Gatineau Municipal Elections
 

So Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin recently became Mayor of Gatineau. I, unfortunately, wasn't really paying much attention to Gatineau politics because there's very little mention of it in the majority of English press in Ottawa.

What does this mean for those living in Gatineau? I've heard that he'll be looking at ways to improve the transit infrastructure and he's even mentioned that he's willing to work with the City of Ottawa to improve inter-provincial transit.

Discuss...

He endorsed the idea of LRT to the west of the city and he held a press conference early in the campaign with me where he committed to finishing a prefeasibility study in the first six months on the idea. It's very exciting!

It's also the remarkable revolutionary step of acknowledging the existence of Ottawa (wow!) and it'll be frosty in Hell for the next four years as he actually wants to work WITH Ottawa! It's as if we moved 500km closer to Ottawa overnight! I'm hoping that Ottawa will reciprocate with better integration of transit, data and just a closer relationship.

This is very, very good for Gatineau and indeed the whole region.

I think Bureau goofed up when he declined to do interviews in the last week of the campaign. He wouldn't even do the door-to-door crap like my councillors did in my electoral district. Maybe he wanted out, who knows?

At least we didn't have 4 mayors in one year.

Your absolutely right, his avoidance of the media and citizens in general is what made him lose the election.

As for Aylmer's comment, I agree, this could bring long needed change to relationship between Ottawa and Gatineau as one metropolitan region as opposed to a big city loner and a want to be independent suburb. Let's just hope that the politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa (municipal and federal) are ready to co-operate.

So Destination Gatineau is dead. On one side of the coin it was mostly just a glorified green space along the water, but investing in the Ruisseau de la Brasserie area instead, as the new mayor envisions, seems like a much less ambitious project. I think the Destination Gatineau project would've done a better job of attracting tourists. But I'm happy with the new mayor's views on transit and his dedication to Old Aylmer.

What is fascinating is how the pollsters were hopelessly off the mark.

Bureau was supposed to win by the wide margin that Maxime P-J eventually beat him with!

I think we need a vibrant downtown for citizens before we need a vibrant downtown for tourists.

A downtown-based tourism strategy vs. a strategy that spreads tourism investment throughout the city. Which one is more effective?

http://www.obj.ca/Local/Tourism/2013...estment-plan/1

That's true. But both Destination Gatineau and the Ruisseau de la Brasserie project are tourism development projects; they're supposed to give people a reason to stay in Gatineau longer once they've visited the museum instead of going back to Ottawa. I don't know if they're trying to make their downtown vibrant for residents.

I agree with you. I don't want tourism dollars thinly spread out and spent throughout the city just to make people feel good that their sectors are interesting *too*.

My comments were merely my wishes, and were not intended as support for what MPJ said about this during the campaign.

All that Destination Gatineau did (as far as I can tell) was turn mostly NCC land and private land to green space. Nothing but more grass along the river. Not worth 135 million.

Did they (Bureau and his cronies) even talk to the NCC and private land owners about it?

Biggest issue first to deal is transit, not just with the Rapibus, but the inconsistencies of service in the Hull sector which probably have the worst on-time performances of all the city. What a mess the Hull routes are during the PM rush hour particularly the 30-series routes which are frequently over 10 even up to 30+ minutes late. I hope they can fix this, because it frequently has overcrowding issues (31, 33, 35, 37). Maybe time to assign articulated buses on those routes and make the schedules more consistent. It is already inconsistent on the actual schedule by look at the User Guide.

But I think it's a good thing Bureau has been defeated, as at the end he looked like someone who was no longer interested in the job participating in only one debate.

Let's see if Ottawa receiprocates, or, as usually, whinges about spending "our" money on "them".

+11111

And a "vibrant" waterfront is one with as little pointless "green space" as possible.

Little negativity though about the new mayor, it's the second straight mayor who has named an ultra-separatist (ex-PQ candidate) in a key mayor's cabinet position, this time the press secretary spot and I'm not a big fan of that guy.

