Hydro-Québec on the Grande Bibliothèque site says no

Open letter published by Lise Bissonnette, Gérard Beaudet, Phyllis Lambert, Yves Gingras, Christine St-Pierre, Carol Couture and Michel Marc Bouchard, in the Ideas section of Le Devoir Hydro-Québec sur le site de la Grande Bibliothèque, c'est non | Le Devoir

Open letter to François Legault, Premier of Quebec, Mathieu Lacombe, Minister of Culture and Communications, Christine Fréchette, Minister of the Economy, Innovation and Energy, Minister responsible for Regional Economic Development and Minister responsible for the Metropolis and the Montreal Region, and other members of the Cabinet.

We're in the final days of 2024. Without any information, debate or reasoning, the Quebec government's Council of Ministers is preparing to adopt, behind closed doors, a decree that will authorize the province's most important cultural institution to sell land to Hydro-Québec, a move that will block the growth of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

On this land, Hydro-Québec will install a huge 315,000-volt substation, a massive, high, dangerous industrial building whose presence will symbolize collective resignation. The renaissance of the Latin Quarter became a fantasy. And the reputation of Quebec, like that of Montreal, the only places in our international reference worlds to inflict such a sore in their center, will become mediocre.

How could this draft decree have quietly landed so high? It's because, for over five years, the operation has benefited from a secret concertation between major public bodies, all equipped to evade access to information measures. They are Hydro-Québec, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), the Quebec Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Culture, supported throughout by the City of Montreal. Had it not been for a scoop that appeared in the business pages of the Journal de Montréal in November 2023, their dealings would have remained incognito. Protesters began to make themselves heard.

No study, no substantial document, no National Assembly forum echoed this. Hydro-Québec offered two coffee-and-croissant sessions to a few local guests to refute any challenge. The site designated for this substation is the only one possible, and to abandon it would jeopardize the energy transition in Montreal, the driving force behind Quebec. If the site had been occupied, would we have given up our 315,000 volts? Nonsense.

We've made our own inquiries into the deleterious effects of a project of insane dimensions. It will block the future of the Quartier latin, a cultural and university space that is so full of life, thanks to the BAnQ Grande Bibliothèque, the Université du Québec à Montréal, the proximity of lively shops and the Quartier des spectacles. It will mean almost a decade of heavy industrial and technological work that will ruin the lives of the neighbourhood and the thousands of people who use it. It will mean the postponement until the Greek calends of the requalification of an area massacred in the 1950s by Berri Street and its Sherbrooke Street viaduct, an urban trench that will become even worse.

Above all, as all those in positions of power know, it will be a tacit acceptance of the already prevailing degradation of the places that welcome urban misery, which we pretend to be sorry about before writing them off.

We are therefore calling on the Quebec government to abandon the project. We hope that the elected members of the National Assembly will take note of the clear reading proposed by their colleague Manon Massé, the MNA for the affected riding, and join her in a non-partisan effort to demand that the project be reconsidered. Unacceptable proposals have been rejected in our recent history, including the REM in the city center. Montreal won't suffer a fatal blackout if the pylons don't make their bed in this garden.

We also call on the Board and management of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, trustees of all our heritages, to explain their direct collaboration in a calamity that will undermine their own mission. The institution's absolute silence is a word in itself. It speaks of BAnQ's submission, despite its legislative autonomy, to the dictates of the government, allied with Hydro-Québec.

These two players imposed a humiliating barter. In July 2022, at a public event announcing the refurbishment of the Saint-Sulpice library, a magnificent heritage building owned by BAnQ, it was revealed in passing that the Crown corporation would assume its share of the costs thanks to the "sale of land" to Hydro-Québec. Stripping a cultural institution for the benefit of Quebec's largest public industrial power: such was the maneuver that took some time to reveal itself.

During the same summer, the Quebec government proudly and fervently adopted an "exemplary" "Politique nationale de l'architecture et de l'aménagement du territoire".

Strange context. The Minister of Energy is currently repeating the clichés of the public relations people mobilized by Hydro-Québec. The most common one is designed to put the worried to sleep. It announces that the behemoth, alien to the nature of its environment, will be "encapsulated", i.e. disguised by an envelope designed thanks to an international architectural competition. It will be anything but "exemplary" to erect a monumental funerary stele over the pit of the best hopes. Unless - and there's still time - some spines can be straightened.

To say no to the adoption of the decree, yes to the intelligence of the premises.