Chris Lowrey
MUN. OF PONTIAC June 12, 2018
After an extended court battle, the Municipality of Pontiac’s council voted 5-2 against recuperating legal fees from former councillor Eddie McCann.
The municipal council was given a legal opinion by RPGL lawyers who said that in order to successfully recoup McCann’s legal fees, the municipality would have to prove “gross, intentional or separable negligence in the performance of his duties.”
The RPGL lawyers – who also represented the municipality in court against McCann – said that the evidence would not prove this. Additionally, they pointed out that the judge noted that McCann “was not motivated by the intent to deliberately or voluntarily harm or cause a prejudice to the municipality.”
The municipality’s previous council passed a resolution which stated that if McCann lost his court case and the subsequent appeal, the municipality would pursue reimbursement for legal fees.
The total cost of McCann’s legal fees were about $48,000 while the municipality’s costs were around $25,000 for a total of about $74,000.
Municipality of Pontiac Acting Assistant Director General Dominic Labrie said the council was told that the municipality doesn’t have a realistic chance of recuperating the funds.
On top of that, he said that if the municipality took McCann to court and lost, it could cost the municipality an estimated $30,000.
McCann, the municipality’s mayor from 2009-2013, ran in the 2013 mayoral race and lost to former mayor Roger Larose.

McCann had until Dec. 31, 2014 to reimburse his election debt with Elections Quebec.
At the time, McCann was acting as both the candidate and the candidate’s representative. As a result, according to Quebec Election laws, he could not pay back his own election debts.
McCann did not meet that deadline. A letter sent to him dated July 6, 2015 from Elections Quebec said that he was supposed to have given an additional financial report to the municipality’s treasurer by April 1, which covered the period ending Dec. 31, 2014.
The July 6 letter says McCann didn’t submit the additional documentation.
The Elections Quebec letter informed him that, since he didn’t pay back his elections debt by Dec. 31, 2014, under sections 64 and 65 of the Municipal Elections and Referendums Act he was not eligible to present himself as a candidate in any municipal election for a period of four years, as of Dec. 31, 2014.
Article 64 states that any candidate who does not file a campaign finance report by a prescribed date is to be declared ineligible until the report is filed.
Section 65 says that any candidate who does not repay his or her debts contracted during the election is deemed ineligible for four years from the date of the default.
However, McCann says that the Elections Quebec representative who sent the letter, Michel Richer, didn’t have the authority to disqualify him and that the only person with that authority is a judge.
Court documents show that McCann filed the additional financial statement on July 28, 2015.
The maximum that McCann could contribute to his own campaign was $1,300. Under Quebec election laws, if a candidate gets a certain percentage of the vote, 70 per cent of eligible expenses can be reimbursed by the government.
However, McCann didn’t qualify to have all 70 per cent of his campaign finances reimbursed.
As a result, court documents show McCann had an outstanding debt of more than $3,000.
Court documents also show that McCann was informed by an Elections Quebec representative that he had not paid back his outstanding debt of $3,149.61 by the date of Dec. 31 2014. As a result he was ruled ineligible to run for municipal office for a period of four years.
But McCann said that when he filed his nomination papers, he was told by Elections Quebec that he was eligible to run.
McCann says that if the municipal council at the time hadn’t asked a judge to remove him from council, Elections Quebec wouldn’t have stepped in.
According to McCann, he and his lawyers had a conference call with Elections Quebec representatives and was again told that he was eligible to run.
McCann ran in the Nov. 8, 2015 byelection for ward two in the municipality, which he won.
On Dec. 3, 2015, the Municipality of Pontiac council passed a resolution asking a judge to disqualify McCann.
On May 11, 2016, a judge upheld the Elections Quebec ruling that McCann was ineligible to sit on council.
McCann appealed the decision and argued that since he was both the candidate and the candidate’s representative, and because he was both the creditor and the debtor to the loan, the debt was extinguished by confusion.
Confusion is a term used to describe a situation where the person who owes the money and the person who is owed the money are the same person. As a result, he or she can forgive themselves of the debt.
However, the trial judge described this practice in the current situation as McCann essentially putting money from one of his pockets into the other.
His ineligibility was upheld and he cannot run as a candidate in an election until 2019. The next municipal election is in 2021.
McCann said the only reason he was declared ineligible was because he had over-contributed to his own campaign.
Now that the whole process is over, McCann said he is somewhat relieved.
“It was tiring,” he said.
When he was asked whether he would consider running again, McCann was non-committal.
“I certainly wouldn’t rule it out,” he said. “I enjoyed it and felt I was good at it.”
The dissenting council votes on the question of recouperating legal fees from McCann were councillors Nancy Draper Maxsom and Tom Howard. All other councillors and Mayor Joanne Labadie voted against pursuing recouperation.
Labadie did not respond back in time for print. More to come in next week’s issue.