Green Coalition makes
new urgent request

Environmental group demands a meeting with federal ministers to discuss Medicom project

January 10, 2021

On January 6, 2022, the Green Coalition submitted the following letter to The Honourable Omar Alghabra, Minister of Transport and The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, requesting for the fourth time an urgent meeting to discuss the Medicom project which threatens essential breeding habitat of the endangered Monarch butterfly.

Meanwhile, in response to public concerns, the Green Coalition continues to discuss relevant issues with members of the Montreal Executive Committee.

The Honourable Omar Alghabra
Minister of Transport

The Honourable Steven Guilbeault,
Minister of Environment and Climate Change

January 6, 2022

Urgent! It is time to halt the Medicom project that will destroy the breeding habitat of the endangered monarch butterfly. Green coalition requests a meeting.

Dear Honourable Ministers Alghabra and Guilbeault,

Today the Green Coalition is making a new urgent request to meet you at your earliest convenience. Three letters were sent to you on June 5, June 16, and June 28, 2021, making requests for a meeting. The Honourable Clifford Lincoln, former Environment Minister of Quebec, is part of our team and we remain eager to meet with you. No response to these requests has been received by Green Coalition.

• Green Coalition remains steadfast. We are totally opposed to the construction of the Medicom plant on the Monarch Fields, the breeding habitat of the endangered Monarch Butterfly. It is a serious mistake for our government to sanction the project there: to finance the project with $29 million of public money compounds the error. The Medicom construction must be relocated to an appropriate site – there are many available nearby.
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• The Monarch Fields are an essential part of Montreal’s last large, unprotected, marshland and riverine ecosystem – 215 hectares of rare wildlife habitats – the size of Mount Royal Park, north of Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport. The Medicom project will fragment the Monarch Fields and this encroachment signals that more development is now a serious threat to the entire unprotected ecosystem. The federal government owns approximately 155 hectares, currently leased to Aéroports de Montréal (ADM), of the irreplaceable and contiguous ecosystem. The Technoparc wetlands themselves, 60 hectares, fall within the jurisdiction of the City of Montreal.
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• Since June 2021, a storm of protests and appeals has been made about the Medicom project that has continued and escalated throughout the federal and municipal election campaigns. The only response received by Green Coalition is a letter from the Honourable Steven Guilbeault dated November 21, 2021, in which he refuses Green Coalition’s formal request for designation of the proposed Medicom site, the Monarch Fields (in favour of conservation).
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• Silence is the response of our federal government (apart from the Minister’s refusal November 21) – silence is the response to all our requests to meet, and silence has greeted the Honourable Clifford Lincoln’s letter to the Prime Minister (forwarded to the Environment minister).
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• And silence has also been Medicom’s response to Green Coalition’s proposal to meet. As for the consultation on the proposed Medicom project that ended August 24, 2021, there is no public record of the many submissions made to the consultation and absolutely no formal announcement of the outcome of this thoroughly unsatisfactory consultation process – only silence.

Honourable Ministers, we hope you will now reply to this request to meet. Clifford Lincoln and the Green Coalition team urgently wish to continue our interrupted discussions with you about Green Coalition’s appeal for permanent protective status for Montreal’s last large riverine ecosystem. This appeal was urgent last June – it is even more urgent today – in 2022!

Respectfully yours,

Sylvia Oljemark, for Gareth Richardson, David Fletcher, Patrick Barnard and the Honourable Clifford Lincoln

Feature image: James Wheeler from Pexels

Read other articles about the Monarch Fields

The Green Coalition – representing more than 80 citizens groups dedicated to the protection and restoration of the Environment. Founded in 1988.