The Plan for a Green Economy 2030 is enhanced by $1.4 billion, including more than $210 million more for adaptation to climate change, Quebec announced on Friday. But municipalities will also have to get involved, whether through tax rate increases or spending cuts, warned Premier François Legault.
What there is to know
- The Legault government now estimates that it can achieve 60% of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target for 2030.
- The necessary measures will cost $9 billion, $1.4 billion more than previously budgeted to achieve 51% of the target.
- Other measures, already under construction but whose effect remains to be determined, could make it possible to reach up to 73% of this target, believes Quebec.
This additional 1.4 billion will make it possible to reach 60% of the target for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions planned for 2030, indicates the new Implementation Plan 2023-2028 of the 2030 Green Economy Plan.
This implementation plan, the third to date, brings the investments devoted to achieving the climate target to $9 billion.
This third version therefore still does not specify all of the means required to achieve all of Quebec’s GHG emission reduction target, which is 37.5% below their 1990 level by 2030.
It does, however, include a “roadmap” setting out other measures under way that could help achieve 69% to 73% of this target.
Pay to fit
“Unfortunately, we will not be able to solve all the problems of the impacts of rising temperatures, so we have to adapt,” agreed Prime Minister François Legault at a press conference at the Montreal Botanical Garden on Friday.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Prime Minister François Legault at a press conference at the Montreal Botanical Garden
“In the plan we are tabling today, we are going from 650 million to 860 million, so we are adding 210 million,” said the Prime Minister in front of a pond where ducklings were wading.
“Municipalities also have to make an effort,” he stressed, arguing that there was “no leeway in Quebec” to increase taxes.
The implementation plan published Friday adds 213.4 million to “strengthen Quebec’s resilience to the impacts of climate change”, bringing the amounts provided for in this regard to 860.6 million.
These funds will be used in particular to map coastal erosion and flooding, as well as heat islands, and to finance measures to mitigate them. By including other investments announced in the last budget, Quebec will devote $1.5 billion to adaptation to climate change over the next five years, recalled Mr. Legault.
“Municipalities, on average, pay their employees 30% more than [pour] the same positions as we have in the Government of Quebec,” noted the Premier. “So, tax rates, review their expenses, but for sure [que les municipalités] will have to contribute to the investments that must be made to adapt to climate change. Each having a different situation, “it is an exercise that must be done by each municipality”.
“Immense” needs
For the moment, “it means nothing because we have no order of magnitude,” commented the president of the Quebec Federation of Municipalities (FQM), Jacques Demers, in a telephone interview. Above all, he said he was “pleased” with the announcement of the sums needed to make plans in each of the MRCs. If the identified costs “cause us to increase our tax bills by 2 or 3%, I don’t think anyone will care. If it is necessary to double or triple the tax bills, there will be discussions to be had.
The announced investments are “welcome,” said the Union of Quebec Municipalities (UMQ) in a press release, while recalling a study it commissioned from the firm WSP. According to this, the needs to adapt municipal infrastructures would be more like 2 billion dollars annually.
” It is off the mark. For us, it is important that the government immediately go back to the drawing board because we are being overtaken by climatic events: we have both feet in it! exclaimed Patrick Bonin, head of the Climate-Energy campaign at Greenpeace Canada, on the sidelines of the government press conference.
The plan presented Friday “is a step in the right direction, but the needs of municipalities remain immense,” commented the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, on Twitter.
[Les municipalités] are at the forefront in the fight against climate change and the means must be commensurate with the environmental disasters they face.
Valérie Plante, Mayor of Montreal
Overall, the new implementation plan, which promises to reach 60% of the target, is “the equivalent of half an action plan”, denounced Mr. Bonin.
“It’s nice, the incentives, but there is clearly no stick, or almost, in this plan. This is always the carrot for motorists, for industries to which we give hundreds of millions when we could simply regulate and force the reduction of emissions. »
With the collaboration of Pierre-André Normandin, The Press