While transport companies are facing significant budgetary difficulties, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, did not want to make a commitment on Monday concerning the financing of public transport. However, it announced the launch of consultations starting in March in order to find long-term solutions for transport companies.
During a speech delivered in Montreal on Monday at a benefit event for Trajectoire Québec, Geneviève Guilbault pointed out that the Legault government was already devoting significant sums to public transit infrastructure, but that a long-term plan had to be developed. term for transport companies struggling to regain pre-pandemic traffic.
Since the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) came to power four years ago, investments in public transit have increased by 88%, she said. “We already put a lot of money into it. How can we rationalize all that and rearrange everything so that everyone assumes their part and that we find a solution that will be sustainable? she asked.
To achieve this, the Minister will begin a consultation tour in March with transport companies, municipalities and bodies such as the Fédération québécoise des municipalités (FQM), the Union des municipalités du Québec (UMQ), the Communauté métropolitaine of Montreal (CMM). She would like that as of 2023, a five-year agreement can be concluded in this file.
The minister’s remarks were reminiscent of those of her predecessor, François Bonnardel, who, on the same platform in May 2022, had promised a financial framework for public transit that would be spread over five years, from 2023 to 2028. and this, although the department had already been conducting consultations for three years.
Registration tax
During a press scrum following her speech, Geneviève Guilbault showed little enthusiasm for the idea of a new registration tax. “In a context of inflation where the cost of living is rising and people have trouble getting there, adding a new tax — we at the CAQ are never keen on adding a new tax — it’s not is not our first choice. But I don’t want to decide for the chosen ones [municipaux] “, did she say.
Quebec had paid $1.7 billion to transport companies to compensate for the tariff losses linked to the pandemic, but the minister believes that we must get out of the model “financial aid a little piecemeal, urgently, at the last minute “.
The president of the Société de transports de Montréal (STM), Éric Alan Caldwell, stressed the need to find users lost during the pandemic. “We must have stable funding for public transit and there is momentum to be seized. The pandemic is over. People ask us for more and we have to be there,” he said.
However, the consultations announced by the Minister do not resolve the STM’s financial problem in the short term. Remember that last November, the STM unveiled a $1.7 billion budget with a shortfall of $78 million. And in January, it announced that it was ending its commitment to a maximum waiting time of 10 minutes during peak hours on eight of its bus routes.
Mr. Caldwell said that discussions were still taking place to find funding that would make it possible to complete the 2023 budget.
For her part, the director general of Trajectoire Québec, Sarah V. Doyon, especially noted that the minister intended to take action quickly. “We have already had the project on the financing of mobility, which was a first phase of consultations”, she recalled. “So here, we hope that this targeted consultation tour with public transit partners will lead to concrete results and new sources of funding. We are also hoping for announcements in the budget in March. »
Québec Solidaire believes that the Legault government is treading water in the public transit file and that it is the emergency assistance that transit companies need quickly. “It’s embarrassing: she [la ministre Guilbault] made a speech with great fanfare to announce something that has already been achieved by his government: the regional tour on mobility financing took place from 2019 to 2021”, commented MP Étienne Grandmont, responsible for solidarity in matters of transport.