One year out from the next municipal election, scheduled for Nov. 2, 2025, THE EQUITY checked in with the 20 people who have been voted in to lead the communities from Luskville to Rapides des Joachims, including the MRC Pontiac warden.

We will be publishing these interviews to offer readers a sense of what these local leaders feel they’ve accomplished since their term began, and what they hope to do with the last year before their seat is once again up for grabs. We will publish three interviews each week, working our way through the Pontiac from east to west.

THE EQUITY has made many attempts since the beginning of October to schedule an interview with Bryson mayor Alain Gagnon. As he has not yet made himself available, we are skipping Bryson for the time being and will publish Gagnon’s interview whenever it is completed.

Lynne Cameron — Portage du Fort

Interview by K.C. Jordan

When you ran for mayor three years ago, what were your main priorities?

The main priorities were to continue with the previous term, of course the projects involving municipal property, clean-up in town and infrastructure improvements.

How much of this have you achieved?

I’ve seen a lot of improvements over the last two terms, and especially this present term. We’ve cleaned up some municipal properties, we’ve done some demolitions. Projects such as the tourist rest stop, that’s new just this summer. Road improvement, water infrastructure, which is ongoing for us, and we have executed a tri-party agreement for fire services [with Shawville and Clarendon].

We believe it will improve response times and overall response to emergencies, because health and safety is a top priority. And then we’ve done structural improvements to the town hall and the office, and the other thing we’ve been working on is strengthening the legislative framework through the introduction and passing of new bylaws.

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?

I’m so proud of our work on the town hall. It was so, so old. Of course, we never had the finances. But thanks to the revitalization grant, we were able to do a lot of work in the hall downstairs, completely renovated it except the jail cells.

What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?

Well, we’re still working on the water lines because they are old, we’ve got quite a bit of that done. The filtration plant is going to need some more maintenance. We could use new sidewalks, but we’ll have to work on that.

What are the challenges in meeting these needs?

The challenges are financial, because we have 119 houses on the water that are sharing the debt for the expenses for the water plant. If, say, we had 400 residents then it wouldn’t be as expensive. The plant was $3.5 million, so when you’re dividing that amongst a smaller group, it’s our biggest expense.

And so our taxes are unfortunately a little high. Basically, there’s things that are out of your control. Like, we have to have water, and there’s no grants for that.

What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?

In that time, we have more work on preserving property values. And then reviewing the strategic plan and bringing it up to date. It basically reiterates the property values and our vision for the next few years.

Municipal infrastructure of course continues, and the improvements remain an ongoing priority subject to financial realities like grants and cost sharing. And we also plan to review and update our strategic plan to bring it up to date including development such as our policy on affordable housing.

After three years sitting on the MRC’s council of mayors, what do you believe this county should prioritize?

It’s their job to enforce or come up with a plan for what the government passes down, and often that’s downloaded without funds to match it.

Right now the big thing is garbage, compost and that’s a huge item. And to get 18 municipalities on the same boat, that’s going to be a job. Now they are talking about preserving and enlarging conservation areas. And this comparative factor is a hot subject.

Healthcare, that’s a big issue, the unequal pay for nurses. So that’s a concern, it you can work here for $25 an hour but you can go across the river for $35 an hour, it’s a no-brainer. That’s the biggest issue in the Pontiac, is how we’re losing our doctors and specialists. People have to travel so far, which is maybe not so bad for a younger person, but for a senior, they’re lost.

Jean-Louis Corriveau — l’Île-du-Grand-Calumet

Interview conducted in French and translated to English by K.C. Jordan.

When you ran for mayor three years ago, what were your main priorities?

Definitely improving the water infrastructure. It was pretty old, and we had to renovate it all. That was important. Also improving roads. We have almost 80 kilometres of roads here on the island, so they are pretty important. We have streets where it’s pretty rough driving, and we have other streets too — it all depends on what we can afford.

How much of this have you achieved?

We have a skating rink we improved. We redid the water network, we changed all the pipes for 1.2 kilometres. After that we redid the surface of the [chemin des Outaouais], the surface was really rough, so we redid it from one end to the other of the village. That project cost $1.2 million and we did that with our gas tax.

We replaced all the windows and doors at the Golden Age Club. We put in a generator at our fire hall. At the municipal hall we decided to put in thermopumps this year. Our budget will also be able to pay for a generator there too.

We put in radar speed detectors at the village limits, and two up in Dunraven. We bought a cabin for the municipal beach on the north end of the island, and we put it there so people could change.

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?

