After Bernard Drainville, it is our Prime Minister who has irritable tunnel syndrome.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“The people of Montreal must stop looking down on the people of Quebec and then Lévis,” said François Legault in an interview Sunday evening on Radio-Canada.
Seriously ?
He was thus taking up a fashionable idea among supporters of this “third link”: it is a purely local issue, which does not concern the people of Montreal.
To question the relevance of the project would be to show contempt for the national capital.
No, but do we interfere with your dozens of bridges in Montreal?
I don’t know if it appeals to the people of Saint-Romuald, but the maneuver is frankly cheesy. There is no Montreal-Quebec conflict. And the opposition or criticism of this third link, far from being essentially Montreal, has nothing to do with contempt or regional rivalries.
First, the sheer scale of the project makes it a national issue. We’re talking about an infrastructure of at least $6.5 billion in its latest version — so let’s count $10 billion, or rather 13, in light of the history of government evaluations.
That would therefore make it the most important infrastructure project in a generation in Quebec. In itself, that is reason enough to ask questions, whether you are from Pointe-aux-Trembles or Pointe-aux-Lièvres.
Second, the very nature of the project, essentially an underground highway with intermittent public transport, is also a legitimate topic of “national” discussion. What kind of development do we want in Quebec? In the region of Quebec, already very “spread out”, what will be the effect?
It is discussed !
The problem is that this government does not want to discuss it. Candidate Bernard Drainville is now to the tunnel what Dogmatix is to trees: he growls as soon as you approach the subject.
“Do you have any studies, Mr. Drainville?”
– The expectation that we live, it does not need to be studied, replied the former radio host to journalists. You just need to be in your car, in traffic, and the damn wait is getting longer and longer. »
It was the same Drainville who, when he was a PQ, replied to Gérard Bouchard that he “didn’t need studies” on the question of religious symbols, because he spoke “to people” in the street .
OK.
But from the Prime Minister, I expect better, more.
We won’t, apparently.
“Are you going to show us the studies, Mr. Legault? »
These studies exist, but he refuses to reveal them. They are outdated, he says. You have to take into account teleworking, etc.
Let us ignore the fact that the government refuses to make public its studies on such an important subject. There is no industrial secret or threat to Hydro-Québec’s profits here. We are talking about studies on mobility, waiting times, citizens’ needs… In the name of what do such documents, paid for by public funds, remain secret?
Could it be that the numbers are bad? Selective documentary retention crosses all governments, as you know.
But wait a bit. If these studies are no longer up to date, are you telling us that a project based on outdated studies is fiercely defended?
Let’s go back to the sad “Montreal-Quebec” argument.
I point out that former mayor Régis Labeaume was against it. The current mayor, Bruno Marchand, is clearly opposed to the project, which goes against his entire vision of urban development. He is content for the moment to ask for studies, the burden being on the shoulders of the government. Without success.
The population of Quebec? It depends who you ask. A Léger poll published in June indicates that 75% of the people of Lévis and 59% of the people of Quebec are in favor of it. A year earlier, only 47% of people in the region supported the older, more ambitious version of the project. There is no unanimity.
Many in the region are raising their voices to denounce the project, and it is not because they are looking down on their fellow citizens.
So let go with Montreal-Quebec! as candidate Drainville would say.
If this tunnel is so obviously necessary, it should be demonstrated other than by going to fulminate in the tank of the candidate Drainville, sympathetic laboratory, but not yet accredited. Let’s get the data, the field studies, the feasibility, the geology, etc.
In the meantime, it’s not that we look down, I swear. It’s that the arguments are so low, you have to bend over, and again, you see almost nothing.