Financial health of Quebec City and tramway: “Over my dead body”, says Mayor Bruno Marchand

The Quebec City tram will not be to the detriment of the financial health of the City, said Bruno Marchand on Friday, swearing that he is making this promise “over my dead body“. The mayor of Quebec, however, did not want to repeat that the Municipality’s share of financing the megaproject cannot exceed 9% of the overall budget.

This is what the mayor of Quebec supported, late Friday morning, a few minutes after the vote on the 2025 budget of the City of Quebec.

His exit comes a few hours before the December 15 deadline to reach a final agreement on the tramway. The announcement of this agreement should be made early next week, probably Monday, December 16.

“It is out of the question, despite all the importance of this project, to weaken the financial health of the City […] Over my dead body that a project as important as this has a negative impact on the financial health of the City,” he strongly argued.

Negotiations in progress

Barely two months ago, Mayor Marchand repeated that the City’s share would not be higher than the 9% agreed upon from the outset. However, on Friday, he chose not to repeat this statement. “I don’t confirm anything. I am in negotiations. We are in the process of finalizing everything. For the moment, it is to the satisfaction of all partners, including the financial health of the City,” he said.

Bruno Marchand also did not seem to make much of the probable absence of a representative from the federal level at next week’s announcement. He just confirmed “that in the short term”, Ottawa’s contribution would not exceed the $1.5 billion announced for a long time, but that the various partners can continue to negotiate.

Reactions

Friday, at Quebec City Hall, Claude Villeneuve, leader of Quebec First, reiterated his support for the tramway, but he said he had questions about the scope of the project.

“Whether we pay 8.9% for a less ambitious project or one that has a less broad scope, that’s a question that we will also have to ask ourselves,” he said, noting that it is a “return to Labeaume”, since the project currently on the table looks exactly like the one announced in March 2018.

On the side of Équipe Priorité Québec, the unelected leader, Patrick Paquet, said he was convinced that the cost of the 19km tram line between Le Gendre and Charlesbourg will be closer to $8B rather than the $5.27B contained in the June report from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec Infra (CDPQI).

Jackie Smith, head of Transition Quebec, sharply criticized the Legault government, which she holds responsible for the delays recorded so far. “If we hadn’t had the numerous procrastination and the interventions of the CAQ, we would have had our tram for less and more quickly,” she insisted.