Water bottlers say they are unfairly targeted by the new regulatory provisions put forward by the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, to protect the resource. Other industries are doing more damage to Quebec’s blue gold, they believe.
Each year, companies subject to the “charge payable for the use of water” withdraw no less than 800 billion liters of fresh water from Quebec’s lakes, rivers, aqueducts and underground. In 2022, beverage makers and bottlers — Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Naya and other Amaro — pumped around 5.5 billion, or 0.7% of the total, shows data obtained by The duty with the Ministry of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks.
At the beginning of April, Minister Charette tabled Bill 20 “establishing the Blue Fund and modifying other provisions” in the National Assembly. Barely six pages long, the legislative text, which will be studied this week in Parliament, provides for the upward revision of the royalties imposed on industries that use Quebec water. These have not been updated for twelve years.
In the wake of the tabling of this bill, Mr. Charette published two draft regulations last month: one to make public the quantities of water pumped by each company in a year and another to implement the increases in royalties.
The latter imposes on most companies that use Quebec water costs 2 to 14 times higher than before. But it specifically subjects companies that bottle water to a fee of $500 per million liters withdrawn. Moreover, it indexes these sums by 3% annually.
“small users”
The data obtained by The duty with the ministry show that certain industries established in Quebec drink quantities of water up to 64 times higher than those who bottle it in order to sell it. This is the case for pulp and paper (352 billion liters in 2022), mines (150 billion) and foundries (54 billion), in particular.
“We are really a small user when we look at all the water users in Quebec, but we are the ones most affected by the new royalties,” laments Martin-Pierre Pelletier, councilor and spokesperson for the Canadian Beverage Association, an organization that represents several multinationals, such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
By regulating in this way, Minister Charette will “most likely” force bottlers to pass on costs to consumers, he added in an interview.
These industries [les embouteilleurs] carry out a specific commercial activity on this resource. So they make money from the water.
In his draft regulation, the Minister of the Environment has planned to increase the bill for all companies that pay royalties. However, those who do not include water in their final product, such as paper mills or factories, will have to pay $35 per cubic meter, against $500 for bottlers, denounces Mr. Pelletier. “We are ready to pay a fee, but we would like all water users, regardless of the purpose, to have the same,” he maintains.
An illogical reasoning according to the director general of the organization Eau Secours, Rébecca Pétrin. “These industries [les embouteilleurs] carry out a specific commercial activity on this resource. So they make money from the water. A paper mill or a mining company don’t make money from water. They use water which, for the most part, returns to the environment,” she notes.
This holder of a master’s degree in environmental management points out that the “very ambitious tariffs” imposed when the fee was introduced in 2011 have not changed since. Revenues from water, a resource with legal status in Quebec, have therefore not kept up with inflation.
In the same way as Naya or Eska, “a mining company will have to pay a royalty on the resource that it will extract”, notes Mme Kneader. “So it’s a bit the same for bottlers. They are given permission to use a common resource to make money. In exchange, they pay a fee which is higher. »
Lift the secret on the water
In addition to imposing more royalties on water abstractors, the Minister of the Environment plans to make public next year the exact quantities of the resource they abstract everywhere in Quebec. This comes in response to a judgment of the Court of Quebec handed down a year ago, and according to which commercial secrecy prevented the State from publicizing these statistics.
This decision by Benoit Charette, a victory according to the Quebec Center for Environmental Law (CQDE), takes small businesses to task, retorts the president and owner of the Amaro spring water company, Daniel Colpron.
“If we declare our volume of water, it’s a bit like declaring our turnover. It is quite simply to protect our market that we consider it to be confidential information, ”he says, worried.
The head of legislative and regulatory reforms of the CQDE, the lawyer Merlin Voghel maintains that this is “essential data”. “The law on water provides for the principle of transparency. We also provide for the right of citizens to participate in decisions about water,” he observes. “In this context, how do we participate in decisions if we don’t have the data? »
“Can we afford for a mining company to set up, for example, in a watershed where we are already experiencing water shortages for several weeks a year? These are data that will allow us to make informed decisions,” adds Ms.me Kneader.
The two regulations of the government of François Legault must come into force on 1er next January. In the meantime, bottlers want to adopt a position of dialogue, says Martin-Pierre Pelletier. No challenge is expected, at least for now.
Special consultations on Bill 20 begin Tuesday in Quebec.