Photo: Jacques Boissinot The Canadian Press Solidarity MP Sol Zanetti saw in the “openness to a change of position” of the Parti Québécois regarding the third link “an electoralist and dishonest strategy”.
Québec solidaire (QS) expressed regret on Wednesday for the collapse of a “common front” with the Parti Québécois (PQ) against the third highway link project, blaming leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon to adopt an “electoralist and dishonest strategy” in the matter.
“The Parti Québécois, although it tries to rectify, what it wants to do, what it [does], is to open the door to a change of position, it is to open the door to the fact that one day they will say: “There could be a third highway.” And that’s a serious setback,” said solidarity MP Sol Zanetti.
The day before, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon refused to exclude at a press briefing (and despite numerous questions) the possibility of supporting a third motorway link in 2026. He took up the pen on X a few minutes later. He wrote, on the one hand, that his party “excludes” this possibility, but added, on the other hand, that the PQ could have to change its position depending on the work of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, responsible for studying the third link project.
“What is clear is that here he is saying that he has the same position as before, but that he will open the door to change,” said Mr. Zanetti. And that is problematic because what is going to make him change his mind, if not electoral reasons which are far from science and which are not honest towards the people to whom he has made believe that he would be a good defender of true sustainable mobility in Quebec ? »
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A “dishonest” strategy
The supportive MP saw in “this openness to a change of position” a “serious step backwards” and “an electoralist and dishonest strategy” on the part of the PQ. “What would make them change their position ? Will science change ? Will, all of a sudden, the issue of greenhouse gases change ?” asked Mr. Zanetti. “Political coherence means saying: we want ecology, we want sustainable mobility, and then, please, we are against a third motorway link and it is not the [Caisse] which is going to make us change idea. »
The day before, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon had declared that there was no question for the PQ of immediately demanding — from an ideological point of view — that a new link between Quebec and Lévis are reserved for public transportation. “The only guiding principle, which is not ideological, but which is founding in the PQ, is that we consult a large number of experts, we consult the population, and it is on this basis that 'we take what we believe to be the best project,' the PQ leader argued.
“What the Parti Québécois is doing,” Mr. Zanetti replied, “is saying: ‘We are perhaps going to put our values aside.’” That's what he's saying. And that’s a very negative signal. »
If QS attacked the PQ so strongly, it is because it is sorry to lose an ally in the fight against the third highway link project, added solidarity activist Gabriel Nadeau- Dubois. “We, when we think we are counting on allies, on an issue as important for the region as mobility and the third link, and suddenly this common front is shaken, I understand [my elected colleagues in Quebec] to be ask: “Coudonc, who can we really work with in the Quebec region, in the fight against climate change ?””
The interim leader of the Liberal Party, Marc Tanguay, for his part responded with a “no” when a journalist asked him if the PQ’s position was clear. “There seem to be contradictions. He was against it. There, he is no longer completely against it and he would perhaps even be for it. So I’ll let him sort it out himself,” he said.
Among the liberals, “we are convinced that, for the mobility issue, we need to have structuring transport,” he added. “We are not going to change our position in relation to what the Caisse de dépôt et placement could propose. »
With Alexandre Robillard