Local Journalism Initiative

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

Jean-Yves Duclos had some uncharacteristically harsh words for the Legault government’s decision to hand Quebec City’s tramway project over to the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ).

The powerful federal procurement minister and MP for the downtown Québec riding called the move a “sabotage attempt” by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government.

Questioned by reporters on Parliament Hill in Ottawa the day after the Nov. 8 announcement, Duclos said, “I think that the Quebec government sabotaged the community’s efforts yesterday because the tramway project has been under study and discussion for 15 years.”

Duclos did not say whether the CAQ decision puts federal funding for an eventual transit project at risk. Last week, Duclos said the Liberal government would financially support the city’s “Plan B” option, with a revised budget of $8.4 billion.

Noting that Quebec City is the only city of its size in North America not to have a modern and electric public transit system, Duclos said the CAQ government is putting at risk “the largest Canadian investment in Quebec in history.”

He said, “The only way the Canadian government can exercise leadership is if the leadership of the Quebec government is also present. I’m sad about yesterday’s result, but I think we have to continue. We can’t afford to stay behind. We must invest in people’s quality of life and people’s health.”

Nora Loreto, cofounder of the group Québec désire son Tramway (QDST; Quebec wants its tramway), said in a statement to the QCT, “This is a really disappointing move from François Legault. Projects like these take years, and by delaying it, the costs will only increase. At the same time, car traffic will also increase, exacerbating an already difficult situation within the national capital region.”

She said, “If the CAQ thinks that delaying this project will hand them the next election, they’re wrong. This decision is a gift to Québec Solidaire and the Parti Québécois, both parties who support the project, and also to the Conservatives, who can cynically use this flip-flopping to try and win a riding or two in the region.”

A post on the QDST Facebook page speculated on the potential impact of the CAQ-Caisse decision on the current project office. William Gagnon-Moisan, who says he’s an engineer specializing in urban transit who’s worked at the office for three years, said, “This project will always have been complicated and strewn with upheavals. But this evening I have difficulty being positive, seeing hope, to still perceive light. So much hard work (and money spent) by so many competent people, to end up like this.” He said, “87 people at the [project office] will lose their jobs … I would have liked to be one of those who will have positively changed the face of our city; unfortunately, it seems that this will not be the case … let’s just hope that the CDPQ will be able to take over.”

The city’s neighbourhood councils, which had, the week before, issued a collective message of support for the city’s plan, reacted with anger and disappointment to the CAQ government’s move. Alexia Oman, president of the Saint-Roch council, told the local news website Mon Quartier that “the CAQ’s recent abandonment of the Quebec City tram project is more than a disappointment; it is a betrayal of citizens and a regression for the future of our city. By refusing a structuring transport system, the government is turning its back not only on residents of central neighbourhoods but also on anyone who dreams of a modern, ecological and efficient capital.”

Veteran municipal columnist François Bourque of Le Soleil wrote, “The good news here, if there is any, is that the government says it is committed to a structuring transport project – for what its word is still worth. Concretely, the scenario of a tram remains possible. However, it will be put back into the balance with others. As if the exercise had never been done. As if the Caisse was going to be able to do better in six months than what has been analyzed for 10 years. The difference is that the bill will have continued to rise and the federal funding may no longer be there when Groundhog Day returns.”

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

As the 60th anniversary of the Nov. 22 assassination of John F. Kennedy is marked, CEGEP Champlain-St. Lawrence business professor and assassination researcher Paul Bleau found himself at the scene of the crime in Dallas, Texas.

Bleau is one of the five authors who contributed 10 chapters to a new compendium of research into the president’s killing, titled The JFK Assassination Chokeholds. The title refers to what the authors deem to be examples of incontestable proof “lone gunman” Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent and that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

Last year, Bleau’s research drew national attention when he was featured in Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone’s documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. Stone screened the documentary in Quebec City at packed events in June 2022. (The documentary is running again at this time on the Crave channel.)

The release of Chokeholds comes in the wake of the recent stunning revelations from former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, “whose new evidence,” according to Bleau, “seriously calls into question the chain of custody and truth surrounding the alleged ‘magic bullet’ (which is the foundation of the ‘lone nut assassin’ fable of the Warren Commission).”

