Congratulations are in order to the five mayors and the 57 of 102 councillors across the county who on Friday at 4:30 p.m. secured their seats for another four years.
Acclamation, in many cases, could be seen as a vote of confidence. It’s an indication of a trust for the person already in the job, the person who has been giving their evenings and weekends to this poorly paid act of public service; who understands the unique challenges in their municipality, and has been working to overcome them.
These people are familiar with their budget, and their budget’s limitations. They already know which water pipes need to be replaced next, and how much this is going to cost. They know which roads are up for routine maintenance, which culverts are about to give out, and which parts of their sewage system are most likely to fail. These things take time to learn, and are the gruntwork of keeping a municipality going.
The visions these elected officials campaigned on, whenever they first ran for public office, have likely since been grounded in the realities of this gruntwork. A vision is one thing, feasibility is another. In many ways, it is to the benefit of Pontiac communities to continue having people in these jobs who already have their heads around the ins and outs of this work.
But holding onto these visions is also key, and election by acclamation is a threat to our ability, as a county, to redesign and update these visions to reflect our ever-shifting realities.
Elections offer an important opportunity for public discussions about a community’s needs, challenges, and hopes for the future. Acclamation deprives us of an opportunity to collectively imagine and reimagine what we can become.
It’s no secret that engagement in municipal politics across the province isn’t doing so well. Between the 2021 election and the beginning of 2024, at least 741 of Quebec’s 8,000 municipal politicians stepped down from their seats. In a 2023 survey run by Union des municipalites du Quebec, 74 per cent of the mayors and councillors who responded reported experiencing harassment or intimidation in the job. In Feb. 2024, the CAQ government launched a telephone helpline to provide psychological support for municipal politicians.
Add to this the complexities of running for public office in a small community. Often, races for councillor will only appear if the outgoing councillor steps down from the position. Understandably, people are reluctant to run against their neighbour or family member.
Whatever the reason for a lack of challenger, those ushered into another term by acclamation are also deprived of an opportunity to participate in this collective imagining. They didn’t have to face off against an opponent, or make a case for why they are best suited for the job. They didn’t have to lay out their priorities, share their understanding of their community’s greatest needs, or offer a renewed vision for what their community could become.
Over the next two weeks, THE EQUITY is hosting four separate Meet the Candidates events across the Pontiac (see details on page 6). These were designed as opportunities for voters to meet those running to represent them, to get a better sense of what each candidate is proposing to bring to the council table.
But we hope all those who already know they’ll be representing their constituents for another four years will still come out to meet with these voters to share their visions, their priorities, and their challenges, and hear from voters on how their priorities and needs may have shifted since the last election.
