Dear Editor,
At the last regular meeting of the Council of Mayors of the MRC (Feb. 17, 2021), which I took pleasure in re-listening to some passages to make sure I understood what had been said (it happens very quickly as one of the mayors at the table mentioned when it came to adopting the agenda… ). I fell off my chair when the presiding officer, in this case the warden, boasted of promoting transparency on the board since taking office. However, she strongly opposed the request of . . .
two mayors to add topics to the agenda, including three of those items that would have been discussed at the previous plenary meeting, and this without justification. Under no circumstances should the addition of an item to the agenda be refused, except in the case of an extraordinary meeting, or if the added item requires more information to make an informed decision. At worst, when the added item is discussed during the sitting, it will only be a matter of submitting a proposal to postpone the subject to a subsequent meeting to better document and study the matter.
As the director general explained, there are no internal governance regulations to govern the conduct of the table of mayors’ sessions and therefore only section 148 of the Municipal Code could be invoked to refuse to add an item to the agenda. This section of the law refers only to the minimum delay required in filing documents before the meeting for decision-making. Nothing to do with adding a topic for discussion. So, in other words, there is no reason to refuse to add an item to the agenda before it is adopted. Refusing such a request without reasonable basis is akin to a gag, a politically correct way of saying “to muzzle.”
Also at the same meeting, the warden hesitantly admitted that the MRC supported the bio-park project because of the insistence of one of the mayors that a declaration endorsed by all 18 mayors to this effect be made public. However, she enthusiastically praises that only one forest project in her interview of Jan. 8 (THE EQUITY, edition of Jan 13, 2021) by freely affirming that this is the most advanced project to date! And to say that the main topic of this interview was her priorities for 2021 and that the number two priority of her 2018 statement is forestry. What an insult to our intelligence. Don’t you have to take regional leadership?
You are right, warden, it is a good thing for transparency to have to record council meetings because of health restrictions and I hope that this practice will continue beyond the pandemic in order to maintain a certain level of democracy in our decision-making bodies.
Jean-Pierre Landry
Campbell’s Bay, Que
