In addition to disavowing the work accomplished with seriousness and rigor by the experts of the Quebec Tramway Project Office, the Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, insults her own ministry with the mandate it entrusted to the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ).
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Since when does the Ministry of Transport not have the expertise to find ways to improve mobility and fluidity in the Metropolitan Community of Quebec, particularly between the two shores?
However, this is one of the two objectives of the mandate given by the Minister of Transport to the CDPQ this week, which officially brings the third link back into the speech.
It’s rather astonishing, when we know that the mission of the Ministry of Transport consists precisely of “ensuring the sustainable mobility of people and goods through safe and accessible transport systems that contribute to the development of Quebec”, we can read on its website.
With 8,500 employees, managing roads, railways and more than 11,000 structures, the ministry has 1,200 engineers, land surveyors, public works technicians, analysts and so on.
If no one there has the expertise to find ways to improve mobility and fluidity between the two shores, then what are we waiting for to react and strengthen the skills of this ministry?
- Listen to the column by Karine Gagnon, political columnist at JDM and JDQ via QUB radio :
Wrong vehicle
Instead, we fall back on a financial arm like CDPQ Infra, whose objective is profitability, not the development of structuring transport networks.
We are betting on the wrong vehicle, making us believe in a future transport agency that should not weaken the MTQ. If we want to be serious and maintain accountability within the government, this ministry must indeed retain a planning role, agency or not.
François Legault was also opposed, in the past, to the creation of such a transport agency, believing that it was equivalent to removing responsibility from the government.
DIDIER DEBUSSCHERE/JOURNAL DE QUEBEC
A swagger
The six-month mandate given to the CDPQ also provides that it will have to identify a structuring transportation project to improve public transportation for Quebec City.
A reflection which, I repeat, had nevertheless been carried out extensively before leading to the Quebec tramway network. A project which, according to science, was in reality a hybrid project also including portions of the light rail system and metro.
Then, as my colleague revealed on November 10, the government even commissioned a study, in 2020, in which an expert who has since become a CDPQ administrator concluded that the tram was the best mode choice for Quebec.
But now, once again, the minister and the CAQ are showing off, dragging into their shenanigans the CDPQ, supposed to be an apolitical organization, and which thus finds itself plunged into the middle of a political controversy that reeks of low-level populism.
