The Rabaska lands, a 272-hectare territory located east of Lévis, are the object of many covetousness. Lévis and the Quebec government dream of establishing an industrial zone there, others protest against their economic ambitions which, in their eyes, threaten an environment that must be protected. An overview of a battlefield where two visions of development have been clashing for 20 years.
These are lands of unaltered beauty. There is the Saint-Laurent, to the north, which stretches around the island of Orleans with, in the background, the silhouette of the Laurentians. The south belongs to a hundred hectares of fields that are lost in nature where, through a peat bog, a lake and a few streams, moose and deer wander in the shade of a dense forest that is also home to great horned owls.
“Below the cliff that runs along the river, there is about a kilometre of banks,” explains Michel Bégin-Lamy, a kayaker used to paddling in these parts. “They are still virgin and wild: no houses, no chalets, nothing. That’s what’s extraordinary: man has not yet destroyed this area.”
For the moment, at least. This landscape, visible from the lands of Rabaska, seems to be on borrowed time today.
The appetite of industry
The government is negotiating “the final details” to acquire these lands from Rabaska Corporation, a three-headed entity composed of the management company Gaz Métro, Enbridge and Engie, the result of the merger of industrial players Gaz de France and Suez. The state has mandated Investissement Québec to purchase the 272 hectares for $38 million.
In the plans of the State and the City of Lévis: building an industrial zone focused on the maritime industry and capable of supplying the Davie shipyard, cramped in Old Lauzon since its inclusion in the Canadian naval strategy and its windfall of billions.
The Port of Quebec, which had paid $8 million in 2017 to obtain precedence in the event of Rabaska selling the land, also says it is “carefully” monitoring the outcome of the talks.
The river, where the Rabaska lands flow into the St. Lawrence, offers a depth of 15 m capable of receiving the gigantic modern bulk carriers. The site, the last before the Quebec Bridge where the water is this deep, also allows easy access to a high-voltage line, the Trans-Canada and a continental railway.
An enviable position, therefore, which fuels the ambition of putting the region on the world map of international maritime trade.
A citizen sentinel
However, many are mobilizing against this economic appetite. Gathered around the Collectif Sauvetage pour le patrimoine agricole de Lévis, they are defending these lands that belonged to the agricultural sector until the government decreed, in 2007, their rezoning in order to establish the methane port then promoted by the Rabaska Company.
Although it never saw the light of day following a citizen revolt and the collapse of the price of natural gas, the 272-hectare territory never regained its initial agricultural vocation – despite repeated requests from the Union of Agricultural Producers (UPA) and a contractual clause which provided for the reinclusion of the land in the event of abandonment of the methane port.
Quebec promises to devote, once it becomes the owner, 109 hectares to agriculture. A “candy” with a taste of smoke and mirrors, according to Gaston Cadrin, vice-president of the Groupe d’initiatives et de recherches appliquées au milieu (GIRAM).
“It’s a gimmick offered to people who are protesting to say: “Look, we’re saving this.” I don’t believe it. An industrial park means the aqueduct that goes all the way here, it also means densification. The rural environment that we have now is going to change radically.”
All the more so since a possible third link would also take root in the same sector.
The president of the local UPA, Jean-Paul Tardif, shares GIRAM’s doubts. “An industrial zone next to an agricultural area is like a cancer. If you put a cancer in the middle of something beautiful, what will happen? The cancer will eat it.”
The Quebec Agricultural Land Protection Commission (CPTAQ) agreed with this view in 2007 in an opinion issued in the case of the defunct LNG port. The CPTAQ stated at the time that “the construction of this industrial port park will mean the long-term loss of an area of more than 500 hectares of agricultural and wooded land.” […] It is therefore the vocation of an entire sector of the agricultural zone which could be compromised in the long term.”
The CPTAQ was still recently studying a request for the return of land to the green zone filed by the GIRAM — until the government, again by decree, removed it from the case last June. A “gag” and a “disavowal” inflicted on the watchdog of Quebec’s agricultural territory which, according to the GIRAM, demonstrate the repeated breaches of the process committed by the authorities.
A trust for “perpetuity” protection
The Collectif Sauvetage, supported by the UPA, Équiterre and the SaluTERRE Alliance, is calling for the entire territory to be placed in trust to “ensure its agricultural vocation in perpetuity”.
“Land of this quality is not easy to find in Lévis,” explains Jean-Paul Tardif. “It’s the same caliber as the fields on Île d’Orléans just across the street. Plus, there could be 11,000 taps here. It’s crazy that the government wants to eat up the best land in the region. The economy isn’t just about industry: it’s also about agriculture.”
Others criticize the “purely speculative” price presented by the government. “The value of agricultural land fluctuates between $10,000 and $15,000 per hectare in Lévis,” calculates Françoise Legault, co-owner of the Ruisseaux farm and spokesperson for the Collectif Sauvetage. The government is proposing to buy them for $38 million. Divide $38 million by 272, and that comes to $140,000 per hectare: it’s not really the same bracket of price ! “
“We, the Quebecers, are going to take $38 million out of our pockets to give to an oil and gas company partly owned by two foreign firms,” she laments. “Rabaska has been sitting on this land for 20 years without doing anything and it’s the one that’s going to pocket our money, for no reason whatsoever.”
His father, Jean Gosselin, is especially afraid of the “precedent” that the state is preparing to create. “When the time comes to create an industrial zone in the middle of farmland, the government will be able to say: ‘We did it in Lévis, why can’t we do it here?'”
The Collectif Sauvetage intends to work twice as hard in the coming weeks to increase popular pressure on the government and protect “these lands which have fed Quebec for 350 years and which can continue to feed us for a long time to come,” maintains its spokesperson.
“It seems to me that it is necessary to preserve these lands for those who will come after us,” concludes Françoise Legault. “Nature is free, everyone appreciates it, and people realize how much it is lost once it is replaced by a parking lot with a big metal box on top.”