By Trevor Greenway
Local Journalism Initiative
La Pêche is getting smaller, electorally and it will save the municipality $30,000.
The municipality will officially move from seven wards to six after the province’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs approved the latest proposed boundary changes.
La Pêche Mayor Guillaume Lamoureux said that the wards will now be better distributed and the constituents will have a more balanced representation.
“We didn’t have the proper representation in some of our wards, and we felt like there was nothing specific to La Pêche that justified willingly maintaining an over-representation of particular wards to the detriment of other wards,” said Lamoureux.
He explained that in its electoral boundary review, which is required by every municipality in Quebec every four years, La Pêche had grown by more than 800 registered voters since 2016 and the influx shifted some wards beyond the permitted deviation limit of plus or minus 25 per cent of equitable voters. According to La Pêche’s electoral boundaries map, Ward 7 (Edelweiss) was at plus 27 per cent, while Wards 1 (East Aldfield) and 2 (Lac-des-Loups) were at minus 20 per cent and minus 14 per cent, respectively.
La Pêche is the only municipality in Quebec with fewer than 20,000 residents to have seven wards. The current population of La Pêche, according to Lamoureux, is 9,300.
And the move saves money. By reducing the number of wards, it also reduces the number of councillors, which will save $30,000.
The most significant changes on the new boundary map will be felt in the new Ward 6 (Wakefield–Edelweiss), where voter numbers will be reduced by 14.5 per cent, and in the former Edelweiss ward, where voters have been moved to either Ward 6 or Ward 5 (Lascelles–Farrellton).
“If you look at every municipality in the MRC that is of comparable size, they all have six districts. Now we all have six districts and six councillors,” said Lamoureux. “I think it’s just a more fair way to divide the boundaries.”
The boundaries will be in effect for La Pêche’s next municipal election on Nov. 2, 2025.