Couillard agrees to meet Pétrolia over Anticosti
Poll finds Quebecers prefer exploiting oil reserves in province over imports
Sticking to his hard line on Anticosti Island, Premier Philippe Couillard has nevertheless agreed to meet with the disgruntled owners of the firm hoping to develop oil and gas reserves on the island.
One day after the head of the Pétrolia firm said it has been unable to talk or sit down with anyone in government since the premier started talking about blocked island development, the Couillard government relented to at least a meeting.
“We will meet with the company to discuss all of their projects,” Couillard said on his way into the Liberal caucus at the National Assembly. “The government is not opposed to development as long as it is in the kind of framework which limits hydrocarbons in Quebec.”
There was no indication when such a meeting would take place.
On Monday, the president of Pétrolia, Alexandre Gagnon, was forced to go public with a news conference to get the government’s attention over the Anticosti controversy. He said calls, emails and even lawyer’s letters had gone unanswered.
But Couillard was not wavering in his opinion that Anticosti — an island in the Gulf of St-Lawrence — is not the best place in the world for oil and gas explorations, an opinion he started floating at the Paris summit on climate change in December.
He repeated it was a mistake by the previous Parti Québécois government to have signed a contract in 2014 with Pétrolia to allow exploration without first conducting the appropriate environmental impact studies.
“What I have said from the start is that it was irresponsible (for the old government) to have set in motion an exploration process without environment studies,” Couillard said. “It’s incredible. The company is the first victim of this error.”
He repeated developing hydrocarbons “is not in Quebec’s future.”
Which raises the question of how Quebec plans to skip out of the $57 million exploration contract it signed with the firm. About $24 million has already been spent, Pétrolia’s Gagnon told reporters Monday.
Enter a pending hydrological study of the impact of gas fracking on the island’s water table. That study might provide Quebec’s Environment Department an opportunity to refuse to issue the permits for the drilling of three wells this summer on the island.
Coulliard seemed to suggest just that Tuesday.
“We aren’t going to bypass the laws and regulations of Quebec,” he said. “The bureaucrats in the ministry of the environment will do their work, they will see the hydrological study and make a recommendation.”
Later, under questioning in the legislature, Couillard added: “Nothing obliges the Quebec government to authorize hydraulic fracking on Anticosti Island. Yes, the contract is respected — to the letter. All the payments have been made.”
His comments appeared to be in response to Gagnon who, at his news conference, did not rule out possible legal recourse to force Quebec to respect the contract.
Failing that, there are rumours Quebec and Pétrolia might agree to some kind of out-of-court compensation package.
But Couillard and Energy Minister Pierre Arcand refused to speculate on how much that could cost, a line seized by opposition Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Legault, who demanded the government reveal the potentially hefty price.
“The spectacle has dragged on long enough,” Legault said.
“We don’t govern by taking arbitrary decisions,” added PQ Leader Pierre Karl Péladeau. “Unfortunately this is the path the premier has chosen. We had austerity and now we have incoherence.”
The renewed debate comes on the same day a new poll shows a majority of Quebecers in fact favour certain oil development projects and the use of pipelines to move the resource.
Conducted-for-a-right-wing-think-tank, the l’Institut économique de Montréal, the Léger poll suggests Quebecers prefer exploiting home resources first rather than importing them by a margin of two-to-one.
On the other hand, 59 per cent of respondents say that if oil must be imported, they prefer it come from Canada’s western provinces.
The use of pipelines to move oil is favoured by 41 per cent of Quebecers as the safest way to transport it, way ahead of trucks, ships and trains.
The poll did not specifically ask whether Quebecers are in favour of developing potential resources on Anticosti Island.