(Montreal) Québec solidaire (QS) and the Parti québécois (PQ) denounce the government’s intention to pay to relocate 200 households located near the Horne Foundry, in Rouyn-Noranda, information reported in The Press Wednesday morning.
QS’s Environment Manager, Alejandra Zaga Mendez, said, “Asking 200 families to pack their boxes to accommodate a multi-billion dollar company that refuses to meet our environmental standards is appalling! »
She added, in a press release, “that the people of Rouyn-Noranda have never asked to be uprooted from their homes”.
In a press briefing on Tuesday morning, PQ MP Joël Arseneau for his part indicated “that we should see with the population what they think of it, we imagine the uprooting, what it can create as trauma in people”.
“The other big problem”, according to Joël Arseneau, “is that we want to do it with a contribution of 85 million from the Government of Quebec, to a company which will, this year, or in 2022, have net profits around 18 billion US.
Interim Liberal leader Marc Tanguay believes that relocation “cannot be a solution for the entire population”.
However, he argued, “it’s a delicate matter, but I think that for some, it can be a solution”.
A new certificate presented Thursday
A government agreement, which was signed with the Liberal government in 2017, allows arsenic emissions from the smelter to reach an annual average of 100 ng/m3i.e. 33 times more than the norm.
But this agreement is about to end. The Government of Quebec also issued a new certificate to the controversial foundry last January and Quebec will unveil Thursday the new ministerial authorization of the Horne Foundry.
Public Health and the Department of the Environment have asked the Horne Smelter to achieve an arsenic emission threshold of 15 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m3) in 2027, this is what could appear in the new certificate.
“We are aiming, in five years, for 15 nanograms, five times more, I find that it does not hold up. Either the standard of three nanograms is not good then it should be 15, but we cannot have the ambition to be… to exceed five times the standard in five years”, indicated the liberal Marc Tanguay in point Press.
24 times more arsenic in 2022 than the provincial standard
Last week, the Horne Smelter released a document in which it says the concentration of arsenic it emitted into the air in 2022 was 73 nanograms (ng) per cubic meter, lower than in 2021, but more than in 2020.
In a document published on its site, Glencore Canada, owner of the smelter, indicates that for the past year, “the annual average in arsenic at the legal station” of the Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda “is 73.1 ng /m3which confirms that our reduction projects are working”.