Ask almost any Montreal lawyer about the Quebec government’s $80 billion plan for future development of the northern two-thirds of the province, and inevitably he or she will whip out a map and a pointer. A geography lesson follows: The targeted area, north of the 49th parallel, is twice the size of France, extending nearly to the Arctic Circle; it encompasses vast areas of pristine boreal forest and tundra, with neither roads nor railways; and the metal ore and diamond deposits are situated within lands controlled by the Cree or the Inuit, or claimed by the Innu and the Naskape.
Plan Nord, the development plan implemented by the previous Liberal Party government, promised to triple the province’s mining output over the next 25 years by pouring public seed money into infrastructure and by establishing a regulatory fast-track for mining and infrastructure projects. Not surprisingly, the plan was warmly adopted by the legal community: Under it, a billion dollars in new business was projected to flow to law, accounting, and engineering firms in Montreal over the next quarter-century. Quebec’s general election in September changed that calculation slightly. While the new provincial government formed by the Parti Québécois has expressed support for development in the north, its resources minister said in October that Plan Nord will now have to be rethought. Royalty rates for natural resources are likely to rise.
