An urgent appeal to stop
ADM development plan
Green Coalition asks federal government to protect Montreal’s very last large ecosystem
June 18, 2025
On June 17, 2025, the Green Coalition Technoparc Team sent a letter of great importance to Prime Minister Carney and Ministers Freeland, Guilbeault and Drabusin about a severe new threat to Montreal’s very last large ecosystem, as follows:
The Right Honourable Mark Carney
Prime Minister of Canada
The Honourable Chrystia Freeland
Minister of Transport and Internal Trade
The Honourable Steven Guilbeault
Minister of Canadian Culture and Identity
Parks Canada and Quebec Lieutenant
The Honourable Julie Dabrusin
Minister of Environment and Climate Change
URGENT!
“Mister Prime Minister Carney, Honourable Ministers Freeland, Guilbeault and Drabusin, please stop Airport expansion into Montreal’s very last large ecosystem.”
June 17, 2025
Dear Prime Minister Carney and Ministers Freeland, Guilbeault and Drabusin :
Greetings from Green Coalition’s Technoparc Team. Today, we are calling upon you to act boldly now to protect and conserve Montreal’s very last large remaining ecosystem, the Technoparc wetlands – 230 hectares of marshes, forest, and meadows north of the airport. This ecosystem is larger than Mount Royal Park.
This vital ecosystem is facing a severe new threat from Aeroports de Montréal (ADM). The largest 167-hectare portion of the total natural system is public, Crown land, held in trust by the Government of Canada, on behalf of all Canadians. The remaining portion of the ecosystem, roughly 60 hectares, is in the City of Montreal’s jurisdiction.
Now, Aeroports de Montréal says it wants to develop almost all the Crown lands in the area. In 1992, ADM signed an 80-year lease with Transport Canada for precisely those Crown lands. And right now, ADM seeks your government’s approval for their 20-year “plan” to develop almost all 167 hectares. If ADM continues with this scheme, it will mean the ultimate destruction of irreplaceable natural spaces, with their important habitat for wildlife – including species at risk and those endangered like the iconic Monarch Butterfly. Montreal’s very last, large ecosystem would be dealt a mortal blow.
This cannot be allowed to happen because, as one of this letter’s signatories, Clifford Lincoln, has written to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “The solution is to establish permanent protective status on the federal lands north of the airport in order to safeguard them from all development.”
The goal, Lincoln explained, is “maintaining the logic and necessity of unbuilt public land around the airport complex.”
Also, this should not be allowed to happen because the City of Montreal has proposed that the ecosystem north of the airport be considered for national urban park status.
Moreover, recent history indicates that any fragmentation of the ecosystem will be met by massive public protest.
Two Montreal companies, Medicom and Hypertec, withdrew their development plans in the Technoparc wetlands because of a public uproar. And when Hypertec agreed to sell its own property in the ecosystem to the City of Montreal, the company did so on the understanding that they were cooperating in the conservation of the whole natural area. Indeed, both Medicom and Hypertec showed exemplary corporate responsibility in following their own environmental mission statements through real on-the-ground practice. Their leadership contrasted sharply with the ADM’s destruction of the monarch’s breeding habitat in July 2022, showing as it did the airport authority’s wanton indifference to the enormous environmental importance of this local ecosystem.
All of us should remember that more than 200 scientists in the Montreal region signed a public letter stressing the importance of the ecosystem’s biodiversity and demanding its conservation.
There have also been two important public press conferences. The first marked the formal agreement between Hypertec and the City of Montreal for the transfer of the company’s land to the city for conservation. The second public press conference occurred this past March and represented an incredibly broad coalition of political forces – the Montreal Metropolitan Community, the City of Montreal, the City of Dorval, the borough of Saint-Laurent, along with 25 local boroughs and municipalities, as well as a host of environmental groups, including Technoparc Oiseaux, Green Coalition, and Mères au Front. All of these members of civil society are aligned in support of the conservation of the entire Technoparc ecosystem, also known as Parc-Nature des Sources.
Notably, the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke has also called for the protection of the entire Technoparc ecosystem.
At both these press conferences, many participants noted and lamented the absence of the federal government on the Technoparc file.
Now the ADM is once again deliberately setting itself against the overwhelming public consensus in Montreal that the invaluable Technoparc ecosystem must be conserved in its entirety.
In fact, such is the weight of public opinion that any attempt by the ADM to once again despoil this natural system would be met with resounding resistance. That is a certainty. The truth is that ADM cannot expect to develop these lands at all without growing public resistance.
With all due respect, Mister Prime Minister, the time has come for you and cabinet to advise the ADM that they must come up with a new plan to manage the airport along the lines of Vancouver and Zurich, two places where airports co-exist with significant natural areas. The modern path is clear: when an airport lies next to an ecological site of major importance, a contemporary planning authority does not destroy the ecosystem. It charts a course of co-existence, to the great benefit of nature, of the airport, and of the surrounding city.
Mister Prime Minister Carney and Ministers Freeland, Guilbeault and Drabusin, this is the vision that you should explain to the ADM. You must instruct the airport authority to seek an environmental solution to its problems.
Such an outcome is to the benefit of everyone.
In closing, please know that we truly appreciate your attention to our concerns. We also want to add a last note of appeal:
We believe that Montreal, Canada’s great historic city, the epitome of “Canadian Culture and Identity,” the cradle of French in North America, and honoured host city of the Secretariat for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, merits its very own national urban park. We hope that you agree and that you will help the Metropolis attain such coveted protective status for its last exceptionally rich and ecologically valuable ecosystem.
Yours sincerely,
Green Coalition Technoparc Team:
Clifford Lincoln, former Quebec environment minister
Sylvia Oljemark, founding president, Green Coalition
Carole Reed, president, Green Coalition
David Fletcher, cofounder, vice-president, Green Coalition
Patrick Barnard, Green Coalition, journalist
Feature image: Patrick Barnard
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The Green Coalition represents more than 80 citizen groups dedicated to the protection and restoration of the Environment. Founded in 1988.
The greates threat to species (including humans) is the loss of habitat, we continue to rationalize development of ecologically sensitive areas using jobs as a key argument.
Admittedly all areas are of equal importance but, due to the increasing global population (closing in on 9 billion), even the staunchest environmentalis must water down their wine. As I have preached repeatedly, jobs come at a cost. Politicians all boast job creation but never speak of the environmental cost. Jobs can be lost, money can be lost, the environment cannot, once gone it is lost. All people require food, therefore all people require energy and that equals loss of habitat – usually by in amounts. As for the technopark (c), there is NO such need for human life, let alone survival. The Right Honorable Justin Trudeau, while attenting a COP meeting, boasted of Canada’s record in environmental protection. Shortly after, we find out that he is one of the principal technopark supporters. It is just this mentality that will see the end of the Monarch butteflies and many others.
My rant for today