The government’s “calculated risks” could pay off big in the regions of Quebec, defended François Legault on Thursday before the annual congress of the Fédération québécoise des municipalities (FQM). Hydro-Québec’s ambitions to double its production capacity by 2035 even outline, in the eyes of the Prime Minister, the contours of an “industrial revolution”.
“Two economic booms” are on the Quebec horizon “in the coming years,” according to François Legault. First, the $150 billion that Hydro-Québec plans to invest to develop its wind and hydroelectric capacities. “It will create a lot of paying jobs,” rejoices the Prime Minister, convinced that “there is social acceptability” for the emergence of wind farms in several corners of Quebec.
Better yet, in the eyes of François Legault: companies already covet this green electricity and demand now exceeds supply. “A great challenge,” according to the Prime Minister.
“When I arrived in 2018, I had a meeting with the president of Hydro-Québec who told me: “I have surplus electricity for at least the next 20 years”. Currently, we are missing some. What a great opportunity: it’s time to manufacture them in all regions of Quebec and prices, for businesses, will slowly increase. »
This gigantic project to decarbonize Quebec represents “the opportunity to have a kind of industrial revolution in the regions” – at the cost, argues François Legault, of some “calculated risks”.
“It’s not safe either, Elysis,” he said of an aluminum decarbonization technology into which the State has injected 140 million in public funds. “But it is not true that we are going to let Ontario, the United States, develop new technologies and that the rest of us will not participate. »
“Yes,” added the Prime Minister, “there are risks. But these are calculated risks. »
Priority to electricity-producing regions?
The president of the FQM, Jacques Demers, also sees big for the Quebec regions and is not opposed to the gigantic project planned by Hydro-Québec. However, he asks that remote environments not only provide resources to fuel prosperity elsewhere.
“When we talk about energy, and particularly wind energy,” he said at a press briefing, “we want to be partly owners to be sure of being part of the equation, yes of the investment, but after that, also, fallout. Not just actors who receive a rating because it happens on our grounds. »
It also calls for a guarantee that part of the energy produced in the region supplies industries which adopt it, in order to prevent remote areas from being confined to the role of provider of resources and energy which fuel the prosperity of the large centers.
“Why not give priority, on a certain volume of energy, to local industries? asks Jacques Demers. This would provide direct economic benefits and people who stay in the region in the long term. »
Labor, housing and other regional challenges
The annual high mass of the municipal sector also provided the opportunity to expose the obstacles which still slow down its development in the region. Labor shortage, funding crisis for regional public transport, lack of housing: Quebec far from major centers is not entitled to the same considerations, according to Mr. Demers.
“It is not normal that our hospitals have to close their emergency departments due to a lack of nursing staff. It is not normal that doctors and nurses do not agree to live in the region. It is not normal that we are organizing flying teams to temporarily support our hospitals. “Fly in, fly out”, indicated Jacques Demers, is not a lasting solution to the problems of the health network, nor in any area of State activity. »
The excessive centralization and the “heaviness” of the Société d’habitation du Québec programs block real estate development in regions “which simply no longer have the means to house their workers,” further denounced the president of the FQM.
“Everything is not dark,” he insisted, highlighting “an extremely positive step forward for the entire municipal world”: the distribution of the growth in revenues generated by a point of the QST, a windfall which will grant 1 billion dollars at the turn of the decade, rejoices Jacques Demers.