Some 500 people gathered Tuesday evening in Limoilou to show their support for the Quebec tramway and to demand that the Legault government not impose any conditions on the City in the decrees which will be adopted Wednesday in the Council of Ministers.
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In front of a full house, about thirty deputies, municipal councilors and representatives of community, student and environmental groups wanted to illustrate that the megaproject enjoys broad “social acceptability” in the community.
“We have to stop wasting time. New conditions mean delays. That means that it costs more and that jeopardizes the project, ”thundered the solidarity deputy Sol Zanetti, co-organizer of this cross-party rally.
His colleague Catherine Dorion was pleased to note that the Prime Minister seems to have changed his tune in the past few hours. “It is good to dissociate oneself from the two or three ministers from Quebec who are afraid of Radio X”, she dropped.
Recalling that the pro-tramway candidates for mayor of Quebec won more than 70% of the vote in the November ballot, Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy accused the Legault government of “questioning the result of the municipal elections”.
His PQ colleague Joël Arseneau said that it is “absurd” to see that the government “meddles in the affairs” of the municipality.
Legitimacy and expertise
For her part, Mélissa Coulombe-Leduc, municipal councilor for Mayor Marchand’s party, argued that the project will contribute to the fight against climate change. She insisted that the municipal administration has all the “legitimacy” and “expertise” to carry out the tramway.
Claude Villeneuve, head of Quebec first, quipped that the condition of “social acceptability” put forward by the government seems necessary for the tramway, but not “to pollute the air of Limoilou”.
Much applauded, the head of Transition Québec, Jackie Smith, affirmed that “if we want a tramway, now is the time to mobilize. The government must deliver the tramway there”.
Representatives of commercial development companies and neighborhood councils pleaded that the tramway will make it possible to combat the labor shortage by facilitating the mobility of citizens and workers.
During the evening, the crowd booed the 3rd link project and the government’s decision to quintuple the daily concentration thresholds for nickel in the air.
Reference-www.journaldequebec.com