By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
Administrators from the Commission municipale du Québec (CMQ) will oversee day-to-day affairs in the village of Stukely-Sud until the fall after four of the municipality’s six councillors resigned in recent weeks. Councillors Véronique Papineau, Joël Chagnon and Julie Royer stepped down in mid-May; at the June 9 council meeting, Coun. René Pepin also tendered his resignation, citing a “work climate that has become toxic and incompatible with my values.” The four councillors added their names to the growing list of town councillors electing not to complete their terms across the province – at the beginning of this year, La Presse reported that more than 10 per cent of municipal councillors elected in 2021 had already stepped down. On June 13, with only two councillors remaining in their posts, the village was placed under temporary administration.
Mayor François Rhéaume acknowledged at the June 9 meeting that “important differences of viewpoint,” had led to division on council. “My role is to ensure that the agenda is respected, that people don’t speak out of turn and that no one is spreading falsehoods,” he said. “I’m dealing with a council that often doesn’t read their documents, and trying to have constructive discussions with people who aren’t always aware of what they were talking about.”
Rhéaume is the municipality’s third mayor since 2021. That year, nine months before the scheduled municipal elections, then-mayor Patrick Leblond, who had previously been suspended by the CMQ in 2019 over conflict of interest allegations, announced that he was moving out of the municipality, making him ineligible to serve. Councillors elected then-councillor Véronique Stock interim mayor. Stock was elected to a full term in 2021 but resigned in 2023; according to her message to colleagues at the time, she also planned to leave the village. Rhéaume succeeded Stock after a byelection in July 2023.
Under the temporary administration, Rhéaume remains mayor and retains certain emergency management powers; however, a mayor can’t pass bylaws or allocate funds without approval from the town council, and a town council needs a quorum of at least five people (a mayor and four councillors) to function. Director general Jean-Marie Beaupré will now manage the town’s day-to-day affairs with oversight from two CMQ commissioners. However, as Beaupré explained, “political decisions” can’t be made without a functioning council.
“If there are day-to-day decisions that are not political, the CMQ [commissioners] will come to me and I’ll recommend what to do; they will adopt a resolution and have it signed,” he said. “It is actually faster [than the usual process] because they will give me a decision in a day or two, instead of having to wait for the next council meeting.”
Beaupré said residents wouldn’t see any difference in the town’s day-to-day operations. “The objective of the CMQ is to maintain services – everything that is already planned in the budget, administration, taxation, road work, will go on as scheduled. We can replace things that break down, and I can replace an employee who resigns, but if I wanted to add a new truck to improve services… or create a new position, for example, that would be more complicated.”
Citing documentation from the CMQ seen by the BCN, Beaupré clarified that there’s a difference between being placed under guardianship (tutelle) by the provincial government and being placed under temporary administration. “There are a lot of rumours that we are under guardianship, and that’s not what’s happening. Guardianship is only done in the case of fraud or financial impropriety. Temporary administration is what happens when you lack councillors.”
No byelection is planned because the next municipal election is scheduled for later this year. The temporary administration will stay in place until the village has at least four elected councillors – either at the end of the candidacy submission period in October, if at least four councillors are acclaimed, or after the election in November, the moment the new mayor and council are sworn in.