The Legault government’s stubbornness in finding virtues in the third link that it does not have is becoming frankly uncomfortable. Everyone understands that a party seeks to be elected, but there should be limits to indecency. Especially when it is calculated in billions of dollars.
Thursday, the press conference during which the Prime Minister announced with great fanfare the resurrection of the project buried just as solemnly in April 2023 was a real insult to intelligence, which recalled this preposterous index of the number of bridges per million d inhabitants invented by the former Minister of Transport François Bonnardel.
Once again, we can only admire the aplomb of her successor, Geneviève Guilbault, who pleaded the need for a new bridge with the same shamelessness that allowed her last year to recognize without blushing the ineptitude of the arguments put forward by his government. Sitting next to him, his colleague Bernard Drainville beamed as heavily as he had decomposed.
François Legault most seriously welcomed the about-face which caused his party to plummet in the polls, to the extent that this “step back” made him aware of the serious risk for economic security of the region, which none of the countless studies carried out over the years had considered the least worrying.
The authors of the CDPQ Infra report surely knew they were giving it a handle, but perhaps they didn’t expect their report to be distorted to this extent. What they had only mentioned through hearsay, without making the slightest recommendation, became the central point.
According to Mme Guilbault, the slightest incident which would prohibit the passage of goods on the Pierre-Laporte bridge could in fact have “hellish and catastrophic” consequences. Fortunately, his government will protect us from this.
During the next federal elections, however, Prime Minister Legault will be caught in one of these difficult dilemmas of which Canadian federalism has the secret. Will he recommend that voters vote for the party that is ready to pay for the Quebec tramway, but not for the third link, or for the party that has the opposite position?
Pierre Poilievre was categorical: he would not put “one cent of federal money” into the tramway project, which he associates with the Trudeau government and the Bloc Québécois, who “are obsessed with the car war and ignore the people from the suburbs and regions.”
Mr Poilievre has said in the past that a Conservative government would not pay for cost overruns from “mismanaged projects by incompetent politicians”, but its enmity for woke who use public transportation seems to have gone up a notch. For the mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, seeing him become Prime Minister of Canada would be simply “catastrophic”.
Conversely, the Trudeau government has always said that its financial participation in a possible third link would be limited to the portion that would be reserved for public transportation. On the other hand, he was and apparently remains willing to assume 40% of the costs of the tram.
The federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, explained that a highway link would be incompatible with the fight against climate change. Even if more and more electric vehicles used it, this would still encourage urban sprawl.
If he were forced to choose between the tramway and a new bridge, François Legault would not hesitate for a second, but the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, assures that there is enough money provided for in the Quebec Infrastructure Plan to finance both. If this is the case, would it not be better to redirect part of it towards schools and hospitals, whose dilapidation often exceeds that of the Pierre-Laporte bridge?
Mr. Legault seemed to see a dirty trick by the Trudeau government in the suggestion of the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Jean-Yves Duclos, according to which it would be possible to lower the deck of the Quebec bridge to allow the truck traffic. We bet he won’t explore this solution, lest it prove possible.
Above all, the Prime Minister does not want any more new studies, which make the mistake of always arriving at the same unpleasant conclusions. Regardless of the cost or uselessness of the project, he decreed that a new bridge devoted exclusively to automobile traffic must connect the two banks, even though the Caisse calculated that its users would save no more than five minutes.
You really have to have the faith of a coal miner to believe in a promise that the Coalition Avenir Québec has repeated during each electoral campaign without ever keeping it and which cannot be achieved before the next elections. If she ever wins, we could well discover an insoluble technical problem, which Geneviève Guilbault will surely be able to explain with her usual sincerity.
P.-S. The author of this column will be taking a break during the summer. Back at the beginning of September.