The Medicom company is giving up on building its surgical mask manufacturing plant on the “Champ des monarques” land, a federal land located north of the Montreal-Trudeau airport. The news relayed by Aéroports de Montréal (ADM) on Tuesday delighted environmental groups who feared the destruction of this habitat of the monarch butterfly.
The Green Coalition believes that Medicom and its subsidiary Meltech Innovation Canada made the right choice because the land initially envisaged for the plant is part of an ecosystem of 215 hectares including wetlands and considered “essential”.
In an email sent Tuesday to groups that had participated in a consultation on the project, ADM indicated that “faced with various options for the location of its non-woven fabric factory, the company Meltech Innovation Canada chose not to retain the ‘location on Chemin de l’Aviation at YUL for the realization of its project. “
Environmental groups now want the federal government to commit to protecting the entire site. The Technoparc Oiseaux organization has been campaigning for years for the preservation of the area where many species of migratory birds have been recorded.
Former Quebec Minister of the Environment, Clifford Lincoln, who wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last September to ask him to protect the Monarch Field, welcomed Medicom’s decision. “By preserving the Monarch Fields from the construction of the Meltech project, Medicom has become an environmental champion. The repercussions of this decision for our environment will be enormous, ”he said in a press release.
Further details will follow.
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