In the echo chamber of the Legault government, everything is going well. It is the fault of activists, ignorant people and opponents in general if the Northvolt project does not receive the consent of the population. We, poor peasants, unable to hunt pheasants, offer our deepest apologies to the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, a man who doubts nothing, and especially not himself.
First, a word on the Northvolt project and its economic benefits and its environmental consequences. This battery production plant is essential to Quebec’s decarbonization efforts. It was also the best line from the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, who made an astonishing outing in The Press and in radio interviews. In summary, he acknowledges that the government helped Northvolt avoid a review by the Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement (BAPE) due to delays. “I don’t have 18 or 24 months to lose. I am six years away from having to deliver extremely ambitious objectives. We are in a race against ourselves,” he said.
The race analogy applies as much to the achievement of Quebec’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as to the approval deadlines for the Northvolt plant in McMasterville, a multinational that is spoiled for choice when it comes to establishing its factory among global destinations. The urgency to act, shared by Quebec and Northvolt, dictated the rapid course of this project, even if it meant short-circuiting the environmental impact analysis process. In the minister’s defense, the battery sector opens up new perspectives in Quebec, and it was necessary to develop new environmental review rules on this subject. As luck would have it, these new scales allowed Northvolt to escape the BAPE.
Although Minister Charette repeats that the project will be the subject of a study by his ministry at all stages of its implementation, he does not succeed in dispelling the unease. Moreover, environmental groups and opposition parties quickly denounced the “surreal” nature of his explanations.
For several months, the Legault government has trivialized criticism and questions about the Northvolt project. Its main promoter, Pierre Fitzgibbon, attacked the reputation of two journalists, from Duty and Radio-Canada (Alexandre Shields and Thomas Gerbet), whom he described as “activists in bad faith”. In doing so, he attacked the most precious thing a journalist has, namely his credibility. Certainly, journalists and the media are not exempt from criticism, but those of Pierre Fitzgibbon come with an excess of victimhood causing unease given his influential functions.
However, there is no shortage of skeptics to add their two cents to the debate on the social acceptability of the Northvolt project. The long list of “activists” includes opposition parties, environmentalists and ordinary citizens who are also beginning to ask questions about the government’s desire to find the balance between the development of the green economy and the protection of ecosystems and populations. When a project is launched with enthusiasm while we still do not know the consequences it will have on air quality and discharges into water, how can a government hope to be given a certificate? good behavior?
Not all criticisms of the Northvolt project are of equal value. This site, which has a “high ecological value”, according to the analysis of the Ministry of the Environment, is in fact a land of industrial use for more than a century, on which nature reclaimed its rights after the closure of the Canadian Industries Limited (an explosives factory) in 1999. The land remains heavily contaminated, so much so that comparisons between its real estate development potential and its industrial development potential remain highly symbolic. The site plans for the two projects simply do not compare. Northvolt’s efforts do not receive their fair share of attention and consideration in the analysis. The company will pay $4.75 million to compensate for the destruction of wetlands and plans to recreate others on agricultural land (an idea that has been criticized).
Minister Fitzgibbon unfortunately does not have the patience of great educators to provide these nuances. But above all, he does not realize that the government’s lack of transparency is the main source of criticism. There is still time to increase the social acceptability of the Northvolt project and reassure the population about its environmental effects. This duty falls to the Legault government, and it cannot accomplish it by relying on the distribution of blame and the search for red herrings.