In Quebec, the tramway is heating up people’s minds to the point of burning a few heads. Insults and the finger of honor rang out even before the adoption of the agenda, Thursday evening, during a public meeting on the project.
The police even had to expel a fifty-year-old whose opposition to the tram was visibly major, since it was precisely with this finger that he decided to express it to an elected representative of the City.
“It’s not a democracy, you are trash, an accomplice!” yelled the man at Councilor Maude Mercier Larouche, responsible for promoting the tram as part of these public information sessions.
The individual was not at his first outburst. Security had escorted him out of a city council meeting a few weeks ago, again for hurling insults at elected officials. The man is particularly fierce towards councilor Mercier Larouche, whom he attacks frequently and without politeness on social networks. His feat of arms on Thursday earned him two statements of offense, one for insult, another for disorder.
The spark plug of the unsightly episode: the forthcoming adoption of a municipal by-law which should allow the City, in its current form, to derogate from certain constraints to facilitate the deployment of the tramway. Under the regulations, she will not have to apply for a permit to move a staircase, redevelop a parking lot or relocate a sign, for example, provided that “the work is[ient] essential to the installation of the tram”.
Thursday’s meeting was to allow the population to express their views on the regulations. However, it began with the presentation of a slide show explaining the project. It was too much for the sixty citizens gathered at the old town hall of Sainte-Foy.
“Propaganda!” shouted some in the audience. A former municipal councilor of Quebec, Anne Guérette, who has become a notorious and virulent opponent of the tramway, led the revolt so that the debate on the by-law took precedence over the information session.
After 15 minutes, the assembly acceded to his request. After a stormy start to the evening, the exchanges began. Citizens marched at the microphone expressing an impression that seemed generalized: everything is played in the tram and the population who opposes it has no voice in the matter.
Presto and social networks
“The population is like a presto,” underlines Catherine Trudelle, professor in the geography department of UQAM who has been analyzing for 20 years the conflicts that arise in the wake of major urban planning projects. “If some citizens have the impression that the information presented is truncated or insufficient, they will develop mistrust. The important thing is the quality, the veracity and the quantity of information transmitted.”
The City, however, gives the right time with regard to the tramway, according to Ms. Trudelle, a former citizen of Quebec. Anyone interested can consult the tens of thousands of pages of analyzes and studies available on the City Hall portal free of charge. A seven-hour plenary committee also allowed all elected officials to question those responsible for the project two months ago. Consultation exercises have multiplied over the past few months so that the population can express their views on how they would like to see the tramway integrate into their neighbourhood.
However, the best information never prevents protest, underlines the UQAM professor. “You have to understand that citizens also have their say and that they are ideally entitled to more than two minutes at the microphone to do so. Cities come and act on the territory and people have to deal with that for decades and decades. It is normal for some to worry about the impact on their living environment.”
The sacrifices imposed on certain citizens to make way for the tram came in several variants on Thursday evening. Some denounced the felling of trees that make up the charm of their neighborhood. Others, the loss of architectural elements “that they pamper like crazy” for a long time.
“You come to us, you amputate everything, was indignant the owner of a century-old house whose imposing staircase will have to be scrapped. You are doing violence to my health. You can’t know what havoc you are doing. You are scraping my life with your project.”
“You will never have, recalls Catherine Trudelle, a project that elicits the unanimous support of 100% of the population. There will always be people who will refuse changes in their environment and that’s normal. It’s hard for someone to see a city change their land, their street or their neighborhood. People say to themselves: “why me and not the others?”
She notes, however, that the advent of social networks has made calm exchanges around major urban planning projects more difficult. People consume information on the internet, it is often misleading and yet they consider it “gospel”.
Thursday evening, the public assembly finally gave way to normal exchanges between citizens and their elected officials. A man dissatisfied with having to give the floor to a counselor denounced a hint of “communism”: a kindness, almost, alongside the gratuitous and misogynistic insults that an Internet user intended for him with frenzy, during the evening, in the chat of the ‘Assembly…