Public transit: Guilbault unmoved
Transport minister Geneviève Guilbault is said to be unmoved by the pleas of municipalities for more transit money, Guilbault seeming happy to let mayors make themselves unpopular by raising funds via higher fees for licence plates.
Brett 20:34 on 2024-05-24 Permalink
Licence plates, not the licenses themselves.
dhomas 06:40 on 2024-05-25 Permalink
Brett is correct. Driver’s licenses and their fees are managed provincially. The CAQ government has already slashed the price of driver’s licenses renewals to around 25$ since 2021. IMO, this was completely unnecessary as people were already used to paying the higher fee (it used to be about 115$), and I say this as a driver who pays for his license renewal every year. The extra revenue could have gone to fund things like, oh I don’t know, public transit? It was really only to buy votes.
Spi 09:07 on 2024-05-25 Permalink
An argument can be made that the fee should reflect the actual costs of the service, if politicians want to charge drivers more to fund public transit then slap on a tax on top it instead of hiding it within a fee.
Nicholas 12:22 on 2024-05-25 Permalink
Technically what was reduced (right before the provincial election) was not the driver’s licence fee but the insurance premium, which pays out injury claims as part of no fault insurance. The fund had gone into surplus, partially due to fewer crashes during the pandemic, so they vastly reduced the money going into it (you still pay if you have demerit points). However, money in the fund can be used for certain safety programs (to reduce injuries), and obviously could be used for things like public transit that reduces driving (and crashes), but the government chose not to.