Bridge Saga Confirms Our Leaders as Idiots

It was with stunned amazement that I watched the presentation by our illustrious leaders who explained quite proudly that the plan to remove the old Champlain bridge (once the new span is completed) will take some four years to complete and cost upwards of $400 million.

Whaaaaat???????????

The Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges  authority prepared a video at a cost of untold tens hundreds of thousands of dollars to illustrate how they might undertake the vastly complicated project.
 I say 'complicated' rather facetiously because the entire world understands that to demolish a bridge, the cheapest and fastest way to do so, is to blow it up in one fell swoop.
Not so in Quebec, where we do things differently, not to be better, just to be different and always at a higher cost.

At any rate, the new bridge looks like it's going to be late and over-budget, something every person reading this page, fully expected.

You might ask why they don't just blow up the damn thing with dynamite in a controlled demolition for a fraction of the cost, with just a couple of weeks preparation.
If you do ask, you'd get the most ridiculous and patently stupid answer in return.

You see the good folks at the bridge authority are afraid of disturbing the mutant three-headed fish that swim below the bridge and they want to spare the folks on the adjacent Nuns Island a nasty dust cloud that would inevitably follow.
Yup, that's the justification for that $400 million cost. The fish and the dust.

Montreal Dumps massive amount of sewage into river

This for a city that dumped a gazillion liters of toxic sewage into that same river last year because to do anything else would cost too much and be quite the bother.
When it comes to saving the environment in Quebec, all efforts are mandatory and at any cost ....as long as Ottawa and Canadian taxpayers ante up.

The question to be asked is why in Quebec is blowing up a bridge not politically or environmentally correct, when the practice is standard operating procedure all over the world.
The City of New York doesn't seem to have any qualms about blowing up a bridge with dynamite and this in one of the most densely populated urban areas in North America.

"A much needed replacement bridge has been under construction since 2015 and is slated to open in April. Once it's fully functional, the 78-year old Kosciuszko Bridge will literally be blown to smithereens. The reason behind blowing up the bridge is that it will just save the work crew's time. Usually, it takes months to dismantle a bridge so blowing it up is actually much easier (not to mention, considerably more dramatic)."Link

The only controversy around the project is which music will be played during the big explosion, with many proposing the 1812 Overture being  played by a volunteer band.
In a ceremony last year blowing up another New York State bridge, Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn't seem to have any qualms about using explosives to take down another out-dated bridge.

"Life is tough when you’re a bridge," he said. "You work for 85 years, stand up through storms, rain, carry vehicles every day. Then at retirement, you don’t get a watch, you don’t get a pension, you don’t get a thank you. All they do is blow you up.”

In fact dozens of bridges are successfully blown up each year, even those over rivers.
What is it that makes us so special that we cannot do the same?

Now I understand that a federal agency is undertaking the foolhardy project which includes an overpriced bridge and a ridiculous over-priced demolition, so we here in Montreal are sitting on our hands, watching the rank stupidity and foolhardy spending with nary a complaint because we are the beneficiaries.
Like usual Quebec takes while giving back a pittance and so Canadian taxpayers get to play the generous fools once again.
The project represents all that is wrong with our government, both provincial and federal when idiots have their hands on the public purse strings and spend like demons just because they can.
The announcement of the environmental effort to spare the fish under the bridge comes in the same week that Montreal is surreptitiously chopping down 1,000 trees on beautiful St. Helen's Island to make way for a paved concourse, further degrading a stunning green space to accommodate Osehega, an alt-music festival.
Maybe the festival can adopt Joni Mitchel's 'Big Yellow Taxi' as it's anthem.
You know the lyrics;

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
And put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half to seem 'em

I cannot fathom the timid reaction by taxpayer groups, watchdogs or the press, who let the issue of the massive overspend on the removal of the old Champlain bridge go with nary a word of protest.
This while people are motivated to protest in the streets over a couple of million dollars in over-compensation of Bombardier executives while quietly accepting a needless $400 million demolition project.

I remember getting a knock on my door in my rented apartment in Florida. A lovely and spry grey-haired senior citizen asked me if I planned to go down to city hall for the big tax protest that they were organizing.
Alas, I answered, I'm only a temporary renter with no dog in the fight.
To which she called me an idiot, reminding me that because of the tax increase I would be paying more next time I rented.
By the way, the protest was successful and rates were frozen.
If only we had the same concerned citizens here, we might attend a grand farewell blow-up party for the Champlain bridge, saving us hundreds of millions.