​Quebec 2022 Elections | LNG Quebec, already forgotten in Saguenay?

Even if it returned to the electoral news, the fire of the natural gas liquefaction plant project of the promoter GNL Québec is making very few waves in Saguenay, according to what has been noted The duty on the shores of the fjord.

The leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), Éric Duhaime, wants to make Énergie Saguenay a “referendum” issue in the region in the October 3 elections. The only party leader to propose the resurrection of the project buried in July 2021 by the Legault government, he called on the Saguenéens in favor of the factory to support his party in the voting booth. “Those who believe in the LNG project […] will vote PCQ, and those who are against the LNG project […] will vote for the CAQ,” he said on the sidelines of an announcement at the start of the campaign.

The duty struggled to find “those who believe in the LNG project” by randomly consulting a few citizens during a visit to the region last weekend.

” Does not ring a bell. I’m not really that, ”says Noël Gervais, retired from Rio Tinto – the “Alcan” –, seated in a brasserie in Arvida.

“Do you have an opinion? Colette Dassylva asks her husband at another local café. The voter maintains that the priority, “is to protect the environment”. “The planet is on fire,” she says, and the PCQ’s position on the climate inspires her little. “I don’t have too much confidence in Mr. Duhaime. »

“She takes us for cellars”

Rejected by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE), the plant project was to lead to the creation of up to 300 jobs in the region.

But it is primarily for environmental reasons that Yvon Laprise, a resident of Jonquière, says he began to campaign in favor of the LNG Quebec project. “I understood that it was not a project that was so harmful for the planet,” he says behind the office installed in his home in Saguenay. “I reassure you, I am not climatosceptic, and I believe that yes, it is necessary to make efforts. But we are already good in Quebec. »

Mr. Laprise is behind the Facebook group “GNL Sag-Lac”, which has 35,000 members and is in favor of taking over the project.

Like many of his fellow citizens, he knew very little about the project at the start, he says. In 2020, “I heard [la députée de Québec solidaire dans Taschereau] Catherine Dorion say on the radio that people in the region are 85% opposed to this project. Then she said: tomorrow, I’m going to Chicoutimi to tell you why you’re against it. […] I said to myself: there, she takes us for sacraments of cellars, ”he relates.

On his Facebook page, Yvon Laprise recently called for a “strategic” vote. “The best and only opposition to advance our LNG project [est] the Conservative Party of Quebec,” he wrote.

Dead and buried?

At the start of the campaign, the PCQ candidate in Chicoutimi, Éric Girard – not to be confused with the outgoing minister of the same name – challenged the CAQ candidate Andrée Laforest to name the economic exit routes now that Quebec has made a cross on Énergie Saguenay. “There is LNG, but for people, you have to work in parallel. […] There are other things on the side, ”retorts the one who is also minister responsible for Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean from her campaign office near Talbot Boulevard.

Anyway, she remarks, sitting in front of a map of her region, “door-to-door, honestly, nobody talks about LNG”.

For the initial project, the door is closed, she assures. Even if his colleague CAQ and Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, said last week that there was still “a little education to do” on liquefied natural gas.

“If we just bet on LNG, like some parties… What is there, apart from GNL, in their electoral platform? asks M.me Laforest without naming Eric Duhaime’s party. “The project is finished. The door is closed. »

Is there room for LNG 2.0? “Of course if we have a phase 2 LNG and it’s completely different… But we’re not there. There, we have to move forward, ”maintains the candidate in Chicoutimi.

Yvon Laprise says he received the Quebec government’s refusal last year as a “slap in the face”. But he “can confirm” that the promoter still gravitates around the region.

At Cégep de Jonquière, we thought on the contrary that we had got rid of the project for good. In 2020, the general association of students of the post-secondary institution had voted by majority to adopt an anti-Énergie Saguenay position. Ève Depatie, second-year student and member of the association, is sorry that the project is back in the news. “Unfortunately, these projects are never completely dead,” she laments.

“It’s really a project that pisses me off,” says Katrine-Sophie Paquette, who she met under the concrete dome of the student crossroads. “We already have our source of hydroelectric and wind energy. I don’t see what it’s for. »

“There is a labor shortage almost everywhere. fact that the creation of jobit’s not necessarily what’s most important,” adds Ève Depatie, who, at 18, will vote for the first time in her life on October 3.

The main issue?

Fervent opponent of the project since day 1, the outgoing Parti Québécois MP, Sylvain Gaudreault, says he is disappointed to see GNL reborn in the news. “LNG is like a bubble almost created apart from people’s real concerns. We don’t get arrested in the street for that, ”he observes.

Seated at his side, the new PQ candidate in Jonquière, Caroline Dubé, is certain that the citizens of the area will vote on other issues. ” When [Éric] Duhaime says it’s the ‘ballot box issue’, it’s disregarding everything that’s happening on the health front, on the education front, on the inflation front,” says- she.

If reborn, the Énergie Saguenay project would theoretically have to go through a new environmental approval process. Before being told no, GNL Québec was aiming for commissioning in four years, in 2026.

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