For nearly two hours Saturday, disgruntled Hydro-Québec customers had the chance to voice their frustrations. Steve Martin, a resident of Elm Park, is fed up with regular power outages. “The frequency of power outages has been astronomical,” he said. “We’ll often have multiple per week – definitely per month.” Most of the people that were in attendance in the small Dollard-Des Ormeaux neighbourhood. For the past few years, 221 homes in the area have struggled with frequent and random power outages. Mike Common says that, following an outage that lasted four days, he and his family lost hundreds of dollars worth of food. “It’s the same residences that are affected. And it’s been like I said, it’s been going on for years. How can they not correct the problem?” he said. Hydro-Québec started the session with a presentation about its 2035 action plan to reduce outages in the province by 35 per cent, along with some fixes that will happen specifically in elm park. “We will be working on the vegetation in this area. We already do the vegetation control in the area, but we have some specific measure that have to be done for the trees that are very close to the network,” said maintenance director Samir Paraiso. But Elm Park residents say that doesn’t make sense and they still don’t understand why the outages keep happening. “My neighbours across the street in the same neighbourhood with the same trees, less than ten times they’ve had outages in 35 years,” said Common. “It’s become a frustration because it’s an area so small and even when there’s fair weather, we lose power,” Martin added. The random outages are one thing - but another is the lack of communication, according to Mayor Alex Bottausci. “An organization is responsible not only to render service and to collect the money for the services that they’re rendering, but also to be able to communicate clearly to their clients to let them know what is happening,” he said. “And that, to me, is what’s been lacking.” Some Elm Park residents say they’ve tried to report problem trees to Hydro-Québec, but nothing was done. Martin says he flagged one for more than three years before it was too late. “Mother Nature took over and knocked out the whole area for a week,” he said. “The impact to people’s lives is tremendous. So here we are trying to make a statement.” The news conference displayed the years of bottled-up frustration for these residents who finally had the floor. “It just sort of shows, just how dire the circumstances are here, that Hydro Quebec moved to have a discussion with their clients. They never do that,” said Common. Hydro-Québec ended the session promising fixes will be in place by the end of the year.
