(Quebec) The Parti Québécois is asking the CAQ member for Bonaventure, Catherine Blouin, to make public the opinion of the Ethics Commissioner who examined her marital situation, she being the spouse of a mayor of his constituency.
As soon as she was elected in the fall, the CAQ member asked the ethics and professional conduct commissioner to provide her with recommendations to avoid placing herself in a conflict of interest with her spouse, Mathieu Lapointe, who is the mayor. of Carleton-sur-Mer. Mr. Lapointe is also prefect of the MRC d’Avignon and president of the Regroupement des MRC de la Gaspésie.
The duty reported on Monday that it is the deputy for René-Lévesque on the North Shore, Yves Montigny, who is now responsible for political relations in part of Gaspésie because of the situation. The affair was first revealed by the Baie-des-Chaleurs radio station, CIEU FM.
As for political relations as president of the Regroupement des MRC de la Gaspésie, Mr. Lapointe must turn to the minister responsible for the region, Maïtée Blanchette-Vézina.
“To avoid any appearance of conflict of interest with the municipality of Carleton-sur-Mer and the MRC of Avignon, of which my spouse is mayor and prefect, a fellow deputy will take care of the possible files of these two administrations”, has indicated the newly elected in a statement sent to The Press. It is said that Mr. Montigny was informed last March.
This is an “unusual” situation, according to the PQ MP for Matane-Matapédia, Pascal Bérubé. “The spouse of Mr.me Blouin is at the same time mayor of Carleton, prefect of the MRC d’Avignon and president of the Table of all the prefects of the Gaspésie, which makes him the number one interlocutor for Gaspé issues,” lamented Mr. Bérubé in press scrum on Tuesday.
For the moment, I take note of this unusual arrangement whereby people have elected a member in their riding, but that, ultimately, for a large part of the riding, it is a member from the North Shore who becomes their deputy.
Pascal Bérubé, MP for Matane-Matapédia
Mr. Bérubé invites the member to show her credentials by revealing the full opinion of the Ethics Commissioner. “The MP, then a candidate, had undertaken during the campaign to make the entire opinion public, and now we refuse. And she says no, she won’t. So that’s enough to make us wonder what’s in that opinion,” he said.
Transparency
For his part, M.me Blouin claims to have been “transparent” since his jump into provincial politics. “Since I entered politics. I undertook to consult the commissioner of ethics and professional conduct if I was elected and that is what I did and since then I have applied her recommendations, ”said the elected CAQ member in her statement.
She recalls that the decision to hand over certain responsibilities to her colleague from the Côte-Nord “affects only the administration of the municipality [de Carleton-sur-Mer] and the MRC [d’Avignon] “.
Pascal Bérubé also wonders why these files were not rather transferred to the CAQ MP for Gaspé, Stéphane Lacroix, rather than to an elected official from the Côte-Nord. On the side of the parliamentary wing of the CAQ, it is explained that it chose Mr. Montigny, former mayor of Baie-Comeau, because of his experience in the municipal world.