Opponents of the Quebec tramway take many shortcuts with the truth and support their cause on “hearsay”, argued the lawyer for the City of Quebec, Wednesday morning, on the third day of the trial brought by the Quebec Merit coalition. Better against the $3.9 billion project.
The apprehensions expressed by the witnesses, in particular with regard to the mental distress and the islands of heat which the tram will cause, are inadmissible, according to Mr.e Kathy Levesque. “It’s futurology,” said the lawyer.
Several claims made in court, she continued, flirt with defamation, especially when a witness associates politicians who promote the tramway with “rapists”.
The City’s lawyer questioned the impartiality and competence of the experts that the plaintiffs called before the court. The three have, sometimes on numerous occasions, taken a public position against the tramway. One of them also participated in videos made by Québec Mérite Mieux, the coalition that implores the superior court to interrupt the construction site.
“Getting there, it’s activism,” denounced the lawyer. She also pointed to a “total lack of rigor” on the part of the plaintiffs when they claim that a light rail would cost less per kilometer than the tram.
According to Québec Mérite Mieux and its lawyer, the process was “originally flawed” since the City would have chosen the tramway without consulting the population, only to then confront the population with a fait accompli. In his argument, Mr.e Guy Bertrand maintains that the tramway is a denial of democracy, since the former mayor Régis Labeaume campaigned in 2017, opposing the tramway, to make himself its greatest defender once elected.
“We tell the same story,” said M.e Lévesque, but my colleague does not start it in the same place. I propose to tell it from “once upon a time”. The defendant party then recalled that on many occasions, and from the first mandate of former mayor Régis Labeaume, the population was able to express itself about the structuring transport network.
The lawyer also rejected the allegations of “secrecy” maintained by the plaintiffs, recalling that the City is governed by the public adoption of resolutions during municipal councils. “There is nothing hidden, everything is public. »
She also criticized the plaintiffs for retaining only “the arguments which were his thesis” by ignoring several nuances to present an apocalyptic vision of the tramway. Me Kathy Lévesque notably castigated the vocabulary used by certain witnesses who denounced “totalitarian” practices or “pro tramway jihadists”. So many “offensive qualifiers and value judgments, according to the lawyer for the City, which do not constitute facts. »