The Center québécois du droit de l’environnement (CQDE) is asking the government to apply the law and to formally commit, within a month, to creating a public register of environmental information. It should be created before the end of 2023.
The Environment Quality Act (EQA) has been in effect since March 23, 2018. Section 118.5 of this act stipulates that the Minister of the Environment must keep a public register containing a range of information on industrial projects and activities.
For example, the register must contain the description and source of the contaminants caused by a project, the type of discharge into the environment, or even the conditions that a promoter must respect, the prohibitions and the specific standards applicable to the realization of the activity.
Five years after the entry into force of the law, the register still does not exist.
“It is a register that would present data on activities that are authorized by the Ministry of the Environment and which have an impact on the environment, so the request of the Center québécois du droit de l’environnement is that ‘there is a firm commitment on the part of the government to commit to having this register created in 2023,’ said lawyer Anne-Sophie Doré, coordinator at the CQDE.
In the absence of this register, she stresses that citizens must make an access to information request to obtain documents which should however automatically be made public online. A process that is often long and complicated.
The public should not “ask” for this information
In August 2022, after several weeks of media hype caused by the Horne Foundry in Rouyn-Noranda file, the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change unveiled a list of 89 companies that were the subject of a ministerial authorization relating to the operation of an industrial establishment, also called a “decontamination certificate”.
The documents revealed during a press conference had made it possible to learn that eight companies had the right to contravene environmental standards on discharges into the air, water and land.
These documents indicated in particular the type of pollutant which was released by these companies, the frequency and the quantity of the releases.
The public and the media should not be forced to ask for access to this type of information, according to lawyer Anne-Sophie Doré.
“This information is considered by the law on the quality of the environment, as information that is public, so the register would allow immediate access, on the site of the Ministry of the Environment, to this information. »
Caroline Poussier, the acting director general of the CQDE, indicated that “this register is a tool that we have been asking the ministry for years, in vain. Yet it would also benefit the government itself: it would reduce the burden of having to respond to numerous access to information requests”.
The Canadian Press asked the environment minister’s office on Friday morning when he intended to create the registry, as stipulated in the law.
At the beginning of the afternoon, the news agency had not yet obtained an answer.