Democracy Begins at the End of Your Driveway

A Citizen’s Guide to Québec’s Municipal Elections

Your street was not plowed for two days. The recycling truck skipped your block. The condo tower next door rose faster than the park that was supposed to come with it. None of that was decided in Ottawa or Québec City. It was decided a few blocks from your house, by people whose names most voters couldn’t recall.

Municipal politics rarely makes the news, yet it governs quietly the texture of your daily life. It decides how your street sounds after a storm, how long it takes to cross an intersection, and whether you can still see the sun from your kitchen window. It is the layer of democracy that touches your front step.

Every four years, Québecers are asked to choose who will run their towns and cities. Most don’t bother. Indifference, however, comes with a cost. Because the people who shape your neighbourhood are not at Parliament Hill or the National Assembly, they are down the street arguing about zoning bylaws, stormwater management, and heritage preservation.

Municipal politics is where taxes meet pavement, bylaws meet neighbours, and democracy meets the snow shovel.

Where Politics Touches the Pavement

If your neighbourhood grows denser, traffic changes without warning, or water pressure drops, you are looking at municipal government. Not Ottawa’s. Not Québec City’s. Yours.

Local power is the most visible yet most ignored layer of governance. You can walk to it, call it, or bump into it at the grocery store. Yet fewer than half of Québecers vote in municipal elections, though their municipal levy funds the roads they drive on, the lights that guide them, and the firefighters who answer when it all goes wrong.

Ideology matters little here. Competence does.

When you vote locally, you are not voting for a party platform or a slogan. You are voting for someone who can read a budget, return a phone call, and tell the difference between maintenance and vision. City Hall is where democracy trades its ideals for invoices.

The Strange Calling of Municipal Politics

Municipal politics has none of the glamour of higher office. People run for local office because they want to repair what is broken, represent who is missing, or keep civic machinery honest. The best candidates carry equal parts frustration and hope. They do it for impact, not income; though a plaque on a wall never hurts.

The pay would not tempt an ambitious accountant. In the smallest towns, a mayor earns roughly what a skilled tradesman does. Councillors earn less and often hold other jobs. In medium cities, the work becomes nearly full-time, the compensation modestly better, and the complaints more frequent. In Montréal or Québec City, salaries approach those of senior professionals, but the hours make a mockery of the math.

Most councillors spend evenings at meetings, mornings on the phone, and weekends walking the streets they represent. They are reminded, sometimes hourly, that everyone is an expert in potholes. Those who remain in the job rarely do so for money. They stay because they can point to a park, a bylaw, or a repaired road and know they left something tangible behind.

To understand what ‘doing it for impact’ means, it helps to see what the job actually pays.

No One Does It for the Money

The reality of remuneration is less romantic.

In a small town, a mayor earns roughly $10,000 to $25,000 a year, while councillors receive between $5,000 and $12,000. In a mid-sized or large city, those numbers rise sharply. A mayor might make $115,000 to $220,000, and a councillor anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000, depending on population and structure.

Most municipalities include an expense allowance, often up to half the base salary. In small towns it is capped by provincial rules; in larger cities it generally reaches the maximum.

Elected officials can also earn stipends for serving on committees or regional boards - modest in small towns, a few thousand dollars more in larger ones.

Most mayors and councillors participate in the Régime de retraite des élus municipaux (RREM), which contributes 4.8 percent from the official and 16.2 percent from the municipality toward retirement.

Finally, some municipalities provide transition pay when an elected official leaves office. Smaller communities often have no such bylaw; in larger ones, it can amount to as much as a year’s salary.

Municipal pay, in other words, rarely rivals ambition. It compensates commitment.

Not Everyone Should Be Running City Hall

But not everyone who wants to fix City Hall should be trusted with the keys. A good municipal leader needs neither a doctorate nor a party machine. They need patience, literacy, and stamina.

The ones worth electing share a few traits. They understand money, because a city that cannot balance its budget cannot fill a pothole. They know how to negotiate, because governance is teamwork, not theatre. They listen, because politics that stops listening to citizens stops being politics at all. And they know where the city’s power ends, which is usually sooner than you think.

Integrity counts most. Mistakes are inevitable; concealment is optional.

Transparency is the habit that separates the merely ambitious from the trustworthy.

