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It is not easy, if not impossible, to obtain certain information concerning the file of the Northvolt factory megaproject, financed by the government of Quebec. The duty has suffered refusals and obtained heavily redacted documents in recent months, in response to requests under the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies and the protection of personal information.
Just a few weeks before announcing the construction of the battery component factory, the Legault government modified the rules which previously provided for automatically subjecting such a project to an environmental assessment, including an impact study. and a probable review by the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE).
Northvolt was therefore able to avoid this procedure, which is nevertheless common for large-scale industrial projects.
The duty sent a request to the Ministry of Executive Council, therefore the ministry of Prime Minister François Legault, in order to obtain documents concerning the regulatory changes that were adopted by the government.
We were refused. In her decision, the “responsible for access to information” mentioned nine articles of the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies which concern in particular information of a commercial, financial, technical nature or linked to a “negotiation “. The decision also mentions “confidential information”.
Another similar request was sent to the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy, for which Pierre Fitzgibbon is responsible. The ministry sent us almost completely redacted documents, citing six articles of the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies.
“However, other documents are not accessible. Thus, we will not disclose those which contain, in substance, information having an impact on the economy and on administrative or political decisions as well as preparatory notes or other documents of a similar nature,” specifies the response from the ministry.
Requests to cities
The duty also tried to obtain details concerning the discussions that the municipalities of Saint-Basile-le-Grand and McMasterville had with Northvolt, since the factory will be built on land that overlaps the territory of the two municipalities of Montérégie .
Saint-Basile-le-Grand refused to transmit the emails received or sent by the mayor concerning Northvolt, in the two months preceding the announcement of the project. McMasterville sent us documents that were largely redacted. It only confirms that the mayor, Martin Dulac, visited Northvolt facilities in Sweden a few days before the announcement of the factory project in Quebec.
Furthermore, after having suffered a refusal from Northvolt and the Ministry of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks, The duty nevertheless obtained several hundred pages of documents filed by the company with the ministry using the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies. These documents, sent late on a Friday, revealed the wealth of biodiversity that will be destroyed to build industrial facilities.
For the president of the Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec, Éric-Pierre Champagne, it is clear that this law needs to be updated. “Initially, the spirit of the Law was that everything is public, by default, but that there can be exceptions. Today, we have the impression that the opposite is happening. We would therefore have to modernize the Law to return to the original spirit,” he explains.
“Governments or municipalities, for example, find all kinds of loopholes to not transmit documents or redact them,” deplores Mr. Champagne, recalling that cases similar to those cited here are commonplace. According to him, the Quebec government, regardless of its political interests, would have an interest in acting to increase “transparency”.