(Quebec) Prime Minister François Legault says he is studying the idea of financing at “zero cost” for taxpayers the baseball stadium project of Stephen Bronfman’s group as he would for any economic project, including the arrival of a professional pétanque team.
“If tomorrow, there is a project for a professional pétanque team that has significant economic benefits, we will study it to see if it improves the revenues of the Quebec government to better fund education, health, environment, ”declared Mr. Legault during another question period during which the parliamentary leader of Quebec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, followed him on the subject of the project of Mr. Bronfman of a billion dollars .
The Prime Minister indicated that the project is studied like the others: the government weighs the potential tax benefits and the financial assistance requested before making a decision. He thus affirmed that the project of Mr. Bronfman, for which this one asks hundreds of millions from the government, must, in addition to obtaining the support of the mayoress Valérie Plante, “to be at zero cost, therefore nothing. cost taxpayers ”.
For Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, “a stadium at zero cost, it sounds like a third carbon neutral link, it’s not serious”. He considers that the promises of benefits from professional teams are “systematically broken”. For him, “financing the uncertain bets of a billionaire who hides his money in the Cayman Islands” is not “the role of the government of Quebec”.
“All the companies that have projects to create paying jobs for Quebecers, to bring additional revenue to the government of Quebec, we look at them, we study them,” replied François Legault. Unlike Québec solidaire, our party is not a dogmatic party. We are not an ideological party like Québec solidaire, we are a pragmatic party in the service of Quebecers. ”
For her part, the spokesperson for the Parti Québécois in matters of the economy, Méganne Perry Mélançon, attacked the “Minister of Baseball”, an expression which earned her a call to order from the president of the François Paradis National Assembly. She asked Pierre Fitzgibbon how he can “advance that the project will be at zero cost knowing that the benefits will be derisory” according to her.
“Like any economic project, if there are economic benefits that will be greater than the costs that will be demonstrated, we will act,” reiterated the Minister of the Economy. But it is too early to comment on this subject according to him. “We will wait for the promoters, we will wait for them to present the project to Montreal society. We will wait to see how the city will react, ”he added.