Introduction

The aim of this contribution,1 which echoes the development of the current critical literature on the relationship between archaeology and neoliberal economy (Hamilakis and Duke 2007; Gnecco and Dias 2015; Aparicio Resco 2016), is to provide an overview of some current developments in the practice of archaeology in Quebec (Canada), to situate these developments in a neoliberal ideological and economic context, and to evidence the consequences of these developments with two case studies: the Turcot Interchange Development Project in Montreal, and the case of a mining industry’s pressures and interference in archaeology. In doing so, the objective is also to highlight some of the negative consequences of cultural resource management systems implemented by federal and provincial governments that are guided by neoliberal principles. These include the privatization, deregulation, and disengagement policies of governments, whether these policies are official or de facto. Significant side effects often occur in a chain reaction, including the diffusion of professional dissatisfaction among archaeologists (especially those working in the CRM industry); diminished access of citizens (including First Nations) to the archaeological collections making up their cultural heritage; lack of transparency in the management and decision-making processes on the part of ministries or governmental agencies; and bad decisions on archaeological heritage conservation.

Most of the data presented here come from two specific case studies, but also from participative observations, discussions, and interviews with archaeologists. We will not directly address the relations between archaeology and Quebec’s First Nations, despite the importance of this issue: eventually this will be the subject of a separate paper. We will focus instead on the general political and economic trends and mechanisms affecting the current practice of archaeology in Quebec.

Historical Context

In the French-speaking Canadian Province of Quebec, archaeology developed in the 1960’s essentially within the academia at first, then progressively through the provincial government, municipal administrations such as Montreal and Quebec City, and CRM companies or non-profit organizations (NPO) (Martijn 1998; Clermont 2001). Its establishment and growth in the long term was supported by the promulgation of the Cultural Property Act (“Loi sur les Biens culturels”) in 1972 and the Environmental Quality Act (“Loi sur la qualité de l’environnement”) of the same year. These two pieces of legislation made it mandatory for developers and city planners to document and investigate archaeological sites before their eventual destruction or preservation, depending on their cultural value and significance. This occurred with the collaboration of the crown corporation Hydro-Québec in the construction of large dam projects for hydroelectricity production in the James Bay area starting in the early 1970’s. At the end of the 1970s, Quebec archaeology was firmly established in an American-inspired utilitarian, market-compatible archaeological framework (Gates St-Pierre 2017), which logically allowed the creation of a developer-funded commercial archaeology and a commodification of archaeological heritage.

In addition to the influence of the global economic neoliberal trend, the weight of the political agenda of the sovereignist movement and its needs for support from history and archaeology to rebuild a threatened identity focusing on the French regime (Handler 1988; Auger and Moss 2001) also had durable effects on archaeology. These effects included a slow penetration of the post-processual critical approach, a reluctance to acknowledge First Nations’ existence in the present (Martijn 2002:207)—potentially debasing the legitimacy of the claim for independence of the French-speaking population in the south of Quebec, with the exception of successful NPO experimentations in archaeology on Inuit (Avataq Cultural Institute), Cree (Cree Regional Authority), and Innu (Archéo-Mamu) territories in the North of Quebec (Zorzin 2011:213), and a failure to deal with issues of ownership, land claims, or repatriation related to First Nations (Trudel 1991).

The French-speaking struggle was also a class struggle, an attempt by the demographically dominant French-speaking population to take control over the resources of the province then still largely controlled by the elite of the English-speaking minority. Archaeology was considered a cultural resource to be used, and, since the 1970s, it has been exploited almost exclusively by French speakers. These processes were embedded in the accelerating capitalist logic and considerably postponed the possibility of finding the space, time and means for more than rescue archaeology in commercial firms, alongside marginal (yet fundamental) academic research.

Current Developments in the Practice of Archaeology in Quebec

Current Quebec archaeology has two main features. Firstly, it is practiced by a small number of professionals representing approximately 250 archaeologists2 active in different sectors of the field (Fig. 1): diggers, directors of CRM companies or NPOs, laboratory specialists, academics, museum curators, site managers, and civil servants in various ministries or public institutions. Approximately 70% of the individuals active in archaeology work in the private sector in 2016 (Fig. 1), and more than 90% of the workforce is both Caucasian and French-speaking (Zorzin 2011:85). The professional archaeological working community has witnessed an increase since the 1960’s, but a noticeable slump has occurred during the present decade (Fig. 1).