Local knowledge matters too. A councillor should know where the traffic bottlenecks form, which parks flood in spring, and which businesses hold a neighbourhood together. A representative who cannot picture the city in their mind cannot serve it well.

Ask any candidate to explain a city budget in plain language and to name one thing beyond municipal control. Cities do not run hospitals or regulate rents. A candidate who promises to is running for the wrong office.

A good candidate knows where their authority ends.

Why Cities Always Feel Broke

Municipal budgets are brutally simple. They must balance. Cities cannot run deficits, even during a blizzard. Most revenue comes from property taxes. The rest trickles in from user fees, parking fines, permits, and transfers from other governments. Borrowing is allowed only for infrastructure that lasts longer than the loan. Daily operations must live within their means.

Democracy, it turns out, keeps its receipts.

Every dollar goes into one of three categories: the operating budget that keeps the lights on, the capital budget that builds new things, and the reserves that prepare for what breaks. The problem is that cities cannot move money freely between these categories. A surplus in the road budget cannot fund a shortfall in public safety.

Costs always rise faster than revenues. Asphalt, wages, fuel, insurance: everything inflates except the patience of taxpayers. Property taxes remain the only major tool available. That is why even well-run cities often appear broke.

Every city wants lower taxes, better services, and less debt. Any two are possible. All three are not.

A city’s finances are not a miracle but a mirror. It reflects what citizens value enough to finance and what they quietly agree to postpone.

And the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. What a city builds today decides what it can afford tomorrow.

The Price of Progress

The illusion of abundance hides in the capital budget. When a city builds a new arena, library, or community centre, it borrows the money and repays it over decades. The borrowing is legal, but it creates a lasting obligation: The borrowing is legal, but it creates a lasting obligation: the cost of maintaining the asset. And maintenance begins immediately.

A building that costs eight million dollars to construct might consume another four hundred thousand a year in cleaning, heating, and insurance. Even when developers pay for new roads or parks, the city still inherits the road resurfacing, lighting, and mowing. Each new cul-de-sac becomes a line in the ledger forever. Infrastructure is a promise that keeps billing you.

Every ribbon cut conceals a bill that arrives long after the speeches.

Smart cities build only what the next generation can afford to keep. A reckless one builds until the paint peels faster than the tax base can grow. Those costs linger long after the ribbon is cut, which is why campaign promises deserve careful decoding.

The Fine Print of Local Democracy

Municipal campaigns overflow with ambition. Candidates promise to freeze taxes, expand services, and sometimes legislate matters that belong to the province. But in local politics, jurisdiction is destiny.

They can promise bike lanes, safer crosswalks, or faster permits, but not school curricula or electricity rates. When they say they will, they are either uninformed or hoping that you are.

At the local level, verbs tell the truth. When a candidate says the city will encourage, support, coordinate, or negotiate, they probably understand their limits. When they say the city will ban, freeze, or control, they probably don’t.

The difference between a promise and a petition is the level of government that signs the cheque.

If it sounds like something Ottawa or Québec City would handle, it probably is.

The Second Half of Democracy

Good citizenship does not end at the ballot box. It begins there.

Before voting, ask difficult questions. How will you pay for it? What will you cut to fund it? What happens when the grant fails to arrive? Which promises depend on someone else’s approval? A good candidate answers directly. A bad one speaks of efficiencies.

After election night, keep watching. Attend council meetings. Read the budget summaries. Email your councillor when the issue matters and follow up when it does not. Participate in consultations. When patience runs out, file an access-to-information request. The moment you stop paying attention, someone starts spending your money in ways you will not like.

Municipal integrity depends less on the virtue of officials than on the vigilance of residents.

Democracy at the local level is fragile not because it lacks power, but because it lacks witnesses.

Democracy Begins on Your Street

The next time your street lies buried under snow, your tax bill rises, or your park sprouts new swings, remember that none of it was accidental. That is City Hall at work.

You can complain. Or you can shape it.

Real power does not live in Ottawa or Québec City. It lives at the end of your driveway.

And the next time the plow grinds past your window in the dark, think of it as democracy on night shift: imperfect, noisy, indispensable. It will never be perfect, but it is ours.

Key Resources
Élections Québec • Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l’Habitation (MAMH) • Commission municipale du Québec (CMQ) • Retraite Québec – RREM