Council delays Route 132 project

A joint project to modernize Route 132 has been stalled because Kahnawake refuses to collaborate with elected officials from surrounding municipalities. The prefect of the Roussillon regional county told The Eastern Door he’s been urging the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) to come to the table for years now, but they won’t budge.

MCK grand chief Cody Diabo said they’ve been holding out over concerns their participation will be perceived as them consenting to the project.

“We have to be very careful,” he said. “We don’t want it to be perceived that we’re being consulted and we’re okay with the project, meaning the provincial government can now sidestep and say, ‘Well, you’ve been consulted, and you didn’t raise any concerns.’

“I’ll say it bluntly, it’s a really racist and paternalistic top-down approach,” the MCK grand chief said of the regional county’s approach. “But the project’s still going through at the end of the day, so it’s a really frustrating situation.”

The project revolves around turning the route into an urban boulevard.

“Route 132 needs to be redone,” prefect Christian Ouellette told The Eastern Door in a recent interview.

“We haven’t been able to move forward, because of the demands surrounding the Seigneury of Sault St. Louis,” said Ouellette, also the mayor of Delson, referencing the long-standing land grievance the band council has filed against Canada.

The project dates back to 2017, when the cities of Delson, Sainte-Catherine, and St. Constant announced a joint commitment to modernize the five-KM stretch of the highway that runs through their municipalities. A committee was created then too, grouping together elected officials from surrounding municipalities, in addition to former Council chief Rhonda Kirby.

Other priorities identified for the committee back then included the creation of a “shared vision” for the project, finding solutions for traffic-related problems, and the drafting of a master plan intended for stakeholders who’d come to be involved in the project.

Kirby and then MCK technician David Lahache only participated in a few meetings that year before pulling out. A 2021 report in The Eastern Door said the decision to stop attending meetings came down to concerns over development within Seigneury lands.

In the time since then Ouellette said he’s made repeated attempts to encourage the band council to collaborate on the project.

“We don’t want to construct buildings, we want to replace the road,” Ouellette emphasized, adding much of the work will involve repaving the five-KM stretch of highway.

The prefect brought up the offer to collaborate again while meeting with Diabo in late February, who he said told him it was off the table.

“The grand chief informed us that he wants to wait on the (federal) government’s next steps before going any further. This has prevented us from moving forward with our projects,” Ouellette said.

Discussions between Kahnawake and Canada over the Seigneury of Sault St. Louis land grievance resumed about two years ago, Diabo said. The hope now is to finalize how formal negotiations over the grievance will be conducted, the MCK grand chief said.

“All of these developments are happening on Seigneury lands, and our intent is to get our land back, so we’re at an impasse,” Diabo said.

“I understand they want to grow and develop, but they’re growing and developing on land that’s not theirs. Those are those hard conversations that we’re going to have to have, and that’s where Canada needs to come in and do their job, the province needs to get involved and do their job,” he added, mentioning the need for consultation.

The MCK grand chief also expressed concerns over the nature of the proposed work.

“They want a Decarie-style industrial boulevard,” he said.

The hope is to expand parts of the road up to four lanes, Diabo said he was told.

“But then you’re going to get to Kahnawake and it’s going back down to a two lane. So, what really is it going to do, besides bog up traffic at the end of the day on our end?”

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