Environmental groups gathered in Montreal on Monday morning to demand that the regulations be respected, in particular the creation of a public register of environmental information.
Équiterre, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, Nature Québec, the Society for Nature and Parks (SNAP Québec) and the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake are concerned about the government’s “tendency to weaken environmental regulations.”
They reiterated their request to subject the Northvolt project to the environmental assessment process, which includes holding a BAPE, but also demanded that the government apply the law and commit to creating a public register on the environmental information.
The Environment Quality Act (EQA) has been in force since March 23, 2018. Section 118.5 of this law stipulates that the Minister of the Environment must keep a public register containing a range of information on industrial projects and activities.
For example, the register must contain the description and source of the contaminants caused by a project, the type of release into the environment, or the conditions that a promoter must respect, the prohibitions and the specific standards applicable to the implementation of the activity.
Six years after the law came into force, the register still does not exist.
“If we had had this register in the case of Northvolt, we would have been able to have access to all the documentation. We would not have had to wait months, ultimately, for documents that came quietly” with “a lot of incomplete information,” indicated the director of Nature Québec, Alice-Anne Simard, during a press conference.
She pointed out that several media and environmental organizations tried to obtain information on the environmental impacts of the Northvolt factory, in particular through the Access to Information Act, but “that we only receive some information after months of waiting” and “redacted documents”.
According to Ms. Simard, this lack of transparency fuels citizen distrust and harms the social acceptability of a project like that of Northvolt.
“The register is provided for in the law, we have been asking for it for six years, so the government should have the obligation to put it online,” added the director of Nature Québec.
“We recently focused on Northvolt, but our various organizations have denounced many other projects throughout Quebec in recent years. Projects which have benefited from shortcuts and relaxations permitted by this government,” argued the environmental groups in a press release.
They are also concerned about the government’s intention to review the terms of the BAPE.
“The means chosen for the energy transition must not contribute to worsening the crisis by destroying natural or agricultural environments of great economic, social and ecological value: strategic environments which are becoming increasingly rare and which are of great value for the health and safety of the population,” the groups believe in a press release.