#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #CANADA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Rouyn-Noranda: The Horne smelter's right to pollute (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 It is a macabre comedy that we are witnessing in the currently publicized case of

the Horne foundry in Rouyn-Noranda. The masks have a time expired. We first saw
Quebec's national directorate of public health foolishly trying to explain its
attempt to hide the facts of the extremely high arsenic emissions from the
smelter and the impacts of exposure of children and adults to this poison. To try
to make us swallow the pill, it argued at the start that jobs were a matter of
public health and that it should not harm it! Of course, this discourse has
something to worry about and revolt; we know something about it in
Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean with Alcan, which is still fighting to prevent recognition
of industrial diseases among its workers who, by a supposed coincidence, are
dying much younger. The parliamentary carnival quickly seized the issue even if
several of its political parties share a responsibility in the right to pollute
offered to the foundry. They are the ones who through electoralism have made
Rouyn-Noranda the city of Quebec where the inhabitants are the most exposed to
arsenic. To respond to the outcry, Prime Minister Legault later changed his tune
to hypocritically assert that health would come before the economy and that he
could close the foundry if it did not make changes, without specifying measures
as to his expectations. His line was taken up in chorus by his ministers, as well
as by the non-independent national directorate of public health. The resolution
of what is, especially for the residents of Rouyn-Noranda, a major crisis will
ultimately be summed up in a public relations operation where those responsible
proclaim their good faith and where the acquired rights to pollute are preserved.

The main beneficiary of this collaboration of the capitalist state is of course
the Swiss multinational extractivist Glencore, which owns the Horne smelter.
Glencore is one of the 50 largest companies on the planet and its activities are
concentrated in several of the most polluting areas. As such, the multinational
has become a champion in breaches of environmental standards. With its colossal
economic means, the company has arrogated a real right to pollute which it seeks
to extend ever further. For example, in the spring, when the concentration of
nickel in the air at the Port of Quebec (owned by Glencore) was worrying, the
multinational was one of the industrialists who made the government lean towards
raising the standards for nickel concentration in the 'air. While in Quebec, the
activity of nearly twenty of the company's lobbyists with the government is well
known, the multinational is facing corruption charges in the United Kingdom, the
United States and Brazil and is under investigation for the same reasons in the
Netherlands and Switzerland. Brown envelopes and bribes in Quebec, we don't know
that, huh? With the legal system we have, it's not that surprising.

For a libertarian decline

As long as there is a tree to raze, a river to harness, a mountain to raze for
ore, the multinationals, allies of the governments, will be there to reap
significant benefits. Of course, they will ''create'' in exchange some jobs in
regions which have experienced high unemployment rates for many years and which
are the product of development based on mono-industry. But what are these jobs
worth in a trashed and unlivable environment? But above all, what are we going to
do when the multinational has packed up once the soil has been exhausted and the
millions amassed? If we persist on this path, we will return to square one. The
only alternative: decide now to break this cycle of misery and exploitation and
build an economy based on the satisfaction of our real needs and the
sustainability of resources. Faced with the big useless projects that governments
and multinationals want to put forward, we must not only resist, but create our
own alternatives to this self-destructive system. We can no longer accept the
bread crumbs that big business is willing to give us to ''ensure'' our
''well-being'' for a while. Because let's face it, the only lasting thing in
their system is the misery and desolation it engenders. A libertarian degrowth,
that is to say not the cessation of the development of new technologies which
facilitate and improve our lives, but the cessation of the manufacture of useless
goods which feed this consumerist society and which require more and more
resources often exploited in the countries of the South. A horizontal and
egalitarian society based on our real needs and built in complicity with the
First Nations.

by Emma Goldman Collective

http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2022/07/rouyn-noranda-le-droit-de-polluer-de-la.html
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