Trains REM: the government Couillard does not guarantee any manufacturing in Quebec

News 15 February, 2018

Photo Simon Clark
The government Couillard is unable to promise that the trains of the express Network metropolitan (REM) will be built in Quebec.

Pascal Dugas Drone

Thursday, 15 February 2018 10:39

UPDATE
Thursday, 15 February 2018 10:50

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QUEBEC | gouvernement Couillard is unable to promise that the trains of the express Network metropolitan (REM) will be built in Quebec.

The company that won the contract for the rolling stock, the French giant Alstom has a plant at Sorel, but the Transport minister, André Fortin, has not been able to guarantee that the trains will be built at this location.

“Now, what interests us is to have a maximum economic impact. We talk about 34 000 direct jobs during the construction of the REM”, the minister said Fortin, evading the question of the manufacture of the trains.

He also reiterated that approximately 65 % of the entire project will be carried out on canadian soil, but refrained from specifying a target for the rolling stock.

CDPQ-Infra, responsible for the construction of the REM, confirmed last week that the consortium led by Alstom had won the tender for the rolling stock, in front of Bombardier.

Disappointment of the PQ

The Parti québécois, which had requested that a minimum québec content for the rolling stock required upon the adoption of the law on the REM, deplores that the government Couillard does not can be more involved.

“I have no difficulty to be a tender open to all companies in the world, and that one or the other wins, in the measure where the train is built in quebec”, summed up the leader of the Parti québécois, Jean-François Lisée.

“I’m not saying that Bombardier must receive all contracts, I am saying that it is Quebecers who should build the train for which you pay $ 6.3 billion”, he added.

He also believes that if Quebec had required that at least 50 % of the rolling stock to be built in Quebec, Bombardier would have offered the best bid.

– With Patrick Bellerose, and Marc-André Gagnon