Figure 1
figure 1

Population of archaeologists in Quebec between 2010 and 2016 (from Desrosiers 2017; Zorzin 2010:6, and the first authors’ own data collected in 2016)

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Secondly, archaeology is conducted predominantly by the private sector (Fig. 1), a situation exacerbated by the current trend to state disengagement. It is a system where the practice of archaeology is increasingly entrusted to private firms, but where provincial and federal powers are supposed to be exerting regulations and control over it (Fig. 2). Actually, state control is being exercised more over archaeologists than over developers, the latter benefiting from the recent deregulation and disengagement of the state, as will be evidenced later.

Figure 2
figure 2

Examples of structural organization of archaeology (inspired by Willems 2009:90)

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Global Trends and Economic Policies

In Quebec, after a relatively rapid conversion of many profitable activities through privatization in the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s (transport and communications, mining, oil and gas, fishery, forestry, sugar refinery, agriculture, food processing and distribution) (Boardman et al. 2003:4–5; Jörgensen et al. 2005:146), a certain balance between a neoliberal economic logic, based on competition and efficiency, and a socially supportive logic, which is subject to the rule of fairness, was eventually found in social democracy, as the economy entered a downturn through multiple recession episodes at the beginning of the 1990s (Kabore et al. 2014:4). A second phase of active conversion of public assets begun in Quebec during the 2000s, mainly involving: (1) education, with the adoption of Law 124 in 2002, and Law 88 in 2008, both suggesting management based on competitiveness and decentralization from the government towards local authorities (Duclos 2015); (2) health, with the enactment of Law 33 in 2006 and Law 20 in 2015, which largely undermined the basic and mostly free state healthcare system to justify its replacement by private and costly alternatives for citizens; (3) the environment, with the recently proposed replacement of the Bureau des audiences publiques sur l’environnement (Office of Environmental Public Hearings) by a more permissive and less independent consultation body, more favourable to the private sector; and (4) culture in general, such as television productions since the mid-1990s, with an attempt to transfer the state’s responsibilities to the cultural patronage of large private groups.

In effect, neoliberal ideologists in Quebec deployed tremendous efforts to shape every single cultural activity into a mould of profitability. A telling example is the progressive replacement of the provincial body Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ) in charge of supporting cultural creation, by the Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles (SODEC) supporting financially profitable projects. This is notably observable in the education system with the appearance of undergraduate and graduate programs in Business Schools like Montreal’s École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC), offering graduate qualifications in cultural management, applying the neoliberal doctrine to a wide spectrum of cultural activities.

In this context, changes of vocabulary referring to culture have started to appear, including an increasing number of terms from business management and development. For example, the arts and literature are now defined as “enterprises”, a term commonly applied to businesses that produce and sell goods and services, denoting the invasive commodification of artistic and cultural productions. Another example is the term in use worldwide: “Archaeological Resource Management—ARM” and “Cultural Resource Management—CRM” (Garrow 2015; Neumann et al. 2010), initially rooted in 19th century’s nation buildings as a political tool/resource (Carman 2015:4, 11), but nowadays incorporated into economic neoliberal logic and processes. Yet, according to Carman (2015:80), the ‘archaeological resource’ (distinguished from the “archaeological record” which serves uniquely the requirements of research) “serves the purposes of the public”, supported by regulations, after it has been categorized by specialists who define its significance. As such, the archaeological resource has been defined as a “creation of regulation and law, serving the purposes of archaeological policy” (Cleere 1989:10; Smith 2004:76–8 in Carman 2015:82), but it was also clearly emphasized that an archaeological resource “is just a resource to be used for a range of possible purposes, of which research is only one” (Carman 2015:82). As socially constructive and beneficial to “the public” (but to which public?), the concept of “archaeological resource” is, it is also a concept illustrative of the political-economic paradigm Western societies are living in, embedded in a dogmatic hyper-capitalist system which actually diverts the “public” benefits towards the private and profitable sector of the economy (developers, businesses—See Zorzin 2016a, b; mass-tourism—See Barron 2017, etc.).

From this perspective, the term “resource” links archaeology to the capitalist rhetoric of exploitation, a further testimony to the pernicious neoliberal commodification of archaeological heritage. It posits that archaeology is a resource exploitable like any other, reducing it to a technical, quantifiable matter, and thus making it semantically compatible with the development logic of growth and profits, as in the mining industry. It also indirectly justifies the profits (even though marginal) that CRM companies make in “exploiting” archaeological resources that belong, first and foremost, to the people, including First Nations. While the mining, oil, or forest industries pay royalties to the state, or directly to First Nations in some cases, for the exploitation of collective resources, no such royalties exist for the exploitation of cultural resources.

