CALEB NICKERSON
PONTIAC June 17, 2020
On June 17, the MRC council of mayors held their final meeting before . . .
their month-long summer recess in July, via Zoom video conference.
TNO
The meeting began with a discussion of the non-organized territories, known by their French acronym, TNO.
Council approved a $50,000 improvement to 15 km of a forestry road in Rapides des Joachims that has fallen into disrepair.
“This road has not been maintained by the forestry industry since the closing of Commonwealth plywood so it’s in horrible condition and this road is still used by many lease owners and also there’s two outfitters and the ZEC in that area,” explained MRC Territory Director Regent Dugas. “This project is badly needed.”
The repairs will be made between kilometre one and kilometre 15 and will involve clearing the ditches, adding gravel and replacing culverts.
Rapides des Joachims Mayor Jim Gibson added that his council would likely be approving additional funding for the project at their next meeting. Dugas said that the local ZEC was also contributing money to the project.
Campbell’s Bay Mayor Maurice Beauregard made the suggestion of adding a clearing for snow plows to turn around and trucks to park on Jim’s Lake Road, between kilometre 40 and 43. He pointed out that the MRC would be sending machinery to the area in the coming weeks to make repairs, so the timing was ideal.
“I believe it’s a very big need on the Jims Lake Road as well. I’ve been up there many times myself, there’s no place to turn,” he said. “While they’re up there working, we should ask the MRC employees to pick a spot between [km] 40 and 43 somewhere … I think we should make a turnaround right away while they’re up there working, it would be less expensive than having the equipment go back up.”
Dugas agreed with Beauregard and said he didn’t think the cost would be significant.
Public question period
The council had solicited written questions from the public through their website. Only one was submitted this month, from Alex Guibord of Shawville, who asked if the region was doing enough to leverage the current adult education facilities to fill match local students with employers and also questioned whether there was capacity for expansion.
Warden Jane Toller answered that while there were no immediate plans to expand adult education, it would be an area to look at with their recently acquired territorial marketing funds.
“There’s no immediate announcement or funds available but this is something we should support and perhaps through our marketing and our economic development we could encourage more of the graduates to work in the Pontiac, and through SADC as well,” she said. “This could be a good campaign to keep our graduates here. That will also be easier when we have more employment available.”
Encouraging mask usage
Toller gave a brief rundown of the COVID-19 situation in the area, noting that MRC Pontiac has not had any cases confirmed thus far.
“The curve has really flattened and started to decrease,” she said. “The MRC Pontiac miraculously is still at zero. It has come to my attention that people are starting to get a little too relaxed. I think the stores are doing their best to keep up the prevention measures, but people aren’t wearing masks as much as they were and I think we should really encourage that because we are doing well but we don’t want to sit back and take it for granted.”
She added that the mayors should set a good example by wearing masks in public spaces.
Economic development
Council approved the posting of a job notice to hire an administrative assistant for the Economic Development Director Cyndy Phillips, due to the large number of files the department has been processing. MRC Accountant Annie Vaillancourt said that the salary range would be between $25 and $30 per hour and noted that the salary was accounted for in the budget because it was a vacant position that was being filled.
The mayors approved a 25 year extension to the lease of the Chutes Coulonge Park. Phillips explained that the lease had originally expired in December 2019, but the previous Economic Development Director Danielle Newman had requested an extension of six months to give the MRC’s lawyer a chance to review the agreement. The newly signed lease will expire Dec. 31, 2044.
Phillips then gave an overview of the new fund called the FRR (the Regions and Rurality fund), which would be continuing on in the place of the territory development fund (FDT) and the Support fund for regional development (FARR).
Toller explained after the meeting that the change was one that the Federation of Quebec Municipalities had requested from Premier Legault’s CAQ government.
“This is something new … it’s something that the FQM actually lobbied for on behalf of all Quebec municipalities,” she said. “[The Premier] said he’d rather have a new program that replaces that and give municipalities and MRCs the chance to really think about projects that will make a difference, that might be three or four years to carry out.”
The new fund is divided into four components, the first of which is a continuation of the FARR funding, in support of projects whose impact extends beyond the limits of a single MRC, and has an annual budget, for the Outaouais, of $50 million.
The second component is a continuation of the FDT, which supports MRCs and other organizations with the development of their region. The 2020/21 budget for the Outaouais is $145 million, rising to $150 million in the following years.
In an email, Phillips said that she hadn’t yet received details on the final two components, which are for MRC “signature” projects and interregional cooperation.
MRC Pontiac’s share of the second component was disclosed at the meeting of being $1,489,604, with the lion’s share ($844,389) dedicated to projects that will be undertaken before March 31, 2021. Of that subtotal, $424,718 will be committed to “structural projects” which will replace the FDT program. A call for projects from this fund will be going out on August 26. Phillips said that once the analysis committee had studied the applications, they would present their recommended projects to the council at the meeting on October 21.
A portion ($294,600) of the second component was also dedicated to pre-committed projects, including $85,000 for the PPJ trail, $56,000 for TransporAction, $50,000 for interregional travel, $45,000 for tourism marketing and $20,000 for the energy from waste project.
The council approved a resolution introduced by Phillips to request an additional $101,155 for the emergency small business loan program that was set up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She explained that the program offers loans of up to $50,000 at a three per cent interest rate, and since the MRC is still fielding applications, they would need a top up, as they’d already dispersed 91 per cent of the previously approved funds.
Red Bridge
At the end of the meeting, MRC Director General Bernard Roy spoke about correspondence that they had received from the provincial ministry of transport, on the status of the Felix Gabriel Marchand Bridge in Mansfield. The bridge has been under construction for several years, but progress has been delayed several times since its start. The latest letter from the MTQ said that the renovations would be completed by this fall.
Mansfield Mayor Gilles Dionne was sceptical.
“That’s what they announced but we’ll believe it when we see it,” he said.
Waste management
At the end of the meeting, Toller mentioned the files that she and her fellow wardens of the Outaouais were working on, including pressing the provincial government for health care funding and promoting local forestry initiatives. She said they were also working on a local solution for waste management. Toller has been a proponent of an energy from waste faci lity, which would incinerate garbage and produce electricity, but said they the technology they choose would be dependent on the amount of tonnage they can secure.
“Basically they fall into different categories, there’s desiccation, there’s pyrolysis, there’s incineration and there’s also a technology that shreds the garbage and cooks it,” she explained after the meeting. “We will be hiring a consultant and we will go through a very transparent step by step analysis of what would be best. But whatever we bring will be environmentally safe, and environmentally much better than landfill.”
She pointed out that aside from Papineau, all the regions in the Outaouais are closer to Pontiac than they are to Lachute.
