14,082 votes earned him 38.5 per cent of the 36,567 votes counted in Sainte-Rose.

Trottier concluded the evening with 24.2 per cent of the votes, followed by Karine Cliche (QS) at 14.3 per cent, Lyne Jubinville (PQ) at 12.3 per cent, Stéphanie Beauchamp (CP) with 9.4 per cent, and Pierrette Kamning Nguendjong (GP) with the remaining 0.8 per cent.

The electoral turnout in the riding has fallen by 2.5 percentage points in four years, from 70 to 67.5 per cent.

Chomedey

Unsurprisingly, Chomedey remained liberal.

Succeeding Guy Ouellette, the new deputee Sona Lakhoyan Olivier earned the trust of 36.5 per cent of voters, which translated into a comfortable majority of 3,198 votes.

That said, support for the LP in this liberal fortress continues to crumble, as the overwhelming majority of some 26,000 votes obtained in 2014 had already been reduced to 7,968 votes in 2018.

Last night, George Platanitis (CAQ) received 8,691 votes, which is 26.7 per cent of the ballots.

Following behind, we have CP Me Konstantinos Merakos (6,464 votes; 19.9 per cent), QS Zachary Robert (2,576 votes; 7.9 per cent), PQ Rachid Bandou (2,338 votes; 7.2 per cent), GP Sahbi Nablia (311 votes; 0.96 per cent), and Federica Gangai of Bloc Montreal – Team Balarama Holness (290 votes; 0.89 per cent).

As for the participation rate of 54.5 per cent, it’s about the same as that observed four years ago, up by half a percentage point.

The Liberals have dominated in Chomedey since the creation of this riding, in 1980.

Mille-Îles

Finally, in Mille-Îles, Virginie Dufour has managed to keep the riding in the hands of the LP for an eighth consecutive election, resisting to the push of the CAQ that began four years ago.

Trailing all evening, the former municipal councillor of Sainte-Rose made an impressive an comeback and took the lead for the first time shortly after 10 p.m., when more than 85 per cent of ballot boxes had been counted.

Once ahead, Dufour kept up the pace to overtake Julie Séide (CAQ) by 425 votes, ending the evening with 32.4 per cent and 9,522 votes.

Séide obtained 30.9 per cent of the votes, far ahead of QS Guillaume Lajoie (12.9 per cent), PQ Michel Lachance (12.1 per cent), CP Ange Claude Bigilimana (10.6 per cent), and GP Bianca Jitaru (1.2 per cent).

In Mille-Îles, 67 per cent of the 44,401 legal voters went to the polling stations, up by half a percentage point compared to 2018.

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L’article The CAQ Wins Four of the Six Ridings in Laval est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

Among the regional issues identified by Action Laval, sitting in opposition at the city hall, we can count a second hospital and a fair centre of international level.

During the 2021 municipal election campaign, Action Laval had also committed to deploying efforts with Quebec, so that the city-region get those new infrastructures.

“We need more than a mega-hospital in Laval’s centre,” said Saint-Bruno’s councillor David De Cotis. “The population of western Laval must leave the city to obtain health services.”

In a press release published on Sept. 27, De Cotis maintained that Laval ranks 15th among the 17 administrative regions in terms of beds per inhabitant.

“All of northern Montreal would win [with] that second hospital,” he mentioned in the press release, pointing out that residents of the Laurentides and Lanaudière are already attending the Cité-de-la-Santé establishment, in Vimont.

As for the fair centre, the equipment would benefit “the whole of the greater metropolitan area”, which doesn’t have modern infrastructures that meet the requirements of this industry, explains Action Laval.

No less than 10 other issues were addressed to the candidates in the running, including one related to public safety and the fight against urban violence.

“We want to have services that take care of our young people before the street gangs do so,” said the leader of the party and municipal councillor in Val-des-Arbres, Achille Cifelli. “We need sports and cultural infrastructures that will allow young people to be taken care of.”

After having met over the last few days with Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), Liberal Pary, Parti québécois (PQ) and Conservative Party candidates, the elected representatives of Action Laval will discuss those issues with the solidarity candidates tomorrow, three days before the provincial election.

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L’article Action Laval is Pushing for a Second Hospital est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

“I’m happy to see that the site teams are mobilized and that the work is going well so that this structuring project can finally materialize,” said Mayor of Laval Stéphane Boyer in a press release published yesterday.

Boyer specifies that “in a little over two years, Laval will have high-level and unique facilities on the north shore that will serve both the needs of the community and the ambitions of the aquatic environment”.

