The room is large, rather dark. Large road maps of Quebec line one wall. Another wall, facing north and glazed over its entire width, gives a breathtaking view of Quebec City. And its highways.
We are on the 29th floor of the tower of the building where the Delta hotel is also located, on René-Lévesque Boulevard, in Quebec. Right in front of the National Assembly.
The Quebec Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, has her offices there. It was around this immense circle of tables placed end to end that she delivered a series of long interviews, Thursday and Friday.
“To present my famous agency project that we’re talking about… about which I’ve been talking half-heartedly, even half-heartedly, for a year and a half. Which I still cannot speak in full today, because we must always be careful before tabling bills,” she justifies herself from the outset, before diving into the heart of the matter. subject.
By creating the Mobilité Infra Québec agency, Geneviève Guilbault intends to remedy the fact that “we do not have the capacity to carry out large-scale public transport projects in the Quebec government”. (Caroline Grégoire/The Sun)
The future name and some details about the agency first leaked in The Press, that same afternoon. It will be called Mobilité Infra Québec. The MIQ. Or MIQ. We will see in use. But you’ll have to get used to it.
This media tour was first planned two weeks ago. Before the study of budgetary appropriations, now completed.
“We don’t have anyone!”
So before Minister Guilbault asserts that “managing collective transport and transport companies is not a mission of the State”. Before the bag episode. And before the new chapter in his chicanery with the mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand.
She also summoned the mayors who have transport companies this Monday to discuss financing.
Ms. Guilbault is not the type to shy away from media adversity. But she prepares and waits for her moment. The interview takes place in the presence of four members of his cabinet.
“There are a series of public transport projects in Quebec already in progress, or in gestation at various levels, and for which there is a need that we have been talking about for years. For which we set up committees, we made reports, we made reports again, reports, reports. But the day we want to make them, we have no one! We do not have the capacity to carry out large-scale public transportation projects in the Quebec government,” declared Ms. Guilbault.
The new transportation agency will have nothing in common in terms of size with the one that has just been created in health. (Caroline Grégoire/The Sun)
This justifies, even requires the creation of this new “small, flexible, light, extra competent, independent structure, which is a bit similar to CDPQ Infra”, according to her. But smaller.
Mobilité Infra Québec will launch its activities with between 30 and 50 people on board, said the minister. Half or even a third of the hundred or so employees assigned to the specialized infrastructure department of the Caisse de dépôt et développement du Québec (CDPQ).
We are far from the model of the new health agency just created by his colleague at Health.
Christian Dubé is about to transfer between 700 and 800 civil servants from the Ministry of Health and Social Services to the new Santé Québec agency. In addition to becoming the sole employer of 330,000 workers in the public health network.
The new transport agency will take over these collective transport projects currently “scattered” everywhere from CDPQ Infra and numerous project offices. Too many, seems to assess the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility.
“We spend a lot of money with the Quebec government in project offices, which are scattered. It costs us dearly and harms this concerted vision and sequenced planning. The current dispersion is harmful,” summarizes Ms. Guilbault.
Duo of bills
The MIQ’s “specialized team” will perhaps not only have public transportation projects as its sole occupation. But mainly, it’s certain.
Minister Guilbault will carry out her project in parallel with that of her colleague responsible for Infrastructure, Jonatan Julien, who intends to modernize the call for tenders system for public infrastructure projects.
It provides for the two projects to be submitted before the end of this parliamentary session, by June 7, then adopted by all elected officials this fall.
Minister Guilbault hopes to see the birth of “a new government business culture” with her future agency. (Caroline Grégoire/The Sun)
To finally hope for an official launch of the agency in a year or so, in May 2025. “I think it’s possible,” she says, with a little hesitation, as if to encourage herself.
Why create a new structure, however “flexible” and “agile” it may be? “We want to have a different, more innovative corporate culture. We want to give ourselves the means to attract the right people who are competent and capable of delivering this mandate,” explains the minister.
She suggests that civil service methods often slow down operations. And that salary conditions will not have to be the same as within the ministry.
Our children without a car
This is to “complete the web” of public transportation in Quebec and “create a new lifestyle. So that our children who get older never even have the idea of buying a car, because the canvas will be completed.
Echoing a statement from Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of Energy, according to whom we will have to halve the number of automobiles in Quebec to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050.
Like her colleague Fitzgibbon, the one who is also Deputy Prime Minister of Quebec sometimes pays the price for her strong personality.
Ms. Guilbault returns to the episode of the bag, where she searched for documents for long moments to answer a question from an opposition MP, studying credits.
“If I had had a briefcase instead of a bag, would it have had the same effect?”
— Minister Geneviève Guilbault, who questions sexist perceptions towards her
Jokingly, she adds that she regrets that no one has pointed out that her famous bag is made in Quebec. Fauve brand, by Maïka Desnoyers. It’s done.
“Those things, for me, are irrelevant. I am paid with public funds. My duty is to be useful, to get things done, to answer as intelligently as possible when people ask me questions. What I strive to do, which is not always the case, but I do my best,” she says, with humility.
“And deliver business. That’s what I’m working on. I think people realize that. At least, I hope so. If we let ourselves be disturbed by the slightest distraction, it will distract us from what we are paid for and what people expect of us,” concluded Minister Guilbault, before heading off to a meeting that promised to be stormy with representatives of the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) of Montreal.
