#Purchase #Quebec #Bridge #agreement #reached #Ottawa
After very long years of procrastination and negotiations, an agreement for the transfer of the Quebec bridge to Ottawa has just been reached between the federal government and Canadian National (CN).
The information, first revealed Thursday morning by Cogeco Media radio host Jonathan Trudeau, was confirmed to the Journal by a source close to the matter who did not want to be named. No details of the agreement have been made public at this time.
In a statement, Jean-Yves Duclos, federal Liberal MP from Quebec and Minister of Public Services and Procurement, said this later in the morning: “After a lot of hard work, the Canadian government has indeed reached a historic agreement with the CN for the purchase of the Quebec bridge. Details will follow in the coming days, but this is excellent news for the people of Quebec. »
Last October, the federal Liberal minister Pablo Rodriguezza affirmed “that we are going to invest massively in the Quebec bridge. There are announcements coming soon.”
In recent years, the federal government has confirmed its intention to buy the bridge (which has been owned by CN since 1993), but negotiations with CN have dragged on.
$784 million over 25 years
In the fall of 2020, the Journal revealed the content of the report by the federal negotiator in this matter, businessman Yvon Charest. At that time, the latter estimated that painting and maintaining the infrastructure would cost $784 million over 25 years.
Two years later, in the middle of the provincial election campaign in the fall of 2022, Mr. Charest made a remarkable outing by warning against the risk of demolition of the rusty bridge more than a century old.
During the 2015 election campaign, the federal Liberals promised to resolve the Quebec Bridge issue before June 30, 2016.
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