Mobility Infra Quebec and infrastructure | Two bills to redress the bar in project management

(Quebec) Faced with exploding costs and delays, the Legault government tabled two bills on Thursday in the hope of better managing public transportation projects and public infrastructure projects in general.

The Minister of Transport Geneviève Guilbault presented at the Salon Bleu her legislative text creating Mobilité Infra Québec, an agency whose mandate will be to analyze, plan and carry out “complex transport projects”. These are public transport and road projects – such as the construction of a bridge. It is the government which will entrust him with the projects. The agency is not responsible for the operation of public transportation systems.

According to the bill, Mobilité infra Québec, whose headquarters will be in Quebec, is not subject to the Civil Service Act, but rather to that on the governance of state corporations. We can thus offer higher salaries than those of civil servants to the managers and employees of this agency. Mobilité Infra Québec will have up to fifty employees initially, according to the minister. Managers will be recruited from private firms or even abroad, she specified. The bill provides arrangements for transferring employees from the Department of Transportation to the new agency.

Mobilité Infra Québec will be administered by a board of directors composed of nine members, including the chairman of the board, the president and CEO and the deputy minister of Transport or his representative. The duration of their mandate is a maximum of five years.

Mobilité Infra Québec may, with government authorization, acquire or form subsidiaries.

The Quebec Public Service Union is opposed to the creation of Mobilité Infra Québec which “would lead to an undemocratic governance practice”. He sees in it “the abandonment of the principle of ministerial responsibility, the dangerous slope of management by board of directors, the possible dubious proximity to the interests of industry”. The government must instead strengthen expertise at the Ministry of Transport, according to him.

The bill provides that the Land Transportation Network Fund (FORT) will finance complex transportation projects or mandates under the responsibility of Mobilité Infra Québec.

“As part of a responsibility entrusted to Mobilité Infra Québec in relation to a complex public transport project, the Minister must agree with local municipalities, public transport companies, the Metropolitan Transport Network or the Regional Transport Authority metropolitan area, when they are covered by the project, of the amount of a financial contribution from them. In the absence of an agreement, the government sets the amount of the financial contribution required from the organizations,” indicates the bill.

“Mobilité Infra Québec can also carry out transport analyzes at the request of the minister (…) and carry out any other mandate that the government entrusts to it,” we add. These analyzes can relate to “mobility planning”. And in this case, Mobilité Infra Québec “can plan the coordination of different transportation services as well as the maintenance, improvement and replacement of transportation equipment and infrastructure.”

The agency “must in particular, to the extent that mobility planning concerns them, consult the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Regions and Land Occupancy, metropolitan communities, regional county municipalities, local municipalities, public transport companies, the Metropolitan Transport Network and the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority to establish development and urban planning needs.

The bill modifies the Public Infrastructure Act so that Mobilité Infra Québec has free rein to carry out the management and control of an infrastructure project.

Geneviève Guilbault gave an interview to The Press on the creation of Mobilité Infra Québec last week. She justified this new independent structure inspired by CDPQ Infra – and a little from Santé Québec too – by saying in particular that the government does not have internal expertise in matters of public transport and that it is necessary to centralize project planning. The mandate of Mobilité Infra Québec, “we could see an overlap with the mission of the ARTM”, the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority, she recognized.

There was resistance to the government regarding the creation of this agency, as The Press demonstrated this last week.

For his part, the Minister of Infrastructure, Jonatan Julien, unveiled his bill “mainly aimed at diversifying the acquisition strategies of public bodies and offering them greater agility in carrying out their infrastructure projects”. He wants to reduce costs and time to build schools, roads or public transport, for example.

With these legislative changes, it creates a new type of contract, the “partnership contract”. This will allow the “collaborative approach”, a way of doing things which is based on the idea that the entrepreneur must be involved during the project planning stage, and that he can help the State to reduce its costs by helping to design it better.

According to Mr. Julien, projects will be completed up to 25% faster and will cost 15% less, and happy entrepreneurs are “making the waves”.

Read Maxime Bergeron’s column: “Reform of public contracts: “butt” gains, or realistic? »

This is not the first time that Quebec has tried to take a step back in terms of infrastructure. He passed a law in 2020 to accelerate around 200 projects whose results were mixed. Above all, it is the Seniors’ Homes – a CAQ promise – which have grown quickly, but at a much higher cost than expected.