After six years of fighting against a graphite mine project, citizens, municipal officials and business people from Petite-Nation, in Outaouais, seem to have rallied the Quebec government to their cause. The minister responsible for the region, Mathieu Lacombe, announced Monday that the La Loutre project does not have the social acceptability necessary to gain government support.
The minister said that the Lomiko Metals project would not receive financial support from the Quebec government, information confirmed by the office of Natural Resources Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina. “The company’s request for financial assistance from Investissement Québec does not meet the criteria in force, particularly with regard to social acceptability,” Ms. Blanchette Vézina’s office responded in writing.me Blanchette Vézina when questioned about this graphite mine project, a mineral designated as critical and strategic by Quebec.
“We’ll see how things go, but if we read between the lines, this project will not see the light of day. Technically, that doesn’t prevent the company from continuing its efforts, but the company was asking the government for financial support, without which the project could not be carried out,” Minister Lacombe told the daily. The Law, adding that the project is “not in the right place.”
Louis St-Hilaire, spokesperson for the Regroupement de protection des lacs de la Petite-Nation and the Coalition QLAIM, was surprised to receive a call from Mr. Lacombe on Monday morning announcing the “good news.” “I’ve made a lot of phone calls since I learned this, and the people most impacted, near the project, were crying. It’s an immense stress lifted off their shoulders,” Mr. St-Hilaire commented in an interview with The Duty.
Like many mobilized citizens, he feared the impacts of an open-pit mine in a resort area, near several recreational and tourist lakes. As early as 2021, all the municipalities in the Papineau MRC and several organizations had spoken out against this graphite extraction project, a mineral used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles. Last week, more than a hundred businesses in Petite-Nation officially spoke out against the project, calling it “destructive to the economic, social and environmental fabric of Petite-Nation.”
Three information meetings on this subject, organized by the Alliance des municipalités Petite-Nation Nord, brought together hundreds of people this summer. According to Minister Lacombe’s deputy chief of staff, Laurence Gillot, these meetings were decisive in the government’s decision.
This project also raised eyebrows last spring, when the company announced that it would receive $8.35 million US from the United States Department of Defense. Mining Watch Canada had notably denounced a possible military use of Quebec’s subsoil. The federal government had promised $4.9 million to Lomiko to “fund pilot plant tests to transform flake graphite into battery-grade material.”
What measure of social acceptability?
This surprise disavowal raises questions about how to measure social acceptability, which Prime Minister François Legault has sworn to respect.
The Alliance des municipalités Petite-Nation Nord, which brings together villages located near the planned mine, had planned to organize a referendum among its citizens in 2025 or 2026. “The response from the Minister of Natural Resources, until [lundi]was that social acceptability would be measured within the framework of the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE),” stressed Mr. St-Hilaire.
According to him, it is not appropriate to wait until BAPE hearings, after years of development of a mining project, to ask whether it is acceptable to the population. “Citizens had to devote years of their lives to it. I spent six years defending myself against this. I put everything into it,” said Mr. St-Hilaire.
Rodrigue Turgeon, spokesperson for the Coalition Québec meilleure mine, believes that the consent of the population must be taken into account even before exploration work is carried out. “The government now recognizes that it is possible to determine social acceptability before the submission of environmental impact studies. This must be reflected in the legislative framework,” said Mr. Turgeon. He is referring to Bill 63, which reforms the Mining Act, for which consultations in the National Assembly begin on September 24.
Lomiko Metals, for its part, did not respond to our request for a response.