Marc Tanguay, the quasi-permanent interim leader of the PLQ, has a habit of repeating, like an old vinyl record that skips, the same formulas: “messy government”, “what is the Prime Minister’s word worth?”, etc.
To the point where François Legault, on Thursday, criticized him for his “lack of creativity”: “The same cassette again, eh? […] The same words every day!”
Tanguay got the message. Friday morning, he gave birth to a new formula: “Everything is stopped, with the CAQ. […] They are like a big orange cone for Quebec.”
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois should take inspiration from it. At each mention, by the Prime Minister, of the horrible “orange taxes” of 2022, GND could respond in a “Tanguayian” way: “It’s the Prime Minister who is orange! An orange cone for Quebec!”
- Listen to the political meeting between Antoine Robitaille and Benoit Dutrizac via QUB radio :
We laugh, but this is all very serious. Since, like all successful humor, there is some truth here.
Startup
Friday, reporters asked Geneviève Guilbault to comment on the concerns of Mayor Bruno Marchand, who fears that the tram project has been definitively annihilated by Quebec.
The minister – no joke! –, replied this: “We are all working together, with the Caisse, with the City, with my ministry, to get things started and moving forward… start that is to say… I told you […] we are in the start-up phase of all this, organizing work, transmitting documents. We are aiming for June for the submission of the report… or in any case… the Caisse’s proposal.”
Seriously? Did she really say that she worked “with the City”? But above all that all this was in “start-up”?
I know that the CAQ minister lives on the planet Saint-Aug-Village, as she likes to say, but there are limits to being so disconnected.
Stevens LeBlanc/JOURNAL DE QUEBEC
The tram project was “started”: the problems were preparing the ground. Some $500 million had been spent. “It’s really much more than rails!” declared this week the vice-rector of Laval University, René Lacroix, for whom it was an opportunity to rethink “the layout of the campus”. Laval is “one of the universities, if not the only university of its size in Canada, which does not benefit from a structuring transport network,” underlined rector Sophie D’Amour.
Same spite on the side of the president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Quebec, Steeve Lavoie. He deplored yesterday [jeudi] in our pages the harmful effects, on the economy of the Capital, of the about-face of the Legault government: “For the companies involved directly or indirectly in the project, helplessness and uncertainty are the predominant reactions. Unfortunately, these two feelings don’t mix well when it comes to financial investment.” According to Mr. Lavoie, there are $1.8 billion worth of real estate projects, “ready to be launched along the tram route,” which have been put on hold.
To say that the CAQ prides itself on being the “party of the economy”. In many cases, its erratic governance, especially when it comes to major transport projects, really gives it the appearance of an “orange cone for Quebec”.