Back to the image: last elections in Quebec, 2018. François Legault’s third at the head of the CAQ. Two defeats on the clock. A third and it’s the end of his career. It will become a vacuum in the political history of Quebec. A lifelong loser status. Heavy, very heavy!
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
He revered Lévesque and Parizeau. He wanted to be in their footsteps. Fulfillment was there.
So no waxing this time around. We get a kick out of it with the promises and then we’ll see for the details; the costs. What the people want, I want. The Quebec region is a must for partying? We steal an idea from the radios: the third link. Oh, the radios! This soil of great truths in Quebec.
François got involved, he won and he is taken with the accursed promise. The worst part is that he would have won it without her.
Since then, François has been playing Lego. One tube, two tubes. Six lanes, four lanes. Very east, less east. But Lego is not used to question the why, rather to build the how. Not knowing the need, but developing the solution. The reverse of common sense.
In spite of myself, I had a small role in this film, silent, because I didn’t know much more about it than the public.
Delicate, the case. They held them from below with the tram. I pushed the use of the verb to procrastinate. I played the clock, like in hockey. Yes, no, maybe, the baboune and what more. But barker as it is not possible, I confided to my relatives that I did not believe it, that the third link would not be made. I still think so.
François and his payroll will immolate themselves by swearing the contrary. Until claiming, without laughing, that they will dig it without federal money. Stop the picture! We are talking, yes, here of a voting pipeline for next October, as in the last elections, look no further.
Commissioning in 2032 it is claimed. I will be dead or on the threshold of a CHSLD. Business case in 2025? Not on the eve of other elections, right? And François may not even be there for a third term in 2026. Well, the heir will pick up the package. Greek, the gift.
And if he returns, around 2025-2026, he could hum a familiar tune on the theme of too high risks and costs, public finances and “I wanted to but I can’t”. A classic.
But not paying politically, this scenario. A simpler sequence will drag the strap.
The federal government will not put a kopeck in there, it is written in the sky. No fit with its programs, which invest in public transit. And we’re serious about program compliance in Ottawa.
In the federal capital, we also want to go there with its own environmental assessment on the project, and we have the right, it affects the river. From experience, this could last for years. Quebec will challenge the jurisdiction of this assessment, claiming another federal intrusion in Quebec affairs. Are you surprised? Ottawa will ask for studies, which will take forever to come, and so on.
Ottawa will not confirm funding, at least not in my lifetime.
In the offices of Grand Chief François in Quebec, we know too well that to get rid of the problem, it must be embodied in another big crisis against the federal government, which must become the piñata of the project. It has to be shit! Thus, we will relive another political “smog” for several semesters.
Unless Mr. Poilievre eventually becomes Prime Minister, and decides to contribute cryptocurrency…
It is very smart, the little political gimmick, but it will be expensive.
If the tramway project in Quebec has taken so long, it is because it was politically subject to the progress of the third link project.
No question that its construction will start before having satisfied the supporters of the new link. An additional cost of $100 million per year of delay for the tramway, according to the Auditor General of the City of Quebec. At least two years lost so far, an additional cost of easy 200 million already there. A minimum in my experience. Add to the total the 325 million granted for the planning work of the third link project office, and we exceed half a billion loonies.
The most distressing thing is that immemorial needs exist everywhere in Quebec to make road networks all in ruts and crevasses survive, and to start public transit projects that constantly stumble.
I would almost prefer to be beside my pumps with my assumptions, not to be right in this mind-blowing political soap opera.
Between us
I had read it when it came out in 2020, and I decided to read it again. Putin, the oligarchs, the conflict with Ukraine, etc. Even more topical than in 2020. Incredibly relevant.
Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West
Catherine Belton
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux