There are many problems that face Quebec today and one of the biggest is transportation. Maintaining the complex system of roads and repairing aging infrastructure like bridges is an absolutely monumental task. However bad the situation in the south of this province however, the predicament is far more dire for . . .
people who live in the far north, places like James Bay, Nunavik or the territories beyond them.
Due to a lack of reliable year-round roads, air transport is the lifeline that connects many of these communities to food and equipment from their southern neighbours. The expense of flying in basic necessities like paper, flour or diapers is passed on to the residents of these communities, and contributes to an obscenely high cost of living.
The CAQ government has set out to tackle the issue, by investing $30 million in a French company to manufacture a fleet of Quebec-made zeppelins that they hope will take over cargo transportation in remote areas.
No, seriously.
Last fall the government inked a multi-million dollar deal for a minority stake in Flying Whales, a would-be blimp-maker based in France, with the aim of setting up a Quebec subsidiary to manufacture the dirigibles for the North American market. Flying Whales claims that their airships will be able to transport 60 tons of materials to areas inaccessible by ground transport.
This issue was back on the front burner last week, after Le Journal de Quebec published a story on Feb. 4, highlighting the fact that the previous Liberal government had passed on funding the prototype zeppelins back in 2017. Citing an anonymous expert that studied the previous proposal, the article states that there would be several challenges to using the blimps in the far north, as opposed to warmer climates like France.
Critics in the opposition parties got the chance to break out their best puns, going on about “bursting balloons” and asking if the bureaucrats at Investment Quebec had been inhaling helium.
Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon admitted that the project is one of the riskiest that he has invested in, but stood by its merit. He also refused to make public any studies on the feasibility of the Flying Whales project.
Premier François Legault, himself no stranger to the aerospace community as the co-founder of AirTransat, also backed the blimps.
“If we don’t take risks we go nowhere,” he is quoted as saying in the Montreal Gazette.
It’s true that airship technology has advanced significantly since the days of the Hindenburg, but the government should be able to show its homework if this “risky” project has merit. By refusing to offer any details about their plans, they’re asking the public to have faith in a $30 million long-shot gamble backed with taxpayer money.
Here’s to hoping they picked a winner.
Caleb Nickerson
