In Vaudreuil-Dorion, a town about forty kilometers west of downtown Montreal, “the shit is stuck,” Mayor Guy Pilon summarizes in an interview. Since January, the three women members of the Parish Council have opted to sit as independents. Since March, they have been excluded from the advisory bodies, which are made up of only men.
Posted at 5:00 am
Everyone agrees on one thing: They do not have the same vision of local politics.
Council members Jasmine Sharma, Karine Lechasseur and Diane Morin learned of the decision to “reorganize the various committees of the Council” on February 24 through the same letter, with their three addressee names.
“Since you have mentioned a number of times that certain decisions go against your values, which we do not know, the current members of the Parti de l’action de Vaudreuil-Dorion have decided to proceed with the established and current values of our political party […]. »
The letter, signed by Mayor Guy Pilon, lists 15 committees that will be made up of all-male councillors.
On January 17, regional news website Néomédia used a quote from Mayor Guy Pilon as the title of an article about the three councillors’ decision to run as independents. “It was the girls against the men,” it reads.
Is that how he sees things? Mr Pilon says he doesn’t remember whether he used the words ‘girls’ or ‘women’.
But does he perceive beyond the semantics that the misunderstanding stems from a gender dispute?
“It has become so, because they decided so,” replies Mr Pilon, mayor of Vaudreuil-Dorion for 18 years in his fifth term.
PHOTO KARENE-ISABELLE JEAN-BAPTISTE, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
The mayor of Vaudreuil-Dorion, Guy Pilon
The February letter expelling councilors from the commissions prompts a joint decision by the Vaudreuil-Dorion action party. In an interview with La Presse, however, Mr Pilon assures that beyond the elections “there has never been a party line”.
In the 2021 municipal elections, the mayor and seven of the eight municipal councilors were elected by acclamation. (The candidate for the mayor’s team won the last council seat.)
The Walmart project, the trigger
Twenty years ago, Vaudreuil-Dorion had 16,000 inhabitants. It now has more than 43,000.
The mayor and the three independent councilors explain that the dispute broke out in 2022 over the construction project in Vaudreuil-Dorion of Walmart’s first order processing center in Quebec. An investment of 100 million by the company, which the mayor is very sympathetic to.
Karine Lechasseur, she was against it. “It’s a kilometer from the future hospital, which makes it a strategic location,” he says.
We don’t have room for development anymore, so we have to be very reasonable about what we want to do [des terrains restants].
Karine Lechasseur, independent councillor
She explains that she does not have the same vision of economic development as the mayor, but fully understands that in a democracy, the majority wins.
What she does not accept is that there is no room for discussion, that she feels what is expected of her, she says: “Come, sit down, listen to us, gain experience.”
Diane Morin also denounced the lack of debate. When she was on the mayor’s team, everything was decided in factions, she says. On city council, she continues, if a council member disagreed on a particular vote, the mayor would go “navy blue.”
PHOTO KARENE-ISABELLE JEAN-BAPTISTE, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Vaudreuil Dorion town hall
But if she doesn’t agree with a proposal, it’s important to her, she explains, so that the people know that she disagrees, that she didn’t vote for it, but that in a democracy, the majority wins.
The independent councilor Jasmine Sharma also criticizes the mayor for “his rigidity”, “his lack of openness”, which culminates in the exclusion of the three independent councilors from all committees, “except for the planning advisory board because it is a mandatory committee that is the subject of a resolution that says I’m sitting in it for two years.”
Mayor Guy Pilon points out that the committees concerned are not “decision-makers”, that decisions are taken within the municipal council and that council members have access to all documents.
On the contrary, according to Jasmine Sharma, these committees “are not just consultative. That’s where the debates take place, that’s where the orientations are taken”.
In his opinion, the debate is all the richer when people with different ideas and opinions can contribute their point of view and recognize “blind spots”.
“Old Politics”
For Ms Lechasseur, Mr Pilon’s approach is “old politics. We don’t have the same concept of democracy.”
“It seems like [une dispute] between men versus women, however [une femme]…that’s who I am. »
Mr. Pilon takes the situation badly.
They spit on me, they tell me I’m a rude character… They called us misogynists.
Guy Pilon, mayor of Vaudreuil-Dorion
“There is no longer a relationship of trust between the six men and the three women,” sums up Mr. Pilon.
Council member François Séguin said in an interview that he was “very comfortable” with the exclusion of women from the committees, which he stressed were only advisory in nature. “They’re the ones who have self-excluded,” he says, adding that after everything that has been said, he doesn’t see how he can sit with them.
“I’m in my ninth term, I’ve always acted with respect, I expect respect too. »
He adds that if a man had been part of the self-employed group, “he would have suffered the same fate,” it’s not a gender issue.
For his part, Paul Dumoulin, councilor for 32 years, says that since he’s known Mayor Guy Pilon, he’s never seen him scream “or put his fist on the table”.
How can one justify the fact that women’s councils are no longer on committees? To which Mr. Dumoulin, like Mr. Séguin, replies that it would be impossible for them to still be there, since the independent councilors have declared that they no longer trust the mayor and the aldermen1
The independent councilors denounce that local councils must decide quickly and without opposition for the mayor.
Mayor Guy Pilon concludes with his desire to “keep the city moving forward”.
“They want us to talk until there’s a consensus. But someday [à force de] pour water into his wine, it is no longer wine. »
1 Councilor Paul Normand emailed that he was absent from the March 20 Council meeting and asked us to contact Mayor Guy Pilon. Councilors Luc Marsan and Gabriel Parent did not respond to our interview request.