The City of Sept-Îles was considered by Volkswagen to establish its mega-battery manufacturing plant, information that caused surprise on the North Shore.
With its deep-water port, available land and proximity to electricity production, Sept-Îles was one of the options studied by the German car manufacturer for its battery manufacturing plant project.
The Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, confirmed this during a press scrum on Thursday morning. “It took 6,000 people, employees. To promise Volkswagen 6,000 people in Sept-Îles, I did not have the audacity to make that promise,” he said.
On the North Shore, no one seemed to be aware of Volkswagen’s interest in Sept-Îles. Mayor Steeve Beaupré is disappointed that this project does not materialize, even if he agrees that the recruitment of 6,000 workers in a city of 28,000 inhabitants represents a major obstacle.
“It was perhaps a little too ambitious for the city of Sept-Îles, but we can’t always reject the project like that out of hand, saying that it’s too ambitious or that we won’t be capable of supporting the workforce. I was taken by surprise, but I still see it in a positive way,” he said.
The Minister of Employment and Minister responsible for the North Shore, Kateri Champagne Jourdain, briefly reacted, but did not indicate that she had been made aware of a possible interest from Volkswagen in Sept-Îles.
“There are economic development projects that are currently under study and that concern the bay of Sept-Îles. Of course, as regional minister, I will make sure that we can move these projects forward. The information I had was that Volkswagen was looking for land around Montreal,” she explained.
Faced with the Quebec government’s inability to quickly make the electricity needed for its plant available, Volkswagen decided to establish it in Ontario. However, Mr. Fitzgibbon remains confident to attract other projects related to battery manufacturing in Quebec, but not necessarily on the North Shore.
The failure of the Volkswagen project demonstrates, in his view, that the construction of a power line to Montreal must be accelerated. These remarks worry the prefect of the MRC of Sept-Rivières and mayor of Port-Cartier, Alain Thibault.
“For a government that calls itself ‘government of the regions’, I think that one, they escaped it solidly. It sends a weird message. Mr. Fitzgibbon wants to have transmission lines to transport our electricity from the North Shore to Montreal, saying to himself: “we have other projects”. The other projects, do you mean they’re going to be in Montreal? What are we becoming, the rest of us, in the regions? It’s already painful enough as it is, ”said Mr. Thibault.
The elected officials of the Côte-Nord will be vigilant over the next few years to ensure that hydroelectricity production, particularly that of the Romaine complex, can create wealth in a region that is the only one in Quebec to suffer a decline. demographic.