Is Quebec sitting on a buried treasure? Its blue gold, which represents 3% of the planet’s renewable freshwater reserves, brings in $3 million a year to the state. Crumbs, according to the government of François Legault, which is about to review the price on water. Overview of this expected reform.
The St. Lawrence. Lake Saint-Jean. The Manicouagan Reservoir. But also the lake aux Outardes. Pine Lake. And the Bird River. In Quebec, the Commission de toponymie counts millions of bodies of water, which cover hundreds of thousands of square kilometers (km2). The fresh water found there represents 10% of Quebec’s territory.
Since 2009, the Act to affirm the collective nature of water resources and to strengthen their protection stipulates that the resource is “part of the common heritage of the Quebec nation and that it is important to preserve it and improve its management to meet to the needs of present and future generations. The Civil Code specifies that it is not liable to appropriation, unless it is collected and placed in a container.
Quebec is therefore one of the few states on the planet to grant water a legal status. In the rest of Canada, provinces such as Ontario and British Columbia have not.
“No one can own the resource,” sums up the director general of the Eau Secours organization, Rébecca Pétrin. “It can make a big difference compared to other countries like France, where some bottlers like Evian and Perrier own the groundwater resource. So local people who dig a well are not allowed to take groundwater. »
“In Quebec, we will never see that,” she continues.
One third of the water billed
In Quebec, the quantities of water withdrawn annually are astronomical. The Ministry of the Environment (MELCCFP) calculates that in 2021, 2.6 billion cubic meters (m3) of water were pumped in Quebec territory. “These volumes of water are withdrawn in particular by municipalities, by companies that carry out commercial and recreational tourism activities as well as by agricultural and aquaculture producers,” explains the department’s communications department in an email exchange.
Since 2011, the State has imposed a cost of $2.50 per million liters of water withdrawn at $70 per million liters on industries that use water from the subsoil or from Quebec water bodies any stage of their activities.
Please note, however: not all users are subject to this fee. In fact, in 2021, only 31% of the quantities of water pumped in Quebec were billed, or some 800,000 m3. “It only applies to the industrial world. So all of this regulation is an exception for the agricultural, institutional, commercial and municipal sectors,” says Rébecca Pétrin.
Unlike Quebec, British Columbia has chosen to extend its royalties to farmers and hydropower producers. However, Bill 20 “aimed at establishing the Blue Fund and modifying other provisions”, tabled in April by the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, does not provide for this.
The Ontario neighbor as inspiration
In recent years, the quantities of water subject to a fee have stagnated. The Quebec government, which nevertheless uses these funds to protect its wetlands, can only count on a kitty of three million dollars annually. And it’s not indexed.
This is the problem that Minister Benoit Charette wanted to tackle last month, when he tabled Bill 20 and a draft regulation revising water royalties. These must ensure that the sums from the price on water are increased tenfold.
As Premier François Legault likes to do, Mr. Charette compared himself to Ontario and its “rates [de redevances] higher” in crafting its regulatory amendments. In Canada, it is undoubtedly the province that compares best to Quebec in terms of water management. She sits over 177,000 km2 freshwater — more than 207,000 km2 in Quebec — and imposes a single rate of $3.71 per million liters on companies that use its water without bottling it.
Since several industries affected by the Quebec royalty are not affected by the Ontario royalty—pulp and paper, for example—the province of Ontario already earns less money than Quebec. “Ontario perceives […] in total about $965,000 per year,” the MELCCFP said in an email.
Quebec will nevertheless draw inspiration from a handful of Ontario policies to limit its consumption of fresh water by private industry. Like Ontario, it will lower the minimum royalty threshold to 50m3 collected per day. It will also impose royalties on water bottlers of $500 per million litres, as with our neighbours.
The study of Benoit Charette’s new legislative proposals begins Tuesday at the National Assembly.