Should the Northvolt battery factory project undergo a BAPE study? In principle, this may seem logical. We have developed a procedure for examining such projects.
But who knows how many factory projects the BAPE has approved? The truth is that BAPE has been studied very little. For what? For the simple reason that Quebec has hardly seen any new companies interested in setting up a factory here for 20 years. It’s a tragedy for anyone interested in Quebec’s prosperity.
This is the real story: Quebec is an industrial investment desert. Although we have natural resources, almost no company has chosen to build a factory in Quebec for 20 years.
The desert
I will tell you the history of industrial investment projects by new companies in recent years. (I exclude expansions and conversions of existing companies.)
In 2018, the BAPE examined and approved with reservations BlackRock’s iron concentrate processing project in Saguenay. The list is ready. Total: one.
In 2013, he studied a chemical fertilizer plant project in Bécancour. The project was never realized.
And to find a precedent we have to go back more than 20 years, to the embossing plate factory project in Béarn in Témiscamingue in 2000.
If we expand the definition, we could include the Énergie Saguenay port project, which has an industrial dimension. The BAPE said no and buried the project.
The BAPE investigates large road construction projects, landfill expansions and wind farms. But factory projects are incredibly rare. Are the processes and deadlines of the BAPE adapted to the competitive life of manufacturers today in a sector such as batteries? I highly doubt it.
The actual problem
I hear opponents and opposition parties proclaiming a scandal if Northvolt is not the subject of a BAPE study. The real scandal lies elsewhere, namely that Quebec has been avoided by all investors in the world for so many years.
I remember screaming both in politics and on television about Quebec not getting its share of private investment in Canada. We made up 23% of the population and received 13% of private non-residential investment. That’s the serious thing.
What was the result? At the end of the Charest years, Statistics Canada presented grim figures. Quebec had become the poorest province in Canada. At times the average household income here was lower than on Prince Edward Island.
Today, when we are confronted with a large industrial project, we react like earthlings who see an alien ship land. Some are scared, some are excited, but everyone is paralyzed by the unknown. We have seen so little of it in a generation.
