(Quebec) Good for building roads, less for designing collective transport projects: this is the harsh observation that Minister Geneviève Guilbault makes about her ministry. The expertise, according to her, is at CDPQ Infra, a player at the heart of the transport agency project supposed to reduce delays and costs which will be presented at the beginning of next year.
“Will it be an agency, will we do it within the government? This is all that is being considered. But one thing is certain, we have to operate differently in public transport […] and concentrate our expertise. If I leave it as it is, as it is at the moment, I will leave the Ministry and it will be exactly the same issue,” asserts the main interested party, in an interview in her offices in Quebec.
In the month of AugustThe Press revealed that Quebec wanted to transfer part of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility to a new agency in order to better manage infrastructure projects. Prime Minister François Legault then clarified that the agency’s mandate would focus on public transportation projects first. Objective: reduce delays, cost overruns, and bring projects to fruition.
The arrival of this agency would ensure that in Montreal, the role of the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM), whose work has been criticized more than once by the government, would at the very least be reviewed.
The composition and mandate of this agency will be defined after the holidays, through a bill. But according to our information, the project is very advanced, it was even almost announced during the most recent electoral campaign, in 2022.
Mme Guilbault affirms that the case of the Quebec tramway, which attracted only one bidder for its rolling stock, “demonstrates that we have a lack of attractiveness on the market”. “It also shows the advantage that we would have in adopting more agile, more efficient delivery methods, with a new way of doing projects. This would help us achieve our production and cost objectives,” she says.
“Deep knowledge” sought
“At the Ministry, they have always built roads and they have the expertise in that,” continues Geneviève Guilbault, before adding shortly after that for public transport, “the fine knowledge to do this kind of project, in government , it is not sufficient at the moment.”
Even outside the government, “the number of experts in major public transport projects, there aren’t that many in Quebec,” she adds.
Apart from the STM, which delivered the metro in recent decades, who delivered a major public transport project in contemporary history? It’s CDPQ Infra.
Geneviève Guilbault
Between the lines, we easily understand that the role of the Fund would therefore be closely linked to the future agency that the government is preparing. Already, in addition to the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) in Montreal, the subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt has just received two major mandates in Quebec: to propose a scenario for a structuring transport system, the tramway project having been put on ice , and another for the third link.
The REM financial model “is not obliged to reproduce itself as is either, but it shows that there are other ways of doing things, so can we be open to different ways of achieving projects ? », asks Mme Guilbault. “There are various ways of carrying out projects and making financial arrangements. »
The ARTM, conversely, could lose weight, even if its role remains more one of planning and not of implementation. “It must also have advantages to have the ARTM”, slips Mme Guilbault. “There are a lot of criticisms, we hear them and we understand them. […] My objective, when I arrived, was not to abolish it, but at the same time, it must work,” she adds.
Ultimately, too many players around the table when it comes time to plan a project, “it can dilute the ability to have a vision and planning,” says the Minister of Transport unequivocally.
“Disillusionment” on the third link
Put on ice, then resurrected after the CAQ defeat in Jean-Talon, the project for a third Quebec-Lévis motorway link could have been better managed from a communication point of view, also mentions Geneviève Guilbault. “I have the impression that the brutality of the announcement in April came as a shock. And then, a kind of disillusionment. Afterwards, there was the defeat in Jean-Talon and the general speech where we feel that it disappointed a lot of people,” she said. According to her, the government currently has “enormous pressure to deliver to Quebec”, even if everyone is “very aware of the credibility deficit that we have at the moment because of these variations”.
The “root of the problem” in financing
They have barely been completed for 2024, but already, negotiations for financing public transport will have to resume to establish a five-year plan. “I’m betting that, things being what they are, even on the day when they are at 100% ridership, the transport companies will tell us that they need emergency help. So at what point do we withdraw from this concept of emergency and attack the root of the problem, which is the financing structure? », Comments the minister on this subject. The performance audits that Quebec has launched on the 10 transport companies will already make it possible to see how to “optimize expenses and revenues”, concludes Mme Guilbault.