The Commission for Access to Information (CAI) is not just for journalists. It is an important tool for citizens who feel wronged by their elected officials, their civil servants or their MRC and who want more transparency in the management of their public funds. We are lucky to have the CAI to temper the temerity of the lilliputian emperors.
It was only one day before the council meeting of September 13th, 2021 that citizens were able to read the agenda and learn that an offer to purchase a plot of land of 52,108 m2 had been made without their knowledge two months before the municipal elections. During this council meeting we had a lot of questions but we got very few answers because the mayor and the deputy mayor were absent. Illness and vacation.
Surprised and worried, we asked for the purchase offers which were refused to us by the person responsible for access for information requests, also Director General and member of the Quebec Bar. We therefore submitted a request for review to the CAI. It was during the first hearing in 2023 that we learned that in 2020 with a municipal budget of $1,633,861 this duo had made another offer to purchase land with an area equivalent to 74 football fields!
The parties involved in a hearing should always submit all the documents concerned and not only those that they were able to “trace” during the three months preceding the hearing. During the hearings, Bolton-ouest was represented by a consulting lawyer. The witness was also a lawyer. We are not. We won. West Bolton had 30 days to send us the documents. She did not meet the deadline. We had to write to the judge in order to enforce his judgment.
The Law must be reviewed in depth so as not to leave the field open to magicians who wish to obscure the information. We ask that directors general not be responsible for requests for access to information in order to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. And to ensure that a citizen does not receive an email on a Saturday for a meeting 2 days later following her request for information to obtain the purchase offers on said land…
Michelle Chartrand
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