of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. In 2021, the median age of Lac-Mégantic was 53.6 and 87% of the population were 15 years of age and over. Residents whose sole native language was French numbered 5,705 (98%), while those with only English as their first language were 60 (1%), 40 people (0.7%) had another language as their mother tongue and 20 people (0.3%) counted both French and English as their first language. Government Municipal The mayor of Lac-Mégantic is Jean-Guy Cloutier, who was elected in a special election in 2015 to succeed retiring mayor Colette Roy-Laroche. Due to the rail disaster, the provincial government of Quebec had delayed the municipal election in Lac-Mégantic from its regular timing concurrent with the 2013 municipal elections; the next election will, however, be held normally in 2017. Roy-Laroche, a former schoolmaster, was nicknamed "the granite lady" () for her handling of the derailment and its aftermath. The town council is made up of councillors representing six electoral districts. Federal and provincial Provincially, Lac-Mégantic is located in the provincial electoral district of Mégantic. It is represented by Ghislain Bolduc of the Quebec Liberal Party. Federally, Lac-Mégantic is part of the federal riding of Mégantic—L'Érable. It is represented by Luc Berthold of the Conservative Party of Canada. Economy Although the railway has declined in recent decades, Lac-Mégantic remains an important centre of agriculture, logging, lumber and pulp and paper. Sonae Indústria's local subsidiary, Tafisa Canada, operates a particleboard factory in the town. Other major local employers include furniture manufacturer Bestar and forestry company Industries Manufacturières Mégantic, part of Masonite International. Granite from the region was incorporated into the National September 11 Memorial in New York City. Various other factories existed in the past, including a paper-printing plant; a sash-and-door factory; saw mills; and a butter, cheese, and cheese box factory. The region's economy in its early days was propelled by the logging industry due to the vast swaths of old-growth forests. Many related industries operated in the region, including lumber (Nantais Mill), the furniture industry and the pulp and paper industry. Lake Mégantic was used for log floating, with a steamboat used to tow the logs to the sawmill. The first steamboat in the region, named the "Lena", was built by