The Legault government cannot demand social acceptability for the Quebec tramway project, while ignoring the opposition to the reduction in the nickel standard that it formalized on Tuesday, argue the opposition.
One after another, the opposition parties denounced this apparent paradox on Wednesday morning. “For a government that has just discovered the virtues of social acceptability, it is rather surprising, even contradictory, to find that it has authorized an increase in nickel particles in the air,” quipped PQ member for Jonquière Sylvain. Gaudreault.
In recent months, the raising of the daily standard for the concentration of nickel in the air, from 14 to 70 ng per m3was denounced by the City of Quebec, all of the regional public health departments and numerous citizen groups in the capital.
However, on Tuesday, the government announced that it would still go ahead while requiring Quebec City to provide guarantees of social acceptability in another file, that of the tramway.
“The people of Limoilou, the people of Beauport, the people of Quebec are furious,” thundered the supportive MP for Jean-Lesage, Sol Zanetti. “Social acceptability doesn’t matter anymore when it comes to satisfying a multinational, it’s just good for delaying public transport,” he said.
The Liberal spokesperson for the environment, Isabelle Melançon, for her part pleaded that the decisions taken in the environment – including nickel – “were taken for lobbies, Fitzgibbon’s “buddies”. [Pierre, le ministre de l’Économie] “. And to add that the “Minister of the Environment, his name is Fitzgibbon”.
In a press scrum, the latter defended himself. “It is wrong to say that I am Minister of the Environment and it is true to say that I work very well with the Ministry of the Environment,” he reacted.
Questioned in turn during the question period at the Blue Room on the question of social acceptability, the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, pointed out that the acting national director of public health, Dr.r Luc Boileau, had recently given his support for raising the standard. He also pointed out that his department’s addition of an average standard of 20 ng per m3 on an annual basis, was going to ensure that the standard could not regularly cross the threshold of 70 ng per m3.