Since the 1970s, Quebec’s cultural sectors have steadily converted to a privatization and commodification logic. For example, the Quebec City administration used to conduct salvage archaeology projects using its in-house team of archaeologists, but now mostly relies on private companies for such assignments (Moss 2016). Similarly, the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communication no longer has archaeologists conducting research of any kind, as it used to do during the 1960s and 1970s (Desrosiers 2016). For its part, the Parks Canada Agency has recently laid off most of its archaeological staff based on the Province of Quebec (and did likewise in other provinces), now relying on private CRM companies to conduct archaeological investigations on its properties, as detailed below. As a result, commercial archaeological companies have taken over nearly all of the archaeological rescue contracts in Quebec (Zorzin 2011:119). The conversion has also occurred through the slow but intended disempowerment of state entities through the transfer of responsibilities to local (mostly municipal) authorities and through deregulation, which accelerated after 2012 as will also be demonstrated later in this contribution.

It now seems clear that archaeological heritage in Quebec was not exactly treated as a “common good” or as “public heritage”, contrary to other nations such as France, Greece, Japan, Egypt, or Mexico, for example. In Quebec the ownership of archaeological sites and artifacts is attributed to the owner of the land where they are found, contrary to the neighbouring Province of Ontario, where archaeological sites and artifacts belong to the state, which acts as the legal steward of those collective assets (except for those found on federal lands). Thus, an individual, a company, or a municipal administration can be the legal owner of archaeological sites and collections of artifacts in Quebec, and they can use, hide, exhibit, modify, or sell them as they see fit (as long as they were legally acquired). Thus, while the Quebec government still regulates the practice of archaeology, it extends its disengagement approach by refusing to act as a steward of the entire archaeological heritage in the province.

Despite its ethnolinguistic specificity, the Quebec case is typical of the neoliberalization of archaeology as experienced in many other regions of the world. As underscored by Aparicio Resco:

[…] within the cultural framework, the result of the implantation of neoliberal thinking throughout the planet is the creation of a mentality in which everything revolves around the purchase and sale of products [and services]. The world is a great market in which the only necessary profitability is economic, where all our actions must be focused on growth an all this within a framework of competition in which only the strongest survive. Everything is contingent on the growth of markets [and specifically contingent on building and construction projects for archaeology], which justify any means employed. (Aparicio Resco 2016:12).

Concerning current archaeological activities, the main difference between many countries is the degree of advancement of this mentality switch. In North America, the conversion was among the earliest ones, and in Quebec it gave absolutely no time or space for alternatives but to work within the private sector, right from the birth of archaeology as a profession in this province during the 1960’s and 1970’s. While other traditions still exist elsewhere, such as a state archaeological organization and ownership/stewardship, they are being progressively dismantled, for example in Japan (Zorzin 2013) and France (Zorzin 2016a), where, since the 2000s, governments have tentatively but irrevocably opened the door to the private sector.

Implementation of Deregulation Processes by the State, and the Consequences for Quebec Archaeology

Deregulation in archaeology has meant that all activities at a state level are characterized by a progressive effort of disengagement and a self-inflicted disempowerment process through legislative reforms, drastic cuts to the number of employees (Fig. 1), and erosion of available means to accomplish a mandate appropriately, ie. in accordance with the ethical and professional standards defined by various associations of archaeologists (see the codes of ethics adopted by the Canadian Archaeological Association and the Association des archéologues du Québec, as well as those of the Society for American Archaeology, the Society for Historical Archaeology, and the European Association of Archaeologists and the World Archaeology Congress). As such, the ability to regulate archaeology in Quebec becomes more difficult, as illustrated in our case studies and from a number of decisions taken by provincial and federal authorities, as discussed below.

Effects of the Reform of the Provincial Law on Heritage Protection in 2012

Since 1972, the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications (MCCQ) has had a mandate to apply the provincial law on heritage protection or LPC (Loi sur le patrimoine culturel, replacing the former Loi sur les Biens culturels). As such, its role is to document the province’s cultural and archaeological heritage, to provide legal protection to sites of cultural and scientific importance, to administer the provincial register of archaeological sites, to issue archaeological research permits to professional archaeologists, and to provide documentation and conservation services to other institutions, to archaeologists and to the public (MCCQ 2016). However, since the 2000’s and the legislative reform of the LPC in 2012, the realities of the management of archaeology by the state have diverged considerably from these general objectives. This has become apparent in many ways:

  1. 1.

