A form that complaints are forgotten, an inaccessible application, requests that we lose sight of: The Commission Municipale du Québec (CMQ) found that the processing of citizen inquiries leaves something to be desired in three municipalities with fewer than 8,000 inhabitants.
Posted at 12:00 p.m
Until recently, citizens of Mont-Joli who used the municipality’s online complaint form were automatically disfellowshipped. The form “went to the spam folder from the address provided. We did not receive him in the city, ”summarizes the spokeswoman for this parish of Bas-Saint-Laurent, Sonia Lévesque.
It was the CMQ who discovered this anomaly during an audit managing requests and feedback from citizens of three municipalities with 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. Mont-Joli was part of the sample, along with Saint-Césaire in Montérégie and Brownsburg-Chatham in the Laurentians.
Mont-Joli cannot say how many complaints went unanswered. Most are asked by telephone, in the town hall or with local councils. “I don’t think there are many,” says Ms. Lévesque. This issue has been resolved, but the municipality does not yet have data on all the complaints received.
The CMQ was interested in handling complaints, reports, requests, comments and suggestions because it “affects the citizen directly” and “returns regularly to the communal world”, explains its spokeswoman, Isabelle Rivoal.
This is a test, not a survey: the communities were chosen for their comparable characteristics, not because they were problematic. However, there were defects everywhere.
“Each municipality examined has at least one inefficient means of communication (e.g. invalid email address) that prevents the receipt of the citizen’s request or feedback,” the CMQ states in its report published on Tuesday. For the application provided by Brownsburg-Chatham, the download instructions were not working at the time of testing.
30 queries were tested at each location. Which part was treated appropriately? Impossible to judge, found the CMQ. Mont-Joli does not register the requests received and the other two communes only register part of them.
The observation at the very end of the exercise is evident: this lack of rigor means we detach from it and certain requests are not fulfilled.
Isabelle Rivoal, spokeswoman for the Commission Municipale du Quebec
Mont-Joli has invested more than $10,000 in software to train its employees in the spring. The other two municipalities should make “appropriate” use of the instruments available to them […] including registering all citizen inquiries,” recommends the report.
All three “have adhered to all recommendations,” notes the CMQ, who wishes all other Quebec municipalities to do the same.
No access to information
However, the CMQ did not assess the requests for access to information, since they are regulated by the Law on Access to Documents Held by Public Bodies and Protection of Personal Data. It has therefore not verified the extent to which municipalities require their citizens to go through the gateway in order to receive answers.
The Quebec Journalists’ Association (FPJQ) has previously denounced the fact that municipalities force journalists to submit requests for access to public documents. “Despite the transparency policy of cities and municipalities, some basic data are no longer accessible. This also makes it difficult for citizens to access information,” the FPJQ noted last year in its report on a survey of 147 respondents (9% of members).
On the other hand, the CMQ took an interest in the municipalities’ websites to see if the information that they are required to publish or that should appear there for the sake of transparency is available. This audit was conducted last year on 20 communities with 500 to 10,000 residents, including Montreal West. “This report should be published before the end of March,” predicts Ms. Rivoal.
The review of citizen complaints and requests published on Tuesday covered the period from January 1, 2020 to October 15, 2022.