To calm the discontent aroused by the felling of hundreds of mature trees along the tramway, the mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, promises to plant 30,000 by 2028.
Each time a tree goes through the chainsaw, the administration undertakes to sow 20. “We want to ensure that the City does not lose its greenery,” said the mayor, Wednesday, during a second information session in as many days on the project.
In all, the construction of the tramway will lead to the sacrifice of 1584 trees along the 19.3 km of its route. Of the number, the project office certifies that it can quickly replace 417 and recalls that 324 others had to be cut down anyway to slow down the advance of the emerald ash borer.
The project office therefore calculates that 843 trees will have to disappear, a number that does not include the cuts planned in the three wooded areas crossed by the tramway. The administration guarantees that it will green an area equivalent to those deforested.
“We are not in a mercantile analysis, promises the mayor. We are in a protection analysis. »
The felling of trees caused a lot of ink to flow during the last election campaign. A good number of citizens found it hard to understand why a green project was carried out to the detriment of the century-old canopy of certain neighbourhoods.
“There are a few eggs to break to make this omelet,” concedes Bruno Marchand, who nevertheless believes that “the population will be angry with us, in 15 years, for not having seen beyond the end of our noses. »
Information campaign
For the new administration, the setbacks of the tramway with the population can be explained by a lack of information. To remedy this, it intends to include the population in the choices that will concern their neighborhood, in particular with regard to the development of public squares, the exterior design of the tramway and even, right down to the name that will designate it.
“We want citizens to be able to know what’s coming near them,” assures Maude Mercier Larouche, the project manager of a vast communication campaign dedicated to “putting citizens back at the heart of the project. »
Meetings with the population will increase at each stage of the work, in the street, in neighborhood councils or online, if the pandemic requires it.
“We have a communication team that has the knife in its teeth”, insists the communications manager within the project office, Nathalie Cloutier.
“It’s really the yin and yang of this project, believes the mayor. The more we know about it, the more we adhere to it. Without setting a deadline, Bruno Marchand intends to convince “as quickly as possible” one out of two citizens to join the tramway. Currently, the project only garners 41% support in Quebec.
Membership will also be essential to fulfill the promise of urban canopy development, since 75% of the land in Quebec is private. The City will personally solicit the owners concerned to encourage them to contribute to the planting efforts.
“There will be no economy of means in this case to talk to citizens,” says Ms. Mercier Larouche. As proof: the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale will even involve psychosocial workers to relieve “the stress” that the installation of the tramway could cause in some people.
Downside of oppositions
The opposition expressed reservations about the mayor’s promises of reforestation. “There is politics that speaks, believes the leader of the official opposition, Claude Villeneuve, about the 30,000 trees that the administration is committed to planting. It’s all well and good, promising figures, but science must also speak. »
The leader of the ecologist party Transition Québec, Jackie Smith, questions the choices made by the administration. The mayor has decided to restrict automobile traffic lanes on René-Lévesque Boulevard to save trees. She wonders why other roads aren’t shared like this. “The protection of trees is of growing concern to the population of Quebec, it should not be taken lightly,” she insists.
The second opposition, led by Eric-Ralph Mercier, welcomed the transparency deployed by the administration in place during this inventory. The head of Quebec 21 promises to remain the “lookout” for the project to prevent “captain tramway” heading straight for the “iceberg” of cost overruns and becoming “captain Titanic”.
“I do not want to be a prophet of doom for taxpayers, predicts Mr. Mercier about the costs, but it will be much higher” than the 3.9 billion currently projected.