Quebec's Environment Minister Benoit Charette will be in Rouyn-Noranda on Wednesday and some citizens are waiting for him. Others, like Maude Letendre, will be following the arsenic discussions from a distance, as she decided to leave this "wonderful city" when she began to fear for her family's health.
"It's not easy to leave, it takes money, it takes time and it takes energy," Letendre told The Canadian Press.
It is with a heavy heart that she left, in 2020, the city where she lived for 12 years to settle in Gaspésie. Before leaving Rouyn-Noranda, she cut her children's hair and "kept Ziploc bags with dates where I cut their hair."
If one day her children have health problems, "we will be able to test the hair to determine if there was arsenic or not."
Hair or nail testing is indeed one of the methods used to establish exposure to high levels of arsenic.
"I tore my children away from their world to limit the damage [...] and I tore my heart out to save my body, because you see, my body was not doing well," says Letendre who claims to have stopped having migraines and vertigo since she has been living in Gaspésie.
"Is there a link? I don't know, I'm not a doctor," the mother asked on the other end of the phone.
The presence of arsenic in the air worried Letendre a lot, but "the political inaction that I noticed was also a powerful motivator to leave," because, she tells, the authorities knew for a long time that the air of Rouyn-Noranda was dangerous for the citizens.
Indeed, the government had known for several years that a dangerous situation had to be corrected. In 2004, in a report entitled "Advice on arsenic in the ambient air in Rouyn-Noranda," the Ministry of the Environment underlined that "the population was exposed to emissions that sometimes reached 1,000 nanograms/cubic metre, thus [being] 330 times higher than the current provincial standard."
At the time, the authors of the report asked the owners of the Horne smelter to "submit to MENV (within two months) an intervention plan identifying the schedule and the interventions that will have to be carried out in order to reach an objective of 3 ng/m3 in the Notre-Dame district."
Almost 20 years have passed since that report, and the Glencore-owned smelter is currently releasing up to 100 nanograms of arsenic per cubic meter (100 ng/m3) into the air, 33 times the provincial standard.
"Confidence is shaken, because the responsibility to protect the public lies with government, with public health. We expect these people to protect our lives," said Letendre, who fears that "arsenic is just the tip of the iceberg."
She points out that "not all contaminants have been studied" and that "arsenic goes through the system, it leaves damage, but there are other heavy metals that accumulate."
Last week, Quebec's public health director Dr. Luc Boileau indicated that further studies are to be carried out in the coming weeks on arsenic emissions, as well as on other metals in the air in Rouyn-Noranda.
THE POPULATION KEEPS THE PRESSURE ON ELECTED OFFICIALS
Meanwhile, in the city of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, citizens are multiplying awareness actions and maintaining the pressure on elected officials.
A few days ago, women from the Mothers Step In collective dressed in white protective suits against hazardous materials protested by singing on the main street before putting the video of their action on social media.
"Spread your arsenic, in a toxic cloud, as the foundry would say, a glass of arsenic filled, I'll put three... no, 100 nanograms!" sang some members of Mothers Step In as a choir, having changed the lyrics of the arsenic cake song from the movie Asterix and Cleopatra.
It is this group of committed women that gave an appointment to the citizens of Rouyn-Noranda on Monday evening at the city council meeting. About a hundred people came to the meeting to ask Mayor Diane Dallaire and her councillors to take a clear and firm position on arsenic emissions from the Horne Foundry.
Tensions got a little high, according to Nicole Desgagnés, spokesperson for the Stop Toxic Emissions and Discharges (ARET) committee.
"There was a lot of anger, a lot of indignation and sadness," said Desgagnés because of the "soft" position taken by elected officials to date.
A few hours after this meeting with citizens on Tuesday morning, Mayor Dallaire declared on RDI that she is asking the government to "aim for the respect of standards for all metals, not only arsenic, whether it be lead, cadmium or nickel."
This statement "helps build public confidence," but it is not enough, according to Desgagnés.
The ARET spokesperson urges the municipal council to write in black and white, in a resolution, that it asks the Quebec government to impose on Glencore the respect of Quebec standards.
As for the planned visit of the environment minister on Wednesday, Desgagnés asserted that citizens are eagerly awaiting his visit.
She recalls that Rouyn-Noranda residents were already aware of the impact of arsenic emissions on health in the fall of 2019, after reading a public health biomonitoring report and that an alarm bell was also raised in a report by the Ministry of the Environment in 2004.
"So much time has been wasted. Now people want precise short-term targets, we know it will be expensive," but citizens "are no longer capable," said Desgagnés, stressing that "we no longer need new studies."
Charette had planned to visit the town of Abitibi-Témiscamingue on Tuesday to discuss arsenic emissions produced by the Horne Smelter "with local stakeholders," but "a maintenance problem on the plane" forced him to postpone the visit until Wednesday.
Over a 70-year period, between one and 14 citizens of Rouyn-Noranda would develop cancer if the company Glencore does not reduce the concentration of arsenic in the air produced by the Horne smelter.
This is one of the conclusions of a study by the National Public Health Institute of Quebec (INSPQ), published last week.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on July 12, 2022.
