Environment Minister Benoit Charette said on Tuesday that the Third Link project was not yet “defined” or “bound”. This is an opportunity to reconsider.
The formal commitment of the CAQ begins today! On the eve of the 2014 elections, it committed for the first time to carrying out a “feasibility study for a third Quebec-Lévis link”. On March 27, 2017, the third link became a CAQ election promise in good and proper form. The work would be built “at short notice”, in a “first term”.
François Legault was impatient with the Couillard government: “We lost three years there. Studies must be carried out quickly and in the next mandate. »
On this eve of the Leitao budget presentation, the CAQ chairman was adamant: “It must not be an empty promise. Quebecers are tired of being fooled. So I expect in the budget that there will be a dedicated sum of money for the project office and that there will also be a precise timetable. »
No studying
The third link poisoned the CAQ leader’s recent campaign. Every day he had to answer many similar questions to those he once put to the government. To the point where he lost patience: “There is no study that takes up the project of a four-lane tunnel. »
He then committed to publishing the studies in early 2023. However, on March 2, he admitted that we should wait until the end of April. They had apparently been carried out taking into account the phenomenon of teleworking, but “the answer was not clear”. Those responsible for the study were asked to “investigate this point”…
“way out”
Since then, alarming data has been released about poor air quality, particularly in lower Quebec, where the Quebec-Lévis Tunnel exit would dump about 50,000 cars a day.
Québec solidaire’s Sol Zanetti this week rightly saw a good reason for the government to shut down this pharaonic and useless project; or turning it into a kind of subway under the river: “We have a feeling that they’re looking for a way out, well there they are. “The reasoning? “Quebec air pollution causes 270 premature deaths a year. »
Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault responded by suggesting that “transport electrification” would solve the problem. However, it is now established that electric cars do not naturally emit exhaust fumes, but rather “more particles produced by tyre-road contact and resuscitation due to the larger size of their tires due to their greater mass” (see the French Environment and Energy Management Agency).
In order for this project to stop polluting the existence of the government (and not polluting the air of the citizens), it is high time to radically transform it. That’s good, it’s not even “tethered” yet.
