Roy with Daniel Green (SVP)

In an unprecedented gesture, the ecology groups have decided to boycott the public hearings on the Romaine hydroelectric project, judging themselves to have “walk-on parts in a corrupt process”.

Coinciding with the beginning of consultations in the North Coast, the Rivers Foundation, the Society to Conquer Pollution (SVP in French) and Nature Quebec are demanding that the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE in French) revise, as a matter of urgency, its process for holding “pseudo public” hearings to allow them to attend in public or by video-conference.

Otherwise they will maintain their refusal to participate in the process which is being held exclusively in Havre-Saint-Pierre, a gesture which will seriously tarnish the credibility of the hearings.  Jean Charest’s government has, however, lost no time in showing himself to be open to the demands of the ecologists.

“We are currently looking at what we can do to get the groups to the North Coast,” said Philippe Cannon, spokesman for the Minister of the Environment, Line Beauchamp.

The decision indeed comes back to Quebec, because in an exchange of emails between the environmentalists and the BAPE, the latter upheld the decision to hold the hearings solely in the North Coast for budgetary reasons.  Let us remember that the project itself is worth $6.5 billion.

“I am condemned to silence,” said the offended Daniel Green of the SVP. “Sadly I don’t have the $2,000 necessary to get myself to Havre-Saint-Pierre!” << Note: in another article, the more moderate Nature Quebec says it’s the principle, not the money. I can’t find a record of the Foundation’s position. – viv >>

According to the Rivers Foundation, everyone in Quebec should be able to express their opinions on the Romaine project, not just the citizens of the North Coast.  Especially since some organisations and communities in the region have signed secret agreements with the promoter, Hydro-Quebec.

“The problem,” explains the Foundation’s director, Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny, is that as soon as a community signs a contract with Hydro-Quebec it becomes extremely difficult for the citizens to oppose it.  These people all go to the same grocery shop, they are sometimes intimidated.”

Ms Saint-Cerny even maintains that the signed contracts, which Hydro refuse to make public, stipulate that the communities undertake “not to try to prevent the construction and ongoing works”.

The remarks of the ecologists have provoked the anger of the local communities, who have denounced their “lack of consideration”.  “To say that the hearings are not really public because they are held here rather than in Montreal in unacceptable,” says Georges-Henri Gagné, president of the Regional Conference of Elected Representatives of the North Coast, and co-president of the Coalition for the Romaine complex.

“They don’t have the cash to come and contribute to the evaluation process of the BAPE?  Yet these are the people who had the cash to make a descent of the river, very costly and beyond the means of ordinary mortals. What we understand is that these groups, who could avail themselves of federal government subsidies to take part in the hearings, preferred a spectacle to a proper unbiased contribution to the progress of the project.  It’s an absolute disgrace!” adds the other co-president, chief administrator of the Minangie MRC, Pierre Cormier.

That said, the groups demand that the government increase the funds allotted to the BAPE to ensure that they can hold hearings in Montreal, as has already been done on other issues such as the spruce budworm in 1983, or to enable the hearing to be broadcast live on the web, as was done for the Sainte-Marguerite-3 project in 1993.

Nature Quebec even goes as far as soliciting the support of the promoter.  “If Hydro-Quebec wants to placate the worries of the environmental groups, it should also put pressure on the government to widen the public hearings,” maintains Michel Bélanger, president of the organisation.

Hydro-Quebec declined to comment.