The cost of the REM has climbed to $9.4 billion, notes the Auditor General

Building the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) in Montreal will be more expensive than expected.

The estimated cost of the project increased from $7 billion in 2018 to $9.4 billion in 2024, concluded Quebec Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc.

On Wednesday, she presented an update of her 2018 report on the accounting analysis of the financial package of the REM.

Remember that the REM is a private electric train network whose construction was entrusted in 2017 to a subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ-Infra).

This is the largest public transportation project undertaken in Quebec in the last 50 years, since the creation of the Montreal metro.

The increase in costs is attributable to inflation, delays caused by the pandemic, the state of the underground vault on McGill College Avenue and the discovery of explosives in the Mont-Royal tunnel.

The complete commissioning of the REM is now planned for 2027 rather than 2024.

At a press conference at the National Assembly, Ms. Leclerc did not want to comment on the effectiveness of CDPQ-Infra to complete projects quickly and within budget.

On the other hand, she stressed that the Fund has always preferred to give the costs nets of REM ($6.3 billion in 2018, $8.3 billion in 2024), while it presents the total costs, which include construction and land.

We always want there to be as much transparency as possible.she said.

What we recommended is that CDPQ carries out a new presentation of costs […] of REM during its full commissioningshe added.

The CAG generates little savings

Furthermore, the Auditor General concludes that the Government Acquisition Center (CAG), which was created in 2020 to consolidate purchases, is not generating the expected savings.

The CAG fails to achieve a significant portion of the purchasing groupings planned in its planningwe can read in the report. Of numerous delays and cancellations lead it to award contracts over the counter to avoid service interruptions.

The organization estimates the savings made thanks to purchasing groups in 2022-2023 at $407.9 million, but the auditor questions this figure, and the method of calculating the CAGwho is sometimes questionable.

The government also needed to make savings by reducing its administrative space. However, six years after the announcement of this project, only 7.2% of the 900,000 square meters to be transformed have been transformed, notes Guylaine Leclerc.

The government is slow to benefit from the substantial savings planned by the reduction of its office spacesshe said, concluding that the target of 35% in 2028 will be difficult to reach.

These findings from the auditor come on the eve of the Legault government’s economic update, which could announce a tightening of spending given the record deficit of $11 billion.

Harmed indigenous students

Finally, Ms. Leclerc deplores in her report the lack of support offered to indigenous students.

She notes that 20 years after noting problems, the Ministry of Education still implements few actions to promote success of these students.

According to her, Indigenous students do not receive support adapted to their needs during their transition between a school in their community and a school in the Quebec school network.

They also do not receive enough help in French.

Two-thirds of the 6,213 Indigenous students who attended the Quebec public network between 2017 and 2023 had an Indigenous language as their mother tongue.

This is an issue, since to obtain their secondary school diploma, the student must, among other things, successfully complete the Secondary 5 French language of instruction or second language course.

The auditor recommends, among other things, that a member of school staff aware of Indigenous realities be available in each school attended by Indigenous students, in order to better support them.