It is impossible to know what volume of water is withdrawn in Quebec by the companies that bottle it for sale. The Court of Quebec ruled in favor of the multinationals who claim that this information is of a confidential nature, after a legal action launched by the Quebec Center for Environmental Law (CQDE) and the organization Eau Secours.
Companies Amaro, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Naya and Eska, in particular, will not have to reveal the volumes of water they pump in Quebec, in order to sell it. This information exists, since it is sent to the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC). But the latter does not make it public.
In 2018, the CQDE launched procedures to obtain access to this information. But the MELCC, then the Commission for access to information refused to transmit the data on the volumes sampled. In January 2021, the case was therefore appealed to the Court of Quebec.
In a recent decision, however, the Court of Quebec confirmed the refusal of the Commission d’accès à l’information to transmit the information to the CQDE and Eau Secours.
The judgment recalls that the Commission d’accès à l’information concluded that the information “is of a commercial nature” and that it has “an objectively confidential character since the whole of the industry treats this information in a confidential manner and ‘they are not part of the public domain’.
The judgment also underlines “the highly competitive nature of the bottler industry due to the very thin profit margin and that companies engage in tight competition”.
For lawyer Marc Bishai, of the CQDE, it would be essential for citizens to be able to know how much water is drawn by companies in Quebec. “Water is not an inexhaustible resource. It is therefore essential to manage it responsibly, especially in the context of climate change. We are already seeing droughts, for example, and water shortages in some contexts. This issue of transparency is still topical. »
The CQDE now wishes to challenge the public so that Quebecers demand a revision of the legal framework to “lift the secret”, which seems impossible in the current context. The MELCC holds this inaccessible information to protect “the commercial secret”, recalls Me Bishai. “It is time to make the information available, since water is a common resource. »
Questioned by Québec solidaire during the study of MELCC credits on Thursday, Minister Benoit Charette refused to make such a commitment. He simply mentioned the idea that the Minister of the Environment of a future government of Quebec might take an interest in the file.
Pricing
Earlier this year, the Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois demanded an upward revision of the tariff for the use of water, unchanged since 2010.
In 2018, it was reported that two billion liters of bottled water in Quebec had generated less than $150,000 in revenue for the Quebec Treasury. In the same year, Ontario received $23 million for the water withdrawn.
In Quebec, the royalty rate is $2.50 per million liters of water. There is, however, a tariff of $70 per million liters of water for bottled water, the manufacture of beverages, certain mineral and chemical products, pesticides, or the extraction of oil and gas. In comparison, Italy charges $2,000 per million liters and Denmark $10,000 per million liters.
The Quebec Regulation respecting the dues payable for the use of water applies to all industries that withdraw or use 75,000 liters of water or more per day.
With its tens of thousands of rivers and more than three million bodies of water, Quebec has 3% of the planet’s renewable freshwater reserves, and nearly 40% of all this water is concentrated in the Saint -Laurent.