One year out from the next municipal election, scheduled for Nov. 2, 2025, THE EQUITY checked in with the 20 people who have been voted in to lead the communities from Luskville to Rapides des Joachims, including the MRC Pontiac warden.

We will be publishing these interviews to offer readers a sense of what these local leaders feel they’ve accomplished since their term began, and what they hope to do with the last year before their seat is once again up for grabs. We will publish three interviews each week, working our way through the Pontiac from east to west.

Alain Gagnon — Bryson

Interview by K.C. Jordan.

When you ran for mayor three years ago, what were your main priorities?

In 2013, the town had accumulated a $360,000 deficit, and things weren’t going that great money-wise. I’ve been in town since 1983, and some people said to me, “Well, why don’t you run?” And I said, “Well, why not?” The deficit came from the government forcing the previous councillors to build our water treatment plant. And the same year, the sewage plant over there. And the company that built the water treatment plant built it, and now we know that they used the cheapest materials. They built it and then they went bankrupt. No warranty, so they spent over $300,000 fixing it.

In 2021, we still had some additions to make to our water treatment plant, where we take the water from the river, lots of sand coming in and that’s like sand, wet sandpaper. So it’s using the whole treatment plant faster than it should. So what we did now two summers ago, we installed a decanting box. It’s a big cement box where the water goes in and sits there for a while. The sand goes to the bottom, the sand is pumped out every 12 hours. So that’s helping the treatment plan, OK, but that’s almost $500,000. That’s the gas tax.

How much of this have you achieved?

When I first started in 2013, my feeling was that the community wasn’t as close as they were before, so I went to see a lady in town that was organizing different things, and I wanted her to make a revitalization committee, which she did. And I was telling her don’t forget that in 2023, the town will be 150 years old, so we need money to kick off and organize something. And we had a good year, the full year.

We’ve been upgrading our ballpark and the rink is new since I’ve been here. We’re changing the LED lights now in the park, the lights for the ball field itself, and the streetlights. We’re upgrading the beach also.

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?

I think [the revitalization] committee; that brings people together. We have an amazing group of ladies now taking care of the revitalization. They work hard, they raise money, and we work together to improve. We have the new rink now. They put in a net around the ballpark completely. That’s new this fall. Of course, resolving the problem with the deficit.

What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?

Well, infrastructure. Like I said, all the filtration plant is, we’ll call it new, but the pipes under the streets, they’re 50 or 60 years old or older. That has to be all redone or patched or upgraded. There’s lots of money that can be spent there.

What are the challenges in meeting these needs?

Money. We have to apply to get grants from the federal, the provincial and all over the place, so it’s a lot of paperwork. It’s hard to fill in those papers. You need the engineer’s plan. You need this. You need that. Bigger towns, where they have engineers working for them, they‘ve got the file already done. Boom. First come, first serve. So by the time we can do it, we have all the info that they want, but after the envelope is gone, there’s no more money in there.

What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?

[Last week we were doing] the budget at the MRC. From there, we’ll be doing the budget of all the municipalities. So in December we’re gonna sit down and do a budget for 2025.
We’re doing some engineering planning with the leftover money [from the gas tax]. We have to replace or improve some of the water mains. They’re 50-60 years old, so lots of breaks. So it’s either digging, changing it or putting what they call a sock in, kind of patching it up from the inside. It’s supposed to improve the pipe for almost 100 years.

After three years as a member of MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe the county should prioritize?

It’s kind of a hard question. Is it the chicken or the egg? If you want tourism, you need a place for them to sleep. So do you build hotels or rooms or whatever for them to come? But then they might be, I won’t say empty, but by the time people are here, you’ve got to survive that. Or you bring people over and they don’t have any place to stay, so they might not come back. Of course, we need jobs. We need industries. We need workers, we need schools, housing.

Odette Godin — Mansfield and Pontefract

Interview by Sophie Kuijper Dickson.

When you ran for mayor three years ago, what were your main priorities?

I didn’t know what I could accomplish, because everything seemed to always be the same. I thought I would have some input, but I didn’t really know how much because Fern [ Waltham’s former DG] ran the meetings, and that’s how it had always been. The mayor sat beside him, but we didn’t hear much from the mayor unless it was time to do his mayor’s report.

I thought even though I wouldn’t make a difference in changing bylaws and stuff, I thought maybe I could do something for the community. I wanted to do things for kids that would keep them busy and involved.

How much of this have you achieved?

I put in for a grant under the vitalization and made a priority of fixing the parts of the ball field that had to be fixed. We got some skateboards and equipment, and we bought a container to store all that equipment so the RA could take them whenever they wanted for these kids.

Another thing is we always had that Waltham sign in the centre of town that you could see from the highway. And it had been removed because I guess it got beaten down, so it wasn’t there anymore. And I always loved that sign, so we got a new sign put there, with a community contest for what the residents think would be a nice sign.

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?

What I’m proudest of is that [ . . . ] I knew there was wrongdoing, and maybe it would have been easier to just be quiet, and sit and collect my $700 or $800 a month, but I didn’t do that. There was wrongdoing in the municipality and I was going to get it fixed, even if it cost me, and I’m proud of that. Because my mother would be proud of that. I stood firm. One councillor said to me, and it was a councillor who liked me, that as far as a lot of people see, Waltham was quiet, it wasn’t in the news, everything was running smoothly, there was no fighting, and the taxes were kept low, and that’s all they really saw. So I understand that’s how it appears, but we also didn’t get anything. Waltham stayed stagnant. But yeah, it has cost me.

