Death of the car
Good Stéphane Laporte piece in La Presse on the death of the car after the CAQ’s shift to making the 3e lien a public transit project: “Y a pas plus steak-blé d’Inde-patates que la CAQ. Y a pas un parti plus attaché aux valeurs traditionnelles québécoises : le hockey, la job steady, le bon boss et le gros char. Ils viennent de rayer la dernière de la liste.”
DeWolf 00:28 on 2023-04-24 Permalink
When even the CAQ realizes that car-centric infrastructure doesn’t make economic sense…
JaneyB 08:45 on 2023-04-24 Permalink
I love the photo for that story – so poetic.
steph 09:44 on 2023-04-24 Permalink
are we witnessing the moment when the ROQ turns it’s back on la CAQ because they’ve become too Montreal-centric?
Kate 09:51 on 2023-04-24 Permalink
We might be! The PQ is making hay over it, possibly seeing the issue as a way to revive some of their previous support in the Quebec City area. Quebec Conservative party boss Éric Duhaime is also trying to use the issue to entice disaffected CAQ MNAs to his party.
EmilyG 12:45 on 2023-04-24 Permalink
Wow. The way that article is written, is art. Well done.
GC 16:27 on 2023-04-24 Permalink
Won’t the voters, with their notoriously short memories, forget about this by the time there’s an election? Also, won’t they mostly just lose voters in Levis? They probably still can pull out a majority. Legault has historically been too good at milking his approval ratings. I find it hard to believe he’s overplayed this one. (But we can hope.)
Kate 10:19 on 2023-04-25 Permalink
They won’t forget if other parties make a point of reminding them. The PQ needs to handle it with discretion, because they won’t want to be tarred as anti‑environmentalist – Paul St P Plamondon isn’t a fool – but the Quebec Conservatives won’t mind that a bit.
GC 09:51 on 2023-04-26 Permalink
Let’s hope so, Kate. About Plamondon, I saw this in a CBC article this morning (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/legault-third-link-frustration-decision-quebec-city-1.6822081):
‘Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said Legault treated voters as “political merchandise,” adding that he would table a bill to allow for the recall of politicians who break election promises.’
He might want to be careful with that, in case the PQ ever want to break a promise…
I’m no fan of Legault, and I’m not going to be directly affected by any decisions for this tunnel. But, in an ideal world the government should be changing decisions to do what’s best if new information becomes available. Obviously, “best” can be difficult to define in these cases. And, if they had already decided this before the election and just lied to curry votes that’s something else. I have no idea if that was the case, but certain detractors–like Plamondon–are certainly implying it. It would be interesting to see what studies the CAQ are citing and when they became available.