With the relaunch of the 3rd link, the CAQ shakes an “electoral rattle”, says the opposition | All about the 3rd Quebec-Lévis link

The opposition parties in the National Assembly are ridiculing the relaunch of the third link project by the Legault government. They only see it as an “electoralist” announcement intended to make us forget the lack of progress in the issue of inter-city mobility since the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) came to power.

Crazy project, fabulation, smoke and mirrors, deception : Québec solidaire (QS) and the Parti Québécois (PQ) were not short of words on Friday to qualify the appeal of international interest launched by the government for the creation of a new inter-river link.

Both political parties remain convinced that the project will never see the light of day.

Election rattle

It will become the symbol of infrastructures that will never exist in Quebecmocked solidarity MP Sol Zanetti.

We will talk about it for decades as the symbol of the promise of the electoral rattle which will never happen, which is irresponsible, which is expensive, and then which is of no use.he added.

For his part, PQ member Pascal Paradis is so convinced that the CAQ will not move forward with the project which he refused to say if, in the event of electoral victory of the PQthis will order the cessation of construction work on a possible third link.

It won’t happen

There will be no project. It won’t happen. What is presented to us today is fabrication, smoke and mirrors. These are the same arguments, the same graphs [qu’on nous avait présentés en] 2018. It’s the same thing, it’s fabrication. We’ve been talking about it for years, it won’t happeninsisted the member for Jean-Talon.

He blames the CAQ to seek to divert attention from his bad parliamentary session. Pascal Paradis deplores that the issue of the third link is still at the forefront while according to him it would be more relevant to talk about the recruitment of young people by organized crime or the difficulty of accessing a family doctor .

Solidarity member Étienne Grandmont also has the impression that the issue of the third link has made little progress since the first election of the CAQ.

However, during the electoral campaign which took him to the helm of the government, six years ago, François Legault’s party had promised to launch the project in a first mandate.

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Back to the future

The member for Taschereau believes that the government is preparing the ground for the next electoral campaign, during which the third link will inevitably be discussed.

Maurice Duplessis said: “with a bridge, we have three elections: at the announcement, at the first shovelful of earth and at the cutting of the ribbon”, but there, at the CAQthey pushed this concept even further with no shovelful of earth and no ribbon to cut. It’s still fascinatingquipped Mr. Grandmont.

It’s a major back-to-the-future operation, because in 2018, that’s exactly what we announced.

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The two sovereignist parties recalled that in its report published in the spring, CDPQ Infra concluded that the construction of a third highway link between Quebec and Lévis was not justified from a mobility point of view.

This is all going nowhere. In fact, it’s hot air, it’s political marketing. We are in the electoral pre-campaign and it is irresponsible, especially because the last report […] summarizes the entire work: this project is not relevantreacted PQ member Joël Arseneau.

Starting point

An early supporter of a third inter-river link, the mayor of Lévis, Gilles Lehouillier, sees the relaunch of the project as a not in the right direction.

Like the Solidarity and PQ oppositions, however, he cannot help but note that the issue is still at square one. He points out that no corridor has yet been selected.

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This brings us back to the same point as the 2018 election campaign when the outgoing Liberal government at the time had identified three to four highway corridors for crossing the river. What a waste of timelamented Mr. Lehouillier in a press release.

According to him, between now and the next election, the Legault government will have to demonstrate to the population that the project is sufficiently advanced to make it irreversible.