Quebec is ending public transit funding negotiations in the short term with local elected officials, who on Monday revised down their deficit calculation by asking for a meeting with the prime minister. The possibility of a drop in performance on the subway therefore remains.
Posted at 2:13 p.m.
“We will finance 70% of the transport companies’ deficit in 2024. This offer is final. “This is 265 million that we are granting,” stressed the office of Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault in a statement issued on Monday afternoon.
Behind the scenes, it is becoming even clearer that there will be no further negotiations at this point, at least for 2024. So the total aid for next year will actually be 265 million, of which 238 million will be for the Greater Montreal area, a figure that, according to government calculations, it absorbs 70% of the deficit.
The latter should also include this “final” aid in the economic update that Finance Minister Eric Girard will carry out on Tuesday.
All this comes while a little earlier, at the beginning of the day on Monday, the Metropolitan Community of Montreal (CMM) had officially sent a letter to Prime Minister François Legault regretting that the registration tax revenue “was not used by the government should be”. [ministère des Transports] when calculating the deficit.
In their letter, the 82 elected officials of the CMM also confirm that they have revised their expected deficit downwards and now stands at 461 million. They therefore call on Prime Minister Legault to “pay a financial assistance of 346 million, representing 75% of this revised residual deficit”, which requires an improvement “of 128 million compared to the final offer presented by the minister”, they say.
A tax at the center of the conflict
From the beginning, the government and the cities of the Greater Montreal area did not agree on how to calculate the deficit. The municipalities so far estimate it at 532 million, while Quebec has been talking about 338 million for a few days, a gap that it explains through an “update” of the ARTM budget framework, optimization measures and related revenues to the registration tax.
The latter, estimated at 122 million per year, “must be used for the development of public transport,” insist the elected officials, who reiterate the urgency of the action given the impending adoption of their budgets, scheduled for mid-November.
“Without sufficient financial support [sociétés de transport] “We will be forced to significantly reduce the range of services offered,” affirm the cities, which have already emphasized that aid below 300 million could, among other things, lead to the subway on the island of Montreal closing after 11 p.m.
In short, it is still unclear whether these cuts will actually be implemented and, if so, how, but they are certainly still up in the air. Bus service cuts and driver layoffs were also mentioned in the Greater Montreal area.
If the question appears to have been clarified on the government side for 2024, a five-year financing plan still needs to be drawn up. In the longer term, Ms. Guilbault’s office is prepared to “optimize investments to provide Quebecers with better public transportation services.”
“For the years 2025 to 2028, we are fully prepared to contribute to the working committee that Ms. Guilbault will establish to improve the efficiency of our transport companies,” the elected municipal representatives repeat in their letter.