A special sitting of the MRC Pontiac council of mayors took place October 25 at the MRC office in Campbell's Bay to deal with a resolution concerning a proposed energy waste facility, a subject that CHIP News first reported on canada-info.ca in June 2023.

The resolution related to a business plan that the MRC had mandated the company Deloitte to produce about the  proposed energy from waste facility. The council passed an initial resolution at another special meeting on August 24, allocating $100,000 from their accumulated surplus for the project. However, it stipulated that council approve the plan submitted by Deloitte before moving forward.

The meeting began with a public question period, in which Remo Pasteris of Bristol and Christine Anderson of Thorne expressed their concerns with the proposed facility, primarily regarding the potential environmental impact as well as the liability should something go wrong. Representing the citizen group Friends of the Pontiac, they distributed an information sheet critical of the project to the mayors and Anderson spoke about the group's online petition against the project, which was started in August and has attracted just under 500 signatures so far. Pontiac Warden Jane Toller responded to both at length in this clip from the meeting, saying she took issue with some of the petition's wording and imagery.

The full recording of the public question period is available here (takes place between 4 min and 23 min).

Before the resolution could be read, Bryson Mayor Alain Gagnon requested that the meeting go in-camera, and a majority of the mayors voted in favour. In-camera sessions are not open to the public and are typically used when the mayors are discussing sensitive issues, such as human resources files. There was no explanation given, and the in-camera session lasted roughly an hour.

Once the public meeting resumed, the resolution was read. It approved the proposal submitted by Deloitte and grants the company a mandate to proceed with the business plan (full text of the proposal at the end of the article). The proposal lays out the timeline and scope of the project, noting also that Deloitte would be working with a subcontractor, the Danish multinational Ramboll, that would provide technical expertise. The estimated cost listed is $104,370, before taxes. After the vote in August, Toller stated that the MRC had budgeted $120,000 ($100,000 from the surplus and $20,000 previously budgeted) for the project to avoid a bidding process, as any contracts over $121,000 must go out to tender.

The resolution passed in a split vote exactly the same as the one in August, with six mayors voting against: Ed Walsh (Clarendon), Donald Gagnon (Chichester), Brent Orr (Bristol), Terry Lafleur (Otter Lake), Colleen Larivière (Litchfield) and Odette Godin (Waltham).

Larivière, one of the mayors who instigated the special sitting, explained her rationale after the meeting, stating that the approval of the proposal needed to be put to a vote. She also questioned whether other sources of funding should have been sought before dipping into the surplus.

Speaking with media after the meeting, Toller was questioned why they opted for  a single-source contract for such a large expense. She said that opting for single-source "wasn't intentional".

When asked whether she was concerned that a third of municipalities voted against the resolution, Toller said she wasn't.

"You can't have 100% support on a project like this, you just can't," she said. "We won't have 100% of people in the Pontiac behind it but we'll have a very healthy majority and as long as it's what the majority want I think we're going in the right direction."

The full proposal from Deloitte is available here: Energy from waste