The Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, reaffirmed Tuesday that the idea of subjecting Northvolt to the environmental procedure normally imposed on large industrial projects is not relevant, since Quebec regulations is sufficiently strict and that the company will respect it.
Since the announcement of the megaproject in September 2023, the Legault government has repeatedly closed the door to an examination by the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE).
In interview on the show All one morning, on the airwaves of Ici Première, Minister Fitzgibbon repeated the CAQ position on the issue. “Northvolt has nothing to do with BAPE. This is a decision of the Ministry of the Environment. The fact that there is no BAPE does not remove Northvolt’s obligation to respect our environmental standards, which are very strict,” he insisted, mocking “certain media and journalists” in passing. who “use certain facts in their own way to arrive at a conclusion that is not the correct one”.
“If they respect the rules, whether there is a BAPE or not, it doesn’t matter,” the minister also maintained, saying he “piloted” the file for the government. Mr. Fitzgibbon notably had a lunch in Montreal on February 6, 2023 with the co-founder of Northvolt, Paolo Cerruti. The company had then already had discussions with the Ministry of the Economy, Innovation and Energy, according to what we could see in documents obtained by the Access to Information Law.
“Sell Quebec”
On February 22, 2023, the Legault government tabled a proposed regulatory amendment which had the effect of changing the rules which would have made it possible to automatically subject Northvolt to the environmental procedure provided for large industrial projects. These changes came into force in July, approximately two months before the announcement of the project financed by Quebec and Ottawa.
Was there talk of a regulatory change during the meeting with Paolo Cerruti? “Absolutely not,” Pierre Fitzgibbon said on Tuesday. The lunch served to “sell Quebec to Northvolt”, because the company was not then “convinced” of wanting to set up in the province.
“The standards are there, we do not need BAPE in certain cases because it does not have a devastating environmental impact,” the minister also argued.
The BAPE currently has four files in progress, including two wind projects and the “project to connect the biogas valorization and biomethanization complex of Waste Management in Sainte-Sophie to the TQM gas pipeline network in Mirabel”. Like Northvolt, all these projects are in line with the environmental and energy objectives of the Legault government.
“Enlighten” the government
According to the definition of this “impartial government body”, the BAPE “informs and consults the population on projects and on any question relating to the environment entrusted to it by the Minister responsible for the Environment and which could have repercussions on its environment or on their quality of life. Concretely, the BAPE “investigates and advises the government in order to inform its decision-making”. It was notably following such a procedure that the Legault government rejected the GNL Québec project.
In the case of Northvolt, such a procedure would have involved the submission of a project notice, then the receipt of a “directive” from the Ministry of the Environment in order to specify the elements which should have been part of a study. impact: issues for biodiversity, water protection, management of contaminated soil, choice of site, choice of technology, industrial processes, social acceptability, impacts on the local environment, road traffic in the sector, mitigation measures different anticipated impacts, etc.
Public information
Once the study was submitted, different ministries could have analyzed the document and requested clarification from the promoter. When the impact study was deemed complete, the BAPE would then probably have started, at the request of Quebec Minister of the Environment Benoit Charette, the process leading to public hearings, the submission of briefs and the drafting of a report, at the end of the exercise. This report would have made recommendations to the government, which could then decide on the next course of action.
It should be noted that all the documentation of the process would have been made public over time. In the case of Northvolt, the media, including The duty, instead had to proceed through access to information requests to obtain the documents filed by Northvolt. Several were obtained redacted. And the full documentation regarding the authorization granted on January 8 to destroy wetlands and wooded areas containing rich biodiversity was only published at the end of January. Only then was it possible to learn that government experts judged the site to have “high ecological value”.
Several experts, ecologists, scientists and citizens of Montérégie have called for a BAPE to be held for the Northvolt project. Dozens of environmental groups, unions, doctors, citizen groups and academics sent a letter to Minister Benoit Charette last month to demand more “transparency” in the Northvolt file, but also an environmental assessment of the project industrial, which they said was “eagerly” approved.