Hydro-Quebec fought to hide decades-old correspondence about a proposed aluminum smelter, saying its details could derail ongoing energy negotiations with Newfoundland and Labrador.
The provincially owned utility made these arguments with Quebec’s access to information commission in 2024, as it waged and lost a battle with a university professor to keep the records from the 1960s a secret.
The dispute illustrates the high stakes and sensitive nature of energy negotiations between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador — talks that remain unresolved.
Marie-Claude Premont, an associate professor at the Ecole nationale d’administration publique in Quebec City, triggered the fight in 2022, while researching Quebec’s history with a French aluminum company and a project that never materialized.
She filed a request for records through Quebec’s access to information legislation.
The utility blacked out sections of text on several pages of documents it returned to Premont. She got a lawyer and took her case to Quebec’s access to information commission, which started hearings on the matter in late 2023, with Normand Boucher adjudicating.
“I pursued the challenge before the commission against [Hydro-Quebec] because such secrecy is very damaging for historical research and the understanding and analysis of public policies,” Premont said in an email Wednesday.
Premont requested Hydro-Quebec release its 1967 discussions about electricity with the aluminum company as it considered operating in Sept-Iles, Que.
“I hope you will recognize that this information, which is over half a century old, has only historical value and cannot now be considered confidential business information,” Premont wrote to Hydro-Quebec, according to the commission’s July 2024 ruling on the case.
The utility said Wednesday it no longer believes releasing the information will jeopardize its position with Newfoundland and Labrador. However, it has not made the documents available on its website, as it typically does with completed access to information requests.
Boucher’s ruling said Hydro-Quebec was trying to censor comments about a letter of intent between governments in Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, which led to a 1969 contract the provinces are now trying to scrap.
The contract allows Hydro-Quebec to buy most of the energy from the Churchill Falls hydroelectric plant until 2041, at rates far below market value.
The plant supplies about 15 per cent of Quebec’s energy.
As the hearings began about Premont’s access to information request, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador were deep in negotiations to abandon the 1969 contract and hammer out a new deal.
A lawyer for Hydro-Quebec argued the text redacted in Premont’s documents would undermine those talks.
Stephanie Assouline, then Hydro-Quebec’s acting director of legal affairs, said reaching a new agreement with Newfoundland and Labrador was essential for Quebec to meet its increasing demands for electricity, according to a summary of her arguments in Boucher’s ruling.
Assouline said releasing the information would likely reveal negotiation strategies and expose the utility’s “modus operandi” for establishing pricing, the ruling said.
“[Hydro-Quebec] argues that even though the 1969 agreement is over 50 years old, the redacted information refers to information that was never shared with representatives of the government of Newfoundland and Labrador,” Boucher wrote.
The judge sided with Premont and ordered Hydro-Quebec to give her unredacted documents.
Hydro-Quebec then asked the commission to strike comments related to its negotiations with Newfoundland and Labrador from the judge’s decision.
If Premont, her lawyer or anyone else had a copy of the decision, Hydro-Quebec wanted it destroyed, according to another ruling by the commission from October 2024.
Its representatives made the comments “in camera” and they were not supposed to be public, Hydro-Quebec argued.
The commission dismissed the utility’s requests.
Neither ruling included the text Hydro-Quebec initially blacked out from the documents it released to Premont in 2022.
The Canadian Press has filed an access to information request for the unredacted documents. Hydro-Quebec did not supply them when asked directly, citing a provision in the legislation that gives it 20 days to respond to requests.
Hydro-Quebec later told The Canadian Press on Thursday it was looking at why it hadn’t posted the records on its page of completed access to information requests. A spokesperson said the utility would rectify the situation.
The utility also defended its previous efforts to withhold the information from the 1960s. Spokesperson Jonathan Cote said Quebec’s access to information legislation “includes several exceptions and allows for the protection of information of a commercial nature.”
Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, described the utility’s actions as “overkill” and an attempt to control a narrative.
The Churchill Falls agreement is a big part of Canadian history, he said in an interview.
“This is part of the historical record,” he said. “How we ultimately tell that story and understand what happened, what took place — I think that’s very much within the public’s right to know.”
Premont shared the redacted copy of the documents, but declined to share the final version. She offered to show the unredacted version to The Canadian Press in person at a possible later date.
Meanwhile, negotiations between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador have stalled and the provinces have not signed final agreements.
Talks are expected to resume, however, after Newfoundland and Labrador’s Progressive Conservative government reviews a report from a panel it tasked with scrutinizing a non-binding framework agreement the provinces reached in late 2024.
The government plans to release that report to the public next week.
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