The newspaper presents the third edition of its ranking of the remuneration of mayors and municipal councilors in Quebec. We have listed the salaries of nearly 6,400 elected officials from 827 towns and villages in the province. Thanks to our interactive tool, you can quickly find out the remuneration of elected officials in your municipality, or even find out who the best paid mayors are in your region.
Since 2018, municipal elected officials have decided their own basic remuneration and they can accumulate additional remuneration from other organizations without any ceiling.
Thus, often, by holding positions outside their city, nearly 200 elected officials were able to earn more than $100,000 in 2022, or even $200,000 for three of them.
In our last list, the former mayor of Longueuil, Sylvie Parent, and the former mayor of Laval, Marc Demers, occupied the first two ranks. Their respective successors reduced their remuneration due to our publications, which modified the top 5 of the highest paid elected officials.
At the other end of the spectrum, no less than 1,762 elected officials receive less than $5,000 per year in exchange for their public service, in cities that sometimes have thousands of inhabitants.
As a JE report recalled, municipal elected officials are often victims of intimidation, which means that 741 of them have left their positions since the 2021 elections.
– With Philippe Langlois
Methodology
- The remuneration of elected officials comes from the 2022 financial reports that the municipalities sent to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing of Quebec (MAMH) on October 12, 2023. The data and the elected officials in office may have changed since then.
- In the vast majority of cases, the remuneration and basic expense allowance are income from the municipality where the elected official was appointed. Remuneration and the allocation of additional expenses come from mandatary or supramunicipal organizations (e.g.: Regional County Municipality (MRC), intermunicipal management, public transport organization, etc.).
- Information on the population of municipalities was collected from the MAMH open data.
- Some municipalities have not submitted their financial report to the MAMH, which explains their absence from our list.