Frustrated by the long delays in obtaining data from the Ministry of the Environment on air quality, the Vieux-Limoilou district council is asking the City of Quebec to assume a bill of $2,500 per year in order to have them. faster.
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The members of the neighborhood council adopted a resolution on Wednesday evening to ask the City to authorize an expense of $206 per month for the year 2023. This would make it possible to make one request per month to the paid Info-Air service. from the Ministère de l’Environnement, to obtain data on various contaminants (eg nickel, fine particles, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, etc.) measured at the Rue des Sables station.
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More than a year of waiting sometimes
The most recent data, accessible to everyone online, dates back to the year 2021 on the website of the Quebec Air Quality Monitoring Network, indignant the president of the district council, Raymond Poirier. Those on nickel date, at best, from April 2022, he adds.
“As things stand, the data is not publicly accessible,” he criticizes, saying that “repeated requests” have been made to the ministry by the various committees on which citizens sit.
Stevens LeBlanc/JOURNAL DE QUEBEC
The mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, understands citizen frustration and says he is working in the same direction to obtain faster access to data, via the Port Activities Vigilance Committee. “They don’t have to pay for that … We will find solutions,” he reacted yesterday.
“It has always been our intention to be transparent and to make data on air quality in Quebec public,” said Environment Minister Benoit Charette in a short statement sent to the Journal.
A second meeting will take place
Minister Charette’s office also confirmed, at the end of the day yesterday, the holding of a second public meeting “with the experts of the ministry” in the wake of the report of the Task Force on Atmospheric Contaminants. This meeting will take place “at the time and in the place” deemed appropriate by the district council, it was announced.
Stevens LeBlanc/JOURNAL DE QUEBEC
The Minister is thus responding favorably to the request made to him in a letter signed by 240 citizens.
The first session, at the end of January, had been organized “virtually on the sly”, deplored the district council, judging that the citizens had not had time to prepare adequately, only a few hours after the publication of a voluminous report of more than 1,200 pages.
– With the collaboration of Taïeb Moalla