The impact on the forestry industry of the emergency decree that Ottawa is preparing to protect three herds of caribou in Quebec is expected to be less significant than what the Legault government anticipated, calculates the Chief Forester of Quebec, who says, however, that he is unable to assess the impact of the measures planned by the Quebec government.
Banning logging in the protection zones under study would deprive the industry of nearly 1.4 million cubic metres of wood on public lands out of the 34.3 million made available to it each year.
“At the provincial level, it’s only a drop of 4.1%,” summarized Chief Forester Louis Pelletier in a presentation Tuesday.
His calculation represents the worst-case scenario, he said, explaining that the impact was calculated based on a total ban on forestry activities in all “provisional zones” included in the draft federal decree announced in June and which is currently the subject of consultations.
” If [les critères] change, if there is forestry activity permitted, if the contours change, it will not be the same result,” indicated Mr. Pelletier.
The drop calculated by the Chief Forester is obviously greater in the regions where the three caribou herds are located that Ottawa intends to protect with its emergency decree; the bulk of the volume of wood removed is on the North Shore and in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean.
Calculation to be put into perspective, according to environmental groups
The reduction in forestry potential of 1.4 million cubic metres per year corresponds precisely to the annual volume of conifers that was available, but which was not harvested by the industry for the period 2018-2023, underlines Pier-Olivier Boudreault, director of conservation of the Quebec section of the Société pour la nature et les parcs (SNAP Québec).
A 4% drop in forestry capacity does not necessarily mean a 4% drop in harvest.
Pier-Olivier Boudreault, SNAP Quebec
The biologist also recalls that the Chief Forester had increased the forestry possibility by 3% for the period 2023-2028 compared to the previous five-year period. “So, we would return to roughly a pre-2023 level,” he says.
Pier-Olivier Boudreault, however, calls for the reductions in forestry possibilities to be distributed fairly among the various industrial players, so that one company does not suffer more than the others, as could be the case with Boisaco in Saguenay.
“But the only way to do that is with a provincial strategy,” he said. “This just goes to show that it’s the government’s inaction [québécois] in recent years which has led us to situations like this.”
It is not too late for the provincial government to act by presenting an improved caribou protection plan, adds Alice-Anne Simard, executive director of Nature Québec, recalling that Ottawa has clearly indicated that it is prepared not to adopt a decree if the Legault government adopts sufficient measures.
“We don’t understand why [Québec] “is not going forward with the Caribou Commission scenario,” she said.
Far from the fears of Quebec
The figures presented Tuesday are at odds with those brandished by the Legault government in June, when Ottawa announced its intention to adopt an emergency decree; Quebec then mentioned a reduction in forest potential of 14 million square metres per year if protection were extended to the entire range of forest-dwelling caribou and mountain caribou in the Gaspé, which was not, however, envisaged by Ottawa.
These calculations were based on a previous assessment by the Chief Forester, who also estimated that a decree targeting only the caribou herds of Val-d’Or, Charlevoix and Pipmuacan would cause a reduction in forestry capacity of 1.1 million square metres per year, which is close to his new assessment presented Tuesday.
Quebec then estimated that this would result in some 2,400 job losses, a much darker picture than the one it itself presented during the Independent Commission on Forest and Mountain Caribou in 2022, when it estimated that protecting all of Quebec’s dozen caribou herds would result in the loss of 841 jobs.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry said Tuesday it was conducting a new analysis.
Unclear on provincial measures
While Ottawa’s protection plan is “clear,” the same cannot be said for the measures announced in April by Quebec for the Charlevoix and Gaspésie herds, according to the Chief Forester, who says he is unable to assess their impacts on forestry. “We informed the Department of the Environment that certain terms and conditions had to be specified if we want to do a proper impact analysis,” said Louis Pelletier. “I can’t do an impact analysis when the government’s will is [est de déterminer les mesures de protection] after the consultation. It would have involved playing a bit of a guessing game.”