Finally a little frankness in the Northvolt issue from the CAQ, which yesterday emerged from its untenable speech of denial.
• Read also: Quebec admits to helping Northvolt avoid BAPE review
The shift took place in numerous interviews given by Benoît Charette, Minister of the Environment.
He confirmed the general impression that had been emerging for several months from the reports on the preparation, behind the scenes, of this megaproject: there had indeed been an adjustment of environmental rules in order to convince the company to set up here.
“If I had said [aux dirigeants de] Northvolt at the time as a BAPE [Bureau d’audience publique sur l’environnement], that takes us 18 months before we can give them an idea of what would be possible, we would not have had a project in Quebec. It’s as simple as that,” Mr. Charette told The Press.
However, MM. Charette and Fitzgibbon have been trying to lead us for months. With red herrings, extreme redaction, etc. Not to mention attacks against those, journalists, who bravely do their job: revealing truths.
The emergency
If, from the start, the government had admitted that long public hearings should be avoided, because Northvolt was the subject of seduction offensives by the Americans, moreover in the context of a global race for decarbonization, the Social acceptability would probably have been greater.
Instead, for months, there was denial that Northvolt had received any special attention.
However, all the regulations for the battery sector, adopted in spring 2023, were dictated to prevent two of the giant Swedish startup’s three factories from being subject to a BAPE.
It can certainly be embarrassing for an elected official to directly admit that the rules have been adjusted to facilitate the reception of an industrial player, but if it is well justified, a part of the population would have accepted it.
If it had also been demonstrated that the ministry, in this project, will apply its rules “among the strictest in the world” (according to our ministers), there would perhaps even have been great support.
Empathy
Our elected officials deserve some criticism, and perhaps even investigations (the lobbyist commissioner will undoubtedly be interested in the unrecorded “influence communications” between Northvolt and ministers).
But perhaps some aspects of their approach are justifiable.
For a long time, Quebec’s economy suffered from being on the fringes of the North American automobile industry. With decarbonization, the opportunity to fully embrace it presents itself.
The race is on now. Hence a real emergency.
Moreover, if Quebec had “escaped” this famous Northvolt project, central to the battery sector, the thing would have been publicly revealed. (This was the case of the Volkswagen factory, ultimately installed in Ontario.) If Northvolt had not come to Quebec, we can easily imagine the press releases that the PLQ and the PQ would very likely have published: “Missing such an opportunity proves that the CAQ and Fitzgibbon are incompetent! We had to do everything to attract this factory!”