Through the care of the CAQ government, the Quebec City tramway project is still bogged down. Already that Mayor Marchand had to manage a delicate file, caught between the infrastructure needs of the tramway, the protection of mature trees and the traffic on René-Lévesque, he was stabbed in the back by the defenders of motorists from the distant suburbs, to avoid not say regions (Portneuf, Lotbinière, etc.). As if the creation of a tramway could be done without reducing or slowing down automobile traffic in the heart of the city. Which, we understand, is nonsense, an aporia, not to say an absurdity, because the tram is a mode of public transport. So here is the project wedged between the worshipers of the canopy and the thuriferaires of the automobile.
Although the partisans of a structuring mode of public transport are shocked by this new tripped up given by the CAQ to the tramway, they should not be surprised. Because the CAQ ministers never really believed in it. And why is this so? Because these good people have their eyes riveted on the electoral compass, in this file as in all the others, as the caquist management of the pandemic has shown us (see the absurdity of the curfew). And that several ridings, especially in the suburbs, are mostly populated by all-drivers, who only dream of highways and parking lots.
To tax this government with electoralism is like saying that the water is wet. In fact, this government only makes decisions on the basis of polls, which it blithely uses and abuses, at taxpayers’ expense of course. In reality, the CAQ government, like those led by Maurice Duplessis, whom its leader admires, is only a facade behind which there is no substance, except an electoral machine.
Look no further, the CAQ is just a cardboard decoration, a mechanism to garner votes. It has no real program, does not propose any social project and has no societal or environmental awareness. All the measures passed by this government were first tested with citizens by survey. And those that the party promises, including the most eccentric like the third link, are defended tooth and nail by the Prime Minister, whose last word is that the citizens want it or that they “like it”. And, as the character of Duplessis said in the eponymous series, “they are the ones who vote”. This is also the reason why the government is so keen to fulfill its electoral promises, except of course the reform of the voting system, postponed indefinitely.
The goal of this government is not to serve citizens or put forward a social project, but to serve the electoral needs of the CAQ. And the tram project risks bearing the brunt of this management without purpose or scope. Sad !