Fall is here and so is the aroma of election season. No one running for council will want to talk about it but I think we should begin preliminary discussions of amalgamation of the municipalities in MRC Pontiac. Amalgamation of some sort is inevitable. I think it is something the collective ‘us’ would be better served to proactively deal with than waiting for the decision to be made by Quebec City bureaucrats.
Never, you say! Denying the inevitable has never, locally, prevented “it” from happening. For almost 10 years I listened to a local councillor at regular meetings say, “Don’t worry, they will never close the dump.” He said that monthly until he said, “They are closing the dump and we have six months to find an alternative. They will have to give us an extension because we won’t be ready.”
Successive provincial governments in Quebec have been legislating mandatory improvements to the operating procedures of local fire departments for nearly 20 years. The goal has been to make firemen better trained, the departments better organized and the general population better protected. Currently, mutual assist type agreements are being forced by provincial regulations on all municipalities to ensure the better staffed, trained and equipped departments are looking after the municipalities that cannot meet the legislated minimum standards.
I used the preceding two examples to illustrate that already changes are coming.
Amalgamation may not happen in the near future but it too is coming. I know this is a polarizing topic that most residents of Pontiac are opposed to. Some residents are downright antagonized by the idea. But realistically, someone just being contrary to the idea of a “change” has seldom been enough to stop it. Locally, dumps were closed and fired departments redesigned.
In an effort to see what the reconfigured municipalities could look like, I set four specific rules and then, as objectively as, a Nameless Faceless Bureaucrat (NFB) in Quebec City, followed these rules until the boundaries were redrawn.
The first is that there needs to be significantly fewer than 18 municipalities when the boundaries are redrawn. The second is that the municipalities must be as balanced as possible in terms of population size. The third rule is no municipality is exempt from some kind of merger If change is coming it is coming to everyone. The fourth rule is the TNO Lac-Nilgaut territory would not be affected at this point in time.
The statistics our NFB would use for the border reorganizations would be taken from the Quebec government web site: https://www.quebec.ca/gouvernement/portrait-quebec/repertoire-municipalites. This is the same site commonly used by our local MRC for their own planning purposes. The smallest municipality in regards to population is Sheenboro with 117, and the largest population belongs to Mansfield-et-Pontefract with 2,328. The smallest landmass belongs to Fort-Coulonge, which is 3.17 square kilometres, and the largest is Sheenboro, which encompasses 634 square kilometres. There is a wide variety of stats between the top and bottom in these two categories. It is a lot for NFB to try and balance.
NFB would use the information found on this site to whittle the current roster of 18 municipalities down to five. This is a very drastic drop, but balancing out new municipalities forces the issue. Using a large-scale map obtained from the MRC office in Campbell’s Bay, NFB would look at different quantities and different shapes for new municipalities. The balance of population, land mass and resources would work out best with five new townships.
Starting with the eastern side of the MRC, Alleyn-et-Caywood, Otter Lake, Thorne and potentially the northern third of Bristol and Clarendon would form a municipality with a population of approximately 2,519 and a land mass of 1,174 square kilometres.
Moving south, the southern two thirds of Clarendon and Bristol would merge with Shawville, giving our second municipality a population of 3,630 and a land mass of 482 square kilometres.
To the west, Portage-du-Fort, Bryson, L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, Campbell’s Bay and the east half of Litchfield would merge. The resulting new municipality would have a population of 2,551 and a land mass of 264 square kilometres.
Next, the west half of Litchfield would merge with Fort-Coulonge and Mansfield-et-Pontefract. This new municipality would have a population of approximately 3,885 and a land mass of 632 square kilometres.
Further west and north along the Ottawa River, Waltham, L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, Chichester, Sheenboro and Rapides-des-Joachim would merge, forming the fifth new municipality. It would have the smallest population of the new five at 2,422 people, but have a huge land mass of 1,734 square kilometres.
Our faceless cubicle dweller in Quebec City would have worked hard with the rules assigned to them to get the boundaries redrawn with as much balance as possible. Their report would also suggest that the naming of these five new municipalities could be as antagonistic as the redrawing of the boundaries. Options might include using references to honour the French, English, Dutch, Polish, German settlers, or the original Indigenous peoples who lived here. There is the option of combining names into something new: Fort Mansfield could be used for the Fort-Coulonge/Mansfield-et-Pontefract/Litchfield merger.
The report would end with a suggestion that a revamped MRC Pontiac should have a higher potential for productivity than the current configuration seems to have. Fewer politicians would allow us to pay more to the few we would need, hopefully attracting better candidates. Fewer personalities at the council table should allow discussions to proceed more efficiently. There could be benefits to amalgamation.
Never, you say! No, not never, just not today or maybe even tomorrow, but it is inevitable.
Tom McCann has lived and worked in Pontiac county for most of his life. His work for CISSSO over the last seven years has enabled him to visit the far corners of the Pontiac region, which he says has gotten him thinking about issues like amalgamation.
