Ottawa will conduct its own environmental assessment of the motorway tunnel project between Quebec and Lévis, the new federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, said on Friday.
“This is a project that crosses one of the largest waterways in the country, so it is clear that there will be a federal impact assessment on this project,” he said. declared at a press conference.
Minister Guilbeault reacted to the declaration of the Quebec Minister responsible for Canadian Relations and the Canadian Francophonie, Sonia LeBel, who said on Tuesday that she was hopeful of convincing him to support the project, which she described as “a winner for the ‘environment “.
“It is not in the context of a conversation on the corner of the table that we will decide whether it is a good or a bad project from an ecological point of view,” replied Steven Guilbeault.
The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau put in place in 2019 “a very rigorous environmental assessment regime” and it is this process which “will allow to shed light on the ecological nature or not of this project”, declared the Minister Guilbeault.
This is the first time that Ottawa has said the project will be subject to a federal assessment, which is not automatic under the new assessment regime.
Federal environmental assessments in Quebec are an irritant for the Legault government, which has repeatedly expressed its annoyance with them, particularly in the case of the Énergie Saguenay natural gas liquefaction plant project.
More details to come.