Published November 29, 2023

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.”

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