Besides Bleau, the other contributors are James DiEugenio, who wrote the script for the Stone documentary and is considered the “pre-eminent scholar” of assassination history, and lawyers Matt Crumpton, Andrew Iler and Mark Adamcyk.

Bleau flew last week to Dallas to present the book and his research at a conference and give at least five interviews to local media. It’s a place he has visited previously in the context of his JFK investigations. He confesses he got a souvenir of the famous Dealey Plaza site – a tiny piece of the picket fence behind the famous grassy knoll where some witnesses say they heard shots that did not come from the Texas Book Repository from where Oswald was alleged to have shot the president.

The longtime St. Lawrence business professor came to the attention of the assassination research community with an article he wrote, inspired by his access to education texts through his work at the college, about how the Kennedy assassination is taught to students.

It found that while some books acknowledged there was controversy, readers would conclude that the “lone nut” theory – that former Soviet defector Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone – was the established historical version of what happened.

Bleau’s contribution to the Stone documentary was based on another article he wrote looking into possible prior plots to kill Kennedy in Chicago, Tampa and Los Angeles in the months and weeks leading up to the Dallas killing.

Bleau said the goal of Chokeholds was not to suggest who might have committed the crime but to lay out a series of indisputable, meticulously researched facts that debunk the so-called official version.

Bleau said he is “particularly proud” of his opening chapter of the book which picks apart the inconsistencies, contradictions and omissions of the Warren Commission report.

In a release accompanying the launch of the book, Bleau said, “There is now an overwhelming mountain of evidence that would give a jury more than a reasonable doubt of Oswald’s guilt, and that there is clear and convincing evidence that there was indeed a conspiracy to assassinate the president and to cover up the true nature of the assassination, which has resulted in 60 years of obstruction of justice.”

He said the most recent example of obstruction is “the decisions of both presidents Trump and Biden to keep hidden the thousands of records about the assassination that remain held in secret by the CIA, FBI and other recalcitrant agencies.”
He said, “We’re getting down to the ‘smoking gun’ documents. We kind of know what the documents they are not releasing are about. Many people suspect they would be very, very troubling.”

As for Bleau personally, his JFK assassination curiosity and research have taken him not only to Dallas but to England where there is a community of interest in the mysterious, unsolved killing, what Bleau calls “the greatest whodunit of the 20th century.”

Chokeholds is available online and in bookstores.

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What is the source of this image?

Chokeholds compiles evidence contradicting the official version of who killed JFK.

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

Those who were old enough to remember, remember.

We were in class that Friday morning, itching for the noon bell to send us home for lunch. Someone came to the door and whispered something to the teacher. He settled us down and told us President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas.

We went home and watched coverage on our small black-and-white TVs. We all knew, children though we were, that the world had changed, and likely not for the better.

What followed in the ensuing days were the indelible images: Oswald’s murder; Jackie’s grief; Bobby comforting the family, the weight of destiny already upon him; John-John saluting his father’s coffin. The Kennedy clan, cursed by tragedy and folly, at its most dire moment.

Years later, having read one of the early books exposing factual improbabilities surrounding the lone gunman theory of who killed Kennedy, I became a low-level JFK assassination buff and followed the various revelations as they cast more and more doubt on the official version.

I have a modest collection of works about the event, including a copy of the debunked and ridiculed Warren Commission report.

There’s also William Manchester’s The Death of a President, which, though rich in fascinating detail and featuring exclusive interviews with Jackie Kennedy – revealing she was a smoker! – still unquestioningly accepted the notion Oswald acted alone. “Oswald was correctly identified as the assassin; the absence of a cabal was established.”

In 1991, the world of JFK assassination skeptics changed with the release of Oliver Stone’s controversial movie JFK, starring Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison, the dogged DA investigating the murder, and Gary Oldman as the “patsy” Oswald.

The movie was so compelling in its destruction of the lone gunman theory that it influenced the U.S. Congress to set up a committee to investigate the assassination.

As circumstances would have it, the assassination buff in me had three opportunities later in life to have a brush with folks familiar with the epic drama 60 years ago.

One was interviewing Stone himself last year when he came to Quebec City to present his documentary updating research into the assassination.

A few years earlier, I had a chance to interview the director of another important film about the assassination, Parkland, which dramatized the shock, chaos and conflict behind the scenes in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, especially at Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was rushed.

