These younger mayors are willing to push the limits and speak their minds when it comes to issues like climate change, the housing crisis and investments in public transit.Laval Mayor Stéphane Boyer and Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier are part of a youth wave that has swept the city halls of Quebec's biggest cities. Évelyne Beaudin says after becoming mayor of Sherbrooke, Que., she decided her office needed a revamp.
'I think the city level is where you really change the world,' says Mayor Évelyne Beaudin from her office in Sherbrooke's historic city hall. Add to the mix a relatively weak opposition at the National Assembly — the governing CAQ holds 89 out of 125 seats — and the mayors are increasingly serving as a political counterweight on the provincial scene.
At the podium, Laval Mayor Stéphane Boyer called the $20-million pledge by Quebec Public Security Minister François Bonnardel, on Boyer's right, to hire more police officers, 'too little, too late.' " I receive a call, literally a mother crying on the phone having nowhere to go, it's heartbreaking," he said.
Catherine Fournier says the spacious mayor's office she inherited at Longueuil city hall is bigger than her apartment. She even jokingly proposed to her colleagues that they turn it into a big shared workspace.Mayor Catherine Fournier in her office at Longueuil City Hall. Fournier says 'It's not just about age. It's about how we do politics.'
At the announcement, with local MNA and cabinet minister Ian Lafrenière in attendance, Fournier pushed the Quebec government to change expropriation laws to help cities lower the cost of acquiring green space. "I looked at the municipal council, and it was all older people and mostly men," she said. "So when they were talking, I did not recognize myself in them."
The mayor, who was once a candidate for the now-defunct sovereignist party Option Nationale, says she supports the CAQ government's efforts to defend the French language, but she doesn't see the 700 or so out-of-province students at Bishop's as a threat.