The Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC) is currently holding a public consultation to decide whether or not air quality standards will be applied. Why hold a public consultation on the application of standards established by experts?
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
Will our government hold public consultations on other health risks already documented by experts? Will it seek public opinion on the application of food safety standards? On the quality of drinking water?
Throughout Quebec, we are worried and losing confidence in our government’s ability to protect us. This is why we believe that this public consultation should not be limited to the population of Rouyn-Noranda, it concerns us all.
It’s happening here in Quebec, in 2022. Our government publicly affirms that it will not take into account the opinion of doctors to make a decision that concerns our health.
Several groups of doctors have come out against the project to renew the privilege which allows Glencore to pollute well beyond the standards for several more years. To get our cars repaired, we trust mechanics, to get legal advice, we follow the advice of lawyers, engineering to engineers, etc. Why does the opinion of the Minister of the Economy take precedence over that of doctors when it comes to cancer and low-weight babies?
It’s happening here in Quebec, in 2022. Our government has been hiding important information about the health of a population for years, information that would have allowed families to make different choices. In our towns and villages, there are, as in Rouyn-Noranda, factories, airports, industries of all kinds, of which we are often unaware of the content of the activities and discharges, as well as the impacts on our health.
What does the government know and what is it hiding from us about the air we breathe in the four corners of Quebec?
It’s happening here in Quebec, in 2022. Our government allows ultra-rich companies to poison us on a daily basis, on the pretext that we must not lose paying jobs, and uses this argument to scare the population. As if there wasn’t a third option between poisoning slowly and closing the factory. As if we didn’t dare to ask this ultra-rich company to comply with standards, which are not new. Glencore has known them since at least 2004, it cannot claim that the deadline for compliance is too short.
Before the Glencore scandal, we thought we were safe in Quebec. We believed that regardless of the pecuniary interests of industries, in a province like ours, in 2022, standards were set by experts and our government was there to enforce them and protect us.
We thought we were protected because we said to ourselves that we are no longer in a time when knowledge and the precautionary principle were not put forward and where the population was kept in the dark, think of the case of the asbestos in the 1970s.
We thought we were protected because that is the role of a government in a developed and democratic country like ours.
Since it is the health of the entire population of Quebec that is in question, from all over Quebec we express our disagreement with the plan to renew Glencore’s ministerial authorization.
In solidarity with our friends and family members of Rouyn-Noranda, let’s take part in the public consultation, by participating in the Memoirothon. Any person or organization can write a dissertation, from an easy-to-adapt template here1. Mothers at the front will file her brief.