The mayor of Quebec City is seeing red when it comes to the pale blue government. On Thursday, Bruno Marchand not only deplored the fact that the CAQ is making cities bear the “odious” burden of increasing the registration tax to fund public transit: he also accused François Legault’s troops of ambushing him over a possible gas tax in the capital’s metropolitan area.
On the one hand, the government is tightening its purse strings. On the other, it is denying cities the means to increase their revenues to finance public transport.
A speech that Bruno Marchand has difficulty digesting.
The metropolitan community of Quebec (CMQ), which extends from Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures in the west to Île d’Orléans and Côte-de-Beaupré in the east, passing through Lévis in the south and the northern crown, has been analyzing since the spring the relevance of asking the government to impose a tax of 3 cents per litre of fuel on its territory.
Although the mayor of Quebec assures that no formal request had landed on the desk of the Minister of Finance, the government gave him a firm refusal on Wednesday evening, in an exclusive first reported by The Quebec Journal.
This media leak, believes Bruno Marchand, was aimed at making him lose his footing.
“It’s to put spokes in my wheels, that’s clear,” decried the Quebec City elected official. He was outraged Thursday that the government had done things this way and believed that the latter had wanted to charge him alone a tax that 28 municipalities wanted to explore.
“When we say that it was Mayor Marchand, it’s false. When we say that it was done, it’s false. But when we say that mayors are looking for solutions with revenues that they don’t have, it’s true.”
The office of Finance Minister Éric Girard invokes “municipal fairness”, “respect for tax areas” and the concern not to “increase the tax burden on Quebecers” to justify its refusal.
A list that does not find favor in the eyes of the mayor.
“There is the Lower Saint Lawrence which is asking [le droit d’imposer une taxe sur l’essence]recalled Bruno Marchand. The Prime Minister had said: “we will study it, I am open”. I understand that if we say no to Quebec, we will say no to any new request.
He also accuses the government of offering “no solutions” to motorists and businesses who are wasting time and money in congestion.
“All the people, all the people who are going to tell you, who have told you or who are going to tell you again, in the coming days [et] weeks, that we should not tax, they have no solution to propose, denounced Bruno Marchand. They tell people who are caught in traffic, I will not charge you because it is not popular, because it takes courage, but I have no solution to propose to you. […] You’re going to continue to sit in your car, you’re going to continue to spend gas, you’re going to continue to have it cost you more.”
“Dad said: I won’t do it.”
This umpteenth spat between Bruno Marchand and the government culminates at a time when a municipal chorus is rising to denounce the underfunding of public transit. The mayor of Quebec City increased the registration tax reluctantly, he said Wednesday, and because the government offered him no other alternative.
Asked about funding for public transit on Wednesday, Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault closed the door on any injection of new money. “We don’t have any money,” she said before asserting that her government had already invested unprecedented amounts in public mobility.
The drying up of public funding is forcing municipalities to tax, according to Bruno Marchand. He believes that a levy on gasoline per litre in the Quebec City metropolitan area, similar to that in effect in Montreal and the Gaspé Peninsula, would have given cities some breathing space.
“We had to know if the government was going to tell us yes or no, because we have to ask dad for permission. Dad told us: ‘I won’t do it’, so as a municipality, we are in a bad situation. [Le gouvernement nous dit] I don’t have any money for you, but I won’t do it.”
The government’s refusal came on the same day that the capital announced a tripling of the registration tax dedicated to financing public transport.
The minister responsible for the National Capital, Jonatan Julien, quickly questioned the validity of this increase. “It’s a lot. Personally, I find it high.”
“The way they did it clearly illustrates their position, [celle] to say: “we won’t do it, we don’t have the money, and what’s more, if we can give the mayor of Quebec a leg up, we’ll do it.”
The deterioration in relations between Quebec and the government comes at a time when the fate of the tramway dear to the mayor of the capital rests in the hands of the CAQ troops. Bruno Marchand hopes that the latter will not make it a political issue.
“We’re not talking about right or left,” he insisted. “We’re talking about people caught in traffic.”