Chris Lowrey
PONTIAC Sept. 26, 2018
The employee at the centre of a controversy involving MRC Pontiac Warden Jane Toller responded to Toller’s interview after the last council of mayors meeting on Sept. 17.
The controversy erupted after local radio station CHIP FM identified Toller as the employer who threatened an employee – later identified as Jessica Bérard – with dismissal or demotion after she made Toller aware of her plans to run for the New Democratic Party of Quebec (NDPQ) in the upcoming provincial election.
Bérard is now serving as campaign manager for NDPQ candidate Samuel Gendron.
CHIP FM’s news report came after a July 10 anonymous letter appeared on the Facebook page of the Outaouais regional association of the NDPQ which accused an unnamed local business owner of threatening to demote or dismiss a candidate for expressing interest in running for the NDPQ.
Despite Toller saying she offered Bérard a part-time server job out of concern that her business would become Bérard’s campaign office, Bérard said Toller was more concerned with who she would be running for – and against.
“On [May] 8, Jane called me to inform me I would be a part-time server since she wasn’t comfortable having her events manager running against [André] Fortin, since she endorsed him,” Bérard said via electronic message.
After working for Toller at her private business – The Spruceholme Inn in Fort Coulonge – during the summer of 2017, Bérard went back to university that fall.
This past spring, Toller was in need of a new full-time manager after the previous one left in October of 2017.
Toller admitted that she initially hired Bérard to take on the manager’s role.
“When [Bérard] offered to come work for the summer, I thought this would perhaps be a good solution,” Toller said. “At least for a few months.”
Soon after, Bérard informed Toller of her plans to run in the provincial election.
“When she spoke to me about the job, she did not tell me that she had plans to run politically,” Toller said. “If she had told me right then and there, I would not have offered her the job because it’s a very time-consuming job that is, many weeks, seven days a week.”
As a result, Toller said she offered Bérard a position as a part-time server.
One of Toller’s main concerns was that Bérard wanted to both serve as the manager and run politically – something Toller saw as impossible.
The Quebec Election Act says in section 248 that “every employer shall, upon written request, grant a leave without pay to an employee who is a candidate or intends to become one.”
Section 254 says that employers do not have the right to “dismiss, lay off, suspend, demote or transfer an employee,” who asks for a leave of absence to run for office.
However, both Toller and Bérard said that Bérard never asked for a leave of absence.
Toller could not be reached by press time.
