The Legault government will give more powers to Hydro-Québec to carry out work on private land without having to ask permission from the owners.
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There is no point in balking if Hydro-Québec employees come to your home with their tools to cut branches under the electrical wires: the law already allows them to do so, and the government is even preparing to strengthen it.
The bill tabled last week by Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon specifies that Hydro-Québec employees can “enter any building for certain purposes, such as carrying out preparatory work or clearing the buildings of all vegetation. poles and wires of the electricity transmission or distribution network.
This “clarification” is a request from the state corporation, according to Minister Fitzgibbon’s press secretary, Mathieu Saint-Amand.
“Hydro-Québec said that it was legally complicated to control the vegetation under their wires on private land,” he explained. “We therefore clarified the law to give them more powers.”
Refusals
Called to specify what legal complications are in question, Hydro-Québec indicated that it happens “on occasion” that its teams are not able to cut branches or trees that pose risks “due to the refusal a customer to access their properties,” adding that this provision of the bill will “ensure the reliability of the network.”
In fact, this problem was encountered in several municipalities in Estrie earlier this year. Hydro-Québec had to obtain authorization from property owners to cut down trees on their land to resolve outage problems, but several of them were recalcitrant.
Other details
The bill also specifies that Hydro employees will be able to go without permission to private land to carry out work other than tree cutting, i.e. to “carry out inventories, surveys, examinations, analyzes or other preparatory work, and to install poles, conduits, wires and other devices required for the distribution of electricity.
Remember that it is also the responsibility of the state company to “repair any damage that could be caused” by these interventions.
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