Those who, even after the slaughter in the CHSLDs during the pandemic, doubt the need to review the role of the national director of public health so that he can exercise his functions “in complete independence and without political constraint” in the words of coroner Géhane Kamel, should look at Abitibi. The region is the scene of a scandalous health soap opera in which the main role is played by the same man: Horacio Arruda. This time again, he seems incapable of reconciling the two hats he wore then, that of national director of public health and the more political one of assistant deputy minister of health.
At the heart of the controversy: frightening data showing a lung cancer rate of 140 per 100,000 people in the region, compared to 107.7 for all of Quebec, from 2013 to 2017. Horacio Arruda knew that these data, presented without contextualization in the appendix of a report itself very worrying on the biomonitoring carried out on the lead, cadmium and arsenic impregnation of young children in the Notre-Dame district of Rouyn-Noranda, neighbor of the Foundry Horne, would “generate more concern”.
Judging that they needed to be analyzed more finely, in particular because people smoke more in this region according to him (which contradicts a study by the CISSS de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue in May 2022), he had obtained their withdrawal. Prudence in science is a cardinal virtue. The problem is not the precautionary burst of the director of public health, who defends himself, but the paternalism of the deputy minister and his laxity. Aware of the difficulties of the multinational Glencore to get closer to the standards in force, Horacio Arruda will have preferred to put the lid on the pot and let time slip by unduly.
Thirty-two months (!) separate the withdrawal of these figures from their reappearance, last month, before the follow-up committee of the 2019 biomonitoring study. Taken from the state of health of the population of Rouyn-Noranda, these data show that the percentage of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is higher there than the Quebec average and that low birth weight births are more numerous. Has science gained from the change? Not even: the additional analysis to justify the withdrawal of these worrying data is still not ready! It would be “in the process of proofreading and correction”.
In a press briefing, the Dr Arruda denied all blame, including that of possibly getting entangled in his hats. By scratching, however, we see that he defended the indefensible by giving his imprimatur to a plan that still allows arsenic emission peaks at 100 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m3), far, very far, from the Quebec standard of 3 ng/m3. Asked to explain himself, he first said that “the Horne Foundry is part of the economic infrastructure of the region” to add, when it was pointed out to him that this was a political and not a health judgment, that n the contrary, “having a job” was also “a determinant of health” that had to be taken into account.
This easily gives absolution to the Horne Foundry, which, after having lowered its emissions to 71.4 ng/m3 in the first quarter of 2022, is now aiming for a concentration oscillating between 20 ng/m3 and 60 ng/m3 for 2024. Nothing to be proud of, especially when we know that the management of the plant recently withdrew from the advisory committee on the pretext that it no longer recognized itself in its “expanded” mandate. It is also to deny the ability of Rouyn-Noranda to build a possible future without the foundry, while the city has diversified since its entry into activity in 1927.
The five-year copper smelter decontamination certificate expires this year, and its renewal is in progress. When the current national director of public health, Luc Boileau, has to put his nose in this file, it will be essential that it is not the assistant deputy minister, but the director of public health — and he alone — who will have the last word so that its requirements are only those required by health requirements. Final point.