Environmental justice against environmental policies: the example of Montreal boroughs

ABSTRACT

This article examines middle- and working-class citizens’ opposition to green policies in two Montreal boroughs. Through observation of council meetings, it seeks to understand how citizens discuss green policies in local political institutions. In this study, citizens do not oppose environmental policies by principle nor deny the existence of environmental problems. Rather, they feel swept along by a ‘green revolution’ for which they will bear most of the costs without any short-term benefit. In order to voice this concern, they tend to use the notion of environmental justice in opposition to environmental policies. Their understanding of environmental justice merges a procedural critique of democracy regarding participation and transparency and a substantial critique of inequities in the distribution of the environmental burden. These citizens also manifest an attachment to their neighborhood that connects the environment to the concept of the common good and an exercise of democracy. In this regard, this study reveals how citizens who mobilized within institutions come to a political understanding of environmental issues through the notion of environmental justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental justice
• environmental conflicts‌
• local democracy
• municipal and borough councils‌
• Montreal

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my research team Gabriel Lévesque, Gabrielle Ouellette Turp and Catherine Viens for their advice and re-reading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Specifically, the councils of Mercier – Hochelaga – Maisonneuve and Outremont were first observed and noted during the investigation of politicization in municipal councils. Once selected, they were subject to a second round of paired observations, as mentioned in the text, to examine more particularly the expression of environmental justice. This second round of observation focused on the discussions related to the selected projects, that is, the observation of monthly sessions between 2019 and 2021 for Hochelaga – Mercier – Maisonneuve and between 2019 and 2020 for Outremont. There are 11 council meetings per year, the month of August having a summer break.

2 For example, https://www.lapresse.ca/covid-19/2020-06-04/voies-pietonnes-et-cyclables-a-montreal-l-opposition-veut-des-consultations page seen 28th December 2021.

3 35% of Mercier – Hochelaga – Maisonneuve residents have a university degree versus 71% in Outremont (Montreal, 2018a, 2018b).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHR) under grant number 371196.

Notes on contributors

Caroline Patsias

Caroline Patsias is a professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) at the department of political science. Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban studies and political science. More specifically, she studies how the transformations of local democracy through the politicization of citizens or the design of participatory bodies, respond to questions of social and environmental justice.