    The MCCQ no longer considers itself accountable to archaeologists, its sole obligations now being towards archaeological heritage and the public. This is contrary to the trinity of obligations explicit in most codes of ethics, which includes obligations to archaeologists (McGuire 2003; Colwell-Chanthaphonh et al. 2008), including the Ethics Code of the Association des archéologues du Québec 3. This new position of the MCCQ has generated astonishment, rapidly followed by deception, frustration, and concerns among Quebec archaeologists, as they fear that the MCCQ will no longer consult them on the definition and implementation of archaeological regulations and reforms, for example.

  2. 2.

    The MCCQ is now passing on their responsibilities for cultural heritage to municipal and regional administrations. The claimed logic behind this is to empower local authorities and communities by transferring responsibilities and legal means regarding local and regional heritage documentation and preservation through the revised LPC (MCCQ 2013). This measure was presented as being extremely progressive and beneficial to populations. But others see a common neoliberal tactic to diminish government expenditures in the cultural domain by shifting responsibilities onto municipalities. In fact, only a few towns or cities have since acquired the expertise and the financial and human resources necessary to deal with this new responsibility. Moreover, archaeological heritage is not always a local concern or priority, opening the possibility to systematically overpass archaeological investigations and protections, local authorities commonly prioritizing development and growth at any cost.

Many such authorities are not even aware of the archaeological heritage existing (or presumed) on the territory they administer. As a result, the reality is simply that archaeological heritage finds itself at risk of being largely, if not totally ignored or neglected in many cases. In short, this type of reform is actually more regressive than progressive: disguised as socially progressive by following the trend for a decentralization of decision-making, it is de facto in line with austerity measures which transfer costs and responsibilities from the state to local, lower-level administrations. Often lacking the necessary expertise, the latter must rely on private archaeological consulting companies which are, in the end, the prime beneficiaries of the reform.

  1. 3.

    Since 1972, the application of the law by the MCCQ on violations by entrepreneurs has been particularly lax. As a result, malpractice and destruction of heritage cases almost never leads to financial sanctions (as allowed by the LPC) or to a court case. This absence of legal action conducted by the provincial government has generated frustration and despondency among archaeologists and citizens, as well as a sense of impunity among developers, resulting in numerous destructions of archaeological sites. The Turcot case presented below will illustrate this point.

  2. 4.

    In line with the concept of the ‘shock of simplification’ (another avatar of austerity measures again aiming at reducing expenditure for the state), the MCCQ now allows entrepreneurs and institutions to obtain archaeological permits directly, instead of delivering them to individual consulting archaeologists or archaeological firms who have the skills and qualifications in the matter. This type of measure greatly facilitates the work of developers, notably by considerably increasing the opportunities to take over or bypass the archaeological process. Again, the official motive is to increase the awareness and responsibility of developers towards the protection of archaeological heritage, although the underlying logic is one of divestment of the state and pleasing developers by making things easier for them. Moreover, the MCCQ now also allows entrepreneurs to sue archaeologists, for example if the excavation of a site requires more time and resources than was initially estimated and entails delays for construction works.

    As a result, there is now a serious risk of interference and conflict of interest within this new configuration, as has been the case in the UK since the reform of 2012 (National Policy Planning Framework). In the UK, many archaeological firms are forced to temporally integrate into larger construction corporations, the latter applying a construction logic of efficiency and ‘quality control’ to archaeological firms, affecting the integrity of archaeological sites and the ethics of archaeological practice (Zorzin 2016b). In this economic configuration, archaeologists are losing their independence both financially and professionally, and it affects the quality of their work and the meaning of their findings (Zorzin 2016b:311–325).

  3. 5.

    The MCCQ no longer conducts internal research, inducing a significant loss of expertise, a drastic reduction in staff and financial capacities, and a limitation of its ability to document the province’s archaeological heritage at large and for the common good (see Desrosiers 2016).

  4. 6.

    The MCCQ does not control the quality of the reports handled by archaeologists or CRM firms at the end of an archaeological surveillance, survey, or excavation. Through the hiring of interns (usually archaeology students with little professional experience), for example, it only controls the outlines of the archaeological procedure, ensuring that the required information is present in a box-ticking strategy. This dehumanises the process, at the same time overlooking the value of the reports in terms of contribution to knowledge about the past.

