The forests and wetlands of Blainville, once seen as an untouchable green sanctuary north of Montreal, are set to be transformed after Quebec’s Court of Appeal dealt a final blow to the city’s fight to preserve them.
In a decision handed down Wednesday 16th of April, the province’s highest court rejected Blainville’s urgent request to block the government’s expropriation of municipal land—land that will soon serve as the site of a massive hazardous-waste expansion by U.S.-based industrial giant, Stablex.
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The ruling marks the latest—and perhaps most decisive—chapter in a fierce tug-of-war between environmental stewardship and industrial necessity.
Blainville officials had spent months sounding the alarm about the potential destruction of nearly 70 hectares of precious habitat—nine hectares of fragile wetlands and another 58 hectares of dense woodland. Yet the Court of Appeal, echoing earlier findings from Quebec’s Superior Court, found that the “balance of convenience” tipped in favour of Stablex’s urgent needs.
With the company’s existing landfill facilities nearly at capacity, judges agreed that halting the project would trigger a looming environmental crisis of a different sort: the inability to manage hazardous waste generated across Quebec.
“The evidence demonstrates that the need to proceed is immediate,” the Court wrote, adding that failing to construct the sixth landfill cell would bring its own serious ecological and public health risks.
Stablex’s industrial complex currently consists of a treatment plant and five engineered cells designed to safely contain toxic waste. The sixth cell, now greenlit for construction, is critical to the company’s operations—and tree-clearing has already begun even as legal battles continued.
City leaders and environmental advocates had pinned their hopes on the courts intervening, especially after the Legault government’s controversial passage of Bill 93 in March. The legislation, rammed through the National Assembly by the governing CAQ, authorized the land seizure through expedited procedures. The bill was passed with 61 votes to 31, with the opposition parties united in protest.
Throughout the political and legal showdown, Blainville proposed an alternative solution: relocating the landfill extension to a nearby site 300 meters from residential areas. But Stablex and the provincial government refused, citing both proximity to homes and higher costs. The alternative land, laden with clay deposits Stablex had already stored there, would have inflated construction costs by an additional $100 million, pushing the total project price from $150 million to $250 million.
Adding another layer of controversy, both the original and proposed sites fall under the Montreal Metropolitan Community’s (MMC) interim conservation protections, owing to their environmental significance. Nevertheless, Stablex argued that without swift expansion, its Quebec operations—and the broader hazardous waste system—would suffer severe interruptions.
In the aftermath of the ruling, both Blainville and the MMC issued cautious statements, indicating they were reviewing the decision with their legal counsel. However, short of a political intervention or last-ditch legal manoeuvre, the battle appears all but lost.
“This is a classic case of choosing the lesser of two environmental evils,” said a source close to the case. “Stablex continuing operations is critical—but the cost is losing a significant natural habitat.”
As bulldozers begin to push further into Blainville’s woodlands this spring, the broader debate is unlikely to fade. In a province that prides itself on its environmental leadership, the Stablex case raises uncomfortable questions about how far Quebec is willing to go when industrial necessity collides with conservation ideals.
