Gatineau Park recalls those private clubs of old which appropriated vast swaths of Quebec’s territory, turning them into a preserve for out-of-province cliques…
Being in essence a gated community run for its landowners, Gatineau Park exists amid utter bureaucratic anarchy thanks to the National Capital Commission (NCC). At once a provincial game sanctuary, a federal park, a municipal fiefdom and a private playground, no one seems to know who really runs it, where its boundaries are, or even who owns lands around lac La Pêche or the Outaouais CÉGEP.
As a result of the administrative vacuum created by the NCC, houses are built on the lakebed at Meech Lake - in the fish habitat - public picnic grounds are furtively closed at Kingsmere to make way for private homes, property is rented to dope growers, while the park’s ecological and territorial integrity is being mercilessly undermined. Since 1992, the NCC has removed eight square kilometres of land from Gatineau Park, while allowing 119 new homes to be built inside it, along with a Loblaws superstore, a donut shop, a gas station and a fire hall.
And completing this portrait of a vassalized territory is the recent appointment of Marie Lemay as head of the NCC. In the late 1990s, as a senior official with the Municipality of Chelsea, Ms. Lemay stood by helplessly while Meech Lake landowners wantonly trampled bylaws and built new housing on the lakebed - below the high-water mark.
Today, as NCC CEO, Ms. Lemay has made helplessness to protect Gatineau Park the earmark of her administration. She has routinely been caught off guard by development projects in the park; allowed construction of new housing on Carman Rd; retained the services of a law firm having close family ties with Gatineau Park landowners to tell her she lacked authority to impose a development freeze in the park. As well, Ms. Lemay has limited access to information, misled a parliamentary committee, and overseen an administration which participated in an attempt to discredit park activists - while refusing to disclose the nature of an NCC director’s conflict of interest in Gatineau Park.
Is it any wonder the former Chelsea mayor and Gatineau Park landowners greeted her appointment with great enthusiasm? As a patsy for the local clique, it would be hard to find a better candidate…
Jean-Paul Murray
Co-chair, Gatineau Park Protection Committee
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