  5. 7.

    Finally, archaeology is now described as a “resource” in the administrative (neoliberal) language, as mentioned before. Resources are to be exploited, and ultimately destroyed, or transformed to generate profits, not to be protected or preserved for the future. This is one of the fundamental and key problems of the CRM industry which still needs to be challenged in order to exit the current hypocritical, cynical, and unsustainable environment in which it functions (Hutchings 2017).

Federal Reforms

The Parks Canada Agency, the main federal institution in charge of archaeology along with the Canadian Museum of History, has a mandate to “Protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage, and foster public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of these places”. It has a similar role to the MCCQ, but exclusively applies to land owned by the federal state and underwater wrecks or sites. Parks Canada describes its employees as “Guardians of Canada’s national historic sites” (including archaeological sites) and as “Partners of the Aboriginal people”. Those are very important responsibilities towards archaeological heritage and the public, including First Nations. However, in 2012 the federal government (then formed by the Conservative Party of Canada with Stephen Harper as Prime Minister) announced the following:

  • A reduction of 90% of the agency’s staff of archaeologists and collections managers across the country. Personnel was cut from 26 to only 2 archaeologists in Quebec (back to 3 since 2015);

  • The privatization of archaeological research activities. As a result of the nearly total annihilation of its in-house teams of archaeologists, the agency is now relying on private CRM companies to carry most of the archaeological field work on the parks and other properties it administers;

  • The relocation of all archaeological collections owned by Parks Canada in various locations throughout the country to a single repository in Gatineau, near Ottawa. Technically, this means dispossessing most citizens, again including First Nations, of their regional archaeological heritage, especially for those living away from the national capital of a country as vast as Canada is.

The consequences of such austerity measures were dramatic: (1) loss of world-class expertise and reputation; (2) employment insecurity (loss of permanent, well-paid jobs); (3) state archaeology practices almost entirely transferred to private sector (CRM firms); (4) limited and difficult access to archaeological collections; (5) degradation of historical and archaeological sites owned by Parks Canada; (6) public dissatisfaction; and (7) difficulties to maintain the agency’s mandate, roles, and commitments. In other words, these are not the best conditions for Parks Canada to accomplish its mandate properly.

The two case studies that follow will illustrate the consequences of the various trends and transformations underlined in the previous pages in more detail.

Case Study 1: Turcot Interchange in Montreal

The Turcot Interchange is an immense transportation infrastructure located in the heart of the city of Montreal. Built during the 1960s and repaired a number of times since then, it has now reached its end of life and needs to be demolished and replaced by a whole new structure. During the preparatory phase of the project, a series of studies produced by CRM archaeologists indicated that there was a possibility that historical remains could be found on the location of the construction works. Consequently, the Quebec Ministry of Transportation (MTQ) hired a CRM company to conduct various investigations under the actual elevated structure prior to its demolition. Various archaeological remains were indeed discovered during the summer of 2015, consisting mostly in vestiges of tanneries from the old village of Saint-Henri-des-Tanneries. Of particular interest were the foundations of many buildings, stone walls from a canalized river branch, water tanks, and large quantities of artefacts, including various tools and metalware, domestic tableware, coins and an intact (but empty) safe, as well as numerous fragments of leather, animal hair, wooden instruments, and other organic materials that were exceptionally well preserved under thick layers of fill. The tanneries were dated to the 18th and 19th centuries essentially. They had given birth to the borough of Saint-Henri-des-Tanneries, now known as the district of Saint-Henri.

The discovery was publicized in the media and soon became a hot topic. The MTQ asked that the remains be excavated and documented as thoroughly as possible, but also announced that the archaeological site would ultimately be destroyed. The director of the archaeology branch of the MCCQ declared that the remains of the tanneries were no different from many others that had already been discovered in the past, and did not possess the exceptional value that could have justified their preservation. Numerous archaeologists contested that declaration, explaining that the site represented the largest, richest, and best preserved ensemble of tanneries ever found in Quebec.