However, excellent choice regarding the Cabinet chief, much better than Mayor Bureau's choice

That's debatable. But I admit, that while I'm a fan of greenspace, and prefer green waterfronts, there should be at least one urban waterfront location in Ottawa. The problem is, the geography makes that near impossible for much of the Ottawa (escarpments) and the Rideau Canal/river (mostly goes through residential areas). Dow's lake could be a good location in the future for this sort of thing, and Gatineau is a very good place for it as well, so good on them for considering that. It should help with their downtown.

I should point out, that there has to be thought into this sort of thing. Grass doesn't vibrate, but outside of earthquakes i've never seen vibrating concrete either.

Sorry for the rant. On a more related note, I hope Ottawa and Gatineau can actually work with each other in a way that makes sense.

EDIT: Impulsive post, didn't realize the thread was about Gatineau till half way through typing. Sorry!

I'm not very familiar with Gatineau/Quebec politics, is controversy over this sort of thing common?

Hasn't been a big deal so far in the media. I know separatism is a very long shot and isn't close to 50%.

But it was just some observation by myself and the fact I had known this guy back in the 2000's most notably as one the most vocal voices against raise in tuition fees during the 05 student strike and that was a PQ militant at around the time and was candidate in the 07 election. But yeah so far, not much of a big deal. There was a bit of criticism by some with Bureau's choice of cabinet chief who was strongly in favor of separatism.

Who is the new attaché de presse then? Can't find his name in the news.

Also, Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin has a lot of personal history with the PQ himself.

This is very rarely an issue for most people in Gatineau. It's one of the things that surprised me when I moved here from Ontario. In the Franco-Ontarian community this would the kiss of death politically.

I tend to agree. This was not a recipe for a vibrant urban core. In detail, the Kruger lands that were going to be cleared ran the risk of becoming Gatineau's Lebreton. There's so much land there, that clearing it all would have left a gaping hole with the extraordinarily difficult task of regenerating it from scratch. It took 40+ years for Lebreton and it's still at turtle-speed because the market isn't absorbing these new dwelling units at a normal rate (since they're in the middle of an urban void) - how long would it take in Gatineau, a smaller market (despite the waterfront location), factoring in the decontamination time and expense?

Better to leave Kruger there as a legitimate industrial member of the downtown core and its history, and if/when it goes away, re-use the buildings. They are enormous buildings with unique potential. Nobody would purpose-build something like that today.

Well, most of us québécois have voted for the PQ at one point or another in our life: for most voters, the PQ is the only alternative to the Liberals, and was, for a very long period, the only alternative on the left of the political spectrum.

In Quebec, there's generally no stigma associated to the fact that someone has been a supporter of the PQ, even in the Franco-federalist circle (yes, they exist! But they are usually not very passionate about this). Very few people care about your past political affiliations, really.

Pedneaud-Jobin's a separatist!? So why would he want to work with Ottawa to create a seamless transit system? Usually separatists think Gatineau is its own independent city and go out of there way to destroy any relationship with the City of Ottawa.

...Because it's the right thing to do and provincial politics are irrelevant in running a city.

I also hear he likes the colour purple. Despite his obvious activism on behalf id the colour, he has kept the red bricks on city hall for the exact same reason: it's irrelevant.

No Mr. Pedenault-Jobin is not a separatist unless someone prooves me wrong. It's worth noting that Action Gatineau had some of their ex-councillors been candidates for the CAQ and that The CAQ's ideology on Wikipedia shows Quebec nationalism although like Quebec Solidaire and unlike the PQ it's not close to be their main priority. It's just that Mr. Patrick Robert-Meunier who is the press secretary has been a staunch separatist back the 00's. Not sure if it is still the case today. The CAQ does have have a bunch of ex-PQ MNA's even ex-PQ ministers including their leader.

Unfortunately, it seems the info07 article about that nomination disappeared quickly. Maybe it is not a big deal anyways and again just an observation by my part.

Not that it matters municipally in Quebec as others have said, but the Pedneau-Jobin family has pretty deep sovereignist roots.

