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Quebec gov't halts hydro-electric project
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BY ROGER ANNIS
MONTREAL - Many of the Cree and Inuit Indian
people who live in northern Quebec are celebrating a
provincial government decision to postpone
indefinitely a hydroelectric project along the Great
Whale and Little Great Whale rivers.
"The project is on ice for quite a long time,"
said Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau, leader of the
Parti Quebecois (PQ) government, at a news
conference November 19.
"It's certainly a great victory for the
environment, for common sense, and for the Crees,"
said Bill Namagoose, executive director of the Grand
Council of the Crees. "Now that the threat to the
land has been alleviated, it's time for the Crees'
right to self-determination." Some 12,000 Cree and
6,000 Inuits live in the region.
Parizeau said the previous government had
overestimated the demand for electricity in coming
years. Hydro-Quebec, the government-owned utility
that was to undertake the $13 billion project, does
not have a market for the 3,000 additional megawatts
of electricity that it would produce.
The decision to indefinitely postpone the
project is a political defeat for capitalists in
Quebec, although most big-business spokespeople
favored the decision.
A pillar of their economic strategy has been
the development of huge electricity projects to give
energy-hungry industries - like aluminum and man
ganese smelting - low costs and a competitive
advantage. The power plants have also been able to
reap big profits through selling electricity
surpluses to markets in the United States.
Market slows for electric power
However, as a result of the depression in the
capitalist economy and the growing availability of
cheaper sources of energy, markets for electricity
are not expanding. In 1992, the New York Power
Authority canceled a multi-year $13 billion contract
with Hydro-Quebec for these reasons.
At the same time, the strategy of providing
below-cost electricity to capitalists in certain
industries has taken some blows. In 1992, manganese
producers in the United States successfully sued for
stiff import duties against one manganese producer
in Quebec, Norwegian-owned Norsk Hydro. The Cree
exposed a secret sweetheart contract for cheap
electricity between that company and Hydro-Quebec.
The Cree used the experience of an earlier
hydroelectric project in their territory along the
La Grande River during the 1970s and 1980s as a
powerful argument against the new project. The La
Grande, or James Bay 1, project left a legacy of
unemployment and deep social problems in the area.
The new project would involve the construction
of a series of dams along the Great Whale and Little
Whale rivers, which flow into James Bay. The dams
would flood close to 1,500 square miles of land.
As happened at La Grande, the flooding would
destroy the habitat and migratory patterns of bird,
animal, and fish species and would poison the waters
with mercury by leaching ethyl mercury into the
floodwaters - a natural process whenever rock
formations such as those in northern Quebec are
permanently flooded. The Cree and Inuit earn their
livelihood from hunting, fishing, trapping for furs,
and tourism.
Robert Mainville, a lawyer who worked with the
Cree throughout the Great Whale battle, told the
Montreal Gazette he was "absolutely taken aback" by
the depth of opposition among ordinary Cree to the
Great Whale project when it was first announced. A
lot of Cree leaders and businessmen wanted to go
along with it, he recalls. "But it was the people
who said no." They didn't want a repeat of the La
Grande experience.
Cree appeal for support
The Cree decided not to focus opposition to the
project in the courts. Instead, they appealed to
people in Quebec and the United States, where the
electricity would be sold, to help them stop it.
They spearheaded an international fight that won
support from environmental groups, human rights
organizations, and from many working people.
Even groups that did not support the campaign
were influenced to question the project. Officials
of the Quebec Federation of Labour, for example, who
supported the Great Whale project from its inception
in 1989, failed in their attempt to have a
resolution in favor of the project adopted at the
organization's convention in 1992. Delegates pointed
to the environmental impact and the huge cost.
The Confederation of National Trade Unions, the
second-largest union federation in Quebec, welcomed
the postponement of the project for the same
reasons.
Many of the environmental consequences of Great
Whale are too complex for scientists to accurately
predict. Two days before the postponement was
announced, a government panel set up to review Hydro-
Quebec's assessment of the environmental impact of
the project concluded that the utility's studies
were inadequate in almost all areas. Hydro-Quebec
has already spent more than $250 million on the
project.
Racist campaign
The Parti Quebecois government also found it
politically useful to postpone the project. It
sought to cut short growing difficulties it faced in
its quest for a "sovereign" Quebec. The PQ wants a
new, pro-capitalist constitutional arrangement with
the rest of Canada that would give greater powers to
the Quebec government. The Cree campaign became a
political embarrassment because it pointed to the
hypocrisy of pro-sovereignty forces who refuse the
right of self-determination to Native people.
To help recoup his government's political
losses, Parizeau kicked off a new round of attacks
on the Cree at his news conference. Commenting on a
speech by Cree leader Matthew Coon Come at an
academic conference in Washington, D.C., the
previous day, Parizeau said, "I deeply deplore the
fact that Mr. Coon Come has chosen to insult me and
all of Quebec.- This campaign of systematic
denigration of Quebec, most times unjust, and
sometimes frankly harmful, must stop."
Parizeau was responding to a speech where Coon
Come condemned the policy of successive Quebec
governments for using "racist double standards" in
its treatment of Natives. "The notion of
extinguishment of aboriginal rights now stands
condemned as an outdated colonial and racist
practice," Coon Come said.
The premier's cue was picked up by capitalist
figures across Quebec, who have intensified race-
baiting attacks on the Cree and on Native people in
general. Bernard Landry, deputy prime minister of
Quebec, called on the Canadian government to conduct
an inquiry against Coon Come and possibly lay
criminal charges.
Responding to the attack, Coon Come said,
"Insinuating that I consider him, and by extension
all Quebecois people, as racist, Mr. Parizeau is
sidestepping the real issue, which is the policy of
discrimination against us. He is trying to pit the
people of Quebec against Native people."
In recent years, some Native leaders have
undermined the self-determination struggle of Native
people by opposing the right of the Quebecois to
freely decide their own future, including
sovereignty, and siding more and more openly with
the Canadian government in its drive against such
rights. Cree leaders have often been in the
forefront of this reactionary stance.
Fight will continue
Cree and Inuit opponents of Great Whale will
continue their fight in the coming months because
the environmental review process, which is a legal
precondition for any hydroelectric project, has not
been canceled. Parizeau did not rule out the
possibility of restarting the project in coming
years.
Louis Egeren of the Grand Council of the Crees
said, "In the past, Hydro-Quebec has used the
environmental review studies to get around potential
opposition to their projects by conducting them many
years in advance of actual construction. That way
they can receive permission to build before real
opposition has a chance to develop.
"The Great Whale project will only be dead when
the environmental review process is ended."
Roger Annis is a member of Communications,
Energy and Paperworkers Union Local 841 in Montreal.
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