Even though the Quebec government decided to suspend the tram, Mayor Marchand said he was “completely satisfied” with the City of Quebec paying the salaries of certain project office employees.
For six months, the municipality will pay $2.5 million in salaries for 46 employees of the tram project office. “There are people who, like before the tram, will contribute to the development of the services for which they will work. We are completely satisfied with that,” said the mayor at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
In addition to these 46 people, 117 employees will remain in the project office and will be paid $7 million by the Quebec government for six months. They will work with the Caisse de dépôt etplacement du Québec (CDPQ Infra), which has begun the analysis to identify the best structured transport project for Quebec.
Photo Stevens LeBlanc
In a decision-making summary released Monday, we learned that Quebec City will have to allocate $2.5 million to keep 46 project office employees on the job during the compulsory six-month break imposed by the Legault government.
Questions
The official opposition at Quebec City Hall, while in favor of keeping the project office alive, questioned what exactly the role of these 46 employees would be for the municipality.
“We must maintain the expertise of the project office,” emphasized Claude Villeneuve, head of Quebec First. But what happens to these 46 employees? What are we going to ask them to do?” In his eyes, the decision summary contains “little information.” This is another reason not to give the Marchand government a “blank check,” he said.
Mr. Villeneuve reiterated that his call for a general tram committee is even more relevant when summaries of this type appear. In his opinion, such a summary shows how much Mayor Marchand will not be able to avoid talking about the tram in the six-month deliberations of the CDPQ Infra.
Not the right numbers
For his part, Patrick Paquet, head of the Priority Quebec team, said he is convinced that the decision summary on the number of project office employees is “erroneous” and does not contain the correct figures.
The latter argued that the total number determined by his party in June 2023 was 75 employees. Therefore, the total number of 163 employees (117 of which continue to be paid by the state) seems incomprehensible to him.
Like his counterpart Villeneuve, Mr. Paquet said he was sure the mayor of Quebec would not be able to avoid the tram issue in the coming months.
Jackie Smith, head of Transition Québec, is confident that CDPQ Infra will ultimately recommend a tram and believes the project office must now focus on planning phases two and three of the tram.
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