The decision to eventually demolish the site to make way for a sewage conduit was criticized by archaeologists, historical societies, heritage protection advocates, columnists, and other public figures, including many politicians, as the discovery occurred during a by-election campaign at the provincial legislature. However, those who opposed the strongest voice against the destruction of the site were residents of Saint-Henri, who were amazed and fascinated by the discovery of the oldest historical remains from their neighbourhood. They soon developed a strong sense of belonging and attachment with those archaeological vestiges that were highly valuable and significant to them. Saint-Henri has always been a working-class neighbourhood, and some of its actual residents still have family stories or memories of relatives having worked in the long-gone tanneries of Saint-Henri. They were the strongest advocates for the preservation of what they felt was their heritage.

With the help of politicians, archaeologists, and concerned organizations including the Public Advocacy Committee of the Canadian Archaeological Association (CAA), the residents organized a series of protests, including a candle light vigil which attracted hundreds of people from every corner of the city and beyond. Archaeologists, historians, and heritage specialists published a dozen of articles in the media explaining why this archaeological site was of prime importance and needed to be preserved. It would have been a unique occasion to document, learn about, preserve, and showcase the archaeological heritage of an underprivileged neighbourhood, for once. The MTQ and the MCCQ had an opportunity to take action to correct the sociohistorical neglect of Saint-Henri. But they preferred not to do so. What remained of the archaeological site was bulldozed on the sly, in the early hours of a Saturday morning of September 2015, without public notice from the MTQ or the MCCQ.

As the premier steward of the province’s archaeological heritage, the Quebec government must ensure the adherence to exemplary practices in this regard (Adjizian 2016). In retrospect, however, some officials from the MTQ and MCCQ have unofficially admitted committing errors in the Turcot dossier, notably in terms of transparency. For example, officials from the MTQ and the MCCQ asserted that it would have been technically impossible, and quite expensive, to preserve the remains in situ, an assertion that was never demonstrated, despite numerous requests from archaeologists, the public, and the media.

Moreover, archaeologists working for the CRM company that was hired to conduct the excavations on the site were compelled to sign a confidentiality clause forbidding them to communicate with the media, archaeologists, the public, or anyone else without the consent of the MTQ. Despite repeated public calls to lift that clause, the MTQ never complied. As a consequence, the archaeologists who knew best and first-hand about the site were never allowed to express their opinions freely and publicly on this issue. Things got even worse as the president of the CRM company that was hired by the MTQ to conduct the field work was also the president of the Quebec association of archaeologists (AAQ). Consequently, the confidentiality clause collaterally prevented the president of the AAQ from taking position in the debate as well, contrary to the CAA. Likewise, the MTQ archaeologist in charge of the tanneries project was not allowed to discuss this issue with archaeologists outside of the ministry: questions and requests were systematically referred to the MTQ communications service, where they obtained, if at all, and after long delays, vague and useless answers. Another consequence was a public opinion that was partly based on speculation in lieu of clear and direct answers from government officials. Here the main lesson to be retained is that confidentiality clauses, which have become dangerously rampant in Quebec archaeology and elsewhere, are the enemy of transparency, and usually cause more harm than good, as the Turcot case illustrates.

The refusal of the MCCQ and MTQ to provide answers and to discuss directly with the archaeological community to find a solution that would have satisfy all parties is testimony to the recent position of the provincial government’s archaeologists to no longer be accountable to other archaeologists. Moreover, while the LPC provides the legal power to the MCCQ Minister to stop any construction work in order to protect an archaeological site, the Minister never considered that option, again despite the opinion of the archaeological community who almost unanimously called for the Minister to do so. Many have accused the MCCQ of abandoning its role of guardian and protector of the provinces’ archaeological heritage in the Turcot case. Fearing a negative reaction from the entrepreneurs who could have faced new—although globally insignificant—delays and extra costs, the MCCQ and MTQ were reluctant to preserve this archaeological site in situ for present and future generations. While the architectural remains and artifacts were thoroughly and systematically documented by highly professional archaeologists, it cannot compensate for the ultimate demolition of this unique site.

When asked if construction plans could be modified to preserve the archaeological site, answers from the MTQ and MCCQ were vague and unconvincing, never accompanied by detailed demonstrations spelled out in black and white. This government is known for its neoliberal ideology and for being favourable to the private sector, to the gradual privatization of public services, and to the implementation of drastic austerity measures, often to the detriment of archaeological heritage preservation. In a capitalist and neoliberal agenda, archaeology has something in common with the environment: both will be protected only if they do not interfere with the sacred doxa of economic development. The economy is always top priority, and heritage always second.

