About a quarter of the projects that received an unfavourable opinion from the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) in the last 45 years were subsequently rejected by the Quebec government, according to an analysis by two Canadian university researchers. This is a sign, according to them, that the BAPE has influence on the government, even if the latter does not always listen to it.
“When the BAPE says no, there is a greater likelihood that the government will say no. And the vast majority of projects rejected by the government had received an unfavourable opinion,” points out Louis Simard, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Political Studies, who has been interested in this institution for many years. The subject is current, since many projects related to the energy transition and mining are set to be subject to a BAPE review in the near future.
With his colleague Mario Gauthier, from the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Mr. Simard examined the files that were the subject of a public hearing, including sanitary landfill sites, highway projects and power generation plants. They were classified according to the position expressed in the report. About 20% of them were considered unfavourable.
“In its conclusion, the report will say, for example: ‘we consider that this project should not be carried out’, ‘we consider that this project should be reviewed as a whole’ or ‘there is no social acceptability’,” explained Mr. Simard, who presented the results of his research at the 61e congress of the Quebec Political Science Society last spring. A scientific article is currently being written for publication in a journal.
The researchers were able to find 263 projects that had received a decision from the government. Of the 50 projects that received a negative opinion from the BAPE, 28 were still authorized. Eight were abandoned by the promoter, while 13 were refused. Among the refused projects were the Énergie Saguenay project by GNL Québec and several landfills. In all, 85.9% of the projects that went through a BAPE hearing were authorized, 5.7% were refused and 7.6% were abandoned by the promoter.
“Sometimes, the government doesn’t listen to the BAPE or it only listens to it partially, for example by including conditions in its decree,” explains Louis Simard. “Participatory democracy does not aim to replace representative democracy. It is the elected officials who decide, and the BAPE is only a consultation exercise.”
It also appears that opponents of the projects have every advantage in participating in the hearings. Consultations that resulted in unfavorable opinions received, on average, a greater number of participants. “An increase in the number of participants appears to increase the probability of an unfavorable opinion compared to a favorable opinion,” the researchers’ presentation states.
For their part, 65 projects received a positive reception from the BAPE. But the majority of the opinions, 147, were considered “mixed”, since the position expressed was less clear. In these cases, the BAPE often formulated a series of conditions, such as the revision of certain aspects of the project, the creation of a monitoring committee with citizens or the updating of energy needs.
“These conditions are important because they are often included in government decrees. All projects that go through the BAPE must normally be the subject of a government decree, where we can find up to thirty conditions, which can also come from the parallel analysis of the Ministry of the Environment,” said the researcher.
Wider effects
The analysis debunks the contradictory myths that the BAPE has no effect or systematically blocks projects, the researchers say. “The reality is somewhere in between,” says Simard. He believes the BAPE is a robust and binding tool because it forces developers and the government to go through a public exercise of presenting, explaining and justifying projects and their consequences.
Moreover, the professor believes that the effects of the BAPE go well beyond government decisions. “Over 45 years, a lot of learning has been done,” he says. “Promoters are developing new tools to make their projects more acceptable to the population.”
He believes that it will be necessary to provide an increase in resources for the many projects to come with the energy transition, in order to “continue to hold public hearings and a consultation process that respects the rules of the art”.