That explanation is fairly complete. I would add that in a post-pandemic environment, ridership is not yet back to where it was before. It's important for governments to be able to provide support for both capital and operations, at least in the current period. This is very important.
Beyond that, I'd say that the provision of services is the main driving force behind the operation of a public transit system. I live in the Montreal area and know many people who aren't well off. In a city like Montreal, these people live as close as 4 to 10 kilometres from their workplace. Right now, whether they're students or just starting out in their careers, they've chosen to buy a car to get around Montreal. That's an aberration. Perhaps they had other options. These are special cases that demonstrate the need for coordinated investments in this sector by all levels of government.
It's all very well to introduce carbon taxes, bonus-malus schemes or any number of other fiscal or complicated measures, but the primary solution for reducing GHG emissions from transport…. In Quebec, of course, given our reliance on hydroelectric power, transportation is the main contributor to GHG emissions. For all regions, we absolutely need an efficient public transit system. Despite the investments we're seeing, there's still a lot to be done. For example, there's the REM, and there's been talk about a tramway in Quebec City for 10 years.
We see the money going into the Quebec government's budgets, commitments and the Quebec infrastructure plan, or PQI, but it has to translate not only into figures in the budgets, but also into concrete measures and actions. We can see that things aren't moving fast enough, and that congestion and pollution problems are getting worse.