The Director-General of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board, Gaëlle Absolonne, was appointed on Tuesday night to fill the position at the helm of the Center de Services Scolaire (CSS) Marie-Victorin, while an analysis of the working climate is under way to take stock of the concerns of the executives of the organization.
After Ghislain Plourde was suspended from the position of General Manager of the CSS Marie-Victorin due to an investigation into potential conflicts of interest affecting him, Dominique Lachapelle took over the management of the school service center on an interim basis on November 15 until 1999. The official candidacy for the post of General Manager is decided . Since then, the company Arima Conseils has been commissioned to analyze the working atmosphere on behalf of manager associations of the school service center, which looks after more than 44,000 students on the south coast of Montreal and employs around 5,000 people.
However, the members of the board of directors decided to appoint the new managing director of CSS Marie-Victorin at a regular meeting on Tuesday evening. Ms. Absolonne will therefore leave the North Shore of Montreal English Language School Board, which she has led since 2018, to take up this position at CSS Marie-Victorin, which is headquartered in Longueuil. The Le Devoir organization announced on Tuesday evening that the exact date of his inauguration in this school service center “has yet to be determined”.
The board also announced on Tuesday evening the forthcoming resignations of two deputy directors, France Blouin and Nathalie Ouellet.
working atmosphere
Gaëlle Absolonne, who has worked in the education sector since 1996, takes over as head of the CSS Marie-Victorin when, since mid-May, an analysis of the working atmosphere of the organization’s managers has been carried out.
At the heart of complaints from current and former managers and executives are the leadership style and leadership qualities of former director-general Marie-Dominique Taillon, now a deputy deputy minister at the Department of Education, a Duty investigation revealed on Tuesday. The Liberal Party of Quebec and Québec Solidaire called for the suspension of Marie-Dominique Taillon on Tuesday pending the conclusions of this analysis of the working climate.
In an interview with Le Devoir in recent weeks, some fifteen current and former managers and executives have denounced a culture of silence that had prevailed during the inauguration of Ms Taillon and her husband Ghislain Plourde at the helm of this school’s service center. Mr. Plourde first succeeded Ms. Taillon as interim Director-General on March 22, 2022 pending the departure of his wife for a position with the Quebec government. He resigned on May 9th.
During a board meeting last month, employees of CSS Marie-Victorin took to the microphone to emphasize the importance of a transparent process in appointing the organisation’s next chief executive. Ghislain Plourde was given this position without there having been an internal or external advertisement. At that time, only his candidacy had been considered.
The director of the Department of Material Resources, Éric Lafrance, had stressed the importance of management acting with “humility” while respecting the “diversity of opinions and ideas” of the school service center staff.
However, with a view to appointing his successor, the board has made changes “to the mandate of the selection committee to better reflect the expectations of the community,” CSS Marie-Victorin told Le Devoir. , in an email exchange, on June 2nd.
Therefore, the position of managing director was advertised internally and externally. This time, “several dozen potential candidates from Quebec and outside of Quebec” have expressed their interest in filling this position, said CSS Marie-Victorin’s Chair of the Board of Directors, Nicola Grenon, on Tuesday evening. Six candidates were then interviewed before Gaëlle Absolonne was given this position on the unanimous recommendation of the Board of Directors. She could not be reached for an interview on Tuesday evening.
UPAC survey
The new CSS Director-General, Marie-Victorin, is also stepping in at the helm of the CSS at a time when the organization is at the center of an investigation by the Standing Anti-Corruption Unit, the reasons for which have not yet been revealed to us. were explained by the latter.
However, on May 25, Le Devoir announced that the former superintendent in charge of design and construction in CSS Marie-Victorin’s material resources department, Alexandre Lobry, was fired in April after mobilizing workers from the organization to work on a to work on such project of his building. This former managing director is also one of the partners of Groupe Immobilier Sept Inc., which has won multi-million dollar general contractor contracts from CSS Marie-Victorin in recent years, alongside Éric Lemire, who runs Démolition Probec. Ghislain Plourde has also invested in this real estate group in recent years, Le Devoir learned.