The panelists on the show The Joust are fed up with new taxes being imposed on Quebecers to cover deficits caused by cases of mismanagement, and this announcement of a 154% increase in registration for motorists in Greater Montreal is the straw that overflows the vase.
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“They are scavengers!” exclaims political analyst Luc Lavoie.
What exasperates the jouster is that none of the municipal leaders who voted on this new tax said to themselves: “we need to manage a little better,” he paraphrases.
This new tax will be used to finance public transport services offered in the greater Montreal region and, more particularly, the STM which is experiencing huge deficits.
“It is known that the Société des transports de Montréal is an incredible bureaucracy and [que] everything is poorly managed,” protests Mr. Lavoie.
Moreover, the STM has just purchased 18 Ford Mustang Mach-Es for the sum of $1.15 million with the aim of transitioning to electric cars.
“We are taken for suitcases,” adds QUB host Yasmine Abdelfadel.
The latter notes that not all transport companies are loss-making and that it is unfair to pass the bill on to everyone for the mismanagement of some.
“There is no deficit at the Société de transport de Laval, it even generates surpluses, she underlines, but the people of Laval today we are going to tell them: “well you have to go and pay 90 $ more for your registration because we are in a deficit.”
And the chronicler Montreal Journal Mathieu Bock-Côté goes even further.
“We live in a regime of generalized tax theft,” he said, dismayed.
“Whether the gun is carried by the municipalities or I don’t know which agency: by Quebec, by Ottawa, by others, in the last instance, we are faced with authorities who always need more money to be able to deliver services that are still inefficient,” he criticizes.
According to him, the deficits are caused by “a bureaucracy which vampirizes the population” and he cannot understand how elected officials can “do so little” when they “already have so much money”.
The analyst even believes that politicians should go through “moratoriums” before imposing “all kinds of new taxes.”
But the former PQ MP, Elsie Lefebvre, who was the only one to defend the importance of public transportation in this debate, does not agree.
“I know it’s expensive and it doesn’t look good, but in Quebec we are 20 years behind in the development” of public transport, she notes.
“I understand that no one wants to pay for these services,” she continues, “but at some point you have to pay for them.”
She nevertheless concedes, in the cases of questionable investments by the City of Montreal – such as the pedestrianization of Avenue Camillien-Houde on Mont-Royal ($90 million), or even free public transportation for seniors ($60 million). $) – “that there are priorities that are not put in the right places”.
Watch the debate on the show The Joust in the video above.
