Mr. Speaker,
In the beginning, it lay sleeping.... A gigantic mantle of pure ice awaiting the coming of the Earth's spring. Then, cataracts of water gushing forth from the glaciers, rolling towards the ocean, gouging in the northerly soil of the Americas the bed of a colossal river and the greatest estuary on the planet.
Freshwater whirlpools collide with the vast salt waters flowing from the Arctic, overwhelming. And then, the miracle. Life explodes, microscopic and luxuriant. Hosts of fish, mammals and birds. Season after season, tide after tide, the harvest is renewed. Drawn by the inexhaustible wealth of these waters, creation's bravest and best gather to feed and to bond.
Humpbacked, bowhead and blue swim alongside dolphins and giant turtles, salmon, smelt, halibut, infinite schools of herring and cod.... The river is a torrent of life.
“Magtogoek.” The mighty river. So named by the first peoples.
These are the lyrical opening passages of Frédéric Back's 1993 animated film masterpiece.
Oh, my beautiful river, my immense St. Lawrence, with your tidal flats, your crosscurrents, your bars, reefs and shoals, your villages like beads on a rosary along the coast still remember, in their foundations, the shaking from the cannonballs of conquest, in your mists and gusts, your shields, your funnelled winds, your fogs and your ice covers.
Today I have listened to people speak the whole day. I have heard speeches by members of Parliament who do not know you, my river, in the heart of the valley of valleys where my nation lives, my mighty river, the artery that is vital to Quebec’s development.
While I listened to them, I told myself that they have closed their eyes to Quebec’s soul, and the soul of Quebeckers. There are no Quebeckers who at some point in their lives have not gone to admire the aquatic ballet performed by whales off the coast of Cacouna or Tadoussac. There are no Quebeckers who have not admired the flowing maritime beauty in the Lower St. Lawrence and the Saguenay fjord. The St. Lawrence is a precious and fragile legacy that Quebeckers want to safeguard for the generations to come. It is a unique and magnificent river, but a river at risk, a river that is choking, a river that has been polluted, mistreated and plundered, a river in need of oxygen and in dire need of love.
Of all the paths I have taken in my life, the road along the St. Lawrence River is the most beautiful and the most evocative. When I reach Île Verte, my present meets my past and all the generations who watched me grow up come to mind.
In the middle of the river, facing Tadoussac, at the slack water, the current never takes long to turn. The currents at the mouth of the Saguenay can reach 7 knots at the ebb tide. When the St. Lawrence tides turn, the water runs back up the current and rushes into the clear tributaries: the majestic Saguenay, the Sault-à-la-Puce, the Sainte-Anne-du-Nord, the l'Ombrette, the Gouffre, the Malbaie, the Sud and the Loup, the Escoumins and the Sault-au-Mouton, the Cèdres and Sault-au-Cochon, the Betsiamites and Papinachois, the Outardes and Manicouagan, the Franquelin and Godbout, the Trois-Pistoles, the Rimouski, the Mitis and the salmon-filled Matane.
The St. Lawrence is a great liquid lung that breathes water.
Today, the threat to the belugas' reproduction off Cacouna from the construction of a supertanker terminal port is only a prologue to a much broader issue—that of the environmental protection of the St. Lawrence, its tributaries, its marine life, and the coastal life and economic activity of an entire region.
What is the oil industry proposing, in fact? What are they offering us? To impose the burden of a long-standing and unimaginable threat over this fragile, unique and irreplaceable ecosystem against a few dozen jobs.
Accepting this offer would be like selling our soul for a mess of pottage, especially since the means we have today to respond to an oil spill in the St. Lawrence and in the Gulf are pitiful. According to a panel of experts, the resources available to us today would enable us to recover only between 5% and 15% of the oil that might spill into the St. Lawrence.
Every year, there are no fewer than 82 150,000-tonne ships, one every four days, sailing up the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the estuary to supply the Ultramar refinery in Lévis. This is in addition to the 10,000 commercial ships that make their way along the St. Lawrence river channel annually.
We have been told that the project would triple the number of supertankers that sail from the St. Lawrence estuary to the oil-importing countries. There are already too many hazardous materials on the St. Lawrence. What would remain of this mythical river after a major oil spill? What would be the impact of 150,000 barrels of oil spilling over the waters and the ice of the St. Lawrence and spreading for kilometres through its tributaries? And who would then go spend their vacation in the Charlevoix, in Tadoussac, Trois-Pistoles or Bergeronne, to look at a black tide full of dead seagulls, belugas and whales? Who would go fishing in the St. Lawrence estuary or in the salmon rivers polluted by an oil spill?
We will save the belugas because they must be saved. They will become the very symbol of this government’s pro-oil stance and its defeat in the coming elections. Like the canaries that miners carried into the mines with them to warn them of danger, the belugas are warning us today that our development strategy is hazardous to our health.
Only an NDP government under the leadership of the member for Outremont will be able to reverse the trend and ensure that Canada will develop in a way that is respectful of the environment.
I have listened the whole day today to our opponents claiming that we are against development. We are not against development; we are in favour of sustainable development, as part of a sustainable approach, in favour of development where projects are approved by the communities, projects that safeguard natural resources for the generations to come—everything that this project is not.
This project threatens the most fragile ecosystem in Quebec, and it is not Canadian oil companies that are going to threaten this ecosystem. We are going to protect the St. Lawrence estuary, and the flowing waters of its rivers and tributaries. This is why we have tabled this motion to prevent the construction of a port terminal in Cacouna.