Banned for three years by the City of Montreal due to illegal dumping, and present on the blacklist of other municipalities, the company Beauregard Environnement was awarded a contract during the July municipal council at the City of Laval.
Mayor Stéphane Boyer expressed that for him and his administration, there was no ambiguity and that the City has an obligation to award this contract to Beauregard Environnement, due to the rules obliging a municipality to choose the lowest bidder. in a call for tenders.
Misunderstanding and anger
For the opposition, this positioning of the Boyer administration and its public release in the media the very morning of a city council day would only be a smokescreen.
“It’s incomprehensible that the Boyer administration has waited this long to ask for a tougher law since Beauregard was banned in 2020 from the city of Montreal.”
It is that last April, this file recommended by the executive committee had been removed from the agenda of the municipal council after an intervention by the municipal councilor of Saint-François Isabelle Piché.
“The evolution of this file is surprising and particularly worrying, therefore affirmed Isabelle Piché, the day after the municipal council held on Tuesday July 11. It is really a flagrant lack of seriousness and I consider that the administration has lost control in this file. The practices of this company have proven to be questionable, which has led cities, such as Montreal, to place it on their blacklist.
For his part, the acting head of Action Laval and councilor for Val-des-Arbres, Achille Cifelli, regrets seeing Mayor Boyer in reaction mode and that no concrete action has yet been taken in this file, more particularly since resurfacing four months ago.
Council clashes
During the municipal council on Tuesday, July 11, the interim leader of Parti Laval Claude Larochelle also attacked the public outing made that morning by Mayor Boyer, judging it too late.
“What have you been doing all this time?” Asked the man who is also a municipal councilor for Fabreville, relayed by his colleague and councilor for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, Louise Lortie, who was also surprised by this outing. media the very morning of the council, expressing: “Are you comfortable with this public outing to save your buttocks?”
In response to questions from the opposition, Mayor Boyer first clarified that “nobody likes to give a contract to a company that has been at fault towards other municipalities.”
For his part, the vice-president of the executive council of the City and councilor of Sainte-Dorothée, Ray Khalil rightly recalled that no elected official is present when the envelopes are opened for the granting of a contract.
Another response from the mayor
The day after the council, Stéphane Boyer reiterated that “for the City of Laval to be able to add a company to its own blacklist, it must have committed a fault on Laval territory. We have already done this with other companies in the past.”
“We all agree that legislative changes would nevertheless be relevant in order to change this situation, added the first magistrate of the City of Laval. However, such a change would require the Government of Quebec to amend two laws through an omnibus bill. Whatever the Opposition thinks, these kinds of changes are not made on the corner of a table, which is why we must give the ministers concerned time to take up the file during the summer period. The parliamentary session is adjourned until September 12.
With the collaboration of Corinne Prince
