The Premier of Quebec, François Legault, has in his possession studies on the relevance of a third highway link between Quebec and Lévis. He refuses to make them public. Each time he is asked the question, his answer is more or less the same: the studies were carried out before the pandemic, the new reality of telework changes the game, their content must be updated.
Which will not be done — of course — before the end of the election campaign.
This response is unacceptable. Why ? Because the CAQ committed to supporting the third link project during the 2018 election campaign. The Prime Minister promoted a tunnel under the St. Lawrence during his entire mandate. Studies have been carried out on the relevance and feasibility of the project. Studies that the CAQ has never made public, while its advocacy continues.
The public has the right to know whether in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and again in 2022, the Prime Minister sold the public a project that the experts disapprove of. If the CAQ made an unnecessary, impractical, too expensive, useless or ill-conceived third link one of its government’s priorities before the pandemic, the studies on the question carried out before the pandemic are of urgent public interest. . Now.
Not after Election Day. Not after new post-pandemic studies become available. Now.
Last week, Bernard Drainville, candidate for the CAQ in Lévis, launched a “let go of me with the GHGs! in defense of the third link. It’s time to reply to Mr. Drainville and his leader: release us with the secretiveness! These studies, this expertise, they were financed with public funds; they therefore belong to the public.
During the special Five leaders, one election of Radio-Canada, last Sunday, François Legault said that the opposition to the third link comes from “Montrealers” who “look down on” the people of Quebec and Lévis. It would be better, however, that the Prime Minister let go of us with Montreal as well. After all, Bruno Marchand, the mayor of Quebec, also believes that the studies on the project should be made public. Could it be that with his stubbornness, the Prime Minister looks down on the mayor of Quebec?
Does he think that the people of Quebec and Lévis don’t find scientific expertise important? Does he fear that the local population will not be able to intelligently read a study written in 2019? Refusing to make public as and when the information that the government has on a major project for a region, is this not disrespecting its population and, more broadly, the imperative of transparency in a democracy?
To say that Montrealers look down on the people of Quebec and Lévis is demagoguery. And demagoguery is necessarily an intellectual shortcut that strikes a very real chord.
As a child and teenager in Lévis, and during the three years that I spent in Quebec itself, I don’t know how many times I heard that one. I had never spent time in Montreal, but I already knew that there were people there, especially many in the mythical Plateau-Mont-Royal, who looked down on us. The urban legend was certainly conveyed by local radio stations. And certain media realities could then be interpreted as evidence. Why is the universe of Quebec soap operas necessarily that of Montreal? Why, at Newscast, do journalists try to speak with the accent of the private colleges of Outremont? Is there a problem with our living environments? Our language ?
I have been on the other side of the mirror long enough to know that regional rivalries and classism do exist in Quebec, but that we are dealing with much more complex phenomena than demagogue declarations — yes, demagogues — that we hear most often on the subject.
A provincial election, normally, should not be the occasion to discuss the subject. One would like to believe that people who aspire to the role of Prime Minister are notably driven by an attachment and respect for all Quebecers. And that uniting the people behind them is an important goal.
We would like to believe it, but we should not be naive either. Our electoral system (which the CAQ refused to reform) leads the electoral campaigns to target with their messages mainly the people of the region of Quebec and the suburbs of 450. Both with its speech and its legislative policy, the CAQ has done a lot , in four years, to exacerbate the division between Montreal and “the regions” in the collective imagination. We don’t expect political training to stop on such a good path.
What is interesting this week is that François Legault is waving the scarecrow of Montrealers who look down on the people of the greater Quebec City region “from above”, basically, to better look down on the population of this same region. If local voices see through his game and denounce him, the strategy may fail.