Benoît Labonté dropped out of Montreal's election campaign last October, just two weeks before the vote. (CBC)Montreal's former opposition leader who was forced to resign over allegations he met and accepted donations from a controversial construction entrepreneur has a new job teaching good governance in Burkina Faso.

Benoît Labonté, the former head of Vision Montreal and ex-mayor of the downtown Ville-Marie borough, will volunteer for two years in the West African country as part of a program run by CUSO-VSO, a non-profit development agency.

In October 2009, Labonté resigned and dropped out of Montreal's election campaign. He later admitted he had accepted money from Tony Accurso, the man at the centre of the scandal over a city water-metre contract.

Accurso's consortium received the contract, the highest ever awarded by Montreal, but it was plagued by irregularities and resulted in a damning report by the city auditor.

Labonté said last fall that taking donations from Accurso was unethical but not illegal. He maintained the practice is widespread in what he called the "Mafia-like system" of Montreal, and all the city's parties do it.

Labonté was to fly to the town of Kombisiri on Wednesday to work on cleaning up local politics and attracting more Burkinabe women to run for office.Benoît Labonté will be in Burkina Faso for two years, trying to clean up local municipal affairs and encouraging women to join politics. (CBC)

Danny Pelletier, the program director for CUSO-VSO, said Labonté is a perfect candidate for the job.

"The program hires people who have worked in municipal politics, who know the mechanisms, how an administration functions and the procedures involved," Pelletier said.

Quebec's elections authority is still investigating the financing for Labonté's campaign to become Vision Montreal's leader in 2008.

However, no charges have been laid and Labonté is free to leave the country.