Faced with new warnings from Public Health, Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette was not ready to defend the Quebec-Lévis tunnel project at all costs on Tuesday. “The whole third link project, we will talk about it when the project is tied up, it is not the case”, he declared in a press scrum.
The day before, the public health department of the Capitale-Nationale had invited the government to “avoid any project increasing road traffic” in the lower town of Quebec.
Air pollution kills 269 people prematurely each year in the capital, according to a report presented on Monday. Research by public health authorities blames the problem primarily on wood burning and automobile pollution.
Minister Charette says he is waiting for “the update” of the third link project, which his colleague Geneviève Guilbault must present “in the coming weeks”, before deciding. It will be remembered that in November 2021, the elected CAQ had maintained that the project would be carried out regardless of the opposition of “certain people”.
On Tuesday, Quebec Solidarity MNA Sol Zanetti urged the Minister of the Environment to immediately drop the project for a new Quebec-Lévis road link. “We must avoid any project that would increase road capacity in Quebec. […] That means we have to stop with the third link. Anything that adds automobiles to the downtown area is a no,” declared the MP for Jean-Lesage.
The Legault government had undertaken to present an update of the project at the beginning of the year, but the latter is still awaited.
During the question period, the bearer of the file, the Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, also had to answer questions from MP Zanetti on this subject. The latter asked him to choose between “the health of the people of Quebec” and the third link. “We all agree, it’s not acceptable for our children to live in environments that, let’s say, have great potential for improvement,” she replied. On the other hand, “it is not so much a question of reducing the number of vehicles on the roads as of increasing the share of electric cars”, she replied.