Jack Wilson

Sherbrooke council calls in the mediators

By Jack Wilson

Local Journalism Initiative

Sherbrooke’s city council is getting outside help to address what many are calling a difficult work environment.

The council passed Rock Forest councillor Annie Godbout’s motion calling for an outside mediator Feb. 20. The Commission municipale du Québec will be in charge of the mediation process.

Godbout said she decided to draft the motion following suggestions from Sherbrooke mayor Évelyne Beaudin that the tension on council would be here to stay. “It isn’t right for us to stay in this situation for two years. For me, the mayor needs to bring people together and make compromises,” Godbout said. “This is an unacceptable position for the mayor.”

Godbout cited councillor Marc Denault’s resignation as Société de transport de Sherbrooke president as an example of poor relationships on council. Denault had cited exclusion from a meeting with provincial Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility Geneviève Guilbault as the reason for his departure. He had charged that the mayor’s chief of staff lied when he said the exclusion had come at Guilbault’s request.

“That wasn’t fun,” Godbout said.

She also mentioned a “very difficult climate” for now former citizen participation secretary Néné Oularé. Oularé left her post as part of a confidential agreement with the City of Sherbrooke. She had previously charged that Beaudin had discredited and tried to control her.

Godbout said Beaudin has also been overly critical of fellow councillors who have opposed her on certain votes. She said the climate in council is difficult for everyone. “We are all affected,” Godbout said.

But the councillor said she’s most concerned about how a difficult workplace culture is affecting municipal operations. “Projects are moving very little, very slowly at the City of Sherbrooke,” she said. “It’s affecting services to citizens.”

Beaudin too has called out difficult conditions on council, saying hostility from other councillors was a factor behind her extended leave of absence. She’s also taken issue with attacks on social media, threatening legal action against a citizen who routinely takes aim at the mayor on Facebook.

Godbout said she’s more focussed on the conduct of council members than on citizens and added that she avoids social media.

Beaudin and Godbout met prior to the motion’s passage. Godbout said Beaudin suggested a few tweaks to the motion, which she agreed to.

Godbout said she’s hoping to attain “more consensus” and “more confidence between people,” as a result of the mediation. Though Godbout said she hopes for positive change, she said she doesn’t expect the process to fix everything. “I don’t believe in miracles.”

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North Hatley dépanneur set to close

By Jack Wilson

Local Journalism Initiative

Accommodation Massawippi will be closing by the end of February. Owner Yingming Ning, known to locals as Ming, said he plans to close the North Hatley dépanneur by Feb. 26. The landlord, Patrick Lajoie, who also owns the Pilsen restaurant and pub, said no new dépanneur will open once the lease ends.

Ning confirmed the lease is ending following a legal dispute with Lajoie. He declined to discuss the specifics of the case for this article.

The dépanneur is currently home to North Hatley’s SAQ agency. Épicier J.L. LeBaron, the town’s grocery store, aims to take over the SAQ license. “It’s not a done deal, but we will apply for it,” said owner Elliott Sharman.

Since word got out of Accommodation Massawippi’s imminent closure, rumors have swirled on the Friends of Massawippi Lake Facebook page. A post asking for further details had amassed 116 comments by press time Jan. 30. Speculation has been especially rampant around what Lajoie might replace the dépanneur with.

Reached for comment, the Pilsen owner would only confirm that the dépanneur was indeed closing and that a new one would not open in its stead. “I don’t want to discuss this at all,” Lajoie said. “With all that’s been written, I won’t live long enough to explain myself to everyone.”

Pressed for further details, Lajoie hung up the phone.

North Hatley building inspector Matthieu Abran said the soon-to-close dépanneur is in a commercial-zoned area. Under current zoning rules, the town permits most possible uses, including residential.

“The municipality would like to retain a dépanneur, but the owner of the building still has the ability to do what he’d like, within permitted uses,” Abran said. Should the dépanneur close, he said there wasn’t much the town could do to encourage a new one.

Under proposed zoning changes, the North Hatley council will seek to prevent the ground floor of buildings in the town’s centre from including residences. That zone includes the dépanneur’s current location, Abran said. But as it stands now, residences, alongside most other uses, are allowed on either the second or ground floor of the building.

