The former mayor of Saint-Léonard-de-Portneuf has just been sentenced by the Commission municipale du Québec to pay $4,000 to his municipality, because of the pressure he exerted in connection with the expansion of his pigsty.
The CMQ criticizes Denis Langlois for having acted “in such a way as to promote his personal interests” in October 2018. It should be noted that the mayor had previously withdrawn from the discussions and had declared his interest at a council meeting when the file on his pigsty, Pork Héden, was on the agenda.
Things went wrong the day after a session. Mr. Langlois did not appreciate that the other elected members of the municipal council entrusted the file to the outside for the sake of transparency, to the MRC of Portneuf, mandated to organize a public consultation.
This forced him to assume consulting fees of $12,000 in addition to causing delays in the start-up of his project, which could represent losses of several hundred thousand dollars.
Direct order to DG
The court accepted the testimony of the director general, Nancy Clavet, garlanded on the telephone by the mayor the day after a session. Denis Langlois would have told him that he had no intention of “paying the price for his incompetence” and would have added: “Organize (so) that it goes to the council”.
The CMQ retains that it was a direct order for the members of the council to be convened again and reverse their own decision so that the consultation can be carried out by the Municipality instead of the MRC.
“When he gives this order, Mr. Langlois is certainly not acting in the interest of the Municipality, but rather in pursuit of a personal objective. He then seeks to provide pecuniary benefits to the company Porc Héden inc.”, one can read in the decision.
Mr. Langlois was unsuccessful in getting the board to change its mind. The public consultation will finally take place under the aegis of the MRC, a few weeks later.
The mayor still denies
Mayor Langlois, in office for 26 years, has always contested the charges and continues to claim his innocence, despite the guilty verdict for one of the three counts against him. He was exonerated for a second breach while the third was withdrawn.
“I am very disappointed with this judgment. I have a clear conscience, I told the truth but the judge did not believe me. In this file, I defended my company but it seems that we have no right to do that so all the businessmen who are in municipal politics, if they do business with their municipality, are all likely to have the same sanction”, he commented.
Defeated in the last elections in November, Denis Langlois made a final cross on politics. He has no intention of contesting the decision. “I don’t have any money to put into it. I will swallow the pill. It sickens. As an end of term, I would have chosen otherwise,” he said on the phone.