(Gatineau) The candidate of the Action Gatineau party, Maude Marquis-Bissonnette, won the elections for mayor of Gatineau on Sunday. She therefore becomes the second woman to occupy the position of mayor of this town in Outaouais, after France Bélisle, who resigned in February.
According to preliminary results, Ms. Marquis-Bissonnette received 41.70% of the votes, which allowed her to beat former mayor Yves Ducharme, who obtained the favor of 30.87% of voters. Mr. Ducharme was attempting a return to politics, having been mayor of Hull from 1992 to 2001, then of Gatineau from 2001 to 2005.
Ms. Marquis-Bissonnette was on her second attempt to be elected mayor of Gatineau. In the 2021 elections, she received 38% of the vote, but was beaten by Ms. Bélisle, at 43%.
The former municipal councilor left her position as head of Action Gatineau following her defeat, then became an assistant professor in municipal management at the National School of Public Administration, on the Gatineau campus. She took over the leadership this spring in anticipation of Sunday’s by-election.
“I have a solid plan and I am ready to take action,” she assured in a video published on social networks on the eve of the election.
“We need a major mayor. We need a strong woman who is capable of leading the files in the City, but also of leading them in Quebec and Ottawa, so that in Gatineau, we have our share of investments in health and housing. , in terms of transportation,” she put forward.
On the Action Gatineau website, Ms. Marquis-Bissonnette committed to “negotiating a QST credit on rental housing with Quebec, supported by the Association des professionnels de la construction et de l’habitation du Québec, in order to increase the number of units and help resolve the housing shortage” within her first 200 days as mayor.
On the social network
In addition to returning to town hall, the Action Gatineau party won the by-election in the Carrefour-de-l’Hôpital district, where its candidate Catherine Craig-Saint-Louis was elected councilor.
Action Gatineau was created in 2012. One of its founders is Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin, who was mayor of Gatineau from 2013 to 2021.
The first female mayor of Gatineau, France Bélisle announced her resignation last February, notably due to the climate of intimidation with which many municipal elected officials are grappling.