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Former STS president blames resignation on trust breakdown with mayor’s office

By Jack Wilson

Local Journalism Initiative

“There are people who lied, who pushed me to resign and I’m the one experiencing the collateral damage the most,” Sherbrooke councillor Marc Denault told The Record days after his Jan. 23 resignation as president of the Société de transport de Sherbrooke (STS).

Denault, who had held his position for 10 years and worked as STS vice president for four years before that, said he resigned after Sherbrooke Mayor Évelyne Beaudin’s office excluded him from a meeting with provincial Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility Geneviève Guilbault. Denault said the mayor’s chief of staff, Steve Roy, told him Guilbault’s office chose to exclude him from the meeting.

The minister, for her part, said her office had no role in keeping Denault from attending. “In no case did I or my team say that we didn’t want Mr. Denault to attend,” Guilbault said in a Jan. 25 interview with 107.7 Estrie’s Martin Pelletier. “It’s up to [the mayor’s] discretion to invite who she wishes,” she said.

“I resigned because the trust relationship was broken and because they lied to me,” Denault said. “I resigned because of my values.”

Denault maintained there were no prior conflicts between him and the mayor’s office. Asked whether the relationship was going “very well” before the incident, Denault responded, “not very well. Things were going well.”

“I think I’m perceived as someone who’s a unifier, conscientious. And I’ve sometimes defended the mayor on certain decisions,” Denault said. Either the mayor or people in her office were responsible for the fallout, he said.

The councillor said he hasn’t spoken to Beaudin since the incident. “I asked her to call me, but she never called me,” he said.

Denault said he was proud to consider the STS “the best organization in Quebec for public transport.” He pointed to reduced fares for low-income people and the universal transit pass for certain educational institutions as key accomplishments. “This wasn’t because of me,” Denault said. “This was because of the entire team’s work.”

The councillor predicted that staffing and finances will remain key challenges for the STS. “And, with the saga we’ve just been through, governance,” he added.

Denault said he will finish his term but won’t stand for election in 2025. He said he had already intended to make this term his last. “I’m turning the page.”

Beaudin’s office didn’t respond to The Record’s request for an interview.

Former STS president blames resignation on trust breakdown with mayor’s office Read More »

Anglo rights group files injunction against Bill 96, future English-language restrictions

By Jack Wilson

Local Journalism Initiative

The Task Force on Linguistic Policy filed an application Jan. 17 asking a judge to stop the province from further restricting the English language or penalizing its use under Bill 96. A judge will hear the case Feb. 6.

“Every week that goes by, there’s another measure that’s being either promised or brought out by this government,” with the intention of protecting the French language, said Task Force president and lead plaintiff Andrew Caddell. “They’re using the anglophone community as a scapegoat for what they see as the decline in French.”

Caddell said he’s looking to “send a shot across the bow to the government that they cannot bring forth these other measures.” Anglophone Quebecers “are full citizens no matter what the government says,” he added.

“We’ve received stories from people who’ve received really egregious treatment from the government,” Caddell said. Indeed, the application lists 30 examples of people it says were discriminated against for speaking English.

The filing references a woman who left a hospital after a triage nurse refused to speak to her in English. The next day, the woman went to another hospital where she was found to have sepsis which triggered a cardiac event. “She almost died,” the document states.

The filing references other examples of discrimination in healthcare settings, a person hung up on by RAMQ after asking for service in English, another unable to seek justice for human rights violations because the Human Rights Commission won’t communicate with her in English and multiple people struggling to complete CEGEP as a result of new French-language rules under Bill 96.

Caddell said the Task Force enjoys wide support in the Anglophone community, having raised over $100,000 for its legal efforts.

He pushed back against notions that English-speakers aren’t integrated into French-speaking society. “Eighty per cent of Anglo Quebecers are bilingual, which is an incredible number when you think about it.” The notion that the French language is in decline doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, Caddell said, given the number of Anglophones and immigrants able to speak French.

Those who can’t speak English tend to be “people who are elderly, visible minorities, Indigenous people, rural poor and recent immigrants,” Caddell said, as well as people with physical or mental disabilities. As a result, marginalized people are the most impacted by the province’s language policies, he said.

“The people that are on the margins, they need to have somebody to stand up for them,” Caddell said. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

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