In one scene there is literally a stand-off, with guns at the ready, over who would take possession of the slain president’s body. Another scene depicts Oswald’s lonely funeral.

Coincidentally, there is a brand new documentary series out featuring the testimony of doctors at Parkland, several of whom are still alive.

The documentary concludes, “The government did everything it could do to negate, intimidate and threaten the Parkland doctors, because their observations contradicted the single ‘magic bullet’ theory of the Warren Commission.”

The other brush with the JFK saga was more personal, and frankly, astonishing. I wrote a column about an aspect of the tale last year on the 60th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, one of Kennedy’s not-so-secret affairs.

In 2013, for the 50th anniversary of the assassination, I interviewed and did a radio documentary about Charles Foster, Monroe’s one-time publicist and subsequent friend, TV scriptwriter and later Moncton-based newspaperman. Foster claimed Kennedy first met Monroe in the flesh by crazy coincidence in his Hollywood apartment when JFK was in Los Angeles in June 1960, to accept the Democratic Party nomination.

Foster had recounted his adventures with MM before in a story published in a local seniors’ magazine, but never revealed the nature of his relationship with Kennedy that followed that chance encounter in his apartment.

He said he was a confidant to the president and from time to time would get personal calls from Kennedy seeking his advice.

Why did he keep the full story of his friendship with Kennedy and Monroe to himself for so many years? “I think mainly I was unhappy with the ending. I cried twice. And I lost two great friends … I want to remember two remarkable people who were very good people and very kind people, and living their own lives at a time when both of them needed to live their own lives.”

For a lifelong assassination buff, hearing Foster’s intimate memories of Kennedy was about as close to the slain president as one could ever dream of getting.

Premier François Legault (right) met with Caisse head Charles Émond Nov. 15 to discuss the tramway study.

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

Events are in motion in the wake of the Quebec government’s surprise decision Nov. 9 to ask the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec to choose the best option for Quebec City’s “structured” transit system.

Premier François Legault met Nov. 15 with Charles Émond, head of the Caisse, to formally deliver the mandate to the pension fund manager.

The Journal de Québec reported the CAQ government plans to mandate the Caisse to expand its scope beyond Quebec City to include Lévis, according to Legault’s press secretary, Ewan Sauves. It also learned, according to government sources, that the infrastructure wing of the Caisse may be asked to manage whatever project is decided, as it did with Montreal’s newly opened REM (light rail) system.

Mayor Bruno Marchand, stung by the Legault government’s dismissal of his plan to have the city manage the project he had announced a week earlier, has now promised to cooperate with the Caisse mission.

He told reporters at a fundraiser for his Québec Forte et Fière party Nov. 15 that while he was disappointed by the government’s decision, “We are going to collaborate in writing the mandate [for the Caisse] … to ensure the best project possible.”

He said he is not “sulking in my corner” and that “the city will win even though my ego may be bruised.”

Marchand said, “We are going to collaborate, but that does not mean that we are going to accept any boboche [shabby, improvised] project or any postponement in time.”

Marchand’s comments came at the same time as reports said the Legault government had discussions with the Caisse about 10 days before Marchand made his “Plan B” announcement with a new price estimate of $8.4 billion for the tramway.

Meanwhile, Jean-Yves Duclos, federal minister of procurement and MP for Québec, issued a subtle warning that delaying the tramway project puts federal financing at risk.

Duclos told reporters at a Nov. 15 news conference for another announcement in Quebec City, “There are already many studies that have circulated on this project. We are talking about six months [for the Caisse mandate]. Can we do it a little faster?”

Duclos said, “The objective now is to maintain the momentum of the project … so that in Quebec we continue to have the expertise to implement the project in the event that the Caisse de dépôt rules that the tramway continues to be the right project.”

Duclos also said if the Caisse becomes the project manager, the nature of federal funding would need to change. “The government of Canada’s infrastructure funds are not there to generate profits and returns. This is why the assistance from the government of Canada for the REM was in the form of a loan,” he said.

On a lighter tramway note, the popular Radio-Canada news satire program Infoman took a scathing look at the saga in a five-minute segment titled “Le Vaudeville du tramway,” in which “we go forward three steps and go back four.”

Mayor Bruno Marchand announced the revised cost of the tramway system at a Nov. 1 news conference at City Hall.

