Dear Mr. Cerruti, welcome to Quebec.
In your letter published in The Press on December 22, you brilliantly presented to us the major Northvolt project, which intends to contribute to decarbonizing the economy by producing one million “greenest batteries in the world” annually on the banks of the Richelieu. At Action Boréale, our expertise in this area may remain embryonic, but it does not allow us to compete with your enthusiasm. It barely allows us to wonder if multifunctional harvesters with “green batteries” will have made any progress in protecting the environment, once clear-cutting has been carried out, once a place of biodiversity has been wiped out.
Even if it means disappointing you, transforming 1.4 billion cars by replacing the oil source with the electric source will contribute to accelerating the destruction of still natural ecosystems, these carbon sinks which constitute the most effective means of making gas rarefied. greenhouse effect. And that we are trying to protect in Abitibi.
A drastic reduction in individual transport is necessary. We urgently need to use our natural, financial and human resources to develop efficient public transport and rail networks.
You want to “work hand in hand with groups who also care about the environment”. Let’s see how much. It is with extraordinary eagerness that our government has facilitated your arrival on the banks of the Richelieu. Given the dimensions of the Northvolt project, the country’s laws require that it first be subject to a public assessment by the ministry responsible for the environment. To at least see to what degree nature will be affected. (One can easily imagine that the same is true in your home, in democratic Sweden.)
However, on the sly, last summer, the ministry fiddled with its own standards, thus allowing Northvolt to escape an evaluation. He finally agreed to this assessment, which will however take place after the construction of the factory. Unheard of!
Did you participate in this conspiracy? All groups that care about the environment were stunned.
” Give a hand. » This is not the first time that you have extended your hand to us, Mr. Cerruti. Last October, thanks to everyone’s little money, we made a promise to give you seven billion dollars. As a mark of goodwill, that’s really hard to beat, isn’t it?
Mr. Cerruti, in return for all these public generosity and to demonstrate your good faith, would you be kind enough to formalize your agreement to hold public hearings under the conditions prevailing before the submission of your project? But first of all, would you also be kind enough to remove your eight lobbyists from the premises of the Quebec Parliament and its ministries?
Because, you see, our current government is too morally fragile to face this pressure. His integrity is questioned at every turn, at every turn. Among other things for environmental issues, the most obvious of which: that of the Horne foundry in Rouyn-Noranda.
(After Prime Minister François Legault promised the city’s population that they would decide for themselves whether they would consent to an ambient arsenic standard five times higher than the Quebec standard, after the people had refused this proposal up to 67%, Legault decreed the deportation of the neighborhood!)
You end your collaboration proposal like this: “In the fight against climate change, we face a choice: sit back and do nothing, or stand up and take action. At Northvolt, we get up and move forward. »
Rest assured, Mr. Cerruti, that Action boréale also wants the people of the region and the environmental groups of the country to stand up and advance on your land to occupy it until the Office of Public Hearings on the environment (BAPE) has completed the mandate that would normally have been assigned to it.