After the Blue Basket, it is the turn of the Blue Spaces to go by the wayside. The network of 17 cultural venues and museums that François Legault saw as his cultural legacy will ultimately never see the light of day, due to cost overruns.
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“I made the difficult observation that it is time to move on,” said the Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, in an interview with the daily newspaper The sun.
Mr. Lacombe points in particular to the overheating of construction costs, which has contributed to exploding the costs of the four projects already under construction. Promised in the midst of a pandemic, the Blue Spaces network was to be deployed in each region of Quebec.
- Listen to the interview with Pascal Bérubé, MP for Matane-Matapédia of the Parti Québécois, on Sophie Durocher’s show via QUB:
Archive photo Stevens LeBlanc
Announced with great fanfare in 2021 by his predecessor Nathalie Roy alongside the Prime Minister, the network involved an initial investment of around $260 million. But the costs of the work started in Quebec, Baie-Sainte-Paul, Amos and Percé have since suffered significant overruns, the office of the Minister of Culture confirmed to our Parliamentary Office.
Three times more expensive
In interview at TVA NewsMr. Lacombe estimated that it would have cost at least a billion dollars to complete the network in all regions of Quebec.
“I think it is better to take these amounts and reinvest them in other cultural projects that exist,” said the minister.
In Quebec, the bill for the construction of the Camille-Roy-du-Séminaire-de-Québec pavilion, which was to house the network’s parent company, is now approaching the psychological bar of $100 million, twice as much as was expected. initially, according to what was reported.
Illustration courtesy, Government of Quebec
In Baie-Saint-Paul, costs have also doubled to nearly $60 million. In Percé and Amos, costs have also increased by a few million dollars.
Work in these four heritage buildings will continue, but without bearing the name “Blue Space”.
Their purpose “will be reviewed in order to develop structuring projects that meet the needs of the communities concerned,” explained Minister Lacombe’s office.
“The objective remains the same, we want our culture to shine more throughout Quebec,” we explain.
A “fiasco”, according to QS
Solidarity MP Sol Zanetti asks the Minister of Culture to redistribute the promised money that has not yet been spent to already existing museums in all regions of Quebec.
“End of the Blue Basket, end of Blue Spaces, the CAQ is beginning to understand that its flashy marketing impresses no one! The government has finally made the decision it should have made months ago by putting an end to the Blue Spaces fiasco,” reacted the MP for Jean-Lesage.
“It was a bad idea, it cost a lot of money, it was requested by no one and we have museums all over Quebec which needed funding to do what they do well,” commented the PQ MP Pascal Bérubé.
“It is a bad use of public money to create a parallel network which was not necessary,” he lamented.