Photo by Peter Black

Though the projected $8.365-billion cost is more than double the initial estimate five years ago, Mayor Bruno Marchand has said the city is still “all in” on the tramway project.

The mayor, in often impassioned language, unveiled the updated cost of the system at a Nov. 1 City Hall news conference, just days after being informed the only consortium bidding for the infrastructure contract, Mobilité de la Capitale, was unable to meet the deadline or guarantee financing.

Marchand said the city would now pursue the Plan B that’s been in the works for months, whereby the municipality itself would take over the infrastructure component of the system, acting as project manager and hiring the expertise to do the job. Marchand said the in-house management would save billions.

“We are not looking for profit and not dealing with the same risks as consortiums [so] we are able to reduce the price, and reduce it to a level which is acceptable in the context,” the mayor said. The budget projected with a consortium handling infrastructure could have reached $13 or $14 billion, he said.

According to a city release, the infrastructure work is essentially the entire design and construction of the 11.9-kilometre tramway line, including “tram platforms; stations; interchange hubs; the tunnel; the operation and maintenance centre; modal, operation and mobility systems; as well as certain municipal infrastructure, including underground networks, roads and urban developments.”

The mayor said the city has taken on multiple complex projects in the past, such as water treatment plants, the biomethanization plant, the new police station and even the Videotron Centre.

“Our employees are good. They’re at a high level. We have a lot of expertise. We have people who are very efficient. We have other companies that are ready to bring to the table what they offered us to do. We have the knowledge; we are able to do it, to deliver it on time and [on budget]. We think it’s the right amount of money to put in this project.”

The mayor said the Quebec government has known about the backup option since July, when the city presented a business plan. He said he plans to meet with Coalition Avenir Québec government ministers in the near future to discuss the project. Asked whether he believes he can convince the Legault government to get on board, Marchand said, “I hope so.”

He said he had spoken with Jean-Yves Duclos, the federal minister for procurement and MP for Québec, the morning of the announcement and was assured of the Liberal government’s commitment to fund 40 per cent of the project. Duclos said in a media report from Ottawa that there is money on the table to go toward the tramway’s increased cost, but if Quebec City doesn’t take advantage of it, other cities will.

Marchand played a video during the news conference which laid out the vision of the next phases of the tramway project, including routes serving the Charlesbourg and Lebourgneuf areas. It noted that by 2041, the city is projected to have 75,000 more residents making 100,000 additional trips around the city.

The mayor said the tramway would be built in three stages, the first and most complex being the section between Université Laval and the Le Gendre terminus in Cap-Rouge. The service garage is already under construction at the western terminus. About $500 million has been spent to date on tramway preparatory work and installations, the mayor said.

The subsequent phases would be the Saint-Roch to Université Laval line and then the Saint-Roch to D’Estimauville stretch.

Marchand said it is possible people will be able to use the first stage of the tramway line while the two other stretches are still under construction. He said the first phase of the project could be completed before the current target date of 2029.

Asked whether he was confident the project would come to fruition in the next decade, he said, “I am totally confident that this is the project we need. This is a solution to our challenges, so we need to do it, and it’s the only one we can do.

“It’s not a matter of months, it’s a matter of years if we wait or if we build a new project. We take the pragmatic solution. We build a good project, the best project we could build, the project that the federal [government] is into and we need the government of Quebec to be into it as much as we are and to start it as soon as possible.”

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

In revealing the revised cost of the current tramway project, Mayor Bruno Marchand also set a target of 15 years for building tramway lines to the northern crown of the city.

As presented in a video, the first line would run to Charlesbourg, presumably along a route which had been part of the initial tramway proposal under the administration of Marchand’s predecessor, Régis Labeaume. At the insistence of the Coalition Avenir Québec government, that leg was changed for the line to the Beauport district of D’Estimauville.

The other line would pass through the Vanier district, with a hub at Les Galeries Fleur de Lys, and then head off to the Lebourgneuf sector and terminate at the Galeries de la Capitale.

The mayor’s first public commitment to the next phases of the tramway vision comes on the heels of a poll showing the tramway is far from popular in the suburbs. In Charlesbourg, according to the Leger poll, only 35 per cent of respondents had a position view of the plan; in the Les Rivières district it was 29 per cent.

