Citizens are mobilizing to demand the resignation of the minister and deputy for La Peltrie Éric Caire because of the retreat of the government of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) on the third link.
The petition recalls that the elected representative of the Quebec region had put his seat at stake on the question of the link between Quebec and Lévis. It was launched Thursday by Jim Légaré who supported Éric Duhaime’s Conservative Party in the previous election.
“Following the recent announcement by the CAQ government to put an end to the third link project, a central promise during the last two provincial elections, I ask Mr. Caire to resign from his post if he has the slightest respect for the citizens who have placed their trust in it,” reads the text of the petition.
“It is time to hold our elected officials accountable and to ask them to be responsible for their electoral promises, on which they were elected,” we add. As of this writing, the petition has garnered over 2,000 signatures.
Asked Thursday after his government backed down, Mr. Caire, who is Minister of Cybersecurity and Digital, said he had no intention of resigning. Instead, he wants to meet with his constituents to explain the decision to them.
The CAQ is now proposing to make a tunnel between Quebec and Lévis which would be dedicated solely to public transit. The Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, argues that the pandemic and teleworking have reduced traffic on the bridges between Quebec and Lévis. Result: a motorway link would no longer be justified.
“If there is a decline in the CAQ, I resign,” said Éric Caire in 2017 about the third link. In 2022, he said he would fight to his “last drop of blood” for the project.
The Journal of Quebec reported this week that the current minister had proposed that Quebec adopt a procedure for recalling elected officials. He made this proposal when he was a candidate for the leadership of the Action Démocratique du Québec in 2009.
In 2011, he introduced a bill that would have allowed citizens of a constituency to impeach an elected official with a petition obtaining a majority of signatures.
This is what prompted Mr. Légaré to act. “Having lived in La Peltrie myself for several years, I thought it was good to take the plunge and start the petition myself,” he wrote to The Canadian Press.