Quebec calls off meeting with Blainville mayor on toxic waste dump expansion
Minister says she will hear out the mayor during consultation hearings instead
The Quebec government is backing out of a meeting it had set for today with the mayor of Blainville, Que., to discuss the expansion of a hazardous waste dump.
In a statement to Radio-Canada, Natural Resources Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina cited the mayor's "change in direction regarding the topics she wanted to address."
Mayor Liza Poulin has resisted the expansion project. She says the land eyed by the government is located in a large peat bog, an ecosystem of high ecological value.
Bill 93, tabled by the province last month, would force Blainville to cede the land to the government so American company Stablex can build a sixth dumping site — something the company says needs to happen before 2027 when it's set to reach full capacity.
Poulin requested an emergency meeting with Premier François Legault last week to discuss the protections of Blainville's peatland and municipal autonomy.
After a meeting with Blanchette Vézina was granted, Poulin specified she wanted to see the environmental studies supporting the government's rationale and understand why it was seemingly acting against its own environmental objectives.
She also wanted to know why the government was awarding special privileges to an American company in the current political context.
Blanchette Vézina cancelled the meeting Sunday in a letter obtained by Radio-Canada, saying that instead, she'll hear out Poulin during consultation hearings on the bill.
"You wanted to share Blainville's position. However, you've decided to impose new conditions," said Blanchette Vézina in her letter.
Poulin says her list of questions didn't at all change the nature of the meeting.
"We're expropriating a municipality for a private enterprise with American interests. It's normal that we ask ourselves these questions," she said in an interview.
According to the government, 76 per cent of the waste treated and buried by Stablex comes from Canada — mostly from Quebec — including from municipalities like Montreal, Laval, Quebec City and Sherbrooke.
In 1981, Stablex received the go-ahead to expand its site onto adjacent land owned by the government which is about 300 metres from a residential zone. In recent years, it changed course and instead set its sights on municipal land for the expansion project.
Stablex's reasoning for the shift is twofold. The new projected site is 1.1 kilometres away from residences and therefore will reduce potential irritants to citizens such as noise and odours. It can also hold almost three times more waste than the initial expansion site, allowing the company to continue operations until 2065 instead of 2040.
Poulin says the 300-metre buffer area between the initial site and residences is heavily forested and falls within the norms.
"The first cells were a lot closer — they were 50 metres away. So there's nothing that justifies this," she said.
In a September 2023 report, Quebec's environmental watchdog, the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE), described the expansion project as "premature" and recommended that the government not authorize it.
It said the projected site on municipal land "didn't present any advantages in terms of the reduction of nuisance."
Poulin says the city's land has a higher ecological value than the land belonging to the government, which has already been disturbed by Stablex's activities. This is according to a report commissioned by the city last fall and completed by Habitat-Nature, which found that the projected site is home to vulnerable species like the smooth green snake and the four-toed salamander.
There's no bog here, says minister
In her letter, Blanchette Vézina says the projected expansion site has more wetlands than the initial site and has already been heavily impacted by human activity. The site is littered with bunkers, she says, recalling its military past, and is currently rented by a company to store explosives.
"So, there hasn't been a bog on that site for some time," the minister wrote.
According to the BAPE report, the ecological value of the projected site itself is low to medium, with wetlands covering surfaces between 0.2 and 3.8 hectares. But, the land surrounding it has a high to exceptional value.
It concluded that the site's value stems from its role as part of a larger ecological corridor, which the expansion project would fragment.
The BAPE estimates that expanding Stablex's operations to the municipal site will entail the destruction of over nine hectares of wetland.
In 2020, Blainville had signed a contract to authorize the sale of the land to Stablex but changed its mind once the BAPE report came out in 2023.
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