
Believing that the arrival of Northvolt is “essentially fantastic news,” but that landing the factory task was “laborious,” the Quebec Liberals are urging the Legault governing administration to launch a generic environmental evaluation (BAPE) on the battery sector.

In a letter sent Sunday to Premier François Legault, formal opposition interim leader Marc Tanguay mentioned that the period for requesting an environmental effects review by the Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement (BAPE) for Northvolt has handed, and he urges Mr. Legault “not to reproduce the exact blunders in the future.”

“For the economy, the environment, our SMEs and our regions, the accomplishment of the battery sector needs a generic BAPE. Your federal government need to reveal greater rigor and transparency,” the letter reads, a copy of which was sent to The Canadian Push.

In his letter, Tanguay maintains that a generic BAPE “need to not be perceived as an inconvenient and destructive phase.”

“On the opposite, it is a collective meeting to define a respectful and exceptional eyesight on the economic, environmental and social stages,” he argues. “Eventually, Mr. Legault, by responding favourably to our ask for, you will create the 1st profitable ailment for social acceptability.”

According to Tanguay, a generic BAPE in the battery sector is “squarely in the mission” of the group, primarily based on the concepts of the Sustainable Enhancement Act, and “it can be carried out in a couple months.”

The business has carried out 11 generic mandates given that its generation in 1978, in unique on the “inventory and administration of asbestos and asbestos mining residues” in 2020, in accordance to the BAPE site.

“For us, the Quebec Liberals, the battery sector, we want it to work. But for it to operate, we have to get Quebecers concerned. And for that, it will take much more transparency, rigor, it usually takes a vision,” Tanguay argued in an interview. “In the Northvolt file, we comprehended, there will be no BAPE. That said, there is the principle of generic BAPE, in the battery sector. This is what we are inquiring. We will have to have collective reflection we need to have collective help for the multiple projects and (economic) possibilities that the battery sector signifies.”

The Liberal leader did not are unsuccessful to toss a barb at Economic system Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon, who, according to him, “manages this as he sees in good shape, on a modest-time foundation.”

“Pierre Fitzgibbon cannot claim to have all the solutions (…) He are not able to converse about social acceptability by simply stating that Quebecers must modify their mindset. There is a resource that we have given ourselves – the generic BAPE – which would have no negative effects on the development of the Northvolt undertaking,” he mentioned.

“It is up to Premier Legault to say, as a ‘responsible federal government (…) we are going to check with for a generic BAPE,'” reported Tanguay. “Since if we wait around soon after Mr. Fitzbiggon and the current Minister of the Setting (Benoit Charette), we will never have just one.”

This report by The Canadian Press was initially released in French on March 24, 2024.
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