Forest products firm Tembec Inc. has agreed to pay a $1-million fine for polluting the Ottawa River, the largest penalty ever slapped on any company under Quebec’s environment laws.
One environment ministry official warned more fines just as big could be parceled out to other companies soon.
“There are several serious investigations going on now,” said Claire Bolduc, regional director for the Centre de Controle Environnemental de L’Abitibi-Temiscamingue-Nord-du-Quebec.
“The government has signalled that offenders will be punished.”
Tembec said it struck a deal with the government to plead guilty on 36 charges related to exceeding allowable limits for effluent from its Temiscaming industrial site. The site, as well as Tembec’s corporate head office, is located in the town of the same name.
A Quebec Court judge approved the settlement Monday. Tembec said the government put forward 155 violations in all against the company but that a plea bargain was struck on a reduced number of charges.
Quebec government investigations over several months found Tembec repeatedly discharged waste over legal limits into the Ottawa River. The infractions occurred between January 2001 and February 2003.
Environment Canada just completed a separate investigation into the Temiscaming facility, said Isabelle Goulet, head of the department’s investigations and enforcement branch in Quebec. She said charges could be brought forward against Tembec under federal environmental regulations as early as January.
Tembec insists it has a positive environmental record on the whole. It has one zero-effluent pulp mill in Chetwynd, B.C., for example, and has committed to independent evaluation of its forestry practices.
But conservation groups have been complaining for at least three years that governments failed to prosecute Tembec despite numerous reported violations at the Temiscaming site.
The company itself has acknowledged that the site wasn’t consistently meeting environmental norms.
Tembec blames, in part, the complexity of operations there. Employing 1,000 people, the site contains two pulp mills, a paperboard mill and two chemical plants. The waste from these plants, in addition to waste water from the town of Temiscaming, is all treated by one system.
Finding a technological solution to treat waste properly has been difficult, Tembec spokesperson Pierre Brien said yesterday.
He said Tembec admits it failed to properly process the effluent. He insisted the site is now completely compliant with regulations. Tembec has spent more than $100 million during the last 15 years to improve the site’s emission treatment system as well as its infrastructure, he said.
“We accept the findings,” Brien said. “We’re looking forward now.”
For many companies, the court-ordered investments they have to make to meet environmental standards far outweighs any fines levelled against them, said John Steele, spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. He said Ontario has levelled at least three fines against companies and their owners that compare in size to Quebec’s $1-million penalty.
Most recently, Maple Leafs Foods Inc. was fined $682,500 plus a special 25-per-cent victim fine surcharge Nov. 1 for non-compliance at a facility in Hamilton, Ont.
Quebec environment minister Thomas Mulcair said in June his Liberal government wants to integrate sustainable development into all its policy decisions to avoid a repeat of environmental disasters that have already occurred in the province.
nvanpraet@thegazette.canwest.com