Mom, I know vulnerability has always scared you. However, this Sunday, in Rouyn-Noranda, I will knowingly expose myself to it. For the sake of dignity. By desire for beauty too. You who knew how to cultivate it so well by growing flowers and knitting clothes for your grandchildren.
For me, it is Justice that I want to garden so that all children in Quebec have the right to a healthy environment. So that they live in a true democracy where the same rules apply to everyone. Even multinationals like Glencore.
I will do it thinking of you.
For environmental justice
With others, I decided to respond to the call for help launched by the Mothers at the Rouyn-Noranda front. They can no longer denounce the Horne Foundry which spews a cocktail of poisons into the air, with the authorization of the government.
Arsenic, lead, cadmium, nickel, sulfur dioxide and twenty other pollutants enter the little lungs of their children and the entire population.
Too many rare diseases are not uncommon in Rouyn-Noranda. In certain neighborhoods, life expectancy is almost seven years lower than the Quebec average.
But of all, babies and children absorb the most poisons. Because in proportion to their weight, they breathe more, drink more and eat more than adults. All their cells are under construction.
The consequences of their exposure will probably only be felt decades later. Responsibility will be almost impossible to prove, as with almost all environmental diseases.
Respect the standards
Quebec has adopted standards to protect the health and safety of the population. How is it that where they would be useful, the government allows them to be deviated from?
The example of arsenic is convincing: 98% of all the arsenic emitted into the air in Quebec is in the sky over Rouyn-Noranda!
The Quebec standard is 3 ng/m3but in recent years, the population of Rouyn-Noranda has been exposed to 165 ng/m3on average, according to the INSPQ!
The government is now asking the smelter to reduce the average concentration of arsenic in the air to 15 ng/m3 by 2027, and now it threatens to close!
However, it belongs to a multi-billion dollar multinational which has the means to modernize it, but not the will.
Ironically, the foundry is no longer the region’s largest employer. This is the CISSS of Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Our health system!
This all sickens me so much, Mom.
Get out of my comfort zone
When you were alive and I was outraged, you always asked me what I could do to change it. You showed me the way to courage.
With Mothers at the front everywhere, including Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, Eve Landry, Véronique Côté and Steve Gagnon, we will demonstrate in Rouyn-Noranda this Sunday. I embark on their disturbing artistic and political proposals to denounce other than with words and numbers.
I will use the body you made for me.