The port of the Montreal expansion is Between five high priority infrastructure The Prime Minister of Projects, Mark Carney, has been the goal of accelerating through the newly created Office of Main Projects (MPO).
Speaking in Edmonton on Thursday, Carney said that the expansion of the existing terminal would help diversify trade, open new markets and reduce costs for Canadian companies.
He Contrecœyou Terminal Expansion Project It is intended to increase the container management capacity of the port of Montreal by 60 percent creating space for 1.15 million containers, according to the Port Authority of Montreal (MPA), Which says that the current terminal will soon reach total capacity.
The project includes the construction of a new term.Inal in ContrecœurThat., About 36 kilometers northeast of Montreal, as well as a rail patio, among other infrastructure.
The Port of Montreal to build a new terminal in Contreoeur, which is one of the five main projects, Prime Minister Mark Carney plans to accelerate. At the end of its construction in 2030, the terminal in the Montérégie region will handle more than one million containers a year.
The expansion would be carried out on land, the MPA says that it acquired at the end of the 80s. The project has been in the Concepción stage for just over a decade.
MPA spokesman Julien Baudry said the construction can begin at the end of the month, except for the final negotiation with the contracting company responsible for preliminary works.
“With so many steps to obtain a project as large as this, to pave on the floor and make sure it is in use in 2030, we need the type of facilitation that the main project office will offer,” he said.
The office was born from the main project bill, the One Canadian Economics Law, or the bill C-5, adopted this summer and is dedicated to the awake “construction projects of the nation”.
What changes for the project?
A Canadian Economy Minister Dominic Leblanc said he sent the project to the MPO so that he could help the MPA obtain a remaining permit of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
Baudry said the MPA has already undergone the permission application process and is waiting to receive news from the agency in the coming weeks.
The port expansion project implies development in the habitat of two endangered extinction of Quebec, the red copper fish and the frog of the western choir, which are protected by the Law of Species at risk.
Yes MPO Officially designates the project as of national interest, the federal cabinet would obtain the authority to exempt it from certain laws and regulations, including environmental laws, to ensure that they can advance.
“I know that the Port of Montreal is hoping that these steps will be completed in the coming weeks. The office of the main projects will work with the port of Montreal to make sure it is the case,” Leblanc said, speaking with journalists in Montreal.
“If we do not need to make the designation, we will not.”
What do the project opponents say?
Just after midnight on Thursday, a Quebec Environmental Defense Group filed a claim in the Civil Chamber of the Superior Court of Quebec, challenging the constitutionality of the C-5 bill.
Particularly, the Centro Québécois Du Droit de l’Endimnim has problems with the scope of the powers conferred to the MPO and Leblancand the type of special treatment of accelerated projects are ready to receive.
In reaction to demand, Leblanc said that the law does not limit or reduce “the environmental evaluations that Canadians expect properly.”
Baudry said the construction work scheduled for this fall does not depend on the DFO.
“The permission that comes from DFO must be on our side before starting construction in the water,” he said.
In 2021, the Canadian Impact Evaluation Agency (IAAC) concluded its five -year environmental review of the MPA Plan. He Published a report To say that the project did not have a significant adverse impact on the environment, but described more than 150 conditions for the MPA to follow.
Hélène Reeves of Contrecœur also is careful to place the MPA expansion plan in the rapid lane. She is the spokeswoman for a citizen group concerned about the project, the Vigie Citoyenne Port of Contrecœur.
She says that the project will not only have an impact on the environment, but also on residents on the southern coast, given the influx of trucks and trains that will be extended between Contrecœur and Montreal.
“We are going to live in a large industrial area that will be the port of Contrech. “Citizens never asked to live in such an industrial area.”
It also highlights the disconnection between the 2021 report of the IAAC and its regional evaluation of the St. Lawrence River, which was approved in 2024, at the request of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà: Ke.
“First we should have evaluated the health of the St. Lawrence River, how it is, before doing more projects in it,” Reeves said.