There’s lots that we did. The big accomplishment for me personally is the municipal hall, plus the generator and the pumping station. I think there were lots of folks who wanted a generator because they were missing water. I think that was a big thing we did. Those are the two most important; it’s for the security of people.

What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?

We want to make a little park [at the other end of the island]. We want to try to beautify the island a bit, try to create parks like we did already here [with the multi-use park behind the municipal office]. We want to beautify the island to attract people here, and it’s important for our kids as well. It’s important for us to try to attract people here. We only have one dépanneur on the island, and we would love to bring people here to keep that dépanneur open.

What are the challenges in meeting these needs?

I think it’s the lack of restaurants, and lack of places for people to stop. It’s not just us — in other municipalities there are little restaurants closing down. There’s no restaurants on the island, no hotels. It takes away a lot when you don’t have a restaurant, people come to the island. But it’s not up to the municipality, it would have to be someone who came [to open a business]. It’s hard in small towns.

What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?

And last year we budgeted for the library, but we’re still waiting on Hydro-Québec to do work on a telephone pole. We’ve been waiting for two years. That’s bothering me a lot. The DG and I have no choice, but we’ve been working on it to try and speed the process up. We wanted it to be done this fall because it’s dangerous. We want to do it, the blocks are all there.

The little park [at the other end of the island]. We got a grant from the MRC, so in the spring we would like to make a park.

After three years as a member of the MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe this county should prioritize?

It’s to create jobs, but it’s pretty complicated. Garbage, too. But one thing I found difficult during my term was the problem of councillors. We had one councillor at the start, she quit because of health reasons. Then we had one who passed away in the month of July, Pierre Jolicoeur, then we had another pass away a few weeks ago. It’s been hard because you know, you have people you’re working with and they work well, and then suddenly you have to hold an election. It complicates things. You have to take a few steps back. That was the hardest thing during my term.

Raymond Pilon — Campbell’s Bay

Interview by K.C. Jordan

When you ran for mayor in 2023, what were your main priorities?

There were a lot of things going on, but basically applying for grants for the ball fence. We received a grant for a total amount of $72,000, and also the three-pitch ball club donated some money too. We are working on it as we speak, there’s a company working on the ball fence. It did not cost the taxpayers any money at all to redo the fencing.

We’re working presently to build a new fire hall [with Litchfield]. Hopefully we’ll be going out for tender for the construction of the fire hall itself in July 2025. So we’re well on our way to getting that done.
Another grant we applied for is through the Ministry of Culture. It’s a big projector that will be projecting little videos or images on different buildings in town that will reflect on the culture of the Pontiac. We applied for it and we received some money from the MRC, and if we receive the grant we’ll have to get the equipment and some footage. We’re probably looking at before 2026 that this is up and going.

How much of this have you achieved?

What I mentioned, that’s basically what we’re working on. We’re working for the Oasis project. The Pontiac is a hot spot when it comes to climate, so we applied for the Oasis program to help us cool down the centre of Campbell’s Bay. That’s another project we’re working on.

With the FQM we’ll need to install water meters in town, we’re obligated to do this, so we’re looking at doing this in 2025. It’s to see how much water people are using.

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?

One of the greatest accomplishments, we had an agreement with the Municipality of Litchfield concerning the fire department. And in 1978, the agreement came out, and it was a 50/50 share, the expenses between the two municipalities. The size of Litchfield’s territory is a lot bigger, so it’s a lot bigger expense to fight fires. So we came to an agreement.

What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?

Of course, it’s housing. People need a place to live. A lot of people would like to come into this municipality. Just recently the Ringrose building was renovated, the entrepreneur created six apartments there, and most of them are already rented out.

There’s also the Morin field behind the John Paul II School. We’re trying to work with the owners and hopefully get that developed someday, but there’s a couple issues they would have to resolve first. And if that becomes available, that will definitely be a big plus for our community. It would basically be a little bit of everything. It could be a single unit, a single home, it could be a semi-detached home, a multi-generational home. All options are open, for sure.

What are the challenges in meeting these needs?

We don’t have very many vacant lots in Campbell’s Bay, so that would be the biggest challenge, is to have some places to build these new homes.

What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?

From now until then, the big file we’re working on is the fire hall. We meet quite often with the architects and the plans are about 30 per cent complete. July 2025, that’s hopefully when we’ll be going out for tender to build this fire hall.

After one year as a member of the MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe this county should prioritize?

The big file is the garbage that’s been in the news lately. There’s also the AgriSaveur project and the municipal property evaluations. Those are big issues right now.