Transition Québec Leader and Limoilou Coun. Jackie Smith said in a Nov. 3 release the city needs to get moving on the next phases. “We cannot wait for the tram to roll to D’Estimauville before starting to debate what happens next. Our city is in transition and this must include all boroughs as quickly as possible. The tramway is not just a toy for people in the city centre.”

Smith has launched an online survey to gather opinions on four scenarios for the Phase 2 line, all of which would connect with the hub in Saint-Roch. Last year, she urged the city to establish a project office to begin planning for the next phase of the tramway.

Marchand echoed the urgency, saying, “We have to think about this right now. If we wait, we’re going to hit a wall.” He noted the lines would be built to address an anticipated demand for transit based on population projections showing some 75,000 more residents by 2041.

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This map shows possible routes for Phase 2 and 3 of the Quebec City tramway plan, with one line running to Charlesbourg and one to Lebourgneuf.

Image from Ville de Québec

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Quebec City’s tramway plan is at a crossroads. That’s the consensus after last week’s announcement by Mayor Bruno Marchand of the revised cost of the system and the city’s decision to manage construction itself.

As the city put it in a press release, the ball is now in the court of the federal and provincial governments. The federal government, via MP and minister Jean-Yves Duclos, is “all in” according to Marchand, but the support of the Coalition Avenir Québec government is less certain.

Premier François Legault, asked about the new cost shortly after Marchand’s announcement, said, “That’s a lot of money. It’s worrying. It’s expensive, very expensive.”

According to Marchand, the Quebec government has known about “Plan B” and its $8.4-billion estimate since July. Legault said he and his relevant ministers, notably Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault and Infrastructure and National Capital Minister Jonatan Julien, need to meet with the city to discuss the way forward.

As for the potential future federal government, Charlesbourg MP and Quebec lieutenant Pierre Paul-Hus repeated Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre’s vow to not put any extra funding into the tramway. “Pierre Poilievre was clear that we would not pay any cost overruns.”

At the Conservative convention in Quebec City in September, Poilievre said he would not spend “billions on projects mismanaged by incompetent politicians” if he became prime minister.

At city hall itself, the revised plan earned the support of Claude Villeneuve, leader of the Official Opposition party, Québec D’Abord, the successor to the party of former mayor Régis Labeaume that first proposed the current plan six years ago.

Villeneuve told reporters there didn’t seem to be much communication between the city and the Quebec government. “You’re adults. Talk to each other.” He said if the project does die, the mayor needs to reconsider his political future.

For Patrick Paquette, interim leader of Équipe Priorité Québec, which has always opposed the tramway, Marchand has already failed and should resign. Paquette said the project should be halted immediately to “stop the bleeding.” In an open letter, Paquette said his party favours an improved system of electric buses.

Transition Québec Leader and Limoilou Coun. Jackie Smith said she would have preferred Plan B to Plan A to begin with. “At some point we have to move forward, have a vision and continue with a project that is already too late,” she said.

Donald Charette, spokesperson for the Québec Merite Mieux group opposed to the tramway, told Radio-Canada, “If consortia withdraw because they are not capable of delivering at a reasonable price, I don’t see how the city can do it. The CAQ must draw the right conclusions.”

Christian Savard of Vivre en Ville said in a statement, “Finally, we have the facts on how we can succeed with the tramway project in Quebec. The route that had been taken through the call for tenders was not the right one. We see that the prices would have been much higher.”

For François Bourque, veteran city hall columnist for Le Soleil, the wavering of the CAQ government’s support for the tramway, “makes the question unavoidable: Is this the end of the tramway?”

He wrote in a Nov. 3 analysis of the status of the project: “For a government that has often felt uncomfortable with the tramway project in recent years, the excuses to get out of it are piling up … explosion of costs, insufficient social acceptability, decline in public transit ridership since the pandemic, withdrawal of the only consortium still in the running for the major tram infrastructure contract, complexity of management if the city becomes project manager instead of a consortium.”

Bourque asks, however, if it kills the current tramway plan, “Will the Legault government have anything else to offer? A more unifying, less expensive project, achievable within a reasonable time frame and with financial support from the federal government?”

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Premier François Legault’s immediate reaction to Mayor Bruno Marchand’s revised tramway cost estimate of $8.4 million was, “That’s a lot of money.”

Photo from National Assembly website