Otter Lake’s plenary sessions are now open to the public, thanks to a resolution passed by council at its Dec. 9 meeting.
Plenary meetings usually happen a week before the monthly public meeting and are where the council, mayor and admin staff discuss issues, and where councillors have an opportunity to ask questions before voting at the council meeting.
“The intent of these plenaries is to have a well-informed group of councillors who will have to consider a vote, whether to go forward and how to go forward,” said Otter Lake mayor Jennifer Quaile.
Quaile said while she was running for re-election in last fall’s municipal elections, the public was asking for more transparency in her council’s decision-making. She said open plenaries were a good way to show transparency.
“It’s just that general sense of ‘Why are they meeting behind closed doors? What is there to hide?’ And for me
[ . . . ] we are there to talk about issues that are in the best interests of the municipality, so why not open it up?” she said.
Members of the public are now allowed to sit in on the plenary sessions, which happen on the first Wednesday of every month. Quaile said there will be opportunities for the public to ask questions during the sessions, and they will also be given a printout with all the resolutions written out in full.
Quaile said there are some matters that will still be closed to the public, such as human resources, legal matters, or anything else that must remain confidential.
“If we’re discussing an item that would do harm to people or the municipality, we shouldn’t be talking about it [in public]” she said.
Quaile said there will be rules in place during the open sessions about the public’s behaviour, and when they may ask questions or comment on the proceedings.
“If there’s an issue that we’re weighing, we could pause for five minutes, [ask] ‘Does anyone have any questions?’ and let them comment. That would be fair to the people who have taken their time to come to the meeting,” she said.
Otter Lake is not the first Pontiac municipality to open portions of its plenary meetings. In 2024, Alleyn-et-Cawood extended their monthly council meetings to include discussions usually held during plenary meetings for the public to hear.
Mayor Sidney Squitti said her municipality also heard similar concerns from residents who attended the meetings but felt not enough discussion was being had about the matters at hand.
“We had ratepayers who were voicing concern that the meetings were very short, and the comments we were getting were, ‘There’s no point coming to a council meeting, all the decisions are made behind closed doors,” Squitti said.
Squitti said council has reduced the length of its plenary sessions while also slightly increasing the length of the public meetings. She said while Otter Lake’s move is more in-depth, Alleyn-et-Cawood’s change has still resulted in better attendance at meetings.
When asked if the move could work in a larger municipality, Alleyn-et-Cawood director general Isabelle Cardinal said she could not speak for other municipalities, but that she believed other municipalities should be able to have open plenaries regardless of their size.
“It doesn’t matter the size of your municipality, we still all have the same resolutions monthly to adopt [ . . . ] we have to do the same processes and procedures,” she said.
Cardinal added that while their meetings are now slightly longer, that is not an argument against opening the plenaries because the meetings only happen once a month and residents want to understand the resolutions that are being passed.
She added that she feels a greater trust now with the public who come to the meetings and are able to hear the council’s deliberations and thought process, instead of just the final decision.
“It really changed the relationship between the municipality and the ratepayer [ . . . ] Ratepayers may not necessarily agree with some of the decisions made, but at least they understand them. They’re provided with the background and the reasoning for making that decision,” she said.
Quaile said no members of the public were present at the open plenary session in January, but the public is invited to attend the next session on Feb. 4. Going forward, plenary sessions will be held on the first Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m.. Otter Lake’s public council meetings happen on the second Tuesday of every month.
