Next to the enormous, dizzying hole dug by the Osisko company in Malartic, the residents’ houses seem no bigger than toys. This reflects the balance of power that has pitted city residents against the mining giant for several years.
This fight of David against Goliath, the filmmaker Nicolas Paquet made the subject of a filmMalartic, premiered at the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma. Nicolas Paquet is also familiar with the place. In a first documentary, The golden rule, he had followed the incredible move of 200 houses from Malartic, intended to allow the reactivation of the mine by Osisko thanks to new technological developments in gold extraction. Today, he reports that the dreams induced by this megaproject, in a town abandoned by previous mining operations, have not come true as expected.
A semi-ghost town?
“As soon as I got there, in the scouting period on Main Street, it hit me. The premises were abandoned, the bank had closed. There were no more bars. There were a lot of “For Rent” and “For Sale” signs, the filmmaker says in an interview. I wondered why a city where, right next door, the immediate neighbor, the mine, is multi-billionaire, why does this city not shine with all these brilliance? […] I didn’t feel that boom at all. I felt that this town was like a semi-ghost. »
A mine, or the revitalization of a mine, in one of these towns left behind over the years and the ups and downs of the economy, whose population has gone from 7,000 to 3,000 inhabitants, is first of all excellent news. ” When the mine project arrived, that of a second mine, the economy was bad in Malartic, and it was well received,” says Nicolas Paquet.
It was later, reveals the lawyer and judicial anthropologist Geneviève Brisson, who carried out an impact study in the community, that the tide turned.
The bad news arrived with the blasts which occurred at all times, including at night, and which disturbed the social peace of the inhabitants living on the edge of the precipice. These blasts also sometimes come with stone fragments, and with a cloud of nitrogen dioxide, orange in color, toxic, which floats with impunity in the ambient air.
There were complaints. Hundreds, according to an investigation carried out by journalists Annabelle Blais, who appears in the film, and Charles Mathieu, from Montreal Journalin 2022. “The worst environmental offender of the last 10 years in Quebec is the Malartic mine, which has even committed certain offenses intentionally and concealed information from the government,” they wrote then.
The citizens who made these complaints, lawyers tried to defend them. Anne-Marie Voisard, author of the book The law of the strongesttells how the Quebec government passed a decree modifying the regulations, for Malartic only, in the days following a judgment recognizing the rights of citizens.
“Two days after the judgment, the government published a decree which not only authorized the mine to double its extraction capacity, to double the project, but which also shattered the regulatory framework. […] This allowed it to outrageously exceed the thresholds and limits which were until then in force, which apply to all companies and which are found in the recommendations of the[Organisation mondiale de la santé] and the European Commission. The government had just admitted that it was losing the standoff against mining,” she says in the film.
Ten billion dollars
The Osisko company, which has since resold its shares in the project, initially paid the sum of $50,000 for the abandoned Malartic mine. According to Nicolas Paquet’s calculations, this mine has since brought in some $10 billion in revenue, from which Osisko’s initial investments must obviously be deducted.
“That’s what we don’t understand,” says a citizen from the southern district met in the documentary. So much wealth! And how come we still have poverty in Malartic? »
Furthermore, the promise of good jobs anchored in the town does not seem to be realized, with most of the mine’s employees living outside Malartic. The population has also suffered from social dissension surrounding the project, from the stigmatization of those who dare to complain out loud about the inconveniences.
Nicolas Paquet tried in vain to meet representatives of the Malartic town hall for his film.
And we probably haven’t heard the last of the Osisko company. The film ends with the announcement that the company plans to resume mining in Murdochville, in Gaspésie, a municipality which has invested, since the closure of its copper mine in 2002, in wind power and tourism. To the music of Richard Desjardins.
Malartic will be presented at Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma on Wednesday, 7 p.m. The documentary will be released in theaters in April.