I have only met Maxime twice casually, but we have a pretty good friend in common, and another friend of mine went to law school with his sister.

Also, his winning candidate in Pte-Gatineau is the daughter of former BQ MP Richard Nadeau.

Because he's a pragmatist as are all politicians who want to get elected and stay elected.

Exactly. The difference is as I said very striking when you compare to Franco-Ontarians. There even a suspicion of PQ sympathies in many circles is enough to have more people than you think want to have nothing to do with you.

I've been on the board of francophone cultural organizations in Ontario where half the ''house'' was adamant about not inviting singers and bands from Quebec that were pro-independence or suspected of being so. We finally won the day after a long battle when we explained that their lineup would be mostly empty (and would also exclude certain Franco-Ontarians, Franco-Manitobans and Acadians) if they went all the way with this.

Gatineau's population is a quarter to a third sovereignist at the very most, but when you drill down to the politically active classes somewhat surprisingly a split that is much closer to 50-50 becomes very apparent.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: former Quebec Premier Bernard Landry will be at Maxime's swearing in as mayor.

Wanna know why? Because Mme Maxime is his daughter, Pascale Landry.

As I said: deep roots.

Personally, I agree very much with this as a basic statement. Once a city feels "bien dans sa peau" with itself, tourists will come check it out. It's a much more durable way to get people interested in your city than put on a show that gets stale quickly (especially if that "show" is... more grass)

La Presse posted a few articles regarding Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin and the Destination Gatineau project:

Les discussions sur Destination Gatineau s'annoncent houleuses
[Feb 11, 2014]

Un accueil tiède à Destination Gatineau
[Feb 11, 2014]

Here's an updated video of Destination Gatineau project (though, I really don't see anything new) from the 2nd article:

• Video Link

Also from the 2nd article, it still seems like Pedneaud-Jobin is still sceptical of portions of the project, most notably the current vague cost estimates ($138 Million with funding hopefully coming in from Ottawa and Quebec) and who will be running the show on this shindig. He wants the City of Gatineau to manage it.

Interesting article - didn't know where else to post it, so if there is a dedicated Destination Gatineau thread, feel free to copy it over, or link to this post.

Wow! Look at those thousands of people! I wonder if they're the same folk who magically populate the NCC or the Lansdowne Conservancy's renderings of grass.

If this project goes through, it will be empty 20 hours of the day on all days except for the days with those family-fun festivals which feature so prominently in their video. At best, it will be forgotten by locals, sporadically used by summer tourists and a wasted opportunity. At worst, it becomes a place to do things far from the prying eyes of strangers.

The place as it is is pitiful, not for a lack of greenspace, but for a lack of consistent, casual, round-the-clock population and interest. This will not provide any of the former and relatively little of the latter.

Until they can come up with a satisfying reason as to why those throngs of happy people should be there and not just on a nice summer day, I cannot find any reason to be remotely supportive of the project.

Yes too bad we continue to be obsessed with generic green space. While it would be one of the nicer urban parks in the region, unfortunately there is not a large population within realistic walking distance and it is not large or spectacular enough to attract people from farther away. The best feature is probably the view so I would think restaurants could do well.

I will personally have a bird if Destination Gatineau becomes a priority over the revitalization of Vieux-Hull and various critical streets like Promenade du Portage, Eddy and Jacques-Cartier. Even Notre-Dame to be honest.

But I think my sanity will remain intact as I believe MPJ feels the same way I do, and is meeting with the Destination people more as a courtesy and to see what can be salvaged.

I don't understand! It's roughly 138 million for a continuous riverside park? I can't even figure out those weird domes around 24 secs or where they are. Boulevard Fournier? What's the point? What about the fact that THEY DONT OWN ANY OF THIS LAND!!!!

Speaking of the NCC, have they expressed any concerns about Gatineau's planned investment on their land? There "protecting Canadian's interest" on a useless strip of land west of downtown Ottawa (ORT), but they haven't said jack about the waste that is Destination Gatineau.

