The announcement of the final agreement on the Quebec City tramway should have been good news, but there are many reasons to be cautious about the chances of the project being completed.
The first reason to doubt is that the CAQ government has once again managed, in the final agreement, to buy time.
The timetable for the commissioning of the tramway has thus been pushed back to 2033, whereas with full knowledge of the facts, the CDPQi spoke of 2030 in its plan submitted very recently, last June.
It took seven years between the unveiling of the REM in Montreal and its commissioning. It will take 15, more than double, for the tram.
The planning phase will extend until 2027, and will be followed by the implementation phase. Consequently, we will not know the price or the schedule established with the selected suppliers before the next Quebec election.
The CAQ government used exactly the same stratagem with the third link. The consequence is that after multiple about-faces in one project as in the other, no one believes it anymore.
Good guarantees
Certainly, the City obtained good financial guarantees in the negotiation of its agreement with the Quebec government, including a contribution ceiling of 8.9% or $678 million.
If the government were to back down and no longer move forward with the project, it would have to reimburse the government in full for the preparatory work from now on. Previously, the City retained responsibility for 8.9% of the amounts.
However, it is clear that the government did not hesitate to put the project on hold in November 2023. It did so despite preparatory work which had cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and which today amounts to today at more than $540 million.
As it wants the project to happen, we can expect the City to speed up the work. Therefore, the more time passes, the less the government would be able to justify stopping the project.
However, will the City be able to move as quickly as it wants if the Conservatives come to power? That would definitely complicate things. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre repeated that he would not put “one penny” into the project.
The height of irony is that the federal Liberal government began to implode right on the day the light rail agreement was revealed. This throws a lot of uncertainty into the project.
Lack of will
Another good reason to doubt lies in the obvious lack of political will on the part of the CAQ to carry out the project.
The Legault government has imposed multiple conditions on Quebec City since 2018, forcing it to review the project several times. The tramway should in particular better serve the suburbs, pass through D’Estimauville rather than Charlesbourg, and create better social acceptability.
All this to come back today with the same project presented in 2018, the CDPQi having determined that this version was the best. In other words, the City and the Tramway Project Office had done their job very well.
This interference was costly, HEC Montréal ruled in a study in March. And to think that the minister had the nerve yesterday to talk about the “best project at the best cost”…
The cost therefore increased from 3.9 to 7.6 billion, similar to that proposed by the City last year. However, it was too expensive for François Legault, who had put the project on hold before withdrawing it from the City.
As for serving the suburbs, instead of going to the 76e Street in Charlesbourg, the tram will stop at 41e. We will come back for an improvement! I also suggest to Minister Jonatan Julien to avoid using this example in the future to try to distinguish the current project from the initial version…
Not irreversible
Then, even though she announced on Monday a final agreement with the CDPQi and the City of Quebec, Minister Geneviève Guilbault never wanted to assert that the project was now irreversible. However, she did so very convincingly recently for the third link, even if the latter remains immensely vague.
The unease was so palpable that Mayor Bruno Marchand felt the need to intervene yesterday to try to “change the vibe a little” because it was good news after all. He also spoke of “major consequences” if the project had to be abandoned.
Mme Guilbault also used the good old method that she has applied since the CAQ came to power when it comes to the tramway: she throws the ball back into the federal court.
The Minister of Transport recalled that the federal government had initially committed 40%. Even though costs have increased, the federal share has not kept up.
However, the Trudeau government has been in favor of the tram project from the start. If the CAQ had made the tramway a real priority, this financing would have been completed a long time ago.
But all the reasons are good, for the CAQ, to buy time on the back of the tram project. It’s Groundhog Day.
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