(Quebec) The conflict that is tearing apart a wealthy municipality on Île d’Orléans has repercussions in high places. The Quebec Municipal Commission (CMQ) opened an investigation Thursday into the crisis shaking Sainte-Pétronille, while the Federation of Journalists of Quebec (FPJQ) denounces an attempt to intimidate elected officials against the local newspaper.
The municipality in turmoil hired a large public relations firm to help it weather the storm on Thursday, after having used a prestigious law firm to put a tenth of its citizens on notice.
“The municipal integrity investigation and prosecution department has opened an investigation,” confirmed David Dusseault, of the CMQ.
CMQ investigations can lead to a hearing before an administrative tribunal or the Superior Court, then to sanctions such as the suspension of an elected official or the conclusion that he or she is ineligible to sit. In serious cases, the CMQ can recommend guardianship, as recently happened in Saint-Placide in the Laurentians.
Remember that Sainte-Pétronille sent a formal notice just before Christmas to 97 of these citizens, or nearly 10% of its population. The municipality wanted to silence these people, who had learned that the new general director, Nathalie Paquet, had been laid off by her previous employer, Val-des-Lacs.
The 97 in question had signed a letter to the mayor and council members asking to reconsider the hiring of Mme Pack. They had attached to their missive a letter sent to Mme Package by Val-des-Lacs, obtained under the Access to Information Act. Sainte-Pétronille’s lawyers believe that this letter should never have been publicized.
Sainte-Pétronille went further. The TCJ law firm, the same one that served notice on the citizens, also threatened to sue the local community newspaper and its journalists if an article was published on the crisis shaking the village. The newspaper Around the island, which is partly financed by Sainte-Pétronille, has folded. To date, no article on this story has been published in its pages.
“The Federation of Journalists of Quebec denounces a vulgar and crude attempt at intimidation by a municipality against journalists. An attempt that can be described as Soviet or North Korean because the affair is so ridiculous,” reacted its president, Éric-Pierre Champagne, on Thursday.
According to our information, an article was written by journalists fromAround the island about a rather heated city council meeting in December. But the newspaper’s management complied with the demands of Sainte-Pétronille’s lawyer. The article was never published.
“The situation in Sainte-Pétronille is worrying,” said Municipal Affairs Minister Andrée Laforest on Thursday. “The CMQ has opened an investigation […] and I will wait for his conclusions. »
The municipality, which had remained silent since the media coverage of the affair on Wednesday, finally broke its silence. The mayor sent a reaction Thursday through the firm TACT, an expert in crisis management.
“We are convinced that the decisions we made over the last year and which displeased some citizens were the right ones,” wrote the mayor of Sainte-Pétronille, Jean Côté. We are also convinced that the hiring process for our general director, whose integrity is unfairly attacked, was carried out in a rigorous and diligent manner. »
The mayor requested an investigation by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MAMH) into the crisis shaking his village. In fact, the Ministry does not take charge of such investigations, it is rather the CMQ.
Remember that the first conflict between the general director of Sainte-Pétronille and the citizens concerned the library, when 14 volunteers resigned en bloc last October. The City had notably refused to reimburse bottles of wine purchased for the traditional volunteer dinner, as was the case in the past.
Citizens irritated by the management style of the new DG had launched their own investigation, and obtained details on his end of employment in Val-des-Lacs. Two fairly heated municipal council meetings took place in November and December. During one of them, a citizen described the mayor as a “seed of a dictator”.
“A hundred people shouting, there is one who says something stupid like that, the others applaud, a citizen stands up in the room to say “what you are doing makes no sense”. and he gets booed… It’s anarchy,” lamented Mayor Côté in an interview with The Press.