Mr. Speaker, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development informed us in 2011 that there are nearly 2,300 contaminated sites in Quebec belonging to the federal government. Some of those sites are high priority, and according to the Commissioner of the Environment, when we say high priority, we are talking about a risk to public health.
I therefore asked the minister a question, on May 8, 2011: when is the federal government going to decontaminate these sites in Quebec? The Minister of the Environment patted himself on the back a bit and said great progress had been made.
I submitted a written question to get clarification and ascertain where things stood.
As a result, I received a list from the government of the various departments where the contaminated sites are considered to be high priority in Quebec. Among other things, I requested that the sites be identified and their locations given, and I asked how long the contaminated sites had been known about, whether they were considered to be a priority, and what the decontamination timetable was.
I want to draw attention to the famous high-priority and high-risk sites in Quebec that have still not been decontaminated.
We have Parks Canada, which has five sites that have no scheduled date for decontamination to be done. The site that is apparently the most problematic is in Havre-Saint-Pierre: the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve of Canada, Petite île au Marteau. It was identified in 2004, and things are moving rather slowly in this case at Parks Canada. At that site, we are talking about metals, metalloids, PAHs and organometallic compounds—a number of hazardous products. All of the other sites are located on the Lachine Canal in Montreal. When are these sites going to be decontaminated? That is still the question.
Environment Canada also has contaminated sites. The most problematic one is in the Pointe-au-Père National Wildlife Area, in Rimouski—Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques. Since 2005, nothing has been done. We are talking about petroleum hydrocarbons, metals and organometallic compounds. These really are relatively major contaminants. The source of contamination apparently lies with a third party. What is the department doing in this case? We do not know.
Another case, at National Defence, is in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier. We are talking about a stew of contamination of the groundwater on land used for research and development for National Defence Valcartier, north sector.
I could go on, but I would like to draw members' attention to this site, where it is flatly stated that there is no cleanup strategy planned before 2030 or 2031. Another site, again at National Defence, is in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier. It is the same thing: hydrocarbons. There, they are saying 2030 or 2031 for decontamination. There are 13 other sites at National Defence, and they are saying 2023 or 2024 for decontamination.
I want to know what the Minister of the Environment is doing. Is he asleep at the switch when it comes to cleaning up PCBs and radioactive materials? What is going on?