MONTRÉAL, 1er MAI 2014 – “Les Pollués de Montréal-Trudeau” seek from Transport Canada to urgently intervene and replace Aéroports de Montréal (ADM) in its role managing airplane noise. The citizens’ committee has tried, in vain, for nearly a year to obtain information regarding the content of meetings of the Airport Noise management Consultative Committee. ADM is not transparent and does not allow the population to attend this committee’s meetings.
“OUR airport’s management is opaque and this is unacceptable in 2014, explains Antoine Bécotte, president of “Les Pollués”. Furthermore, these managers ignore citizens trying to obtain justifications for air traffic that continues to annoy them with low altitude flights, day or night. This is unacceptable: this airport belongs to the whole population.”
ADM is hiding behind the methodology of the NEF (Noise Exposure Forecast) model based on data from its monitoring stations installed exclusively west of Highway 15 to argue that citizens living in the Ahuntsic-Bordeaux-Cartierville-Saint-Michel Saint-Léonard-Rosemont and Villeray-Parc-Extension neighborhoods as well as the citizens from Town of Mount-Royal are not affected by the noise of carriers over Montreal. “Les Pollués” question the location of these stations in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Saint-Laurent, Côte-Saint-Luc, Dorval and Pointe-Claire and also question the technology used, it dates back to 2004.
“Worse, how can we trust an administration that, on the one hand, seeks to generate revenue from airport facilities and on the other, is responsible for managing public complaints about the noise pollution caused by its activities? It’s totally at odds. How can we believe that ADM, a private company would make unbiased claims?”
Mr. Bécotte therefore calls on Transport Canada to take a more active role in managing airplane noise on the island of Montreal. Thousands of citizens have suffered from the deteriorating situation in recent years and the little respect ADM has for the citizens burdened by its poor management.
“Urgently, the first step Transport Canada will need to do to appease the discontent of citizens whose nights are disturbed by nocturnal activity in the Montreal sky will be to impose a real curfew from 11 pm to 7 am.”
“Les Pollués” have also pointed out today, as part of ADM’s Annual General Meeting, that the Montreal airport has become a simple regional airport – sliding to the fourth-biggest in terms of attendance and with aircraft movements that are less that 20 years ago – thus they may reorganise without dramatic consequence the night traffic that causes more problems than it generates in profitability.