It would be unfair for Quebec to be deprived of federal funding for the tramway, as desired by Pierre Poilievre, who nevertheless advocates structuring transport in the west of the country, believes Bruno Marchand.
• Also read: Against the Quebec tramway: Poilievre advocates public transport in a video that resurfaces
“If we don’t have the funding, it’s a profound injustice,” says the mayor of Quebec. He argues that the citizens of Quebec pay for projects across Canada with their taxes. “If we don’t have our lion’s share when it comes time to pass Go, there is something that is not working,” said Mr. Marchand.
Image taken from a video on Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube page
The mayor was reacting to a video published a year ago and which resurfaced in recent days, where Mr. Poilievre extols the merits of structuring transportation in Calgary and affirms that he will require municipalities to approve projects residential properties near stations if they want to receive federal funding for public transportation projects.
Accommodation
However, Quebec precisely wants to encourage the creation of housing with the tramway, insists Mr. Marchand, who recalls that $2 billion in private investments are planned along the tramway route.
The speech that Mr. Poilievre gives in this video is “clearly in contradiction” with the one he gives about the Quebec tramway, for which he does not want to pay “a cent”, an “irreconcilable” position, according to the mayor Bruno Marchand.
Villeneuve
Asked about last year’s video in which Mr. Poilievre praised public transportation, Claude Villeneuve, leader of the official opposition, said that the Conservative leader will have to “come and explain to us why people from the West [du Canada] would have the right to modern transport infrastructure and not us.
Same reasoning from Jackie Smith, head of Transition Quebec, who denounced the “double standards” and “electoralism” allegedly demonstrated by Pierre Poilievre.
– With the collaboration of Taïeb Moalla
