Quebecers care about their institutions.
Nearly twenty years ago, the liberal government of Jean Charest proposed privatizing part of the Mont-Orford park so that a developer could develop a pedestrian village at the foot of the ski center of the same name. Local residents initially saw it as a potential source of nuisance because of the anticipated influx of tourists and visitors of all kinds.
However, opponents of the project were quick to distance themselves from these particularist arguments, associated with the proverbial “not in my backyard” to which they tried to confine them. This is because the privatization of an area recognized and protected as a national park constituted a dangerous precedent. If we allowed ourselves to privatize a portion of Orford, what guarantee did we have that the government would not do the same with other national parks, depending on the projects presented by the promoters?
While the Northvolt case is different in many ways, what is striking is the disregard for the institutions that citizens value when it comes to gauging the public interest and protecting the environment. That the largest industrial project in Quebec is not examined within the framework of the rigorous and transparent process of the Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement (BAPE) while authorizations are issued in record time where other promoters receive a dismissal does not reassure citizens in the idea that the project would have been the subject of a demanding evaluation, as the government repeats.
In the case of Orford, the risk of forever discrediting the status of a park made it possible to rally environmental groups and numerous actors to the cause, including unions, political parties, artists and other public figures, as well as an impressive number of citizens (more than 80,000 people have signed a petition aimed at stopping a project that is nevertheless very limited).
The promoter himself found himself caught off guard in the face of such popular revolt, which he had not anticipated. Thus, the circumvention of the rules by the government in place in order to promote the realization of its project did not serve the promoter, quite the contrary. Social stakeholders pointed out loud and clear that we had set rules in Quebec — in this case a Parks Act — and that they expected them to be respected.
The BAPE, an institution admired internationally and which has played its role for more than 40 years, is one of the rules that we have given ourselves in Quebec to ensure that all the necessary expertise and information , including the perspective of the social actors themselves, are available to inform decision-making related to projects that raise environmental issues.
As we saw in the case of Mont-Orford Park, circumventing a rule or an institution is offering a poisoned chalice to the developer. Already, in the case of Northvolt, we are no longer only reporting the loss of wetlands, we are also calling into question more broadly the relevance of the development of the battery sector in Quebec, among other things in light of its effects on energy demand . The current context, where many believe they have been cheated by the circumvention of the rules relating to BAPE hearings, is less and less conducive to thoughtful discussions around this crucial issue.
Even if Northvolt is committed to certain deadlines, the population of Quebec is not linked to any of them. It is not too late to start a dialogue not only on the current project, but more broadly on the energy and ecological transitions that we want in order to avoid repeating the same debate on the occasion of each new project.
A generic BAPE hearing, requested by around a hundred signatories of a letter sent to the Prime Minister more than a year ago, would constitute a forum conducive to such discussions. This would allow us to think about the possible reception conditions for a company like Northvolt. And the promoter, who seems more or less helpless in the face of the current controversy, would emerge a winner, with a potentially more legitimate project.