Posted at 5:00 am
Jean-Thomas Léveillé The press
Chantiers Chibougamau officials were baffled when their Lebel-sur-Quévillon pulp mill was accused of polluting beyond Quebec standards.
“We don’t have permission to emit pollutants beyond standards,” Frédéric Verreault, the company’s executive director of corporate development, told La Presse.
” [Dire le contraire]it’s wrong, it’s unfounded,” he assured.
Chantiers Chibougamau bought the Nordic Kraft plant from Domtar in 2017 and restarted it in 2020 after 15 years of inactivity to recycle the residues generated by their main activity, the manufacture of wooden building materials.
The ministerial approval of the facility (formerly known as the hygiene certificate) that followed the transaction stipulates “in black and white” that current and future standards must be met, stresses Mr. Verreault.
“The wording of the regulations applicable to discharge points takes precedence over that of [la présente] Hygiene certificate”, we can read in the document that the company sent to La Presse.
As an example, Frédéric Verreault cites wood dust emissions, for which the legal limit was reduced from 450 to 100 micrograms per cubic meter between the granting of ministerial authorization and the reopening of the factory.
We had no possessions; On day 1 we had to meet the reduced target.
Frédéric Verreault, Executive Director Corporate Development at Chantiers Chibougamau
Confusion has been caused by Minister for the Environment and Combating Climate Change Benoit Charette’s claim earlier this week that ministerial permits allow for pollution in excess of standards, Mr Verreault regrets.
“The government knows very well that our certificate does not constitute a right to pollute,” he says. We have no reason to doubt the minister’s strictness, but he clearly received bad information. »
Frédéric Verreault regrets that some media then falsely claimed that each of the 89 companies deviated from the law with ministerial approval.
“We spoke to two journalists [qui ont publié des reportages en ce sens]they have the information and they chose not to talk about it,” he lamented.
Those reports have brought a barrage of questions for the company, including from its own horrified employees, but also from members of the community, Mr Verreault said.
“We’re being thrown under the bus with Minister Charette,” he said. It’s time we postponed the bus because we don’t deserve to be there with the energies that go into complying with environmental laws. »
Minister’s mea culpa
Mr Charette’s claim “was incomplete,” acknowledges his press secretary, Rosalie Tremblay-Cloutier.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Benoit Charette, Minister for the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change
The 89 companies that currently have ministerial approval “systematically rivet the right to deviate from applicable environmental laws and regulations,” she said.
In fact, the vast majority of these companies must comply with the Quebec standards applicable to their discharges.
Rosalie Tremblay-Cloutier, Minister Benoit Charette’s spokeswoman
However, exceptions have been granted ‘for historical reasons’, the most notorious of which concerns the Horne foundry in Rouyn-Noranda.
lack of transparency
The confusion surrounding ministerial authorizations shows that “there is a problem with the information we have access to,” says lawyer Anne-Sophie Doré of the Center Québécois du droit de l’environnement.
“That’s the problem: we don’t know [ce que permettent ces documents] “, She says.
The 2017 reform of the Law on Quality of the Environment (LQE) provided that ministerial authorizations are public and accessible through an online register that has not yet been set up.
“The future public register, as envisaged by the reform of the LQE, will come into force when the government has set the date on which this new public register will come into force,” had indicated the door to La Presse earlier this summer -spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Environment and Combating Climate Change, Sophie Gauthier.
Minister Charette’s office has pledged to publish the 89 Ministerial Authorizations in force “in the next week”.
What is a ministerial authorisation?
Ministerial permits (formerly called decontamination certificates) regulate the discharge of pollutants from industrial establishments. In some cases, they may allow the standards in force to be exceeded. The Quebec government has gradually introduced these certificates for two sectors of activity: first the pulp and paper industry in 1993 (the first certificates were issued in 2000), then the mineral industry and primary metal processing in 2002. Currently, 89 industrial companies pollutants released into the environment have ministerial approval, but the Department for Environment and Combating Climate Change predicts that their number could eventually rise to 250.
Learn more
1972 Year of the enactment of the Quebec Environmental Quality Act
Source: Government of Quebec