Quebec Superior Court Justice Bernard Godbout began hearing opening arguments in a landmark case that has pitted residents from a small Quebec town against the federal government and a munitions manufacturer.
Over the next six months, lawyers will present evidence on whether the use of the chemical solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, was to blame for an unusually high number of cancer cases, deaths and other serious health problems in Shannon, near Quebec City. It has been alleged that TCE, considered a probable carcinogen, was dumped into the soil for decades at a munitions factory on the nearby CFB Valcartier military base and gradually filtered into the water supply of the town's residents.
More than 3,500 former and current residents of Shannon, many of whom are families of military personnel based in Valcartier, are part of the class-action suit. According to the plaintiffs, approximately 500 TCE-related cancer cases have been documented, including 200 deaths.
In his opening remarks Monday, the lawyer representing the federal government said there wasn't a shred of scientific evidence to substantiate the claim that TCE, which was detected in the water supply, caused any of the cancers documented in Shannon.
"When you analyze the data on exposure, there are very few people who have exposure (to TCE)," David Lucas said. "And from a scientific point of view … there are very few types of cancer which have been found to have a causal relationship with exposure to TCE. The people who live in these residences, do they have the cancers associated with TCE? And our estimate is no."
Yet Claude Juneau, who practised medicine in the community for 37 years, had observed an unusually high number of cancer-related deaths and diseases. In 2000, when the residents learned that the wells from which they drew their drinking water had been contaminated with TCE, Dr. Juneau was convinced the deaths were part of a major public-health scandal.
"The number of people with brain cancer was 20 times higher than what we were supposed to find. It was the same thing for the number of kidney, pancreatic and liver cancers," said Dr. Juneau, now 78. "I showed my file to oncologists who couldn't believe the numbers."
Marie-Paule Speiser, a nurse in Shannon, witnessed first hand the increasing number of cancer cases in the community, including that of her husband and several neighbours and friends. Ms. Speiser, who blames TCE for the health problems and those that she has also developed, accepted lead-plaintiff designation in the case. The unprecedented litigation could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages should she win on behalf of the residents.
In his opening arguments, the plaintiff's lawyer, Charles Veilleux, argued that the federal Defence Department and the company who manufactured the ammunition, Industries Valcartier Inc., knew about the health risks involved in dumping TCE in the environment. He contends they were "negligent" by refusing to end the practice and inform the public.
"Since the 1950s, the government received expert advice on the environmental impact of dumping the contaminants into the soil," Mr. Veilleux told the court. "The government failed to put into place the measures to avoid the contamination. … It knew the TCE would contaminate the ground water."
The federal government categorically denied the allegations, saying that TCE didn't appear in the water supply until the 1990s, rather than in the 1940s and 1950s as claimed by the residents. According to Mr. Lucas, expert testimony will show that Quebec's National Public Health Institute issued proper warnings when TCE was detected in the 1990s and that the manufacturer and the federal government could not be held responsible for industrial practices used decades earlier that were not known at the time to be harmful to the environment.
Jean Saint-Onge, the lawyer representing SNC-Lavallin, who bought the munitions factory in 1980 before selling it in 2007 to a subsidiary of General Dynamics - also named in the class-action suit - argued that the company followed normal procedures and did nothing to knowingly contaminate Shannon's water supply.
While the class-action court proceedings began on Monday, much of the preparations have already been taken to help expedite the trial. At least 23 expert witnesses will be heard between now and mid-April, followed by testimony from numerous cancer victims and their families.