The Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, is “not the man for the job”, while his officials denounce political interference in the Northvolt file.
The official opposition reacted Tuesday to communications filed before the Superior Court, which reveal the pressure that civil servants were under to authorize the controversial battery factory project in Montérégie at full speed.
According to exchanges in the Teams messaging system, ministry analysts believed that the work was shoddy and that there was a lack of transparency.
“Will the minister [de l’Économie et de l’Énergie, Christine Fréchette] can she tell us that she supports this way of doing things or will she tell us that she would have done things differently? » asked PQ MP Pascal Paradis during question period.
“I haven’t felt that we have had a Minister of the Environment for the last six years,” declared Liberal leader Marc Tanguay in a press scrum Tuesday morning.
“He’s clearly not the man for the job. For us, he is not at all a good Minister of the Environment. »
But he refused to go so far as to ask for his resignation.
“It is up to François Legault to answer this question,” explained his colleague, MP Virginie Dufour, at his side. It was still him who made him minister and he still seems to be satisfied with his actions. »
The co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, for his part, spoke of a “scheming” by the CAQ government.
“I really feel like we rolled out the red carpet for a lame duck, basically, gave them the royal treatment only to realize it was a startup extremely fragile which is on the verge of bankruptcy,” he said, recalling that the Swedish company is currently in financial difficulty.
“The CAQ has created a precedent which is very serious, we have modified tailor-made rules for a multinational, to accelerate a project which is only falling behind schedule, […] it’s a big mistake in governance,” accused solidarity MP Alejandra Zaga Mendez.
Quebec has “nearly the strictest” rules in North America on environmental matters, replied the Minister of Energy and the Economy, Christine Fréchette.
“The ministry […] will give authorizations under the same rules to which all Quebec companies are subject.”