If everything goes as planned, that infrastructure, which stands on the land north of the Cosmodome, could be inaugurated at the end of 2024.

$125M

Only bidder in the running, Quebec’s giant Pomerleau was awarded the design-build contract last winter for $108.4 million.

Taking into account the sums already invested in 2018, so before putting on hold the project, the bill increases to $125 million.

It will be remembered that on this date, four years ago, the City of Laval cancelled the call for tenders due to bids exceeding by almost 50 per cent the construction costs, then estimated at $61 million.

At the time, the municipal administration attributed this cost overrun to an overheated construction market. Then, there was the labor shortage that hit the industry, and a significant rise in the cost of raw materials, contributing to further increase the bill.

For the construction of that equipment, Laval has already received $20 million, funded equally by the two higher levels of government. Quebec and Ottawa made the announcement in June 2021.

Facilities

The aquatic complex, which keeps its initial design, will include:

• a recreational pool with 3 swimming lanes;
• a beach entrance and a large slide;
• a 52m × 25m pool with a bridge and a removable floor;
• a diving pool with 1m, 3m, 5m and 7.5m springboards and a 10m tower;
• a multifunctional training room;
• a fitness room;
• multipurpose rooms;
• fixed stands with 500 seats.

The capacity will be 875 bathers and 500 spectators, the aquatic complex being built to host provincial and national competitions.

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L’article Aquatic Complex: Construction Resumes Four Years Later est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

“It corresponds to what we’ve been saying for a few years, which is that Laval is becoming more and more anglicized, and that French is occupying an increasingly secondary role,” he said on the phone, when asked to react to the linguistic portrait of Laval emanating from the 2021 census data, published a few hours earlier by Statistics Canada.

Urgency to Act

Desautels also added that “we will need to take very strong actions if we really want to save French in Laval”.

He sees in the situation an urgency to do something.

“If we do nothing, we’ll simply disappear,” he said. “We can say that in probably five or 10 years, Laval will have become a bilingual city, and in 20 years, a unilingual English-speaking city. This is absolutely evident from current trends.”

First, he really hopes that Laval’s French language committee, that the City intends to set up, will get under way quickly.

“This committee needs to come to life in the coming months, because in two years, it will be too late”, Desautels said.

Take Drastic Measures

To stop anglicization, which is constantly gaining ground in Laval, Desautels asks the municipal administration to, in the future, “communicate with all citizens in French only”.

Unlike municipalities whose status is bilingual, Laval remains a French-speaking city and isn’t required by law to address its citizens in the language of Shakespeare, regardless of whether they communicate in English with Laval’s administration, argues the president of the SNQL.

“Everything, absolutely everything should be in French only,” he insisted, while mentioning digital, oral and written communications. “The more bilingual documents we offer, the more we encourage people who don’t speak French to continue not doing it.”

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L’article The French Language “Seriously Threatened” in Laval, Says the President of the SNQL est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.

Along with his candidate Valérie Schmaltz, he visited the Ulric-Debien primary school, freshly renovated and enlarged in the Auteuil district, before revealing a commitment of $2 billion in the upgrading of educational establishments.

This would add to the $7 billion already provided for in the last budget to renovate schools over the next four years.

Education Being the Priority

“Our children and teachers deserve to have beautiful schools,” Legault said, who’s making education “the priority of all priorities”.

He gave as proof of this the $5.2 billion his government has invested in school renovations since 2018, which is twice the amount of $2.7 billion invested by the previous government.

An envelope increased to $9 billion would make it possible to renovate more than 600 schools by 2026, which would benefit, among other things, from larger windows, more spacious gymnasiums, more common areas, and greener and better equipped schoolyards.

Again in Laval

Legault has never been in town so often. In fact, it was his third press conference in three weeks, including the one that marked the unveiling of his first electoral commitment, last Aug. 12, surrounded at the moment by his six candidates who will by seeking the votes from the city-region’s residents.

Let’s note the CAQ is leading the polls in five of the six ridings of the territory.

“I’d like to make gains in Laval, and we’ll work very hard to do so,” Legault said. “As a city, Laval has been taken for granted for too by the Liberal Party. It’s time for us to replace them, but we’re not taking anything for granted.”

In the last elections, Laval had resisted the CAQ wave, with only Christopher Skeete in Sainte-Rose winning a riding for them.

L’article François Legault Continues his Campaign in a Laval School est apparu en premier sur Courrier Laval news.