The Horne Foundry, Aluminerie Alouette, ArcelorMittal; Quebec’s major polluters will see a jump in the rates they pay to offset their environmental impacts.
The Legault government will significantly increase the fees that companies discharging contaminants into the air and water must pay, the Minister of the Environment, the Fight Against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks, Benoit, will announce on Tuesday. Cart.
These rights, which concern the approximately 85 companies that have ministerial authorization to carry out their activities, have remained practically the same since their introduction 30 years ago.
Their increase will go through the modification of the Regulations relating to the operation of industrial establishments (RDREEI), as part of a vast omnibus project of regulatory amendments which is currently the subject of a public consultation.
The increase will be twofold: first, the “base rate” for contaminant discharges covered by this regulation will increase from $2.20 to $9.08 per tonne, depending on the will of the government, an amount that will be indexed annually .
The amount obtained is multiplied by a “weighting factor”, which varies according to the contaminants and which will also be increased. It would gradually increase by 2026 from 200 to 100,000 for emissions of arsenic and cadmium, for which prolonged exposure presents a high risk to health, two contaminants released by the Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda.
This means that the emission of a single tonne of arsenic will cost $908,000 in the future.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Installations of the Horne Foundry, in Rouyn-Noranda
It was the controversy surrounding the Horne Foundry that “really made the government think” about the issue, said The Press Minister Benoit Charette.
That’s when we realized, on my side at least, that there had been no update [des droits] for 30 years, basically.
Benoit Charette, Minister of the Environment
The annual bill for the Horne Foundry, owned by the Anglo-Swiss multinational Glencore, would thus drop from some $220,000 to $2 million, the ceiling set in the draft regulatory amendment.
Those of the Aluminerie Alouette in Sept-Îles and the ArcelorMittal pellet plant in Port-Cartier would increase by $700,000 and $500,000 respectively.
Reinvested income
The fees paid by the companies currently total some 6 million – which go to the State’s Environmental and Water Domain Protection Fund – an amount that Minister Charette considers “clearly insufficient”.
The increased fees will generate over $10 million more annually, which will be reinvested in improving “industry environmental performance” and protecting air and water quality.
If it can lead to or promote changes in behavior and awareness among the companies themselves, so much the better. If it can ensure that some of their processes are modernized to limit emissions, we will all be winners.
Benoit Charette, Minister of the Environment
The Legault government also sees it as a way to support the development of “green and innovative” small and medium-sized businesses.
The government wants to send the message that “there is a price for pollution,” says Minister Charette, but this price could be badly received by the companies concerned.
“There is an obligation to do things differently [après] 30 years without there having really been any indexation”, replies the minister, who believes he has “good arguments” to defend his decision.
This change is the first step in a broader review of “all the parameters for pricing industrial discharges” that Quebec intends to carry out in the longer term, by adding, for example, other contaminants to the list of those covered by the current regulations.
Benoit Charette also intends to add “greater transparency” to the process, so that companies that discharge contaminants into the environment are known to the public, as are the fees they pay, like the reform of the regime. royalties on the water abstraction that it oversees.
Serve the polluted, not the polluters
The will of the government is well received in the environmental community, but the allocation of funds arouses mistrust.
“We should not use this money to help companies upgrade, they make billions in profits,” reacted Rébecca Pétrin, director general of Eau Secours.
“It would be a way of extracting money from them and then giving it to them to promote their research and development,” she laments.
Rébecca Pétrin believes that the funds collected should instead be used to compensate those who suffer from pollution.
Municipalities, which must treat the water that companies pollute before distributing it to their population, should benefit from this money, illustrates Mme Kneader.
“Polluters must bear the costs of the damage they cause,” also believes water treatment engineer Alain Saladzius, president of the Fondation Rivières.
“It has to go to catering too, not just to the development of new technologies,” he says, calling for “completely transparent” fund management.
The amount of the rights must be sufficiently important to force the companies to reduce their releases of contaminants, underlines André Bélisle, president of the Quebec Association of fight against atmospheric pollution.
“Two million, for Glencore, is not even small change”, he illustrates.
“Ideally, what we would like is to upgrade the facilities so that there are no more releases of contaminants into the environment,” adds Rébecca Pétrin. That’s what the Environment Quality Act. »