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The economic future of this corner of Quebec is hanging on a cement plant

But the pull between a paycheque and preserving the region has some locals conflicted.

Canada’s largest cement factory is open for business. The massive industrial plant, run by McInnis Cement in the town of Port-Daniel-Gascons, began production a few weeks ago. It’s touted by the Quebec government as an economic engine for the remote Gaspesie peninsula.

In an area struggling for economic stability, McInnis has promised around 150 jobs and fifty years of activity. It’s a promise Quebec has fully jumped on board with, helping to finance the $1.5 billion project and pushing it through without standard public consultations currently required under Quebec’s Environment Quality Act.

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The stakes are markedly high. The economic future of this corner of Gaspesie, not to mention millions of public dollars, hang in the balance. And since the factory is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the Quebec’s history, the impacts on the local environment and Quebec’s climate targets remain to be seen.

Watch the VICE documentary on the McInnis cement factory

How do you solve a problem like Gaspesie? Home to just 1 percent of Quebec’s population, it’s one of the province’s most beautiful regions, rife with dramatic coastlines that attract hundreds of thousands of tourists each summer. But the area is struggling with a declining population thanks to ongoing socio-economic challenges.

Nowhere is this more evident than Port-Daniel, where in 2011, the unemployment rate sat at 19.8 percent (compared to 7.2 percent in the rest of Quebec). Average income hovered around $18 586 in 2010, the lowest in Quebec and almost ten thousand less than the provincial average.

“People didn’t want to leave. But now there’s nothing left.”

Given the low job prospects, there’s been a steady exodus of younger generations who have left in search of a paycheque. The town has lost almost a third of its population since the 1970s.

It’s a far cry from a few decades ago. “I know the area from back when there were young people. I came here in ‘83 or ‘84,” says fisherman Hugues Roussy. “There were people everywhere, the bars were full everywhere. There were factories, fish, cod… everyone was working. People didn’t want to leave. But now there’s nothing left.”

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And while Gaspesie may be known for its seafood, the fishing industry has taken big hits in the past few years. After the Atlantic cod stock collapse in the early 1990s, Canada announced an indefinite closure of local cod fisheries in 2003. Families who had been fishing for generations gave it up. These days, many residents rely on seasonal work. Others have simply left.

Given the dearth of primary industries, it’s easy to understand why both locals and the government were on board with the McInnis cement factory.

Successive provincial governments have struggled to find effective economic solutions for Gaspesie. In the early 2000s, Bernard Landry’s PQ government launched a recovery plan to restructure the area’s economy. Only a decade later, the next PQ government (under Pauline Marois) announced another five-year strategic plan.

This time, Marois had a specific project to champion and in 2014 she announced major financial support for the Port-Daniel plant. Public money makes up roughly 40 percent of McInnis’s financing, $615-million of equity investments and commercial loans through the Caisse de depot and Investissement Quebec.

The McInnis plant isn’t just bringing jobs. The factory will be responsible for approximately 2 percent of Quebec’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

The kicker is, the McInnis plant isn’t just bringing jobs. The factory will be responsible for approximately 2 percent of Quebec’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

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McInnis will be abiding by the latest environmental standards, and claims it will reduce average greenhouse gas emissions by about 20 percent through its use of advanced technology and hydroelectricity.

Even so, the environmental effects are hard to ignore. Cement production is an intensely polluting industry, accounting for approximately 8 percent of global CO2 emissions with heavy metal emissions that include mercury and lead. It’s a major contributor to climate change, yet it’s an essential global infrastructure product with few mainstream environmentally-friendly alternatives.

Which raises the question: would such a polluting project have gone ahead in a region less desperate for work?

In Gaspesie, the need for jobs means the project’s environmental issues have been placed firmly on the backburner.

“”Here, you’re not going to find anyone against the factory,” Roussy told VICE. “I found that hard, because I know it’s going to be a source of pollution. We’re going to see in maybe ten years, that’s when we’ll see the effects.”

