In July 1995, the report of a conversation with a group of ambassadors in which Jacques Parizeau compared a possible yes victory to a “lobster cage” in which Quebecers would be locked up caused quite a commotion.
This had fueled the rhetoric of the federalist camp, which worked to spread the unpleasant impression that the Parti Québécois was continually looking for tricks aimed at trapping Quebecers and presenting them with a fait accompli.
This is the same impression that many people have regarding the Northvolt issue. The Legault government seems to want to drag us into a forced march into a project that becomes more irreversible every day, without us being able to examine its ins and outs. He himself does not seem interested in knowing them.
The information meetings to which residents of the area where the Swedish company will set up its factory were invited were not reassuring. The lack of response to their concerns was even somewhat insulting.
It is impossible to know what quantities of water will be taken and what will be discharged into the Richelieu River, which constitutes the source of drinking water supply for several municipalities. “Currently, we have no demand [d’autorisation]so I have no data to share with you,” explained the regional director of the Ministry of the Environment in Montérégie.
Same thing for air emissions, battery recycling and even noise. The ministry knows nothing about all this and will only take an interest in it when the project has reached these stages of its completion.
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This progressive authorization process constitutes a formidable “lobster cage” in itself. Once the factory is built, does anyone seriously think that after investing billions in it, the government will demand that it be dismantled because it does not meet its standards?
For decades, the Horne smelter poisoned the residents of Rouyn-Noranda with arsenic, not to mention other toxic releases, under the pretext that its closure would have constituted an economic catastrophe.
In March 2023, the government finally demanded that arsenic emissions be reduced to 15 nanograms per cubic meter of air in 2027, and eventually to 3 nanograms, but now the costs of this reduction, initially estimated at 500 million of dollars, have been “significantly revised” — upwards, of course — and the company suggests that it could instead close its factory. Obviously, if the government agreed to pay…
Either, a foundry almost a century old and a new battery factory are very different things and Northvolt prides itself on being a model of respect for the environment, but business is business and no company is going to accept requirements that would compromise its profitability.
Multinationals know perfectly well how to assess their balance of power against a government. As Glencore is aware of the importance of its factory for the economy of Rouyn-Noranda, Northvolt has very well understood the interest that the Legault government rightly places in the battery sector.
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The latter, however, locked himself in the “lobster cage” by exempting the project from a BAPE examination, which would have allowed it to be studied in its entirety. By declaring, in an interview with The Press, that Northvolt would have preferred to settle elsewhere rather than submit to it, the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, implicitly recognized that his government had in reality given in to a form of blackmail. And that he himself must be treated in negligible quantity, something that officials in his own ministry have long understood.
Mr. Charette thus agrees with all those whom his colleague from the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, described as “activists” because they claimed – wrongly, he maintained – that the rules had been distorted to accommodate Northvolt.
The government had every right to think that this project was essential to the decarbonization of the economy and the achievement of its GHG reduction objectives, or even that the BAPE procedure had become too restrictive, but it preferred to deny for months an obvious fact that was obvious to everyone.
After such an admission, Mr. Charette could at least have spared himself the ridicule of adding: “There was no preferential treatment granted to Northvolt, no privileges and no political pressure. »
He now assures that his ministry will be very vigilant for the future. “These evaluations that we do are among the strictest in the world. And for each of the stages, these evaluations will be required… otherwise the factory will not see the light of day. ” No kidding !