Can a business-driven Quebec use our hard-won hydroelectric heritage as it wishes to propel exogenous economic development? Has he received the mandate to encourage the privatization of energy resources? What will happen to the collective nature of this “common good”? Will we be able to plan its use other than as bait for the establishment of foreign industries in the hope of benefits that are, to say the least, uncertain to share… with whom? Will we be able to get out of the old rut of a colonized Quebec?
And upstream, what have we collectively learned from the history – quite recent – of the failure of these major economic development projects in Quebec which were imposed without adequate public consultation or despite the citizen mobilizations which had raised the risks? We can think, among other things, of the Mirabel airport saga, the financial burdens of the Bécancour and Gentilly power stations, the economic and environmental cost of the McInnis cement plant, the price to pay to “compensate” the oil companies who coveted Anticosti, to the unacceptable ecological and health repercussions of the Horne foundry, etc.
We must also remember all these energy projects that were poorly put together at the start and whose public consultations made it possible to avoid deviations. Do we remember in particular the government’s enthusiasm for the development of the shale gas sector? “There is an appointment for Quebec that it cannot miss,” said the Minister of Natural Resources in 2010, assuring that there would be no environmental damage and that the only challenge was that of “to break down prejudices” within the population.
So, how can we welcome today the Quebec government’s intention to revise the rules of the environmental authorization process for economic development projects and the recent granting of $8.5 million for this purpose? And according to what criteria will the enhanced fund of Natural Resources and Energy Capital (1.5 billion) support, among other things, the battery sector (for export) and the mining operations linked to it? Will we be able to devote sufficient investments to the consolidation of collective achievements in terms of energy and to an effective decarbonization program?
It seems that over the last decades, Quebec’s energy governance has remained primarily a matter of enthusiasm, of jovial faith on the part of our decision-makers, driven by a certain spirit of the times – of untimely fracturing, by example, to the imperative of a certain “transition”. This is how Hydro-Québec announced significant hydroelectricity surpluses barely three years ago and worked as a good and generous neighbor to conclude contracts for the massive sale of “green energy” to the Americans.
However, now declaring a worrying shortage, the government and Hydro-Québec are rushing to deploy in emergency mode a plurality of energy initiatives, from industrial wind megaprojects in self-production mode to “green hydrogen” projects, for example, even before for having developed an overall plan, shaking up the rules and accelerating the privatization of collective resources. Among other things, the Northvolt industrial complex – presented as a spearhead of the energy transition – is probably developing with no other bulwarks than the eager confidence placed in it by decision-makers and the support of imposing public financing.
Finally, a question of governance arises for all energy development projects: where are the experts, analysts and consultants who prepare arguments for decisions to be made on the basis of rigorous knowledge? We must demand from the outset a genuine national energy policy, accompanied by solidly developed sectoral plans.
But in the short term, why do we hear so little from municipal authorities in the debates around energy projects? Don’t regional county municipalities have the primary function of planning and protecting the territory? Have municipalities, lacking funding in the face of climate change, become vulnerable to pressure from developers and, in certain cases, stakeholders in this model despite the costs that ultimately fall to them?
Above all, through all this movement and the prevailing haste, it is important to fundamentally ensure that Hydro-Québec (whose 80 years of existence is being celebrated this April 19) remains the conductor of the electricity sector in the long term. — technology, planning, efficient and fair pricing, etc. —, responsible for validating its safety development in accordance with the guidelines of the Environmental Quality Act. If the state-owned company were to explode under the pressure of the legislative prospective on which the government has been working for two years already regarding the laws which will govern the Régie de l’énergie and Hydro-Québec, things could lead to an unstable decarbonization plan for the Quebec economy and long-term damage for the citizens of Quebec.
The scale and complexity of the challenges raised by the fundamental question of energy development in Quebec certainly call for cutting-edge technoscientific insight, but also for citizen intelligence. Hence the primordial importance of public debates and consultations, beyond “information sessions”: such a requirement for ethical and political rigor currently escapes our decision-makers.