Opposition efforts by local group Environnement Vert Plus to force the project to undergo a formal public review only mobilized a handful of people. “Everyone knows somebody that knows somebody that works there,” says Pascal Bergeron, who helped organize the protests. “Everyone said: sure, bring the cement factory. We want the jobs, regardless. It’s super hard to mobilize in that context.”

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“People didn’t ask any questions. They didn’t care about asking questions. It was more like, if there’s jobs coming, I’m going to shut up, and I’m going to go to work,” says Chandler-based musician David Dupuis.

The McInnis project isn’t the first time the government has spent millions on an industrial project in Gaspesie. The town of Chandler, only half an hour from Port-Daniel, is home to the former site of the once-massive Gaspesia Pulp & Paper Company.

Gaspesia was the last major mono-industrial project to grace the region, and one that left deep scars. At its peak, the mill employed around 700 people. Its closure left the area economically devastated, and became one of the most notorious financial disasters in the history of the province.

After Gaspesia’s closure, hundreds of people lost their jobs, resulting in devastating social outcomes. The suicide rate peaked: one estimate says that 80 percent of suicides between 2004-2008 in the region involved former workers. Parental neglect and abuse rates went up. Many were forced to leave.

“I felt the impact directly, because my father lost his job and it caused our family to split,” says Dupuis. “There were always people leaving. We didn’t really know why. Later on, we’d learn that the father had committed suicide, so the mother was leaving with her kid because she couldn’t live here anymore.”

”Here, you’re not going to find anyone against the factory,”

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“You can’t say that locals didn’t try to make Gaspesia work. People protested many times over the years,” artist Silver Catalano told VICE, whose grandfather worked at the plant. “Gaspesia was a source of pride. People really had a sense of community there.”

The saga is only just coming to a close: the plant’s last remnants were dismantled this spring.

Hundreds of millions of public money were lost. Among the public funds that had been injected into the project was a $145.25 million loan from Investissement Quebec.

For comparison’s sake, Investissement Quebec helped finance McInnis Cement through $250-million in commercial loans and $100-million in equity. And McInnis has already run into cost overruns: a $444-million shortfall was reported last year. However, the McInnis project does have significant funding from private investors and the government has stressed they’ll make money from the loan’s commercial interest rates.

It seems fifty years is the longest anyone is ever willing to look ahead.

After the Gaspesia debacle, Quebec set up an independent commission to investigate what went wrong, and to avoid similar disasters in the future.

Among the commission’s recommendations were that large Investissement Quebec loans be managed by a non-governmental financial institution, with reports made accessible to the public. They also recommended that a committee of independent experts be established before IQ commit massive public funds to industrial projects, and that their findings also be made public.

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Neither of these recommendations were applied to McInnis.

McInnis’s CEO, Herve Mallet, is confident about the factory’s economic impacts and long-term success. “It’s a massive project for Quebec’s economy, and even moreso for Gaspesie. We’re creating work for generations of locals. We’re not here for five years or ten years. We’re here for 50 years at the minimum.”

It seems fifty years is the longest anyone is ever willing to look ahead. Gaspesia itself ran for just over sixty.

Amidst memories of a thriving region and economic stability while Gaspesia was in operation, it’s easy to understand why the McInnis factory is so attractive to locals. “It’s an opportunity for people to believe in something, just like they did in Gaspesia. A new, promising opportunity,” says Catalano.

But the pull between a paycheque and preserving the region has some locals conflicted.

“It’s clear that we could create jobs in ways other than destroying forests and our resources.”

“We’re a region that lives off of tourism and the beauty of our landscapes. If we’re going to bet on something to develop the region with, it shouldn’t be on this type of huge project,” Bergeron says.

Tourism is a key economic sector in Gaspesie, responsible for over 1300 jobs in the region according to a 2010 government study.

“Can we have autonomy and decide what type of development we want?” asks Bergeron. “There are such better ways of doing this, using less resources, if we let locals decide how they’re going to plan local development.”

“It’s clear that we could create jobs in ways other than destroying forests and our resources,” says Catalano. “We’re proud of where we live, and I get the impression that in order to create jobs, we’re often inclined to ruin what we have.”