Mobility, housing, homelessness, infrastructure, workforce… Bruno Marchand has a well-filled shopping list for the next state budget. His demands from the Legault administration total $496 million.
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Quebec’s mayor met with Finance Minister Eric Girard on Monday as part of the pre-budget consultations to give him all of his demands.
At a press conference on Tuesday, he clarified at the outset that the content of his new list was “additional to previously known claims” such as cost overruns for the streetcar, the carrying capacity of the Quebec Bridge, Phase IV Promenade Samuel-De Champlain and the requested amounts for the development of the InnoVitam zone.
Among the new priorities identified by his administration, the mayor is asking for $100 million over five years to acquire and resell land to develop blended, “affordable and sustainable” neighborhoods near the future streetcar that would make it possible to “meet the need for housing, to accommodate new workers and to avoid urban sprawl”.
The City of Quebec continues to ask the government to fund the construction of 500 new social and affordable housing units per year (for a total of 2,500 units over five years) and to provide $25 million to repurchase and renovate existing buildings.
infrastructure and public transport
To reduce its accumulated maintenance deficit related to municipal infrastructure (roads, aqueduct, sewerage, etc.), the city is asking the provincial government to invest an additional $40 million per year, totaling $200 million over five years years.
As for stalled public transit funding, an issue that will be the subject of a new Quebec State consultation, the city dares not commit to a quantified demand. Mayor Bruno Marchand will announce his detailed intentions within “a few months”.
On the other hand, it is again a question of obtaining the right to collect license fees for the new projects that are being built along the tram route. It’s also asking for $54 million to implement its Active Mobility vision unveiled last September.
$15 million for homelessness
Finally, Bruno Marchand is asking for an additional amount of $15 million to address homelessness, $63 million to address armed violence, $14 million to meet growing demand for mental health needs, and $25 million for the Regionalization of immigration and labor force.
reactions of the opposition
The Quebec First opposition generally welcomed Bruno Marchand’s pre-budget proposals. “There is nothing about what the mayor proposes that we reject or that we don’t find interesting,” agreed chef Claude Villeneuve, with the exception of the kings throughout the tram. As in the previous year, the opposition leader presented his own shopping list to the Legault government.
On the part of Équipe Priorité Québec (EQP), chef Patrick Paquet reiterated that “several requests (from the mayor) are legitimate”. However, Mr. Paquet introduced certain nuances. He said that requests for municipal infrastructure funding should have been made jointly by the 10 largest cities in Quebec. His colleague Stevens Mélançon added that the mayor would have benefited from specifying some of his wishes.
-With the collaboration of Taïeb Moalla
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