Finally, the Turcot case is also illustrative of a mechanical mode of management of archaeological “resources” that is distinctive of systems based on contract archaeology. Such systems are based on the rigid, mechanical, and questionable application of a three-part process: (1) CRM company produces an archaeological assessment; (2) CRM company conducts field work (surveys/excavations) to “save” a maximum of information and artifacts; and (3) destruction of the site follows. This mechanical procedure has become so deeply anchored, routine, and unquestioned that when a site of exceptional value is discovered, state regulating bodies (such as the MCCQ or the MTQ) finds it difficult to think and act outside of this mechanical procedure—although exceptions do exist. In this context, salvage archaeology is often seen as a way to lift an embarrassing constraint on development projects.

To sum up, the Turcot case is highly illustrative of the consequences resulting from state bodies denying their ethical obligations, viewing heritage protection as a problem instead of an opportunity, perpetuating the neglect of deprived segments of the population, and fixed on an ideological and mechanical praxis requiring only minimal archaeological investigations to allow a rapid clearance of the “archaeological constraint” for entrepreneurs. Now that the MCCQ allows such entrepreneurs to be legal holders of archaeological permits, the worst can be expected regarding working conditions for CRM and consulting archaeologists, the protection of archaeological heritage in Quebec, and the tense relations between the MCCQ and archaeologists. Our second case study illustrates other forms such consequences can take, from a more personal and ethnographic perspective.

Case Study 2: Mining Industry Pressure and Interference on Archaeology

This second case study illustrates the continuation of a colonial logic in the exploitation of natural resources in Northern Quebec/Labrador. It is based on an interview held in Montreal in 2010.

Billy [Archaeologist/Digger in Commercial Archaeology]: “One summer, I had the opportunity to work as a project manager, and produce the report. However, my final report was never accepted because it did not satisfy the archaeological firm. The manager was expecting a technical report, but I produced a critical one, describing all the difficulties encountered in dealing directly with the client, in a remote region of Northern Quebec/Labrador […]”.

Here is the short story of what happened. “It was a weeklong contract. I was supposed to make an archaeological survey on the location of approximately a hundred pools of a mining company […]. To find the remote location of the future drilling spots, I had no proper equipment, like a GPS. When I arrived, the drilling spots had still not been officially defined and located. However, equipped only with a map, I found some spots where the land had been cleared by the mining company. As soon as the employees of this company realized that I was able to find the locations without their help, they stopped the clearing activities, waiting for me to go ahead… [This means that a decision was made by the mining company to undermine the archaeologist’s work, apparently judged as potentially harmful]. […] At the same time, I remember feeling under pressure from my archaeological unit while absolutely nothing was done [to facilitate my work] on the field. I tried to be cooperative, but walking around the zone, I found an area potentially exceptional for moose hunting, in slightly elevated tundra. Everybody was telling me I would not find anything there, even my archaeological unit director, but I found an outcrop of chert [a sedimentary rock], and an obvious zone of passage. I did my work as best as possible, and I found sites! It was insane to authorize the mining company for free use of the entire territory concerned after only a few spots had been checked. […] I think the mining industry tried to obstruct the location of finds as much as possible and tried to obtain the widest possible permit for a zone considered free of archaeological material. In the report, I wrote that the zone had a lot of potential but I had only been asked to do a technical report. To force me to write a technical report, the archaeological unit put my future contracts on hold… or re-allocated them […]. I tried to write a new report, but every time I sat in front of the computer, I could not help feeling that this manipulation was to facilitate matters for the mining company. I realized I could not do this job without support, and ended up sending an e-mail to the archaeological unit saying that I no longer wanted to continue working as an archaeologist”. This is how a capitalist logic can destroy an archaeological career.

Even though cultural heritage is entirely indigenous in Northern Quebec (except for some rare trade posts), the archaeological expertise is almost entirely conducted by white Quebecers, with the exception of relatively recent projects conducted by the Avataq Cultural Institute, the Cree Regional Authority or Archéo-Mamu, as mentioned earlier. Most of the archaeologists working in the North did so during the construction of gigantic dams for electricity production and were employed by private firms based on Montreal. Many of these archaeologists testified that they were very well aware that they were collecting data and artifacts of Indigenous peoples’ past, hoping that, 1 day, a synthesis would be done by Indigenous peoples themselves.