When less would be more
Fall is here and so is the aroma of election season. No one running for council will want to talk about it but I think we should begin preliminary discussions of amalgamation of the municipalities in MRC Pontiac. Amalgamation of some sort is inevitable. I think it is something the collective ‘us’ would be better served to proactively deal with than waiting for the decision to be made by Quebec City bureaucrats.
Never, you say! Denying the inevitable has never, locally, prevented “it” from happening. For almost 10 years I listened to a local councillor at regular meetings say, “Don’t worry, they will never close the dump.” He said that monthly until he said, “They are closing the dump and we have six months to find an alternative. They will have to give us an extension because we won’t be ready.”
Successive provincial governments in Quebec have been legislating mandatory improvements to the operating procedures of local fire departments for nearly 20 years. The goal has been to make firemen better trained, the departments better organized and the general population better protected. Currently, mutual assist type agreements are being forced by provincial regulations on all municipalities to ensure the better staffed, trained and equipped departments are looking after the municipalities that cannot meet the legislated minimum standards.
I used the preceding two examples to illustrate that already changes are coming.
Amalgamation may not happen in the near future but it too is coming. I know this is a polarizing topic that most residents of Pontiac are opposed to. Some residents are downright antagonized by the idea. But realistically, someone just being contrary to the idea of a “change” has seldom been enough to stop it. Locally, dumps were closed and fired departments redesigned.
In an effort to see what the reconfigured municipalities could look like, I set four specific rules and then, as objectively as, a Nameless Faceless Bureaucrat (NFB) in Quebec City, followed these rules until the boundaries were redrawn.
The first is that there needs to be significantly fewer than 18 municipalities when the boundaries are redrawn. The second is that the municipalities must be as balanced as possible in terms of population size. The third rule is no municipality is exempt from some kind of merger If change is coming it is coming to everyone. The fourth rule is the TNO Lac-Nilgaut territory would not be affected at this point in time.
The statistics our NFB would use for the border reorganizations would be taken from the Quebec government web site: https://www.quebec.ca/gouvernement/portrait-quebec/repertoire-municipalites. This is the same site commonly used by our local MRC for their own planning purposes. The smallest municipality in regards to population is Sheenboro with 117, and the largest population belongs to Mansfield-et-Pontefract with 2,328. The smallest landmass belongs to Fort-Coulonge, which is 3.17 square kilometres, and the largest is Sheenboro, which encompasses 634 square kilometres. There is a wide variety of stats between the top and bottom in these two categories. It is a lot for NFB to try and balance.
NFB would use the information found on this site to whittle the current roster of 18 municipalities down to five. This is a very drastic drop, but balancing out new municipalities forces the issue. Using a large-scale map obtained from the MRC office in Campbell’s Bay, NFB would look at different quantities and different shapes for new municipalities. The balance of population, land mass and resources would work out best with five new townships.
Starting with the eastern side of the MRC, Alleyn-et-Caywood, Otter Lake, Thorne and potentially the northern third of Bristol and Clarendon would form a municipality with a population of approximately 2,519 and a land mass of 1,174 square kilometres.
Moving south, the southern two thirds of Clarendon and Bristol would merge with Shawville, giving our second municipality a population of 3,630 and a land mass of 482 square kilometres.
To the west, Portage-du-Fort, Bryson, L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, Campbell’s Bay and the east half of Litchfield would merge. The resulting new municipality would have a population of 2,551 and a land mass of 264 square kilometres.
Next, the west half of Litchfield would merge with Fort-Coulonge and Mansfield-et-Pontefract. This new municipality would have a population of approximately 3,885 and a land mass of 632 square kilometres.
Further west and north along the Ottawa River, Waltham, L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, Chichester, Sheenboro and Rapides-des-Joachim would merge, forming the fifth new municipality. It would have the smallest population of the new five at 2,422 people, but have a huge land mass of 1,734 square kilometres.
Our faceless cubicle dweller in Quebec City would have worked hard with the rules assigned to them to get the boundaries redrawn with as much balance as possible. Their report would also suggest that the naming of these five new municipalities could be as antagonistic as the redrawing of the boundaries. Options might include using references to honour the French, English, Dutch, Polish, German settlers, or the original Indigenous peoples who lived here. There is the option of combining names into something new: Fort Mansfield could be used for the Fort-Coulonge/Mansfield-et-Pontefract/Litchfield merger.
The report would end with a suggestion that a revamped MRC Pontiac should have a higher potential for productivity than the current configuration seems to have. Fewer politicians would allow us to pay more to the few we would need, hopefully attracting better candidates. Fewer personalities at the council table should allow discussions to proceed more efficiently. There could be benefits to amalgamation.
Never, you say! No, not never, just not today or maybe even tomorrow, but it is inevitable.
Tom McCann has lived and worked in Pontiac county for most of his life. His work for CISSSO over the last seven years has enabled him to visit the far corners of the Pontiac region, which he says has gotten him thinking about issues like amalgamation.