Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

Why So Many Mayors Are Quitting

From housing to wildfires, small-city issues are getting too big to handle

In November 2023, one of Quebec’s youngest mayors, then twenty-three-year-old Isabelle Lessard, stepped down mid-mandate. That summer, she’d dealt with intense wildfires that forced the evacuation of about half the town of Chapais, a northern community of about 1,500.

Mayors and municipal councillors across Canada are stepping down from their positions in record numbers

Intensive workloads, high expectations, low salaries, and harassment incidents contribute to the increase in resignations

Some municipalities have organized educational workshops and support resources for prospective local candidates

Any leader managing a crisis can expect scrutiny, but some of the criticism Lessard received, including for not dressing professionally enough, hit her hard. Tensions arose between her and her colleagues. The discovery that the blaze was probably the result of arson also took a toll on her. In a 2025 interview with Who still wants to do politics?, a Radio-Canada podcast, she said she developed a form of social anxiety. “I started fearing people and what they are capable of,” she told host Régis Labeaume, a former Quebec City mayor.

Lessard’s resignation is not an isolated case. In Quebec, some 1,115 mayors and municipal councillors elected in 2021 (about 14 percent of the total) didn’t complete their terms, a 50 percent jump from the previous four-year period. There are no overarching bodies that consistently track municipal resignations, but data from by-elections offer a fairly reliable picture.

Council positions filled in by-elections went up by over 30 percent in Alberta between 2021 and 2025. In Ontario’s 444 municipal governments, there have been more than 150 resignations from seats won in 2022 as of mid-March, double the number from 2018–22, according to data compiled by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, or AMO. The trend goes beyond Canada: in France, mayors caught between mounting expectations and budget pressures are stepping down in record numbers.

Decode the stories behind the headlines with The Walrus newsletter. Sign up for The Walrus newsletter and get trusted Canadian journalism straight in your inbox.

Mayors and city councillors are at the forefront of the challenges shaking up our communities, including........

© The Walrus