A distant view of next year’s city election
La Presse notes that, a year from now, we should be embarking on the next municipal election campaign, and ponders whether Projet will be able to leave a positive enough impression on the voting public to be allowed to continue its administration of the city.
It’s clear from this piece that nobody can know this far in advance. Who could’ve predicted in 2017 that Plante and her team would have to steer the city through the biggest crisis the world has seen in years? Could any municipal administration have done a significantly different or better job, given that the major decisions are not in their hands, but in the hands of Quebec City, Ottawa and ineluctable fate?
ant6n 18:05 on 2020-08-17 Permalink
But where’s the pink line?
Kate 21:31 on 2020-08-17 Permalink
The pandemic has to be the worst thing that’s happened to Projet in city hall, but a close second was the election of a CAQ government in 2018. With little chance of raising party support in Montreal, the Legault government has no motivation to do things for the city.
JaneyB 13:00 on 2020-08-18 Permalink
The CAQ still has to pay attention to Montreal because it contains half the population of the province and is responsible for nearly all of the province’s economy. It would be nice to have some seats in govt but economic power is also good. Even in our pandemic-beaten needy state, Montreal is still the engine (along with Hydro-Quebec of course).
david293 14:43 on 2020-08-18 Permalink
The pink line studies should be completely finished, so that it’s shovel ready. It has been three years. Obviously, the thing will only get build with support of higher levels of government, but they should be ready to jump when that support is forthcoming. It just hasn’t been a priority, at all. Now that a mega spree of infrastructure spending is about to come down from the feds, Montreal isn’t ready. And Trudeau’s crew can’t do better than, say, funding the studies that should already have been completed.
Huge missed opportunity, all down to PM’s priorities.
Kate 15:24 on 2020-08-18 Permalink
Curious to know: what priorities would people give here to these proposed projects:
– the pink line
– extending the blue line to Anjou
– extending the western side of the orange line to Bois-Franc
david∞, Montreal is certainly ready to work on extending the blue line, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to do what Alan DeSousa has suggested, and use the subterranean construction of the metro garage at Côte-Vertu as the basis for an extension of the tunnel to Poirier and Bois-Franc.
Ant6n 18:16 on 2020-08-20 Permalink
Theres a Factor of 3-5 between each of these three in terms of cost as well as effect as well as complexity. Is „priorities“ the best basis of discussion?
But then also, given that the prep work for a large infrastructure project represents a smallish fraction of cost but a significant fraction of the time of a project, is „priorities“ a good enough argument to not start the prep work.