Battle for Mille Fleurs

IT SEEMS unfortunate that the Government should have treated the Law Association as vagrants squatting at Mille Fleurs. The fact that it resorted to such strong-arm methods last Saturday to regain possession of the historic mansion on Queen’s Park West appears to be not only an insult to the Association but an unwarranted use of force against one of the country’s respected professional organisations. It pains us to think that, whatever concerns the Government may have had about the condition of the house, they could not have been resolved amicably in on-going discussions with the Association. It seems agreed on both sides that the picturesque building, one of the “Magnificent Seven” gracing a section of Queen’s Park West, had been neglected for so long that it urgently needed extensive restoration.

Indeed, when the decision was taken in September 2001 to lease Mille Fleurs to the Association for the purpose of housing its secretariat, it was on the basis that the Association would undertake the restoration and maintenance of the building. Since then, however, disagreements appear to have arisen between the two parties over the state of the house and eventually the dispute reached the point where the Government decided to repossess the building and wrote the Association to that effect on October 27, 2004. The bone of contention, it seems, was the proposed lease itself. The Government may have grown anxious over the fact that during the two years and nine months that Mille Fleurs was in the Association’s possession, no restoration work was ever undertaken nor was the building actually occupied.

On the other hand, when he formally accepted the keys to the mansion in February 2002, then president of the Association Karl Hudson Phillips QC offered to restore the building for the grant of a lease, using the cost of the project as consideration for the lease. Since then, however, no lease has been presented. It was noted that after the Manning Government took office in 2002, then attorney general Glenda Morean-Phillip promised to speed up delivery of the document. Why, after 33 months, the Government has been unable to produce what must be a simple lease is difficult to understand. Should the Association have started restoration work at Mille Fleurs without the lease in its hands? Apparently this was considered unwise. What worries us in the first place is the failure between two respected and, one assumes, reasonable parties, the Government and the Association, to settle this matter in a mutually satisfactory manner.

If promises were made, then both sides may well have been delinquent. Whatever its anxieties, however, the Government’s action in regaining possession of the mansion seems unnecessarily crude and arbitrary. On Saturday, armed policemen, public officers, a permanent secretary and a man armed with a bolt cutter scaled the walls of Mille Fleurs and took possession of it, effectively ejecting the Association. Instead of solving the dispute, however, this action is not only driving an upset Association into seeking legal redress but also into raising questions about the Government’s commitment to the rule of law. Says present president Russel Martineau SC: “If we allow the Association’s rights to be trampled on, what signal will be sent to the society? People will be helpless and, therefore in the interest of the country, we must take a stand on this.” And so, the battle for Mille Fleurs begins.