GATINEAU VOTES
Pedneaud-Jobin re-elected
Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin didn’t exactly cruise to an easy victory Sunday night, but he won reelection as mayor of Gatineau by hanging onto an early lead while his four challengers split the opposition vote into too many little pieces.
Pedneaud-Jobin, 49, held on to a steady 45-per-cent share of the vote for much of the night as one poll after another reported in, while his closest challenger, Denis Tassé, remained stuck at about 30 per cent.
The other serious challenger, Sylvie Goneau, trailed in third place with less than 20 per cent. Two newcomers, Rémi Bergeron and Clément Bélanger, were far back in low single digits.
“In the mayor’s race, the Gatineau people have chosen our program,” Pedneaud-Jobin told a cheering crowd when he arrived at his victory party after 10 p.m.
“I am proud of the campaign that we ran,” a campaign that he said was propelled by love of the city, “a campaign that was positive and filled with ideas.”
He said the party was celebrating a victory “that is not as satisfying as it could have been.
“When we were elected in 2013, there were five of us. Along the way we became six. Tonight we are seven …. ”
There was a generally upbeat mood among the supporters who crowded the bar, cheering loudly whenever the screen showed a party member winning a council seat.
Liberal MP Greg Fergus showed up just before the mayor did, cheered every word and interspersed it all with chants of “Maxime! Maxime!”
Tassé, a former city councillor, had identified one central issue and stuck to it through the campaign. It was old-style politics: offering to pave people’s neighbourhood streets.
After trekking from door to door throughout the long campaign, he told an interviewer simply: “It’s what people want.”
“There were too many candidates, that’s obvious,” Tassé told Radio-Canada. “If there had been only two candidates, I think I would have won.” “I have no regrets.” Tassé said there would be no more elections for him.
“I had 12 wonderful years (on council) … it’s time for someone else to enjoy it.”
Goneau told Radio-Canada she was satisfied with the results.
“I did a strong campaign and had a wonderful reception from the voters,” she said. “The voters have spoken.” A recent poll by LeDroit and 104.7 Outaouais found that improvements were far and away the most important issue for voters, cited by 44 per cent of respondents.
Turnout in the election was unusually low, at 38.4 per cent of eligible voters.
Tassé was the only candidate to show growth in mid-campaign polls, apparently drawing votes from former council colleague Goneau, rather than taking them from Pedneaud-Jobin.
Pedneaud-Jobin made a long list of promises throughout the campaign — supporting his vision for development, parks, culture and more. For the moment, though, he’ll be plunged back into the management of old-fashioned issues that have pushed themselves to the forefront.
For example, Gatineau still has significant flooding and washout problems. It’s still grappling with the task of rebuilding following last May’s devastating floods.
Some of the mayor’s vision of the future may prove costly, which can be an issue in a city where taxes have been rising at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent.
Action Gatineau promises included:
■ Millions more for green space, including $5 million for Parc des Cèdres;
■ Adding $13.5 million to the $32 million already allocated for downtown renewal;
■ More money for snow-clearing;
■ And, of course, a new hockey rink to replace the Robert Guertin Arena. The city’s share is capped at $36.5 million, plus $25 million to line up streets with the new site. That was a decision taken by the previous council, but the incoming group will have to pay the bills.
■ Transit, in the long run, may dominate civic spending. In addition to the relatively new Rapibus system, the mayor is firmly in support of a plan to bring light rail transit across the river, linking with Ottawa’s LRT.
That won’t come soon, but Pedneaud-Jobin said there would never be a better time to obtain funding from senior levels of government, and the LRT link also has support from many councillors outside his Action Gatineau party, even though there is disagreement about where the link or links should be.
Paradoxically, the mayor said in an interview that he considered one of Gatineau’s greatest successes to be the recent joint bid with Ottawa to bring Amazon’s new headquarters to the capital.
Even if Amazon doesn’t come, it marked the first major occasion when Ottawa and Gatineau took on a major economic plan as a single integrated unit, he said.
There were too many candidates, that’s obvious. If there had been only two candidates, I think I would have won. I have no regrets.