The Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, recently informed us that a bill would be tabled in 2023 to “push Quebec towards energy sobriety”. This would imply that Quebecers should reduce their daily energy consumption.
The goal of this bill would be to “decarbonize Quebec and achieve its climate targets”. This initiative is even presented as beneficial for the Quebec economy. Nevertheless, this kind of project, regardless of its presentation, always hides its main objective: austerity.
government packaging
Decarbonization of Quebec, climate targets, improvement of the economy. Here are some of the elements of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) packaging.
It should be noted that the project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 37.5% for 2030, and that would result in the installation of wind farms in the north of the province and the potential construction of new electric dams.
We risk seeing the term “superfluous consumption” appear more and more, consumption that should be limited as much as possible in order to be restricted to the essentials.
At first glance, we should be delighted with the prowess predicted in the coming years by the government in power, but, in reality, the picture of the situation is quite different. In recent years, this kind of packaging of “energy sobriety” is part of a long tradition of liberal economic planning to make people accept austerity measures.
Promoters of “sobriety” seek to maintain the vagueness surrounding the concept. They maintain a planned confusion which hides the real consequences of sobriety which are the austerity measures. These much less attractive measures can be expressed as follows: “consume less, that’s all”. However, is it possible for everyone?
Who will toast?
We must be clear about the situation to come: the government will seek to pass under the term “sobriety” a drop in energy consumption.
And this formulation will make people accept a general deterioration in living conditions. This degradation can be seen on several levels: promotion of cohabitation (often precarious), reduction in the consumption of healthy food products, unhealthy reductions in heating or water for the shower, reduction in public transport in the region and others .
We risk seeing more and more the term “superfluous consumption”, consumption that should be limited as much as possible to be restricted to the essentials, to demonstrate sobriety. If so, who will judge this superfluity? Who will take the brunt of these austerity measures?
As always, the poorest, those who cannot necessarily afford to reduce their energy consumption. They cannot for health, economic or daily planning reasons. Unfortunately, these “details” will not appear in the CAQ’s energy efficiency packaging.