Quebec mayors collect city salaries on federal campaign trail

Two elected mayors seeking federal seats say a provincial law prohibits them from taking a pass on their pay.

Thestar.com
Sept. 11, 2015
By Allan Woods

It is taken for granted across the country that mayors and councillors campaigning in the federal election for promotion to the House of Commons will temporarily give up their salaries and step away from their duties.

Be it out of respect for the taxpayers who fund the paycheques or to avoid potential conflicts, unpaid leave of absences are simply the norm.

But complaints about a star Quebec Conservative candidate, Victoriaville Mayor Alain Rayes, have brought to light a little-known provincial law that effectively prohibits local politicians seeking higher office from taking a pass on their pay.

The situation involving Rayes, who earns $90,000 annually for running the city of 43,000, came to light this week at a city council meeting when councillors approved the temporary promotion - and temporary $90,000 salary - of Victoriaville’s deputy mayor. A simple citizen stepped up to ask a simple question: does the city still pay Rayes’ salary?

It is a sensitive topic for a Conservative party that casts itself as the guardian of tax dollars, one that is now being blamed on a provincial law that seems to buck the Canadian trend.

“We checked what others had done and we verified with the (provincial) ministry of municipal affairs and we said that, as a city ... we have to pay the salary,” said Michel Lessard, Victoriaville’s director general. “After that, what the elected official who receives the salary decides to do with it is up to him,”

“He can do whatever he wants with it.”

Despite having made a show of clearing out the mayor’s office in August, Rayes told local reporters this week, “I am still the mayor of Victoriaville,” and said he works on city business three hours a day while campaigning instead of his usual 70 hours a week.

Renouncing his city salary, he said, “would have meant triggering an election tomorrow morning, with the consequences that would have.”

Quebec’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs, which sets the salaries for mayors and councillors and was consulted by the city of Victoriaville in this case, did not immediately respond to questions Friday.

But Rayes received rare bipartisan support from the Mount Royal Liberal party candidate, Anthony Housefather, who is mayor of the Cote Saint-Luc in Montreal and paid an annual $50,642 salary.

“I did check before the campaign because I’m lucky enough to be in a financial position that I could relinquish the salary ... but the town clerk did check around and came back with the legal opinion that you’re not allowed in Quebec to relinquish the salary,” Housefather said.

Housefather has taken an unpaid leave from his full-time job as a lawyer with a multinational firm during the campaign. As a result, he said, “I probably spend as much or more time being mayor now than I did before.”

In the rest of the country, unpaid leaves are the norm in this campaign.

In Newfoundland, where Conception Bay South Mayor Ken McDonald is running for the Liberal party, the city approved his leave of absence without pay. The same thing happened in Nipigon, Ont., where Mayor Richard Harvey is the Tory candidate in the riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North, or in Alberta, where the Conservative hope in the Bow River riding is Martin Shields, the mayor of Brooks.

“We are doing it as an unpaid leave of absence, just like we would with a staff person,” said Brooks’ chief administrative officer, Alan Martens. “We keep him informed on what’s going on, but he hasn’t participated in any meetings or any decisions or anything like that.”

When former Montreal Liberal MP Denis Coderre decided to run to become mayor of Montreal in the spring of 2013, he gave up his seat in the House of Commons before launching his campaign.

Not so with Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown, who was criticized for hanging on to his federal seat in the House of Commons and continuing to collect his salary as the MP for Barrie while running for the leadership of the provincial party.

Brown’s defence? He asked parliamentary historians for precedent and found the 35 other MPs who had sought to lead provincial parties before him had kept their seat and salary while doing so.

An NDP spokesperson said a number of its candidates across the country hold elected office. Some have taken unpaid leaves of absence while others continue in those roles during the campaign.

One, Georgina Jolibois, the mayor of La Loche, Sask., was dealing with evacuations due to forest fires when the campaign began and hasn’t stepped back from her mayoral tasks, the party official said.