The Superior Court ruled: the tramway project is not illegal. The judge totally rejected the anti-tramway arguments and ruled that the project can go ahead.
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“In short, nothing in the plaintiffs’ appeal poses an obstacle to the tramway project of the City of Quebec,” concludes Judge Clément Samson, in the judgment whose The newspaper got a copy.
The judge affirmed that “the Council of Ministers had the power to rule on the Quebec tramway project within the meaning of the provisions of the Law on the quality of the environment, that the process was conducted in accordance with this law, that the council of ministers had the discretion to accept the Quebec project. The plaintiffs fail in their request to demand a referendum since no law imposes it, concludes the Court .
In addition, “the courts have no power to intervene with regard to the breach of electoral commitments”, decides the judge.
“In general, the plaintiffs fail in their challenge to the tramway project with regard to any infringement of their fundamental rights protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, he writes. Accordingly, the claim for compensatory and punitive damages is dismissed.
Judge Clément Samson, who heard the case of the anti-tramway last December, delivered his judgment on Tuesday morning.
He was called upon to decide a crucial question: is the Quebec tramway project illegal?
It is the claim of the group Quebec deserves better (QMM), which brought the case before the Superior Court.
QMM has enlisted the services of lawyer Guy Bertrand to represent it.
They demand that the project be stopped and that the court order the holding of a referendum on the project. Over four days in early December, the court heard arguments from both sides. The mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, summoned the press at 11:30 a.m. to share his reaction to the judgment.
QMM will react in the afternoon.
Impact on quality of life
During the trial, the plaintiffs called two residents who live along the route of the future tramway. They exposed the potential consequences of the project on their quality of life, one of them describing the expropriations as “rape”.
Experts called by QMM said the project was “unacceptable” because the City did not consider all possible modes of transportation.
The opponents had failed to make public the decisions of the Council of Ministers which preceded the adoption of the decree authorizing the tramway.
“Useless” expertise
For its part, the City of Quebec and the Quebec government had refuted all of QMM’s arguments, asking Judge Samson to consider the contributions of the two experts as “completely useless” and to reject them.
The City recalled that it has no legal obligation to organize a referendum to take a decision on the tramway. She argues that the project cannot be declared illegal if it has been authorized by the National Assembly.
The Quebec prosecutor had meanwhile pleaded that it is not up to the court to judge the “political” decision that was taken for the tramway.
More details to come