List of 89 ministerial authorizations | “It’s not a license to pollute”

The 89 Quebec industrial establishments holding ministerial authorization do not all exceed environmental standards, such as the Horne Foundry in Rouyn-Noranda. One of them deplores the “misinterpretation” conveyed by the Legault government and certain media.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

The leaders of Chantiers Chibougamau were flabbergasted when their pulp mill in Lebel-sur-Quévillon was accused of polluting beyond Quebec standards.

“We have no authorization to discharge pollutants beyond the standards”, declared to The Press Frédéric Verreault, executive director of corporate development for the company.

” [Dire le contraire]it is false, it is unfounded, ”he assured.

Chantiers Chibougamau bought the Nordic Kraft plant from Domtar in 2017 and relaunched it in 2020, after 15 years of inactivity, in order to recover the residues generated by their main activity, the manufacture of wood construction materials.

The establishment’s ministerial authorization (previously called a sanitation certificate), which followed in the transaction, stipulates “black and white” that current and future standards must be respected, underlines Mr. Verreault.

“The wording of the regulatory standards applicable to discharge points takes precedence over that of [la présente] sanitation certificate”, can we read in the document, which the company sent to The Press.

Frédéric Verreault gives the example of wood dust emissions, the legal limit of which was reduced from 450 to 100 micrograms per cubic meter between the issuance of ministerial authorization and the relaunch of the factory.

The assertion earlier this week by the Minister of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, Benoit Charette, that ministerial authorizations allow pollution beyond the standards has sown confusion, deplores Mr. Verreault.

“The government knows full well that our certificate does not amount to a right to pollute,” he says. We have no reason to doubt the minister’s rigor, but he clearly received bad information. »

Frédéric Verreault regrets that some media then wrongly claimed that each of the 89 companies holding ministerial authorization derogated from the law.

“We spoke to two journalists [qui ont publié des reportages en ce sens]they have the information and they have chosen not to talk about it,” he lamented.

These reports have earned the company a barrage of questions, including from its own appalled employees, but also from members of the community, Mr. Verreault said.

“We find ourselves thrown under the bus with Minister Charette,” he said. It’s time we moved the bus, because we don’t deserve to be there, with the energy that is put into respecting environmental laws. »

Minister’s mea culpa

Mr. Charette’s assertion “was incomplete”, recognizes his press secretary, Rosalie Tremblay-Cloutier.

The 89 companies that currently hold ministerial authorization “do not systematically benefit from the right to derogate from the applicable environmental laws and regulations”, she said.

However, exceptions have been granted “for historical reasons”, the most notorious of which concerns the Horne Foundry in Rouyn-Noranda.

Lack of transparency

The confusion around ministerial authorizations demonstrates that there is “a problem with the information to which we have access,” says lawyer Anne-Sophie Doré, from the Center québécois du droit de l’environnement.

“That’s the problem: we don’t know [ce que permettent ces documents] “, she says.

The reform of the Environment Quality Act (EQL), adopted in 2017, provided for ministerial authorizations to be public and accessible through an online register, which has not yet been created, however.

“The future public register, as provided for by the reform of the EQLwill be in force when the government has set the date of entry into force of this new public register”, had indicated to The Pressearlier this summer, the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, Sophie Gauthier.

Minister Charette’s office has pledged to make public the 89 ministerial authorizations in force “during the next week”.