With that in mind, it is heartening to see that since Gatineau Mayor France Bélisle's surprise resignation, women have been pushing at the gate to replace her. The bleak picture of Gatineau's political environment painted by the resigning mayor in her farewell speech does not appear to have discouraged Audrey Bureau, Sylvie Goneau and Olive Kamanyana, two former city councilors and elected members of the current city council. There may be others. Maude Marquis Bissonnette?
Only one man has so far clearly confirmed that he is still considering Gatineau City Hall. This is Lac-Beauchamp City Councilman Denis Girouard. Councilman Mario Aubé has decided to pass, while Councilman Steven Boivin remains vague about his intentions.
Mr Girouard lost all of his council roles a year ago under unclear circumstances. The adviser had mentioned health problems, but numerous sources subsequently advised Law that he would be stripped of his various committee and commission appointments due to repeated language discrepancies with other advisers, local authorities and certain officials, as well as gestures or comments that could be perceived as intimidation.
It is certainly not these isolated misbehaviors by Councilor Girouard that led France Bélisle to leave office so abruptly, portraying the political environment of Quebec's fourth-largest city as a hostile, toxic, even aggressive place. She appointed Mr Girouard to chair the advisory table on the events two days before her departure.
It is important to emphasize that no Gatineau elected official appeared to share Ms. Bélisle's assessment of the environment. Even his closest colleagues quickly distanced themselves after his surprise speech on February 22nd.
Gatineau doesn't have one of those garbage radio stations that attack local elected officials they don't like every day. Councilors don't yell nonsense at each other as they leave the committee room. The intensity of the debates at the council table has never prevented civility from being essential. Any pranks or small variations in language are usually suppressed within a second. Nobody dares to pass a colleague queuing at the coffee machine made available to the Council and journalists.
Gatineau residents who come to public meetings to challenge the council do so most of the time in class, even when they're fed up. We regularly see children coming to talk. Some have already “slammed” their question. During the emotional and orderly debate about the spread of Bti, the local council received great cheers. We are a long way from town halls where angry citizens come to shout their anger by reminding the chief justice that in a community of a few hundred people, everyone knows where everyone lives.
An irritating game
However, no one questioned France Bélisle's honesty in what she said about the way she experiences politics in everyday life.
Appearing on the set of “Tout le monde enloque” last Sunday, the ex-mayor spoke of the “torment of the last straw” as opposed to “the straw that breaks the camel's back” to explain her sudden resignation. Torture, invented by the Chinese and unfortunately well documented today in the Middle Ages, is the ideal term to describe a repetitive irritant that causes psychological stress to us.
The agony of gout is long. And it doesn't have a reputation for being pleasant. Former Gatineau mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin said earlier this week that he had come to the same analysis regarding Ms. Bélisle as another former mayor of the former city of Hull. “A few weeks after she took office, we looked at her in the media and said, well, she doesn’t like her job.”
France Bélisle reiterated that the job of mayor was the most rewarding but also the most difficult job she had been given. Probably a few brave citizens hiding behind their computer screen reminded him that human stupidity now has tools it didn't have before to be more intrusive. However, the former mayor often repeated that she loved direct contact with citizens. His ease in this area was unanimous. So it was probably not the citizens who tortured Ms. Bélisle drop by drop.
Difficult political competition
However, the political tournament often seemed to irritate him. Their difficulties in bringing elected council members together to reach majorities on issues important to them, particularly during the last budget and on the police board issue, have likely added to their frustration. Was it the result of excessive partisanship that no longer had anything to do with the interests of Gatineau residents, as the former mayor suspected?
Well-known Gatineau activist Bill Clennett had fun reviewing all of the council minutes since November 23, 2021. The analysis has not been validated by the registry service, but the portrait essentially corresponds to the data shared by the former with the entourage of the mayor and Action Gatineau when it came to showing that the municipal council was working effectively.
According to this analysis, 93% of the approximately 2,055 decisions submitted to the Council were adopted unanimously. The vote was requested 147 times and the resolution was rejected 23 times. Of those, nine resolutions were voted down by a large, even unanimous, majority of the council, and 10 more were voted down by a bloc vote by Action Gatineau, which was joined by a few independent elected officials.
Rather than attempt a rapprochement with her opponents, Ms. Bélisle tended to respond blow by blow, often not hesitating to make the first attempt when democracy was not trending in her favor. She also insisted on always being the first to speak at press briefings, which often gave her the opportunity to set the tone.
Tensions have sometimes been high in the Civic Center's Henri Masson Room, where elected officials parade one by one in front of other elected officials on the council and senior floor to answer questions from the media and respond to criticism, sometimes directly from city leaders, who are called Spectators act. The attacks by the intermediary media therefore sometimes took place live before the journalists published anything.
What are the real straws that persuaded the ex-mayor to give up her seat a year and a half before the general election while plunging the city into a costly by-election? When Quebec announces the location of the future hospital, what are the real annoyances that forced them to let an interim mayor, who was not popularly elected to the position, take charge when the itinerant population needs to be relocated? Guertin location and when will the future of the tram project be decided?
France Bélisle decided to leave local politics by turning away without answering the questions that such a setback would inevitably raise on the ground. Perhaps the coming months will provide explanations for what actually didn't work during Ms. Bélisle's midterm.