Steven Guilbeault said Friday that the construction of the Northvolt battery mega-factory in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, in Montérégie, did not worry him, recalling that any project has an impact on the environment.
“If you ask me, as a federal minister, if the Northvolt project worries me: no, it does not worry me,” declared the head of the Environment in Ottawa on the sidelines of an event which took place in Montreal. “It’s a major industrial project. We have done others, and there are others like that in the country. But it is a project which, in the long term, will lead to very significant ecological benefits for the entire country. »
Thursday, the Quebec Environmental Law Center (CQDE) filed a request for an injunction before the Superior Court of Quebec demanding an immediate halt to the work of felling trees and destroying wetlands on the site of the largest private industrial project in the history of Quebec.
Minister Guilbeault did not want to comment on the current legal process. However, he recalled that no project receives unanimous support. “Someone tell me there is no social acceptability [pour ce projet]… I have never seen any measurements. It’s easy to use this concept [d’acceptabilité sociale]which is a very vague, fuzzy and undefined notion, to say that the project should not be done,” he said.
The electrification of transport – to which the Northvolt factory will contribute by producing battery components for electric vehicles – represents a giant step in the fight against climate change, believes the federal elected official. “The electrification of transportation is not the solution to climate change, but it is certainly one of the solutions,” he said. And those who claim that there are no benefits to switching, for example, from a gasoline car to an electric car are either misinformed or they are disinformation. »
Faced with the emergency, it is necessary to accelerate the fight against climate change, Minister Guilbeault reiterated. “How can we speed up our processes without short-circuiting the necessary consultation? […] That’s a bit like our social challenge. »
Environmental assessments
The Legault government exempted the Northvolt project from the environmental assessment procedure generally imposed on large-scale industrial projects, as soon as the project was announced in September 2023.
Data obtained by The duty from the Quebec Ministry of the Environment indicate the presence of 21 vulnerable or threatened species on the mega-factory site. And at least 142 bird species, some of which are threatened, also frequent the 170-hectare site.
On the federal side, an evaluation by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada is underway “to see if federal laws should apply to this project.” indicated Minister Guilbeault.