Tinfoil hat moment:
Insiders say consultations were unexpectedly postponed to 2026 at the request of Steven MacKinnon.
MacKinnon is one of the main proponents of a controversial eastern Ottawa-Gatineau road bridge (their version of Quebec-Levis’s 3e lien), and has been very insistent recently on how mass transit and that project are not incompatible.
If an Ottawa-Montreal connection via the north shore is favoured today, it’s possibly the result of MacKinnon’s interference; he wants a combined bridge.