What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?

We need businesses. We need a way to finance small business startups. We used to have three stores at one time in Waltham, and a garage and a post office. When they talk at the MRC about tourism and van life, I try to explain to them that that does nothing for us. It costs us money for people to go tubing, because we’re not getting any money for those roads. They’re not taxpayers. It costs us money. There’s no need for them to stop in Waltham. You can’t pick up milk or a pop or chips, nothing. We need vitalization, we need young businesses to get a grant or a loan, interest-free.

What are the challenges in meeting these needs?

We don’t have enough money to give them. We can’t be the ones to give them a loan. And like I say, it’s hard for us to get big enough grants to help businesses get going. But I think a lot of that is the role of the Quebec government and the MRC.

What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?

What I hope to accomplish is to quiet the negative talk and instead get them to realize that I just want the best for this town. I was born in this town. I want to have ideas. I don’t need attacks when [residents] come to council meetings. Give us ideas on how we can help. Stop revisiting the past.
After three years as a member of MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe Pontiac leaders should be prioritizing to improve the quality of life for the people who live here?

I think that more attention needs to be paid to the English people that live in the Pontiac. I never thought we would get to that point where we were fighting to be heard just because we were English. So there’s work to be done in the Pontiac and they better start treating Pontiac people not as English, not as French, just as human beings. And I don’t think the MRC is putting up a big enough fight for that.

Corey Spence — Allumette Island

Interview by K.C. Jordan

When you ran for mayor in 2021, what were your main priorities?

My main priorities were to focus on infrastructure, particularly the road, internet and cell phone infrastructure. I strongly believe that infrastructure is a key economic driver, meaning that if you don’t have good roads, and if you don’t have Internet service, if you don’t have cell phone service, people will stay away from the area. Infrastructure is key to bringing in small businesses, even large businesses.
How much of this have you achieved?

As far as the Internet goes, the Quebec government put high-speed internet across the province, which was good. As far as cell phone service goes, there’s some parts of the island that received an improvement in their service with new towers going up. And I expect by the end of this year, beginning of next, we should be close to having satellite to cell phone service for texting.

As for our road infrastructure, we’re kind of a special case compared to most other municipalities within the MRC. Anyone who has water and sewer in the MRC, the government of Quebec gives out monies towards their infrastructure and municipalities are allowed to spend it, pending certain conditions. One of the conditions is that if you have water and sewer, they grade your water and sewer on how well it’s kept. If you’re graded poorly, they force you to spend monies to upgrade it before you spend it on other infrastructure such as roads. So on Allumette Island, we have water and sewer in the village of Chapeau and it needed to be upgraded. It was way out of date. We were pushing toward water and sewer infrastructures for the village, and we’re getting very close to having it completed. So hopefully next year the village of Chapeau will be totally up to date. This will allow funding to go toward other areas of the municipality.

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?

I think my greatest accomplishment so far is building relationships.

I’m also very proud of what we’ve done in the past little while, of the amount of incoming grant money and spending that came into the community. I don’t think that has ever been seen before and I’m proud of that. And I’m proud of our not-for-profits. They have done fantastic on their own bringing funding into the community.

What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?

I think the municipality’s greatest needs are to continue focusing on giving what is required for living for our constituents, and I still believe that focus has to remain on providing quality infrastructure. That’s one of them; the other one is that we need to convince the Quebec government to provide better services for our community, otherwise I could see members of our community relocating somewhere else where the services are better. We’re so closely tied to Ontario, and the contrast is very different as soon as you cross the border. This is a provincial thing, where the Quebec government does not want to invest in our area. They continue to deprive our area and every service possible. They’re moving the healthcare out, they don’t want to spend on the infrastructure here.

What are the challenges in meeting these needs?

The challenge of meeting those needs is getting the attention of the ministers in government, getting them to realize that. It’s working with the Quebec provincial ministers to work with us. We have a great member André Fortin, and he’s a great advocate for our area, however when you’re not the main party in governance, it gets difficult to put monies in here. It’s an uphill battle.

What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next election?

There’s a few things I’d like to accomplish. Because we’re lacking so many resources, it’s difficult for each municipality, smaller municipalities to ensure all the proper governance is in place. We’re one of the lucky ones, where we’re a little bit bigger and that we do have proper governance in place, but some of the smaller ones, as you can see what happened with, say, Waltham, things didn’t go well for them. So I want to make sure that the proper bylaws, the proper processes and policies are in place so that good governance remains ongoing.

After three years as a member of MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe Pontiac leaders should be prioritizing to improve the quality of life for the people who live here?

Currently there’s a hot button issue with the comparative factor. There are some things that the MRC as a whole can do, similar with the municipality. However, when things are done at provincial level, we just need to, you know, follow those laws, right? And there’s only so much tools that the municipality has to govern. And there’s only so many tools that the MRC has to govern. So we can only do what we can. It seems a lot of people within the county don’t have a good understanding of that and it causes a lot of hectic issues, sometimes for no reason.