Citizen groups organized a demonstration in front of the offices of federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault on Tuesday morning in Montreal. They are calling for the proposed Northvolt battery plant to be subject to a federal environmental assessment.
Activists from Mothers at the Front and the Citizen Action Committee-Northvolt project presented themselves in front of the minister’s offices Tuesday morning on De Maisonneuve Boulevard, in downtown Montreal, to submit “a request for an environmental assessment of the ‘entire Northvolt project’, we can read in a press release.
“Minister Guilbeault’s initial refusal to request a federal environmental assessment was based on the contribution of this company to the decarbonization of our society, without having properly assessed its impacts on biodiversity,” wrote the citizen groups.
But “this argument can unfortunately become a form of greenwashing if it also serves to keep silent the impacts on biodiversity and avoid the environmental assessments necessary to properly evaluate projects,” they denounced.
Northvolt received $7.3 billion in provincial and federal aid to build a battery factory in Montérégie.