Minister Geneviève Guilbault is tabling a bill this Thursday which will lead to the creation of Mobilité Infra Québec, a new agency whose mission will be to plan and develop major road infrastructure and public transport projects more quickly and at lower cost. .
Mme Guilbault presented us with the outlines of this agency last Thursday during an editorial meeting that she had called.
I write “outlines” because the minister could not go into detail before tabling her bill, which limited what she had the right to tell us for legal reasons. Several questions were therefore left unanswered.
Why this meeting, you might ask, if Geneviève Guilbault did not have the freedom to present the future agency to us in detail?
We clearly felt that the minister was in fashion damage control after a particularly difficult week marked by two statements that caught the imagination: his “Gère ta fougère” (we now sell the t-shirt…) and the Prime Minister’s “it’s easy for mayors to beg in Quebec” François Legault have done nothing to improve relations between Quebec and the municipal world.
It is therefore in an attempt to re-establish communication that the minister undertook this media tour, also knowing that the mayors were going to meet on Friday in Drummondville to participate in the National Meeting on the Future of Collective Transport organized by the Union des municipalities.
Another psychodrama
This is not the first psychodrama we have witnessed between the CAQ government and the mayors of Quebec. It seems that this government has made a specialty of adding fuel to the fire since coming to power. Whether we think about the demands of cities for adaptation to climate change, for homelessness or for public transport, it’s always the same game.
We say no, tension rises, then a few days later we position ourselves as “savior” by granting emergency aid… and interviews in the media.
This paternalistic attitude on the part of the Legault government always places mayors in a situation of dependence on Quebec. And then we treat them as beggars…
Structural chicanery on the horizon?
Let’s come back to this famous agency which will plan and manage major transport projects. First, it risks stepping on the toes of the ARTM, since it will be responsible for national planning of major projects. The ARTM is already responsible for planning public transportation in the Montreal metropolitan region. Who will have the last word ?
The last thing Montreal needs is another structural dispute.
The creation of Mobilité Infra Québec will also not resolve the issue of the politicization of transport projects, a politicization which has caused a real fiasco in the Capitale-Nationale region with the back and forth surrounding the 3e link and the tram project.
Effective planning requires data, not surveys.
Minister Guilbault repeats that her new agency will make it possible to build faster and cheaper. We will not contradict her on the urgency of developing public transportation in Quebec. But I still raise a doubt when we know that all projects will have to be approved by his ministry as well as by that of Infrastructure, which will play the role of “control tower”, as Minister Jonatan Julien explained to my colleague Maxime Bergeron Wednesday1.
Hoping this control tower won’t slow down processes that are supposed to be faster. This is all the more worrying as the famous agency will also manage road projects. When we know this government’s natural penchant for asphalt, there is cause for concern.
The question of financing
The other element which raises serious doubts about the capacity of Mobilité Infra Québec to change things is the fact that the Legault government does not seem open to tackling the fundamental problem of public transport: its financing.
Last week, Minister Guilbault repeated at every microphone that she would not make up the structural deficit of transport companies. The possibility that the latter would reduce the service offering did not seem to move him. Instead, she suggested that cities and transportation companies could review the working conditions of their employees.
If anyone on this planet seriously believes that we are going to reopen collective agreements in the midst of a labor shortage, I would like them to express themselves in my email box. I don’t believe it for a single moment.
However, Minister Guilbault agreed during her meeting with the mayors last Monday that it will be necessary to discuss the question of financing so as not to replay the same film next year.
Obviously ! For years, even decades, experts have been shouting that to develop public transport, stable and recurring funding must be provided. There aren’t 36,000 ways to get there. The solution is spelled in four letters: tax. On registration, on kilometers traveled and on gasoline (by increasing the existing tax) while we still use it.
The question of financing public transport is, so to speak, philosophical.
The CAQ government sees the money allocated to public transportation as an expense when all the experts will tell you that it is an investment. That public transport contributes to economic development, the quality of the environment, and the well-being of populations. It is an essential service that must be considered within the framework of territorial planning.
As long as we have not developed a real vision of the place of public transport in the lives of Quebecers, we will remain at the level of communication.
1. Read Maxime Bergeron’s column “Reform of public contracts: “butt” gains, or realistic? »
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reference: www.lapresse.ca