At the Sept. 17 MRC Pontiac council of mayors meeting, a 30-year agreement was approved between MRC Pontiac and the Pontiac AgriSaveur Solidarity Cooperative, a group of local producers set to operate the facility. The document details each group’s respective obligations to the building. Maryse Vallières-Murray, project manager for the MRC’s AgriSaveur iniative (of which the abattoir is a component), explained that it was similar to a lease and known as an emphyteutic agreement, requiring the co-op to handle all maintenance and upkeep, with no rent. At the end of the 30-year period, all assets will belong to the MRC.
“This kind of agreement really gives [the producers] all the rights and obligations of an owner, they just don’t have a mortgage or anything to pay because it’s already paid,” she said.
“After, at the end of the 30 years, the money they put in that building, and let’s say they put in a smoker and more ventilation, [additions] to the building [ . . . ] Those extras are coming back to the MRC. It’s kind of how they pay, they don’t pay a monthly rent, they have investment, they have the obligations to do, and that’s coming back to the MRC.”
She said that once the agreement is notarized, it will be available to the public.
The second resolution that council approved was for up to $353,638 of additional funding from the 2025/26 FRR component 2 to carry out essential work on the abattoir building to make it operational.
The original abattoir project was launched in 2018 and according to THE EQUITY’s reporting at the time, the financing was broken down as follows:
– Owners: $875,000
– loan from the Business Development Bank of Canada
(BDC) in partnership with Investment Quebec and Caisse
Desjardins: $828,62
– loan from Caisse Desjardins: $828,625
– zero per cent loan from BDC and Desjardins: $700,000
– MRC Pontiac: $83,875
– SADC Pontiac: $83,875
Total: $3.4 million
The previous operation went bankrupt and its assets were purchased by MRC Pontiac in May 2024 for just under $1.6 million, via FRR funding from the provincial ministry of municipal affairs.
Vallières-Murray said that when the MRC first purchased the building from a bankruptcy, it was not able to conduct a thorough inspection of the building. The MRC recently found some water damage and other issues that need to be addressed before the building can be used.
“There was water leaking in some places, there are some pipes to replace,” she said. “Not structural changes but technical maintenance that needs to be done to get up and operating.”
Kyle Kidder, a beef producer in La Pêche and the president of the Co-op board, said that once the repair work is done, hopefully this fall, they will be able to slowly re-start operations.
“We anticipate being able to do a soft start potentially, once the work has been completed and go ahead,” he said, noting that they were currently considering candidates for manager.
He said he was looking forward to offering the regional service again.
“I’m very excited about the project and look forward to starting production and offering the service to the area,” he said. “It’s been a life-changing experience for myself and it’s been a real pleasure working with everybody on the board as well as the MRC.”
Fire service meetings
MRC Pontiac will be hosting three upcoming meetings on increasing cooperation of municipal fire services.
The meetings will all be held at 6:30 p.m. at the following locations:
– Wednesday Oct. 8 at École secondaire Sieur-de-Coulonge (250 chem. de la Chute, Mansfield)
– Thursday Oct. 9 at St. Joseph’s Hall, L’Isle-aux-Allumettes (8 rue St. Joseph)
– Thursday Oct. 23 at the Campbell’s Bay RA Hall (2 rue Second)
MRC public safety coordinator Julien Gagnon explained that the meetings would be covering new provincial directives that mandate municipalities to call on their neighbouring fire service if they can arrive at a scene faster, based on a new mapping tool that Quebec’s Ministry of Public Security created in collaboration with municipal officials.
“There’s always corners of municipalities where other municipalities will be closer,” he said, noting that the ensuing discussions about inter-municipal agreements and pay structures mushroomed into a larger conversation. He said that various fire services have slowly been amalgamating over the years, such as Bryson and L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet recently joining Campbell’s Bay-Litchfield. He said that with increasing costs and regulatory burden over the years, they wanted to discuss the most efficient way to organize local services.
“The very brief explanation, to sum it up, would be budgets are ever increasing, the cost of operating a fire department is very high, there’s a lot of extra rules, regulations and laws, and all sorts of things that help with safety in general. So all of those things have forced municipalities to try and find some solutions before they become problematic,” he said. “For those reasons we’re currently evaluating the possibility of integration. That’s really in the early stages.”
Gagnon added that they were also forming a MRC-wide committee made up of local fire chiefs, DGs and elected officials, who will be spearheading this cooperation effort once the new administration is elected in November.
“The municipalities are adopting resolutions one by one now, to name either a member of council or could be fire chief [ . . . ] they’ll analyze this file, ultimately to present at the end to councils to decide which direction they want to go,” he said. “They will come up with recommendations, whatever’s most feasible will be recommended to council.”
Solar energy development hits roadblock
Also at the council of mayors meeting, it was announced that solar energy project proposals for Pontiac’s territory, recently submitted by renewable energy developer Innergex, had been rejected by Hydro-Québec on the grounds that Pontiac’s power grid could not handle a heavier electricity load.
Solar developers had until October to submit requests for technical guidance to Hydro-Québec with regards to project proposals for specific sites.
Bryson mayor Alain Gagnon, also a member of the MRC’s renewable energy committee, said that at the committee’s Sept. 3 meeting, members had heard from Innergex that both the projects it had submitted in Hydro-Québec’s call for tenders for 300 megawatts of solar power had been rejected.
“So it seems that the distribution system is pretty weak and can’t handle any more power we want to put in,” Gagnon shared at the mayors’ table.
In response to this setback, mayors passed a resolution on Wednesday to request further information from Hydro-Québec regarding why the projects were rejected, and further details about the crown corporation’s plans for upgrades to the lines.
“MRC Pontiac wishes to put pressure on Hydro-Québec to be proactive concerning the work needed to update the hydro lines on our territory, and to be able to give a date for the commencement of the work. The lack of upgrading not only creates poor distribution of electricity to citizens, but is hindering economic development on the territory,” the preamble to the resolution reads.
Innergex’s Pontiac projects were not the only ones rejected. Gagnon said of the 10 projects the company proposed across the province, Hydro-Québec rejected nine.
The news comes over a year after the MRC first began the work of positioning itself as a prime place to develop solar energy projects, which it believes would do well here because of the high sunlight availability in the region.
In Aug. 2024, the MRC signed a confidentiality agreement with Innergex to further explore the possibility of developing solar energy projects on the territory, so the company could be ready to submit proposals once Hydro-Québec opened its call for tenders in May of this year.
At a June council of mayors meeting, MRC economic development officer Rachel Soar-Flandé said the MRC was supporting Innergex in putting together a proposal. But it was only once its two proposals had been submitted for technical review that Innergex learned the hydro lines it would need were not up to the task, news that came a bit late for some working on the project.
“I would think that before going for a call for interest or call for tender, [Hydro-Québec] would make sure their distribution lines are up to the task,” said Litchfield mayor Colleen Larivière, who also sits on the renewable energy committee.
“The MRC put a lot of time and effort into this. We’ve been working on it since the end of 2023. And then to find out that they can’t accept us because our distribution lines are not up to par . . . It’s a little bit like putting the cart in front of the horse.”
In an email, Soar-Flandé said the MRC remains committed to supporting solar energy development.
“We will continue working with Hydro-Québec to push for grid upgrades, and with solar developers and other partners to identify viable project opportunities and ensure the Pontiac is well positioned for future calls for tenders.”
