(Saint-Jérôme) Poles with three election signs, as we see these days in Saint-Jérôme, the residents had not seen that in 2017. The outgoing mayor, Stéphane Maher, was elected with his entire team of Vision Saint-Jérôme – half of which, like him, without opposition.
However, this varnish did not take long to crack. Targeted by allegations of fraudulent electoral maneuvers, Mayor Maher was the subject of an investigation by the Chief Electoral Officer. And, despite numerous calls to step down, he hung on.
The verdict fell more than three years after the start of his term on November 30. For having offered jobs and other benefits to two of his former advisers so that they do not stand for re-election in 2017, Stéphane Maher was declared disqualified from sitting. The counselor of Vision Saint-Jérôme who replaced him last February resigned after less than two months, replaced by another counselor of the party, Janice Bélair-Rolland.
At the end of this stormy mandate, the Jerome people now have the choice between three aspirants with very different profiles.
Janice Bélair-Rolland, 39, Vision Saint-Jérôme
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Janice Bélair-Rolland, outgoing mayor and mayoral candidate for the Vision Saint-Jérôme party
Elected in 2017, after unsuccessfully trying her luck with the Liberals in the 2015 federal election, Janice Bélair-Rolland made a career in the private sector. After 15 years in the family business, the Académie des pompiers, where she was in charge of training for industrial firefighters, she worked in real estate brokerage. At the town hall, “I had the impression of putting on little slippers that I had abandoned a little earlier with the family business,” she says. Excited by “all that I could lead forward”, the outgoing mayor decided to represent herself.
Marc Bourcier, 64 years old, Avenir Saint-Jérôme
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Marc Bourcier, candidate for mayor, leader of the Avenir Saint-Jérôme party
Former PQ member for Saint-Jérôme, Marc Bourcier is a known face in town. Elected in December 2016, this retiree from teaching was defeated by the caquist Youri Chassin in 2018. Before being a deputy, he had tasted municipal power as an advisor to Vision Saint-Jérôme in 2013. Mr. Bourcier has d ‘ elsewhere recruited the two ex-advisers excluded by the former mayor Maher, André Marion and Mario Fauteux, to offer them “a real chance to campaign”. He promises that the elected officials of his party will sit as independents, in order to ensure “independence of speech”. He also undertakes to reduce the mayor’s salary by 16.5% and to carry out only one mandate.
Marc-Olivier Neveu, 21 years old, Jérôme Movement
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Marc-Olivier Neveu, mayoral candidate for the Jérôme Movement party
The last municipal elections having taken place five days before the 18 years of Marc-Olivier Neveu, he could not attend. It was not for lack of interest on the part of the one who says he has attended every council meeting since 2013. After having campaigned for the Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois, he co-founded the municipal party Mouvement jérômien in 2019 with Simon Lynch and Marc-Antoine Lachance, who present themselves as advisers. The citizens, he said, “will have the choice between the people who have been there for several years and us, the Jérôme Movement, which is proposing a new avenue”.
What development for Saint-Jérôme?
On several priorities (adding affordable housing, controlling taxes, improving snow removal), the positions of the three candidates are not so far apart.
Each also defends its own issues.
Janice Bélair-Rolland highlights the achievements of Vision’s two mandates, including the Théâtre Gilles-Vigneault, the promenade along the Rivière du Nord and free public transport.
For Marc Bourcier, for example, the City must focus more on its status as “capital of transport electrification” – which he does not fail to recall with a small school bus decorated by him in the colors of the local manufacturer Lion Électrique. .
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Bus from local manufacturer Lion Électrique, in Saint-Jérôme
Marc-Olivier Neveu proposes in particular to implement participatory budgets, and to develop “neighborhood hearts” in the former merged municipalities of Bellefeuille, Lafontaine and Saint-Antoine.
It is on the development of the territory that the differences are most glaring.
Saint-Jérôme has some 80,000 inhabitants. In 20 years, they will be more than 96,000, forecasts the Institute of Statistics of Quebec. Where will they stay, in this “capital of the Laurentians” where the vacancy rate is less than 1%?
If Mme Bélair-Rolland and Mr. Neveu both speak of the need to densify the downtown area, their visions of the surroundings of Lake Jérôme are diametrically opposed.
In 2015, the City acquired 10 million square feet of land to make it the Lac-Jérôme Natural Park. But a recent agreement with the promoters of an eco-neighborhood-type project on wooded land adjacent to the park has sparked an outcry.
For the Jérôme Movement, the City should never have signed this agreement. The party promises to impose a moratorium on the project and to buy back the land.
The eco-district presented to the City is “a great project”, maintains for her part the outgoing mayor. His party is also proposing a general six-month moratorium on any real estate development that has not yet received a permit, in order to review the urban plan. But this moratorium will not affect the eco-district project, since development will not yet have started there, believes Mr.me Bélair-Rolland.
When the City bought the land which became the Lac-Jérôme Natural Park, “there was no question of real estate development around that”, indignant for his part Marc Bourcier who was advisor at the time of the transaction. But buying the land from the promoter, as the Jérôme Movement proposes, “it’s the land of unicorns,” he said. Too expensive. His solution would rather be to do away with the planned street project inside the municipal park to accommodate the promoter.