The state-owned company has agreed to pour $700 million into the regional council of the county of Minganie over the next 50 years.

Actor Roy Dupuis, spokesman of the Rivers Foundation, considers that Hydro-Quebec and its principal shareholder, the government, is literally buying off the elected members of regional authorities in order to obtain their support for carrying out large energy projects like the Romaine.

Roy Dupuis says he spent the whole of last week on the internet, following the public hearings on the Romaine project despite the “terrible” sound, the difficulty for the listener to know who the speakers were in the heat of debate, and the absence of the tables and diagrams being discussed at Havre-Saint-Pierre.

But he got a shock when Hydro-Quebec were forced to table a summary of the sums of money which have been paid and which will be paid over the next 50 years to Minganie Regional Council (MRC), totalling in excess of $700 million.

And yesterday, the North Coast press announced the completion of a further agreement for $56 million with the indigenous people of the region.

The actor, who has been involved in the defence of Quebec’s rivers for some years, points out that, in paper DA38, produced for the commission of the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE in French), $1 million has already been paid to the MRC on signing the agreement on the 21^st January, ostensibly to cover the “costs” of negotiating and ratifying the document.

Another $6 million in cash, non-reimbursable, were added on 21^st April “to give financial support to the Minganie MRC for its work in supporting Hydro-Quebec in the process of obtaining the permits and government authorisations necessary for the execution of the Romaine project, and also to give financial support to the Minganie MRC for its work in promoting the Romaine project and in encouraging its acceptance in the local area”.  A further $6 million will follow later, reimbursable if the project doesn’t see the light of day, again for “encouraging the social acceptance and integration of the project” in the area.

A second fund of up to $15 million will be provided by Hydro-Quebec for corrective work, to benefit the environment and the “land use” of the region.  The payments will begin once the work has started.

Finally, a third fund for regional development will be created “to enable projects of a social, cultural, economic and recreational/touristic nature”.  Payments over 50 years will reach $275.8 million for Romaine-2 and $409 million for Romaine-4.

Hydro-Quebec, who confirmed these amounts in a written document, nevertheless refused to divulge the text of the backing agreement to the commissioners.

For Roy Dupuis, there’s no doubt about it; Hydro-Quebec “appears to be openly buying the region” and its councillors who dare to commit themselves to a backing agreement 10 months before the BAPE hearings, and without waiting for the results of the evaluation commission.  The councillors – and it’s the same in other regions with private promoters – don’t hesitate to submit to a project without knowing the impacts except from the point of view of the promoter, and without knowing if it deserves to be turned down, a hypothesis which can’t be excluded prior to a truly independent tribunal.

For the spokesman of the Rivers Foundation, “no agreement with a public or private promoter should be legally authorised before the project is approved by Quebec, and that at the completion of a genuine public debate in front of a truly independent court.  The decision must be taken in full knowledge of the facts, and money must not bias the debate.  The question should also be asked why the profit arising from the exploitation of a public resource like a river should not benefit, via general funding, all the MRCs and regions in Quebec. As it stands, those who do not have rivers are unjustly disadvantaged, and buying the support of those who do have rivers gives the impression that their poverty is being used to convince them to sacrifice the resources of our heritage.

According to Roy Dupuis, because of the Romaine debate, the BAPE is sinking “into a serious credibility problem”, notably because they have limited the hearing to the region where the project will be built, where billboards and commercials have been advocating in its favour for over a year without the slightest balancing viewpoint.  The actor, whose foundation boycotted the first part of the hearings, says that it’s just the same as if the BAPE had decided to limit the hearings only to the cities because, he says, the voice of the regions is just as essential in the debate as those who are calling for a debate on the “national investment” of the project.

He believes less and less in the objectivity of the BAPE and its representatives, the president of the organisation being a personal nomination by the Prime Minister and the members of the Cabinet – “and if that’s not a conflict of interest on the part of a government that supports the project in order to cash in on the proceeds, what is?”

“How would the Prime Minister or the government react if it was the environmental lobby who nominated the president of BAPE and its representatives?”

If the president of BAPE were to be nominated by mutual consent of the parties of the National Assembly, Roy adds, it would certainly be “a bit more credible, but not totally when you see to what degree our political parties have for the most part decided to develop resources without regard to alternatives with less impact, like a banana republic that sells its resources”.

For the heart of the problem, according to Roy Dupuis, is over-consumption of energy, not to mention widespread “wastage”, which opens the door directly to over-exploitation of resources because it’s easier and more profitable for the friends of the administration, the bankers, the big engineering companies and the consultancies.

“Almost all the political parties,” adds the actor who is becoming an increasing militant ecologist, “are taking advantage of the current economic crisis to drum up interest in those developments that have a severe ecological impact, such as the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the St-Lawrence Seaway or the last great virgin rivers like the Romaine.”

In his opinion, during this election the political parties should call for a moratorium on big projects until they can establish, within a new energy policy, a system of prioritisation for development ventures, beginning with those with less severe consequences on the environment like energy efficiency, solar, wind and geothermal power generation.