At both ends of the third link, contrasting reactions to the most recent change of direction by the CAQ and its Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault. While the mayor of Quebec is jubilant north of the river, the population fulminates south of the St. Lawrence against what they consider a “betrayal”.
“It’s a beautiful drunken promise that he made to us, the government”, cowardly Yvon Dumont, the prefect of the MRC de Bellechasse, an early activist for a third highway link. “That one is going to be really hard to swallow. However, I esteemed him, M.me Guilbault. »
In his eyes, the latter would have been able to energize the region and its economy. One – or two tunnels – between the city centers of Quebec and Lévis would have allowed cars to avoid the detour imposed by the bridges. This more direct link led to the hope that new residents would come to live in the villages of Bellechasse, spend at the counters of its businesses and supply its factories, currently hampered by a labor shortage that is hurting the regional economy. .
“Today, it is the promise of a government that is not kept and it is the word of a prime minister that is not kept either. I try to restrain myself in my ardor, slices the prefect, but it horrifies me to the maximum. »
Yvon Dumont, however, does not mince his words. “It’s a betrayal,” he insists.
In addition, no one at the CAQ had the delicacy to notify the elected officials of Chaudière-Appalaches of this about-face. “There are no words to describe that, it is beyond me,” says the elected representative of Bellechasse with spite. “How much trust should we place in the government now? Today, we all have the impression that he took us for idiots. »
“It’s inappropriate”
At the head of the bridges, in the parking lot filled with shiny Costco cars in Lévis, disappointment mixes with anger. “Of course we are very disappointed, sighs Monique Boisvert, a resident of the Saint-Étienne sector, to the east, who notes that rush hours, on the bridges, show only slight signs of slowing down.
“I have nothing to say, I’m too much in tabarnak”, launches Julie Leclerc a little further, storing the groceries in the car. Resident of Lauzon, not far from downtown Lévis where the third link should lead, she believes that the new version “will change absolutely nothing”.
“There are already buses and they are empty. Who will go to Quebec through the tunnel? Nobody, she predicts. Absolutely nobody. »
In Bellechasse too, the bitterness is strong. Hélène Gosselin wonders where the CAQ gets its famous traffic data that suddenly renders a third highway link obsolete. “I work in Lévis,” she says. You almost have to leave Lévis before 3:00 p.m. to avoid getting stuck in traffic! »
Confirmation of the new version by Minister Guilbault on Wednesday morning extinguished all hope at the Lévis Chamber of Commerce. Its general manager, Marie-Josée Morency, believed until the very last minute that it was a bad joke, fake news, a hoax.
“I still had hope,” she recalls, until the minister and her boss spoke of a “difficult, but necessary” decision. The worst turned out, explains the general manager.
“Today, we feel cheated by Minister Geneviève Guilbault. I have calls from all the chambers of commerce in the region: here as elsewhere, everyone is disconcerted. »
It was the Lévis Chamber of Commerce that, in 2014, put the third link back on the agenda, offering the CAQ a hobbyhorse that may have enabled the party to sail to victory in Chaudiere-Appalaches. “It will be difficult to repair confidence, concludes Marie-Josée Morency. This change of course, for us, is inconceivable. »