Breaking the promise of a third highway link was “a very difficult decision” to make, but “responsible” given the impact of teleworking on travel times between Quebec and Lévis, defended François Legault and Geneviève Guilbault on Wednesday.
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As revealed by our Parliamentary Office at the end of the day on Tuesday, the Legault government has finally resigned itself to abandoning the automobile component of its under-river tunnel project to make way for public transport.
In the corridors, several CAQ ministers from the greater Quebec City region had long faces. Minister Éric Caire, like his colleague from Lévis, Bernard Drainville, walked along the walls, ignoring questions from journalists.
“It is sure that personally, I have a disappointment”, confessed the CAQ member of Beauce-Nord, Luc Provençal.
The MP and Minister for Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, Martine Biron, assured that she heard the disappointment of those who wanted a highway tunnel. “I don’t have a lot to say today, because there are still threads to tie,” Ms.me Biron.
- Listen to the interview with Bruno Marchand, Mayor of Quebec on Yasmine Abdelfadel’s show via QUB-radio :
A source reported that the “discontent” is felt among the elected CAQists, but the president of the caucus of the government, the deputy Mario Laframboise, assured that his parliamentary group “is united, until proven otherwise”.
“It’s a file that is very emotional,” acknowledged the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon.
“We are first and foremost a pragmatic government,” briefly argued the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, who will present this morning the data that led her to back down on a flagship commitment made since ten years by his party.
The pandemic as an excuse
“You have to understand that the situation has changed a lot,” commented the Prime Minister, also speaking of a “difficult decision”.
“You will see it tomorrow in the data: the impacts of telework [sur les habitudes de déplacements] are huge. We thought it would come back to the way it was before the pandemic, after the end of the pandemic, but we see that there are significant changes in habits, among other things at rush hour,” said Mr. Legault.
- Listen to the interview with Marc-André Viau, Director of Government Relations at Équiterre on the Mario Dumont show via QUB-radio :
Hounded in the chamber by the interim Liberal leader, Marc Tanguay, the Prime Minister affirmed that “everyone understands that we had a pandemic, that the pandemic accelerated the development of teleworking”.
“It’s a classic: ‘it’s the fault of the pandemic’. […] We had enough of the pandemic excuse, ”replied Mr. Tanguay, recalling that the CAQ MP for La Peltrie, Éric Caire, said, again in June 2022, that he was ready to fight until to his “last drop of blood” for the motorway tunnel.
Speaking in turn, Mr.meGuilbault acknowledged that his party had committed, in the last election, as in the previous one, to building a motorway tunnel. But to ignore the pandemic’s impact on travel times would have been “willful blindness and scientific denial”, she said.
reactions
“When there is a change of context, we must be able to adapt […] and we must be responsible, because we manage the funds of Quebecers.” – Francois Legault, Prime Minister
“We had to make a very difficult decision in the third link file, but which in our opinion is a responsible decision.” – Geneviève Guilbault, Deputy Prime Minister
“What is the Prime Minister’s word worth?” – Marc Tanguay, interim leader of the PLQ