Blainville, or the Night Quebec Chose Stablex Over Its People

Some political acts can only be committed under cover of night. Not because it's dark, but because no one is watching.

In March 2025, the CAQ government imposed closure to force through Bill 93. While Quebec slept, the National Assembly was rushed through a law written for a single company. A law that expropriates the City of Blainville against its will, at a cost of $17 million, to hand the Quebec subsidiary of the American firm Stablex the land it wanted. The bill had been tabled less than a month earlier. Its principle had not even been adopted. Why the rush? Because Stablex wanted to start clearing the land before April 15. A multinational's calendar became the calendar of our Parliament.

What We Sacrificed

The land handed to Stablex includes nine hectares of wetlands and 58 hectares of woodland, on the edge of the Grande Tourbière de Blainville. Hazardous waste will be buried on it. And not only ours: between 2018 and 2022, Stablex received hundreds of thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste from the United States.

The BAPE, Quebec's environmental public hearings office, the very body we pay to assess projects like this one, delivered a damning report in 2023. According to opposition members, it found no social acceptability and no urgency to expand the site. The City proposed an alternative. Municipalities, environmental groups and all three opposition parties said no. The CAQ swept it all aside.

Blainville's mayor, Liza Poulin, summed it up better than anyone: the state granted itself the right to do what the law normally forbids, as a favour to a company.

Read that again. Then ask yourself what will stop a future government from doing the same with your land, your lake, your village.

Contempt as a Method

This is not the first time. Closure, an exceptional procedure meant as a last resort, has become a reflex under the CAQ: Stablex was already the sixth, according to Québec solidaire. A government that rules by closure is a government that has stopped believing it must persuade. It simply imposes.

And when Blainville tried to defend itself in court, its request for an injunction to suspend the law was rejected. The trees came down. Case closed, we are told.

Those Who Stood Up

And yet, something happened in Blainville. In the days after the law was passed, hundreds of people took to the streets, joined by some thirty municipal officials from across the region. A mobilization like no other, in the organizers' own words.

And then there is William Guindon. Fourteen years old. When every door closed here, this young Blainville resident took the case to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the body created by Canada, the United States and Mexico. At fourteen, he is doing what ministers refuse to do: demanding accountability.

If a teenager can find the courage to stand up, what is our excuse?

Enough Complaining

Here is the uncomfortable truth. Quebecers know how to be outraged. We excel at venting on social media, sighing at the evening news, repeating that "it won't change anything anyway." That resignation is exactly what those who govern by night are counting on.

A people that complains without acting is every government's dream. A people that stands up is its nightmare.

Standing up doesn't have to mean waving a sign. It means writing to your MNA and demanding an answer. It means showing up at city council. It means supporting the cities and groups fighting in court. It means remembering, on election day, who voted for what in the middle of the night. It means refusing to let Quebec become the dumping ground of a neighbouring empire while we're lectured about national pride.

A nation that does not protect its own land is sovereign in name only. Sovereignty doesn't begin with a referendum. It begins with a peatland in Blainville, and with citizens who decide it will not be sold without them.

The CAQ chose the night. It's up to us to choose the day !