When you leave behind Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu and its river going up the land, the landscape quickly becomes agricultural. Between Rang Amyot, Rang 3 des Moulins and Route 137, “it’s the pig’s Bermuda triangle”, as David Moore, himself a resident of the sector, baptized it: “There is an appalling concentration of piggeries, that’s enough. »
This resident and other families have just learned that their next neighbor will be another piggery with 3,996 animals. A “magic number”, quips Éric Lévesque, a forestry technician who lives near the planned building, since it avoids an examination by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE): “We are among the most beautiful villages in Quebec, but also among the most stinky,” he adds.
In a few square kilometres, 20,000 pigs have been added over the past 10 years, all projects led by two brothers, Pier-Luc and Maxime Archambault. The latest project has fueled tensions with these residents, who fear for their quality of life and for the environment.
Mr. Moore and his partner, Jolanta Sprawka, oppose the project, and not only for its nauseating aspect: “When we came to live in the countryside, we obviously accepted agricultural activities. Before, it was livable, but now it’s too much, “says Mme Sprawka.
Besides the comings and goings of trucks, it is also animal welfare that worries Mr. Moore. “We can already hear the cries of the animals, they never see the light of day. This is not what we want as a type of agriculture in 2021. “
As in Saint-Adelphe (see text above), these citizens were not taken aback to have been made aware of a project after its approval by the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC) .
“The way it is done is so distressing. We have no spring,” says another resident of the same rank, Brian de l’Étoile. “At what point will this development stop? Couldn’t we put a limit on the number of pigs within a certain radius in the municipality? he asks suggestively.
“I understand that it is difficult to accept, but concretely, we cannot prevent industry and agriculture from developing”, notes meanwhile the newly elected mayor, Jean-Marc Bousquet.
Producer’s point of view
The producer makes no secret of having chosen the number of 3996 pigs to escape the BAPE. “The most acrimonious, no matter what we would have done, they would have been against the project. But in general, we have a good relationship with our neighbours,” says Pier-Luc Archambault.
This new farm will allow their family, “in the pig business for 44 years”, to “close the loop” for all ages of pigs, from maternity to nursery to fattening.
“If I could have just 100 piglets and support a family, I would, but that’s not the case,” says Archambault.
Above all, like other farmers, he says he is “tired of being told that he is a polluter”: “It is never easy to receive emotions. It is always pig production that is unpopular. »
Multiplying projects
These very tense discussions have multiplied in the last four years. In 2018, the threshold requiring a BAPE review on a new project increased from 600 to 800 animal units, which represents a jump from 3,000 to 4,000 pigs.
This moment coincides with the increase in the number of creations and expansions of pig farms. Between 2011 and 2017, the MELCC authorized an average of 26 projects per year. The count then increased to 44 projects authorized in 2018, then to 53 in 2019 and to 67 in 2020.
Impossible to know if they were in majority around the “magic number” of 3996 pigs, since the MELCC was not able to detail the size of the herd for each of the 400 projects authorized between 2011 and 2021.
In a memorandum dating from 2015, the Union of Agricultural Producers (UPA) did not hide the fact that “most farmers who could be concerned [par un BAPE] prefer to create more than one breeding place to avoid submitting to it”.
No project has gone before the BAPE since 2003, confirmed the head of communications for this body.
Tensions rise
In less than a year, at least five projects have made local headlines. In Maricourt, in Estrie, a group of citizens also tried to stir the cage all the way to Quebec City last July to obtain a BAPE examination.
The climate worsened to the point where the promoter of the project gave formal notice to the municipality as well as four councillors, in a personal capacity. Alexandre Tessier, then adviser, received the missive like a ton of bricks: “I took it as a personal attack. I am very disappointed and bitter with the way it happened, I find that citizens are honestly looking for concrete solutions. »
Elected officials and citizens critical of the project “must learn on the job”, he notes, in front of “a powerful and very well oiled machine”.
Maricourt’s project went ahead a few months after another did the same in the neighboring village of Valcourt. These two additions of piggeries encouraged the population to create the Val-Saint-François citizens’ committee. Pierre Avignon, one of the instigators of this initiative, wishes to gather as much information as possible before the announcement of the projects. “Our observation is that citizens are in a hurry when this happens. So we want to be able to make proposals,” he said.
Several elected municipal officials admit to feeling enormous pressure, and finding themselves very cramped: “The government is washing its hands of it and leaving it in the court of elected municipal officials, as if we were experts in deciding. Elected officials have no leeway,” says François Clermont, mayor of Fassett, in Outaouais.
A project of 6000 piglets also raised waves there, last August. The mayors of the 24 municipalities of the MRC de Papineau then adopted a resolution asking Quebec to revise the public consultation process.
Closer to Maricourt and Valcourt, the company Productions porcs plus had gone so far as to file a lawsuit in 2014 for $500,000 against citizens opposed to a maternity project for 2,340 pigs planned for Saint-François-Xavier-de- Brompton. It was dismissed in court in 2017.
The hostility that can develop on either side often leaves citizens bitter and discouraged. In Adstock, near Thetford Mines, in Chaudière-Appalaches, Paul-André Quintin preferred to move outright to leave this controversy behind him. The increase in production from 1,500 to 7,500 animals in two buildings is one of the only projects to have been postponed following citizen mobilization.
“We know that it is [niveau] policy that this must change, and we have tried to propose concrete solutions to environmental problems. But the beacons are not reinforced or respected. Lake Bolduc [dans la localité d’Adstock] is in a sorry state. I preferred to leave and leave it behind, ”says Mr. Quintin.