I thought the NCC was a major partner of Destination Gatineau.

The cynic in me thinks that's because the NCC supporting it would cut off an obvious LRT route to Place du Portage and the Museum of Civilization, err, whatever, by putting a sacred park in the way.

The mayor just stepped down

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...down-1.7122360

Holy Moley.. death threats? Good for her. No one needs that kind of stress!

It seems to be coming quite common. The media is saying that some 800 politicians have resigned in Quebec since the last round of municipal elections.
Many due to the same reasons as the Gatineau mayor. It happens elsewhere as well.

Yup, 800/8000, so 10%!

Here's her resignation speech:

• Video Link

Mayor of Russell not stepping down, but he's also calling out online intimidation:

https://www.ledroit.com/actualites/a...FCGJNDAPKRKHI/

Senators (from the Senate) given panic buttons, and Senator Bernadette Clement (former Mayor of Cornwall) also calling it out:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sen...tons-1.7118064

Although I think Belisle mostly stepped down cause she can't get her way, these online threats are real.

Worth noting that before she stepped out the door, she stacked the deck in her favour by appointing anti-tram Councillors to powerful positions:

https://www.ledroit.com/actualites/a...IH5M6WIMTDNRA/

And booting out the AG Deputy Mayor for an independent Deputy Mayor.

Of course threats and intimidation are totally unacceptable.

But in terms of having a conflictual climate at city council, France Bélisle is hardly an innocent victim when it comes to this.

I have close friends who are very close to the goings-on there and we have discussed this quite a bit.

Gatineau has a new Mayor! For now.

Champagne believes the debates at the Council table are healthy and doesn't see the same acrimony mentioned by Belisle, though acknowledges that is her truth.

Champagne is dedicated to advancing the tramway project.

https://www.ledroit.com/actualites/a...LUDHMUPE3JPI4/

There will be an election for a new mayor sometime within the next four months. There is too much time left in the term to allow the interim mayor to finish it out.

Will be very interesting to see if key files move forward over the next few months. Keeping an eye on the tramway of course, and the new police HQ. Hospital the City has very little say in.

Gatineau to elect new mayor June 9
France Bélisle stepped down last week, ending 1st term early

CBC News
Posted: Feb 27, 2024 10:47 AM EST | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

Gatineau, Que., has called a spring byelection to choose a new mayor after France Bélisle's sudden resignation last week.

Voting day will be Sunday, June 9, city officials announced Tuesday.

Candidates may file their nomination papers between April 26 and May 10, and there will be advance voting June 2.

The city estimates it will cost about $2 million to hold the byelection.

Bélisle, who became the city's first female mayor when she was elected in 2021, made the announcement Thursday morning.

She said in French she was leaving to preserve her health and integrity. She said she did not want to keep participating in the current political climate and that she had received death threats.

City councillor Daniel Champagne is acting mayor.

Quebec's next round of municipal elections are scheduled for November 2025.

With files from Radio-Canada's Patrick Foucault

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...2024-1.7126760

We have two candidates so far.

La conseillère municipale du district du Carrefour-de-l'Hôpital, Olive Kamanyana

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle...tion-partielle

Guy who owns Top Karting and is pissed at the Provincial Government for its hospital site flip-flopping (while property and business owners in the area of the "current" site are in limbo waiting for a final decision), Jacques Bélanger.

https://www.ledroit.com/actualites/a...DHSNTMHWXVNAA/

And Maude Marquis-Bissonnette considering another go at it, but it would require her to run for Action Gatineau Leadership first.

https://www.ledroit.com/actualites/a...IKMBNWABFPT2M/

A few other notable people are considering running.

Not running are Hull-Right AG Councillor and current interim leader Steve Moran. Former Mayor and current Councillor Marc Bureau also confirmed he won't be running to win back his old job.

Sylvie Goneau out. She was really a thorn in AG's side when Maxime PJ was Mayor. If Belisle though AG was bad with her, Goneau was way worse.

https://www.ledroit.com/actualites/a...PXYAGD6ZWBX5I/