Hydro-québec Plans 13 Billion Dollars in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean
Hydro-québec is projecting up to 13 billion dollars in investments in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean over the next decade. Claudine Bouchard used a speech in Saguenay to tell local businesses to get ready for the contracts that could follow.
Claudine Bouchard in Saguenay
13 billion dollars is the scale Bouchard put on Hydro-Québec’s regional plan when she spoke Friday before the Chambre de commerce et de l’industrie de Saguenay-Le Fjord. She said the utility needs businesses to carry out its entire plan, and added that regional firms should prepare for work in other sectors too.
Hydro-Québec is framing the spending as part of its energy transition strategy. Bouchard said the utility provides 50% of Quebec’s energy and the other 50% comes from imported fossil fuels, calling that gap “C’est notre espace de croissance.”
Two wind projects in play
3,000 megawatts is the potential attached to the Lac-Saint-Jean project, while the Monts-Valin project is estimated at 500 to 1,000 megawatts. The Nutinamu-Chauvin and Utshishkau projects are both in development in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, and Hydro-Québec said they will move under a third-party-third-party-third-party partnership model with Indigenous communities and MRCs.
1,800 megawatts from energy savings, 2,400 megawatts from the Quebec-Newfoundland and Labrador agreement, 4,200 megawatts from hydroelectricity in Quebec, and about 1,000 megawatts of solar energy with 600-megawatt peaking plants are all part of the broader production mix Bouchard laid out. That mix leaves regional contractors looking at a wider work list than wind towers alone.
30 months of labour friction
30 months after their collective agreement expired, members of SCFP Local 1500 and Local 937 greeted Bouchard at Hôtel Le Montagnais on Friday morning while denouncing the length of the negotiations. Dany Bolduc, president of Local 1500, said “la sous-traitance est au coeur de cette négociation” and added that “il n’était pas question pour le syndicat de prendre la population en otage.”
Bouchard did not give a date for the start of work on Friday, so companies hearing the message still have time to position crews, suppliers and subcontractors before contracts are awarded. For regional firms, the clearer signal is not a calendar date but a pipeline: Hydro-Québec is preparing work across wind, savings, hydroelectricity and solar, and it wants local capacity ready.
