Legault Government's Contempt for Civil Servant Scientists
On Friday, April 5, Ghislain Côté, a biologist employed for six years by Quebec's Ministry of the Environment, the Fight Against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks (MELCCFP), resigned from his position as coordinator of the analysis and expertise team and acting regional director for the MELCCFP's Lower Saint-Lawrence region.
On February 21 and 25 he had written two letters to the Minister of the Environment, Benoît Charette, that remained unanswered. In the letters, he says that the Quebec government's decision to go ahead with authorization to build the Northvolt plant on land owned until last July by a group of real estate developers, MC2, was "a political order."
As evidence of this, he pointed out that Environment Minister Benoît Charette had publicly declared last November that the mega-plant construction project would go ahead even though the environmental impact analysis by MELCCFP scientists had not yet been completed.
In one of his letters to Minister Charette, Côté reminds him that as Minister he has full latitude to accept or reject a project: "I urge you to be transparent. ... If the decision is up to the Minister, then do it. The Environment Quality Act gives you the right to do so, but don't shift the burden onto the teams who normally work independently." What Côté is referring to is the report produced in March 2023 by the senior analyst and biologist employed by the MELCCFP which concluded that a proposed MC2 real estate project on the site where the Northvolt plant is to be built was non-compliant, whereas the report produced in January 2024 by the same MELCCFP official deemed the Northvolt project to be compliant.
Big Private Interests Trump Scientific Findings
In the March 2023 report rejecting the MC2 real estate group's application, the civil servant cited 23 references, including nine scientific articles, that demonstrated the site's ecological value and the adverse environmental impact of the real estate project including the destruction of wetlands. In the January 2024 report, the conclusion was that the Northvolt project was compliant, with only 11 references retained, and none of the scientific articles appearing (see table below).
Comparative
table of the conclusions of the MELCCFP
analysis reports for the MC2 and Northvolt projects. Source
Radio-Canada
As noted in a Radio-Canada article, "the land sought for both projects is an abandoned, partly contaminated industrial site that was operated by the former Canada Industries Limited (CIL) explosives factory until 1999. Many of the wetlands are the result of excavations, but flora and fauna have since reclaimed their rights."
"The origin of the wetlands has no bearing on their role and importance," writes the Ministry of the Environment in its analysis. One sentence, however, has disappeared from a paragraph copied and pasted from the first to the second report: "They are therefore considered natural environments."[1]
As well, in the analysis of the MC2 real estate project, the following is mentioned, which does not appear in the analysis of the Northvolt industrial project:
"The site constitutes a stepping stone linking two large forest tracts, Mont Saint-Bruno and Mont Saint-Hilaire [...]. Ultimately, this is likely to compromise the dispersal of individuals and connectivity (COVABAR, 2015 Annual Report) and have a negative impact on the viability and continuity of populations and, by the same token, on biodiversity (Hanski 2011)."
The MC2 project analysis mentions wetlands that have become "renaturalized." This was "almost obscured in the second report," notes Stéphanie Pellerin, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Université de Montréal, who compared the two documents.
"What caught my eye was that the whole aspect of the importance of wetlands, in particular the regional assessment that was in the MC2 analysis, had completely disappeared from the Northvolt analysis. It's really striking," adds Pellerin.
An internal report by the Ministry of the Environment's Office of Legislative and Regulatory Policy showed that Minister Charette did not have the support of his officials to exempt Northvolt from a review by the Environmental Public Hearings Bureau (BAPE) for its battery production. Ministry employees recommended a full review, saying "Since the impacts of this type of plant are poorly documented, the precautionary principle prevails."
The precautionary principle is important because excavation work is going ahead on the Northvolt site, and the Ministry of the Environment has no idea what atmospheric emissions the future industrial complex will produce. Nor do officials know what will be discharged into the Richelieu River, or how much water will be drawn from the river to cool the industrial process. The Richelieu is the source of drinking water for several municipalities in the region.
The precautionary principle was also raised in February 2023 when the Legault government proposed modifying environmental regulations to accommodate the new battery industry. At the time, its proposal was that any battery assembly plant with a capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours (GWh) or more would be subject to a BAPE review.
Public consultations were held in the spring of 2023, and the ministry received two comments on this aspect, including one from the Quebec Order of Chemists, which thought it was a good idea. Northvolt, on the other hand, suggested raising the threshold to 40 Gwh. Officials recommended rejection of Northvolt's proposed change. "The threshold should remain at 30 GWh," according to their report. In July 2023 we learned that the Legault government had adopted a regulation with no threshold for review of battery assembly plants. In other words, there will be no BAPE for battery component plants in Quebec, whatever their capacity.
This prompted a reaction from former BAPE vice-president and environmental journalist Louis-Gilles Francoeur who called this political decision "contempt" for the "scientific process" on the part of the Minister of the Environment, and a "rejection of the public service."[2]
Scientist Fired for Exposing Interference at the Ministry of Agriculture
In January 2019, 32-year veteran and renowned agronomist Louis Robert was abruptly dismissed by the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ) for leaking documents to the media that demonstrated private sector interference in public pesticide research. He was fired despite the protection that the law guarantees, in principle, to whistle-blowers.
As early as October 2017, Robert had passed on to the ministry's senior management information on conflicts of interest and interference in the Grain Research Centre (CÉROM) by pro-pesticide board members and a crisis in the management of the publicly-funded organization tasked with finding ways to reduce pesticide use in agriculture. The deputy minister and his assistants had been aware of the crisis at CÉROM since at least June 2016.
In March 2018, an assistant deputy minister of MAPAQ congratulated Louis Robert, writing that "Your disclosure regarding CÉROM was marked by a desire to correct a situation that you considered to be against the public interest." Nevertheless, pressure was exerted by members of CÉROM's Board of Directors to silence Robert. One of the board members was the president of the Association of Grain Producers. Less than a month before the October 2018 election that brought the CAQ to power, Louis Robert was suspended with pay. He was fired in January 2019, accused of passing on confidential information to Radio-Canada without authorization and "displaying a lack of loyalty."
Less than a week later, Agriculture Minister André Lamontagne declared that it had been his decision to fire Robert. He said: "It's my decision, I'm very comfortable with my decision" and that "this decision is in no way a reprisal against a whistle-blower." Robert responded a week later by filing an action for "illegal and abusive dismissal." The Union des producteurs agricoles du Québec, Quebec's farmers union, and the Syndicat des professionnels du gouvernement du Québec, Quebec's professional civil servant union which represents 26,000 civil servants, supported him. The Québec Ombudsman launched an investigation and concluded that Robert's firing was unjust.
The Ombudsman concluded that MAPAQ had committed a major breach of confidentiality by repeatedly revealing Louis Robert's identity, going so far as to provide his name to the department investigating a media leak and publishing it online following an access to information request. Robert was reinstated to his position at MAPAQ in July 2019.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 27 - April 20 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54277.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca