A week after being elected mayor of Longueuil, on Montreal's South Shore, Catherine Fournier announced she would be cutting her salary by $65,000 per year.

Speaking on Tout le monde en parle, the 29-year-old mayor said reducing her salary is one of the first things she wants to do at the first city council meeting on November 23.

"We will lower it considerably [...] I think it's going to be about a $65,000 pay cut, so it's going to be around $185,000 [per year]," Fournier said.

Former Longueuil mayor Sylvie Parent had the highest salary of any mayor in the province, according to The Toronto Star, with an annual income of $250,000, which she increased during her term.

Fournier promised to reduce the salary set by her predecessor during the campaign period.

"I think everyone agrees that it doesn't look good for the mayor of Longueuil to earn a higher salary than the premier of Quebec," Fournier told TVA Nouvelles in April.

Fournier told Tout le monde en parle host Guy A. Lepage that the whole question of elected officials' salaries, in general, deserves more in-depth reflection.

"There are many mayors in Quebec who earn only a few thousand dollars per year, while it is a job that is considerable. There are also differences between levels of government. The federal government makes about double the salary of a Quebec MP. So, I think there is some cleaning up to be done in all this," she said.

The new mayor of Quebec City, Bruno Marchand, who was also a guest on the show, said he will receive a salary "in the same range" as Fournier. "If she had lowered it more, I would have done [that], but as she does not..." he said, laughing.

Fournier is one of four mayors of major cities in the Montreal region who have pledged to voluntarily lower their salaries.