According to their testimonies, this type of archaeology is not a scientific exercise but an extension of a colonial process, not “by planting Quebec’s flag everywhere”, but by imposing a style of society, a capitalist rhetoric, and an exploitative vocabulary related to the land and its “resources” of all kind, including archaeological ones. Archaeology is then limited, at best, to collecting and preserving data and artifacts without any possibility of challenging the logic of development, nor challenging the logic of economic confiscation of lands from the remaining Indigenous populations of Quebec and from Canadian people at large.

Mining/extraction industries, such as the one presented in this case, knowingly or unknowingly use archaeology as a colonizing agent, as illustrated in New Zealand (Bargh 2007). Archaeology becomes a fancy and respected diversion (for the public), as well as a way to comply with provincial regulations (for the government), and an ethical and protective activity (for Indigenous past), while actually supporting the confiscation process, and prohibiting any debate on the bigger issues of land ownership, hunting territories, environmental impacts, and cultural appropriation (Zorzin 2014). In this configuration, it is capitalism that is extending its borders, much more than anything else, and contract archaeology participates in this colonial expansion. This archaeology is facilitating land appropriation under the cover of ethical practices, and prioritizing the neoliberal injunction of growth.

Finally, the employers themselves, whether an archaeological unit or a developer, as in this case, appear to be the ones preventing archaeologists from performing their tasks in conformity with national and international standards (See the Valletta Treaty signed in 1992 in Europe). Archaeological firms are not directly responsible for this situation because their main obligation is to satisfy the needs of their clients in a competitive market. This dynamic was accentuated with the 2012 revision of the LPC, notably by delivering archaeological permits directly to the developer. Most developers/clients do comply to the ‘polluter-payer’ principle, and pay for archaeological excavations, despite the fact that it was never really a compulsory activity and it is not today in Quebec (see LPC 2012, Art. 150). As a result, developers’ actions can only be focused on the minimization of time and money dedicated to archaeology. This characteristic of free market competition in an increasingly privatized market automatically reduces the time and the means given to archaeologists to accomplish their work, as the pressure on them to obtain contracts and assure their survival is rising. This is a source of deep frustration for archaeologists, especially younger ones, as indicated by a recent survey conducted online among Quebec archaeologists by the Association des archéologues du Québec (Johnson-Gervais 2017; Roy and Loyer-Rousselle 2017).

Conclusion

In recent years, the practice of archaeology in Quebec, as in many other places around the world, has been characterized by an increase in the disengagement processes of the state. This is manifested by the implementation of a logic of non-accountability for state administrations towards the archaeological community, the privatization of state archaeological services, the degradation of working conditions for archaeologists, inadequate protection for endangered archaeological sites, greater forbearance for the neglect of cultural heritage in times of economic crisis (economic development always prevail over the protection of cultural heritage, especially in times of economic difficulties when “jobs are more important than artifacts”), the downplaying of ethical principles when considered “irritating”, and citizens’ dissatisfaction in terms of heritage protection and conservation.

Resisting the regional consequences of these global trends would need a radical change that may not happen soon, which does not mean we should not start working towards this right now. Voices are already rising from the Quebec archaeological community, voices calling for a more ethical, decolonized, inclusive, relevant, and sustainable archaeology liberated from the perils of the neoliberal ideology (Desrosiers 2016; Gates St-Pierre 2017; Zorzin 2011). CRM companies adopting a cooperative business model as an alternative have recently appeared in Quebec, with positive and promising results. Moreover, NPOs and First Nations are getting increasingly organized and vocal about cultural heritage, even though these groups are still marginal (see Fig. 1—“Others”: 2.9%). Some voices are finding a positive echo, especially among the post-boomer generations of archaeologists, but also among First Nations and the public, our strongest allies in this endeavour. The Réseau Archéo-Québec is doing a wonderful job in this regard, successfully reaching out to the public like no other organization in the province. In conclusion, we can be optimistic that solutions to the problems presented in this paper can be found.

Notes

  1. 1.

    A first version of this paper was presented by the authors at the World Archaeological Congress 8 in Kyoto in August 2016.

  2. 2.

    This represents 1 archaeologist for 32,800 inhabitants, i.e. twice less than France, and three times less than the UK, despite the fact the Province of Quebec covers four times the surface of France and more than six times the surface of the UK.

  3. 3.

    This Code of ethics is available through the AAQ website: http://www.archeologie.qc.ca/lassociation/code-dethique/.

  4. 4.

    As formulated in the Parks Canada Charter, available on their website: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/agen/chart/chartr.aspx.