MCK Applauds AFNQL Resolution

KAHNAWAKE – The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke (MCK) wishes to inform the community that on May 15, 2024, the Chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL) passed a resolution denouncing Canada and Quebec’s failure to fulfill their obligations to consult and accommodate Indigenous Peoples regarding the Northvolt Project.

This resolution confirms a broad level of support for the MCK’s positions taken in the Northvolt litigation filed last January, including:

Denouncing the provincial and federal government’s failure to consult.

Affirming that their patterns of late and fragmented consultation are unacceptable.

Calling out the provincial wetlands compensation scheme as being particularly dismissive of Indigenous rights and

Pointing out that Northvolt is just one piece in Quebec’s Battery Initiative and Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy, both of which have generally failed to respect the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the principles of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.

In January 2024, the MCK filed a lawsuit with the Quebec Superior Court, asking the Court to declare that the federal and provincial governments breached the duty to consult and ordering them to respect their duty to consult on the Northvolt Project.

01/23/2024

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) wishes to inform the community that a lawsuit has been filed with the Quebec Superior Court to demand orders requiring the provincial and federal governments to engage in consultation with the Mohawks of Kahnawake regarding the Northvolt battery plant project in the Montreal region.

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke lawsuit alleges that the Quebec and Canadian governments failed in their obligation to adequately consult both the public and Indigenous communities before approving the plant. “The site contains some of the highest quality wetlands in the region,” the council said in a statement, arguing that the laws that govern work in wetlands fail to “consider, let alone respect, Indigenous rights.”

They say the government rejected a residential project on the same land last year and that it did not impose conditions to compensate for the losses caused by the construction of the Northvolt factory.

The group’s lawyer, Jessica Leblanc, presented a number of documents in court, including one she described as an assessment from a government biologist who said the information provided by Northvolt was insufficient to evaluate the impact on wildlife on the site. She said it was “unreasonable” for the Quebec Environment Department to authorize Northvolt to begin work on the site because it didn’t have enough information on the environmental impacts.

That authorization was also given on the condition that Northvolt propose a plan to mitigate the impacts of any biodiversity loss, but that it was given three years to do so, according to the Montreal Gazette.

As part of the approval, the Environmental Department wrote that, in order to mitigate the impact on wildlife habitat, the company “has committed to creating, restoring or conserving natural environments over an area to be determined, which will be of equal ecological value.”

The Guardian reported that environmentalists and First Nations members oppose the project because they fear it will destroy 170 hectares (420 acres) of wetlands and woodlands, killing or displacing at-risk species. “This site contains areas of high ecological value – so much so that a previous housing project on the same site was refused by the minister of the environment less than a year ago,” said Marc Bishai, a lawyer with the Quebec Environmental Law Center. “According to the ministry’s own experts, the wetlands on this site are among the last in the region and provide precious ecological functions and habitat for at-risk species.”