Quebec is slowly recovering from one of the greatest crises we have ever known. Unsurprisingly, economic recovery will be on the menu for our governments and infrastructure spending will be powerful levers for the recovery. In Quebec, more than $77 billion in investment is planned for public infrastructure over the next five years. Faced with such ambitions, Quebec government engineers are skeptical. How are we going to adequately regulate these public contracts when nothing has changed since the Charbonneau commission?
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
The weakening of the government’s internal engineering expertise is denounced every year by all credible experts, including the Auditor General. The disturbing precariousness of our public infrastructures, which we know today, is symptomatic of the secondary role of the government engineer in the decision-making process. This sad situation is the legacy of a political orientation that was established at the beginning of the 2000s and which is based on disproportionate subcontracting. Today, the government engineer’s inability to influence decisions and adequately oversee infrastructure work is constantly demonstrated. Faced with the unacceptable nature of their daily lives, the government engineers decided to contribute to the solution by writing a brief that outlines the means to correct the systemic problems of the Quebec Ministry of Transport and the Quebec government.
In particular, we propose to provide the necessary training to rebuild our expertise. We propose to equip government engineers with the same software and work tools as those commonly used by the private sector. Above all, it is imperative to improve our remuneration.
It’s simple: the government engineer is the lowest paid civil engineer in Quebec, in both the private and public sectors. With such conditions, how to attract and retain expertise? What is the government’s vision?
We can understand why previous governments could take advantage of engineers without experience, without technological tools, and therefore docile. But the CAQ government should not endorse this situation. He has the opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past. We ask loud and clear that before committing Quebec to the path of record spending on contractors and engineering consulting firms, take a tiny part of these budgets to restore the expertise of those who will control and oversee your infrastructure investments. This is nothing but acting responsibly.