The most chaotic road drama of recent years has just taken an even more confusing turn.
We won’t be comparing apples to oranges, or even bananas, here. Of all the fruits proposed by François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) since 2018, that of the “third link” between Quebec and Lévis is undoubtedly one of the most indigestible.
SCREENSHOT, PRESS
François Legault recently ventured into the corridors of the National Assembly with fruit, to illustrate that it is better to compare like for like in the Northvolt project.
But the Legault government persists in serving it in thin slices. The “public consultation” launched Tuesday on the project, already criticized from all sides, could be the bite that will cause self-intoxication.
It is important to retrace the course of events to understand the strangeness of the latest twist in the running.
Remember: last April, François Legault abandoned his highway tunnel project, the flagship promise of his 2018 and 2022 campaigns. The new studies were clear: ridership would be insufficient to justify a public investment of at least 10 billion of dollars1.
Six months later, 180 degree turn of the wheel. The Prime Minister resurrects the “third link” after the CAQ’s crushing defeat in the Jean-Talon by-election. Looking contrite, he promised to “consult the population” of Quebec on this project, despite studies which denied its usefulness.
(A resurrection that its ministers, even that of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, learned directly, with amazement.)
New twist, in November 2023. A double, that one.
The Legault government is axing the Quebec City tram project, deemed too expensive. Then he asked CDPQ Infra, a subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt, to analyze the feasibility of a vast structuring network in the capital, which would include public transport AND a “third link” to the South Shore.
The group had six months to complete this enormous (and controversial) mandate.
We will not repeat here the entire debate on the relevance of entrusting this file to CDPQ Infra. This remains a surprising decision, so let’s stick to the facts.
CDPQ Infra is now halfway through the six-month mandate granted to it by Quebec. Around 30 group employees met with more than 40 “stakeholders” in the capital – for example, transport companies, elected officials and environmental groups.
The institution is moving forward at high speed, as it did with the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) in Montreal.
The people at CDPQ Infra have started to do their own analyzes on potential routes and modes, whether rapid buses or light trains. The writing of the report will begin in April, and all the recommendations will be delivered to Quebec in June.
Halfway through this CDPQ Infra exercise, which he himself requested, the Legault government announced Tuesday… a major “public consultation on mobility in the Capitale-Nationale and Chaudière-Appalaches regions” !
Basically: Quebec wants to know if people want more public transportation, if they find the roads congested, if they take the bus, etc.
Several experts are already questioning the value of this online “consultation”, with its rather tenuous content, thank you. The opposition parties denounce a “facade of consultation”, with questions “directed towards the desired answers”2.
The scientific value of the exercise seems all the more limited since anyone can respond to the online survey several times, as I did five times on Tuesday.
“It shows a desire to consult, but we are doing it wrong,” Fanny Tremblay-Racicot, professor of municipal and regional administration at the National School of Public Administration (ENAP), told me.
She speaks frankly of a “denial of science” in this matter.
Quebec uses a very strange method to gauge the pulse of the population, in the very final stretch of a project freshly resurrected from the dead.
But that’s not all.
Many people fell out of their chairs at CDPQ Infra on Tuesday morning. They learned about the launch of this consultation… by reading an article from Sun !
Yes: they had not been informed of what was coming. But they will still have to take into account the results of the consultation and the SOM online survey commissioned by the Legault government.
This doesn’t sound very serious.
CDPQ Infra troops already have in their hands more than 600 documents and studies already being analyzed in the mobility file in Quebec.
The public consultation report will be added to the pile… but not on top.
We’ll talk about it again in June.
Read “Abandonment of the third motorway link: “The situation has changed a lot”, pleads Legault”
Read “Third link and tramway in Quebec: the government launches an online consultation”