Mr. Speaker, on January 27 I asked a question about a recent episode of red dust in Limoilou.
In fact, I went to the location in question to see the deposit, which was limited to a very specific area in the extreme southern part of Limoilou, but nevertheless affected several hundred residents.
Needless to say, the question had to do with the fact that the Port of Quebec and the company were hiding behind the federal government to avoid taking any action. For its part, the federal government stated in a letter that I received from the Minister of the Environment that as the contamination was related to air quality, it fell under provincial jurisdiction.
I have been working on this file for over a year now, and my team has worked very hard on it too. I ended up submitting many access to information requests. I wish to tell the House that I am extremely dissatisfied, because some of the answers I received, from both Transport Canada and Environment Canada, demonstrated patent inaction. This was the case for several of the replies. Others had so many sections blacked out that I was unable to determine the outcomes of the consultations or actions by the two departments in question. It amounted to an outright denial.
The departments involved are clearly hiding behind sections of the Access to Information Act and claiming that there is too much information of various kinds for it to be disclosed. This pretext goes much too far and is much too wide-ranging for me to be able to believe it and let things go. However, what is particularly deplorable is that many of my access to information requests remained unanswered, even though the deadline for responding was exceeded by a wide margin.
I will come back to the answer that I received from the environment minister. It was repeated, practically word for word, by an employee in the minister's department: air quality is a provincial jurisdiction and hence the responsibility of the Quebec Department of the Environment in this specific case.
I would like to point out to the House that this response contradicts the claims made by the Minister of Transport, who is passing the buck to the Port of Quebec and washing her hands of the whole affair.
On the other hand, it is viewed quite differently by the Port of Quebec, and particularly Arrimage Québec, represented by Johanne Lapointe, who claimed in connection with the most recent episode that all matters pertaining to dust contamination in the Limoilou area are in fact the responsibility of the Quebec Department of the Environment, but that everything within the boundaries of the port remains to be determined by the courts. In other words, this is one more way for Arrimage Québec to shirk responsibility, with the collusion of the federal Conservative government, of course.
I would like to ask the minister when she will finally shoulder her responsibilities and resolve this impasse, which has been holding residents of my riding hostage for too long?