Members of the Commission de la représentation électorale and biographical notes

The Commission de la représentation électorale (CRE) is made up of Mr. Jacques Drouin, Chief Electoral Officer, and two commissioners appointed by the National Assembly from among qualified electors.

Appointed in the month of April 2005, Mr. Serge Courville, full professor at Université Laval, performs the duties of commissioner. Mr. Bruno Jean, professor of Sociology and Regional Development at the University of Québec, Rimouski, will carry out the work of a Commissioner after his appointment in October 2011.

Biographical notes

• Mr. Jacques Drouin, Chairman
• Mr. Serge Courville, Commissioner
• Mr. Bruno Jean, Commissioner

Jacques Drouin, Chief electoral officer and Chairman of the Commission de la représentation électorale

Unanimously designated by the Members of the Québec National Assembly, Mr. Drouin has held the positions of Chief Electoral Officer of Québec and Chairman of the Commission de la représentation électorale since January 1, 2011. He was named General Secretary of the Network during the Constituent Assembly held in Québec city between August 22 and 24, 2011.

Mr. Drouin has been with Québec's public service since 1978. A graduate of Université Laval with a Bachelor's Degree in Geography, he first worked for the Commission permanente de la réforme des districts électoraux, an institution that would become the Commission de la représentation électorale in 1979. He participated in the drawing up of Québec's electoral map which would be used in the 1981 general election. It should be recalled that this institution merged with that of the Chief Electoral Officer in 1983.

After a short period spent at the Bureau de la statistique du Québec, where he was in charge of the Québec territories file, he returned to the Directeur général des élections du Québec to provide his expertise in the preparation of a draft electoral map of Québec as part of the proposal to reform the voting procedure published in 1984 by the Commission de la représentation électorale.

Between 1985 and 1991, he held various positions with the Directeur général des élections du Québec including those of coordinator for the 1985 general election, person in charge of the secretariat of the assistant to the Chief Electoral Officer for political financing, and head of the Municipal Polling Service.

In 1991, he became secretary general of the Directeur général des élections du Québec, a position that he would hold until 1996. Aside from his responsibilities as secretary general, he directed the advisability and feasibility study on the permanent list of electors and supervised the working group in charge of the development and implementation of this permanent list. The Directeur général des élections du Québec won the Prix d’excellence de la fonction publique (Public service award of excellence) in 1999 for the completion of this mandate.

From 1996 until his recent appointment, Mr. Drouin served as assistant to the Directeur général des élections du Québec and director of electoral operations. In this capacity, he ensured the preparation, organization and holding of four general elections and close to 40 by-elections in Québec. In addition, he assumed direct responsibility for 125 returning officers as well as for their 125 assistants. He was also in charge of the Provincial Polling Service, the Municipal and School Polling Service, and the Electoral Territories and Permanent List of Electors Management Service. Finally, he was responsible for the work of the Commission permanente de révision (Permanent board of revisors).

A well-known specialist in the electoral field, Mr. Drouin has participated in many electoral missions to foreign countries, notably with the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OEA), and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). These missions have taken place in Haiti, Benin, Gabon, Chad, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, Madagascar, Togo, Catalonia, France and Morocco.  The purposes of these missions were election observation, training observers or electoral staff as well as the evaluation of capacities and needs, and cooperation with the electoral authorities of the nations visited.

Serge Courville, Commissioner

Mr. Courville holds a Ph.D. in Geography from Université de Montréal (1979), where he also acquired a background in education and school administration. A retired professor from Université Laval, he taught at the Geography Department from 1981 to 2004, where he founded the Laboratoire de géographie historique, which subsequently became part of the Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises. Prior to that, Mr. Courville had been in the employ of the Montréal School Board (1964-1979) and the Government of Québec, with the Ministère de l'Environnement (1979-1981).

A specialist in historical geography, Mr. Courville was the founding director of the Géographie historique collection and the founding co-director of the Atlas historique du Québec collection at Presses de l'Université Laval. He has authored or co-authored some twenty books and more than fifty articles on the historical geography of Québec, several of which have won acclaim from the scientific community: the Guy-Frégault Prize and the Lionel Groulx/Les Coopérants Prize of the Institut d'Histoire de l'Amérique française, the Jean-Charles Falardeau Prize of the Social Science Federation of Canada, the Alf Heggoy Prize of the French Colonial Historical Society, and three awards that he shares with his colleagues/collaborators of the Atlas historique du Québec: the Prix spécial du Jury of the Association québécoise de cartographie (Carto-Québec), the Lionel Groulx/Bell Québec Prize of the Institut d'Histoire de l'Amérique française, and the Clio-Québec Prize of the Canadian Historical Association.

Elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1992 and to the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1997, Mr. Courville is also the recipient of a research scholarship from the British Academy (1997) and a Killam Scholarship from the Canada Council for the Arts (2000-2001), which he devoted to the study of views on colonization in the 19th century. In addition, he has worked as a consultant for the National Geographic Society and Microsoft Corp. and has sat on the Boards of Directors of Fonds FCAR (1988-1991), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (1998-2001), and Télé-Université (1997-2003).

Bruno Jean, Commissaire

Mr Jean has been a professor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski since 1977. For many years, he has carried out academic work such as directing the Sociology module, GRIDEQ (Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire en développement régional de l'Est du Québec) and a Doctorate in regional development. Originally from the Lower Saint Lawrence region (RCM des Basques), he studied (undergraduate and postgraduate) at Université Laval.

Completing a doctorate in sociology (social sciences development) from the École des Hautes Études en sciences sociales in Paris in 1982, he was visiting professor at the Université de Nantes (1988) and at the Département Systèmes agraires et développement of the INRA (French national Institute for Agricultural Research) in 1995. He received the prestigious Award for Excellence in Research from the Université du Québec in 1991. His expertise is sought by various organizations; he has been appointed a member of the Comité national des partenaires de la ruralité by the Québec government as part of implementing the national rural development policy where he contributed to the definition. He is also a member of the Rural Issues Advisory Committee set up by Mr. Andy Mitchell, then Secretary of State for Rural Development in the federal government. He has also been appointed to the Académie d'agriculture de France as a foreign member.

The lectures of the holder of the Canada Research Chair in rural development focus on rural development, the environment, economic and social development, third-world development, and local and regional development. His research covers different rural development dimensions ranging from changes to family farming to the dynamics of local development in the rural environment. In addition to this work which has helped to expand the field of rural studies in Québec, he has been involved in many scientific cooperation programs in a variety of countries. He has been published many times in the field of regional development and rural studies. His most recent book is Territoires d'avenir: Pour une sociologie de la ruralité (For a sociology of rural life was a milestone in the recognition of rural life as an essential part of the socio-economic reality of modern advanced societies).