(Senneterre) Dominique Anglade maintains that she was unaware of the risks to the health of the population associated with arsenic emissions from the Horne Foundry when the Couillard government, of which she was a part, authorized the company to exceed the Quebec standard.
Posted at 11:06 a.m.
The Couillard government authorized the renewal of the “industrial sanitation certificate” for the Rouyn-Noranda foundry in November 2017; the company’s application had been submitted in August. Dominique Anglade was then Minister of the Economy. The Minister of the Environment responsible for the certificate was Isabelle Melançon, outgoing MP and candidate in Verdun.
Thanks to this certificate, the foundry of the multinational Glencore obtained the authorization to release into the air up to 100 nanograms of arsenic per cubic meter, or 33 times more than the Quebec standard, set at 3 ng / m3.
“I had no discussion that said that we were going to exceed standards and that there was an impact on the population. I can assure you of that, ”said Dominique Anglade at a press conference in Senneterre, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, on Saturday.
Did the government ask itself the question at the time as to whether it was normal to exceed the norm so much? he was asked. “I didn’t have those discussions. Of course not,” she replied.
“I was not aware that the standard was exceeded at this level, […] that it had an impact on people’s public health. That, that information, it was not available, ”she insisted.
However, in a report produced in 2004, an “interministerial Health and Environment working group” clearly states that “given the carcinogenic nature of arsenic” […], “it is necessary to adopt a preventive approach aimed at reducing as much as possible the levels of exposure of the population”. He proposed to reduce emissions in the Notre-Dame district, close to the foundry, below an average value of 10 nanograms per cubic meter of air. He also wanted the company to quickly present a plan “identifying the timetables and the interventions that will have to be carried out to achieve a 3 nanogram objective in the Notre-Dame district”.
“I have never had anything in my possession that said there was an impact on people’s public health. Never, pleaded Dominique Anglade. I have never had in my possession a document that said: here is what will be decided and here is the impact it will have on the health of the population. »
From March 2015 to February 2018, Dominique Anglade’s ministry was targeted by a lobbying mandate from the company Glencore, “in order to ensure the maintenance of the operating license (sanitation certificate)” and the certificates of permission from the Horne smelter,” reads a public record available online. Topics covered include, among others, […] the arsenic emission criteria of the Opinion on arsenic in ambient air in Rouyn-Noranda. This is an indication of the involvement of Mme Anglade on file at the time.
Machine-gunned with questions on the subject, the Liberal leader turned her guns towards the Legault government, accusing it of having “hidden from the population” information on the risks linked to arsenic emissions from the foundry. Quebec recently decided to ask the company to achieve, within five years, an annual average of 15 nanograms of arsenic per cubic meter of air – five times the standard.
Passing through Abitibi-Témiscamingue on Friday and Saturday, Dominique Anglade chose not to stop in Rouyn-Noranda. Its candidate in this constituency is Arnaud Walorin, who lives in the Notre-Dame district. “It was from 2019, at the end of 2019, that people began to tell us that there is truly a public health issue. We knew that there were fumes, that there were things, but at the level of public health there was a message that was clear to us “in 2019, he argued.