It’s not easy to remain faithful to the polluter-pays principle and its spirit. Adopted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development more than five decades ago, enshrined in law in both Quebec and Ottawa, this principle has since been the subject of a thousand twists and turns, sometimes right under the noses of our politicians. When it’s not with their blessing.
This is the somewhat unpleasant impression that emerges from the green light given by the Trudeau government to the destruction of 37 waterways for the benefit of Quebec Iron Ore. With peace of mind and compensation in hand, the company will be able to dump hundreds of millions of tons of mining waste there over the next few years. This final obstacle, lifted a few days ago by federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, will allow the expansion of production at the Bloom Lake iron mine, near Fermont.
The cherry on the cake is that this compensation will be provided at a relatively low price, namely $16 million. However, this solution had been torn to pieces by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) in 2021. The latter had sent the subsidiary of the Australian mining company Champion Iron back to the drawing board, considering that it had not been able to demonstrate that the solutions chosen were “indeed those that minimized the impacts on wetlands and aquatic environments.” The Legault government chose not to follow the BAPE’s advice, deciding in favor of the mining company’s plan.
To exploit its deposit until 2040 at a rate of 15 million tonnes per year, Quebec Iron Ore estimates its “storage needs” for tailings and waste rock at 1.3 billion tonnes, of which 872 million will have to be stored in new sites. Logic would have dictated that they be deposited in the pit of the imposing open-pit mine, as is often the case. But Champion Iron refuses to do so on the pretext that it does not want to “jeopardize the exploitation of a resource that could potentially be exploited in the future.” Hence the use of surrounding waterways.
To make up for their loss, it proposes a compensatory plan that will allow seven interventions on nine sites to support “the conservation and protection of fish and their habitat” by 2035. This is less about repair than about yet another iteration of the good old logic of indulgences. You broke something? No need to mend the pots, just compensate and go in peace.
In doing so, we forget that the polluter pays principle is part of a broader principle, that of social responsibility, which is much more than a simple badge that companies can wear to make a good impression. It is also a state of mind that, in addition to the imperative to create jobs and generate profits, adds the need to take into account the environmental and social impact of all their decisions.
Here, using the pit would have been to the disadvantage of the mining company, but above all to the great advantage of society, because our natural heritage would have remained practically untouched. Our politicians knowingly agreed to sacrifice waterways in exchange for an advantageous exit route for a company that chose an easy option rather than one that would have allowed it to minimize its environmental and social footprint.
It now remains to be hoped that the priority given to its profits will not hinder the continuation of the actions of Quebec Iron Ore when the time comes to keep its compensatory promises. The graveyard of broken promises includes many companies that have closed the books without following through on what they had committed to.
This is especially true in the field of mining resources. We know that the restoration of hundreds of abandoned mining sites that have been taken over by the Quebec government has already cost the public treasury more than $230 million. And it’s far from over. The upcoming bill could exceed a billion dollars, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests.
This is when the industry does not stand in the way of restoring these toxic legacies. Through a freedom of information request, the reporter from Duty Alexandre Shields informed us on Saturday that shale gas wells drilled and fractured in Quebec are still leaking methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas. The problem is that their closure is on hold due to legal action launched by the companies responsible for them. They consider the $62 million in public funds planned as compensation to be insufficient.
In doing so, these companies are demonstrating a very poor collective spirit. They are also demonstrating the immense limits of outsourcing costs in favor of a State, which should demand much tighter accounts when it comes to selling off, or even sacrificing, our common heritage.