(Drummondville) MP Pascal Paradis closes the door: under no circumstances will the Parti Québécois endorse a project for a third highway link between Quebec and Lévis.
“The position of the Parti Québécois has absolutely not changed on this issue. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said it very clearly. On the motorway section, this is excluded. It was excluded in 2018, it was excluded in 2022, it was excluded during the Jean-Talon campaign, and it is excluded in 2026,” said the elected official during a press scrum on the sidelines of the National Council of the PQ, which is held Saturday and Sunday in Drummondville.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Parti Québécois MP Pascal Paradis
At the start of the week, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon had not been as affirmative in a press briefing.
“The reason for my answer is that you want to know my position for 2026, for the moment the position in force is that of 2022. But in anticipation of 2026, the variable that I am missing is that -what’s this whole referral thing to the Fund. […] Where will we be? Are there any firm commitments or things already started? I doubt it,” he said.
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Then, on social media, the PQ leader affirmed that he was excluding a place for the automobile in his Quebec-Lévis project, but he maintained that he does not control what the Caisse de dépôt et placement d’in will do. here 2026 and that could be a game changer. “We do not want a highway link to the PQ, but we do not control the CDPQ agenda for the next two years,” he wrote on the X platform.
The Mandated Fund
CDPQ Infra has received the mandate to determine a structuring transport project to improve public transport for the City of Quebec and to improve mobility and fluidity in the Metropolitan Community of Quebec, particularly between the two shores. She must present her project in the summer.
Mr. Paradis, however, believes that it is fanciful to believe that the CDPQ will begin the construction of a new bridge by the time a general election is called in the summer of 2026. “Imagine. The project has been in the air since before 2018. It has been the subject of a multitude of elections. What has been done in this project so far? Nothing. Before we say that there will be something built before the next elections, that’s fiction, it’s speculation,” he said.
Later in the day, its leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, however, reiterated that in 2026, the Parti Québécois project “will take into account the evolution or not of the situation in relation to the decisions of the government and the Caisse”.
In recent days, columnists and analysts from different media have criticized Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon for this position. Mr. Paradis believes that the confusion comes “from a political party, which I think, wanted to play politics with this question”. Without naming it, it targets Québec solidaire, whose deputies Etienne Grandmont, Sol Zanetti and Ruba Ghazal wrote messages on X on this subject.