Interview with Mayor Guillaume Lamoureux

On November 7th, Guillaume Lamoureux was reelected mayor of La Pêche for his second consecutive four-year term. Gillian Kirkland sat down with Guillaume to discuss the priorities of the new council, as well as access to information and citizen participation.

When she asked Guillaume how he felt about the 46% participation rate of the last election, he responded, "It's reassuring to see that we're above average, but it's too little". He clarified that he felt he had a strong mandate due to the fact that he and all returning councilors who ran a campaign were reelected.

"We have put out a lot of information, and if people want to know what we're doing, they can go to your website and look at our various publications," he said. Gillian then asked Guillaume why it was still so difficult for anglophone citizens to access information in English.

"As a municipality, we do not have a bilingual status, nor could we get one under the current law," he responded. I then inquired whether, with a $17 million budget, it would be possible to hire a translator. His response was simply, "We can't do that."

 Mr. Lamoureux then went on to outline three areas he saw as priorities for his new mandate, namely, the Covid crisis, the climate crisis and the housing crisis.

You can watch the full interview here or click on the corresponding timecode below to jump directly to the topics that interest you.

0:25 Election results and mandate

2:59 Access to information in English

7:58 Budget 2022

10:39 Residential tax rate

14:16 Covid crisis

15:39 Climate crisis

20:47 Electric charging and car sharing

22:10 Collective transportation

22:53 Compost, recycling and garbage

29:53 Wakefield spring

31:46 Housing crisis

35:26 Citizen participation

30:05 Upcoming council meetings