The City of Montreal and Quebec’s Ministry of the Environment are locked in a legal dispute over which entity must pay for cleaning up a hydrocarbon spill that polluted the Saint Lawrence River at Pointe‑aux‑Trembles in October 2024.
The incident released hundreds of litres of hydrocarbons, and the remediation effort is projected to last roughly two years. Because the source of the spilled material remains unidentified, no party has been assigned liability, prompting the conflict over cost responsibility.