(Ottawa) Sacré-Cœur Mayor Lise Boulianne says her small municipality of some 1,600 residents will inexorably become “a ghost town” if the Trudeau government goes ahead with an emergency decree aimed at protecting the woodland caribou.
The mayor delivered a moving plea for the survival of her municipality on Monday before a parliamentary committee tasked with studying the impact of the adoption of this decree on the future of the forestry industry in Quebec.
Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault maintains that he has no choice but to adopt such a decree in order to force Quebec to take the necessary measures to protect caribou in three distribution areas: Val-d’Or, Charlevoix and Pipmuacan, in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault
“Has Mr. Guilbeault thought about the consequences of this decree?” asked Mayor Lise Boulianne during her testimony, which at times sounded like a cry from the heart.
“How can we imagine an entire population getting up one morning without any idea what their future might look like? We are talking about a tragedy for our municipality,” the mayor also said.
She recalled that 70% of the population of this small municipality on the Côte-Nord depends on forestry and the activities of the Boisaco company.
Also speaking after Mr.me Boulianne, the president of Boisaco, Steeve St-Gelais, argued that the implementation of the decree would deal a fatal blow to this forestry company. According to him, 600 jobs are threatened with disappearance.
“And that will be the loss of more than $200 million in annual revenue in total for our community. That is inconceivable,” he said.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Boisaco President Steeve St-Gelais
Since the Trudeau government threatened to adopt this decree in the spring, the joy of living in this municipality has given way to anxiety and worry, he also maintained.
Boisaco’s general manager, André Gilbert, said that the caribou population has been relatively stable in Quebec for several years and that climate change and predators, more than logging, explain the dangers linked to the increase in the population of this species.
But the chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, Ghislain Picard, offered a completely different story. The precariousness of the caribou population is very real and the federal government has an obligation to act to protect it.
“There is an urgent need to act for the caribou, which is an umbrella species essential to the health of our ecosystems and the biodiversity that lives there,” he argued.
He also deplored the slowness of the Quebec government in grasping the urgency of the situation.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The federal government says that the caribou population has been threatened in Quebec for several years and logging is the main cause of this precariousness.
The federal government says that the caribou population has been threatened in Quebec for several years and logging is the main cause of this precariousness, particularly due to logging roads that destroy the habitat and promote the movement of the caribou’s natural predators such as bears and wolves.
Recently, Minister Guilbeault announced that he was extending the consultation period until September 15 before imposing any decree, thereby responding to the request of several Indigenous communities and representatives of the forestry industry, among others.
The Legault government is fiercely opposed to this move, arguing that the emergency decree represents a “unilateral and illegitimate decision” by Ottawa that could result in the loss of at least 2,000 jobs. Quebec also maintains that its own measures to protect the declining species are bearing fruit.