Construction Nexus is once again in the hot seat for environmental infractions, it has been learned The duty. The company specializing in excavation will have to pay $5,000 for backfilling a marsh located in an agricultural zone in Mirabel. The amount of the sanction is considered “laughable”, “almost scandalous”, even “insulting”, according to observers and specialists in the environment and residual materials management.
The Ministry of the Environment confirmed by email that it had sent an administrative monetary penalty (SAP) of $5,000 to the Laval company on March 21. However, he refuses to comment on the matter given that an “investigation is underway”.
This is the second sanction sent to Construction Nexus by Quebec in less than ten months. In July 2023, a SAP of $10,000 was imposed on the excavation company for a violation of the Regulation respecting the storage and transfer centers of contaminated soil.
The ministry is now evaluating possible remedies to “remove the contaminated soil from this land”, ensuring that no possibility is ruled out to “stop the violations”.
Nexus could be held responsible for inadequate soils that were buried on the site before its owners — Romeo and Antonio Sacchetti — will acquire it in November 2022, through a numbered company, as revealed The duty last August.
Since 2019, inspections and an aerial survey have allowed the ministry to note deposits of soil mixed with residual materials such as concrete, asphalt, scrap metal and construction residue. Sampling also showed that “the soils are contaminated with metals, PAHs and C10-C50 hydrocarbons”. A sanction had been transmitted to the previous operator of the site, Location Tri-Box.
Nexus was to present a corrective measures plan to the ministry before mid-May 2023. However, the company twice requested deadline extensions to transmit this plan, indicates the ministry, which specifies that it is still awaiting the measures.
The Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Territory of Quebec is also investigating the activities of Nexus in Mirabel which were carried out without its authorization. Having been made aware of the actions of the Quebec authorities, the municipality – which also did not authorize any backfilling – for its part forced the closure of the site on September 11.
The company’s president, Romeo Sacchetti, did not respond to the company’s request for an interview. Duty. In August, when asked about the first sanction from the Ministry of the Environment, he declared: “It’s not my department. […] I manage to get contracts, not to fight for a $10,000 ticket. »
An “almost scandalous” sanction
The amounts of the sanctions also cause observers in the residual materials management sector to react. “A reprimand of $5,000, I find that almost insulting,” says Karel Ménard, general director of the Quebec Common Front for Ecological Waste Management. “They can do wrongdoing without there actually being any costs associated with the environmental consequences. » This amounts to “a slap on the wrist,” he says.
The consequences go beyond environmental considerations, according to Kevin Morin, general director of the Quebec Environmental Technology Business Council. “We believe that the sanctions should be greater than the profits that the company was able to make by committing an offense. The financial sanction must be commensurate with the damage caused. »
Merlin Voghel, lawyer at the Quebec Environmental Law Center, believes that such a weak sanction is “laughable”. According to him, it is high time to revisit the system of administrative financial sanctions for environmental offenses. Since their creation in 2011, SAP amounts cannot exceed $10,000.
“SAPs are a highly valuable mechanism when they achieve their objectives, namely to deter contraventions,” he said, specifying that the process is faster and “less cumbersome” than a formal prosecution. “But an SAP becomes a less useful tool if the penalties are too low in relation to the income of the offenders,” he adds.
According to him, the amounts of the sanctions could vary between $2,000 and $200,000 and be established according to the seriousness of the acts committed and their frequency.
The former vice-president of the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment, Louis-Gilles Francoeur, also maintains that the sanctions from the Ministry of the Environment must be increased. “It’s almost scandalous that the department doesn’t pay more attention to offenses like this. »
To be dissuasive, fines should be modulated according to “the turnover or profit of a company”, he believes, citing the example of measures deployed by the European Union to curb anti-competitive practices. Sanctions can reach up to 10% of a company’s turnover. “That would have a real deterrent effect. For the moment, it is almost an encouragement to deviance to have sanctions which have, in fact, no effect,” he says.