AYLMER, QUEBEC | The city of Gatineau announces plans for a network of dog parks -- there's reason to celebrate and praise our council. When the city plans to fund more kids' sports, not less, there's reason to celebrate; when the city cleans up the St. Jacques waterfront in Gatineau and replaces the patchwork docks there, or when the city does more than talk about protecting green space -- as in keeping Boucher Forest integral -- these are all reasons to praise our council.

But for every step forward, it seems often there are two steps backwards. This is hard to understand.

If city councilors are the intelligent and thoughtful people we know they are, why do they approve measures that seem incomprehensible for the fourth largest city in Quebec.

It's not entirely city council; many events seem to catch council unawares. For example, the condemnation of six big homes in Gatineau sector because they were built on an unstable clay base. The question isn't why were they built there, but why was the builder given permission to cut down the trees and build there?

Who issued the building permits, and why?

The city says the building permits were issued based on engineer's reports claiming there was slight danger of subsoil shifting. Now the danger seems evident. Are our councilors examining how this huge mistake about?

Could it be that the city relied on reports by an engineering firm, hired by the developer, who saw those properties as prime real estate? Could this be the same engineering firm which found no brownfield contaminants left from the large railway yard in Frasers Field, here in Aylmer?

Historical photos show a big and busy railroad yard and industrial activity here. There are now homes built almost everywhere across Gatineau, most inhabited by people who know nothing of the area's history. Homebuyers are after bargain housing, close to a bridge, that's all.

If in twenty years health problems surface, as they have in other cities, who will be responsible? Not the developer, who trusted his engineer's reports. The city employee who should have known the property's history and the track records of the various engineering firms? That city employee will be retired, and may be living far away.

Which city official approved the Lafrance Street report, ignoring that the hill there contains the same unstable clay which resulted in the nearby 1971 landslide which left 22 families homeless or which caused the historic mud slide in Notre Dame de la Salette in which thirty six people died?

The Lafrance developer was one of Gatineau's heavy kingpins -- did council turn a blind eye?

Or is the city's engineering staff too understaffed to pick up on such correlations? Are councilors too overworked to pay attention to everything they must approve?

And if the city still has insufficiencies -- in terms of inspectors or rushed councilors -- why are we instead spending so much on things like the Quebec Games or a Volleyball Training Centre?

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Copyright © 2008 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/05.08