MONTREAL, Que. – Quebec Trucking Association officials were a little embarrassed this month, as their 49th annual convention fell on Easter weekend. Such events are apparently planned so far in advance that nobody checked the calendar for conflicting dates.

The theme of the opening ceremony was the impact of trucking on daily life in Quebec, and in Canada as a whole, where some 220,000 truckers get products to market. The QTA, which represents 1,500 members and some 13,000 vehicles, was keen to point out the industry’s strengths, and at the same time, outline the challenges ahead. About 80 per cent of goods moved in Quebec are hauled by truck, and the QTA had produced a video showing the path of a little tub of yogurt from raw milk to packaged container, heading to the end consumer.

Popular Montreal CKAC radio presenter Gilles Proulx, one of the opening ceremony speakers, played on the audience’s appreciation for his rather cynical sense of humor with a commentary on the state of the trucking industry in Quebec.

Proulx said that while in the rest of Canada, and particularly in Ontario, the economy is “booming”, in Quebec, it’s at best a “boom, boom, boom” or just sputtering along.

“If we compare ourselves to our neighbors, we are stagnating. We’re missing a viable infrastructure, we’re dealing with a bad image of truckers, and the flagrant problem of the absence of police on the road,” said Proulx on a more serious note.

Proulx noted that while the Quebec trucking industry feeds provincial coffers with taxes each year, very little of that money goes back into the system in the way of infrastructure projects.

“Truckers are the lifeblood of the economy in Quebec,” said Proulx. “But truckers see only financial penalties, a lack of respect and comprehensive education.”

Proulx was greeted with wide applause when he cynically criticized the provincial government’s recent announcement of infrastructure plans, which will see $3.8 billion injected into provincial roads and public transit networks over the next 10 years.

Quebec will still need to find $2 billion, from the federal government and the private sector, to fund major improvement projects.

“It’s coercion, not persuasion, that is needed to fix the industry,” said Proulx. “We have to keep a hardliner attitude.”

Quebec’s Transport Minister, Guy Chevrette, was supposed to speak at the QTA convention, but cancelled at the last minute.

Chevrette had earlier told the Montreal Gazette that the impact of the lack of infrastructure improvements in Montreal was costing more than $500 million a year in lost time and environmental impacts. n