Representatives from the Boisaco forestry company questioned the idea that woodland caribou are in existential danger and the need to protect their critical habitat, contradicting Indigenous representatives before elected officials in Ottawa on Monday.
“The species is not threatened in Quebec and I think that is important to understand. […] “We don’t understand the concept of urgency,” said its general manager, André Gilbert, before the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development.
Boisaco, launched in 1985 by two worker cooperatives, believes it is the victim of a federal emergency decree on the protection of woodland caribou, adopted in June due to the lack of a sufficient Quebec strategy to protect the species from human activities.
Boisaco President Steeve St-Gelais also went to Ottawa to deplore the “anxiety, worry and anguish” experienced within the company and in the municipality of Sacré-Coeur, in the Haute-Côte-Nord, since the publication of this decree.
The company claims in particular that the number of individuals is stable in the herds of the forest ecotype of woodland caribou, while questioning the available data on the subspecies. “Females tend to run away into the woods when they hear the census helicopter,” illustrated André Gilbert.
According to him, the main threats to caribou are climate change and natural predators, such as wolves, and that it would be counterproductive to create a “glass bell”, that is to say to prohibit human activities in their sector, when the species would have been accustomed to it for decades. In addition, wood management allows for better fight against forest fires.
The forests in which Boisaco operates are home to the Pipmuacan herd, one of three populations of forest caribou that the federal government wants to protect, but the only one still in the wild, the Charlevoix and Val-d’Or herds living in enclosures.
“How can a government believe in the survival of a population of some 225 caribou? [de Pipmuacan]according to the proposed decree, without worrying about the survival of a village, our village? ” launched the mayor of Sacré-Coeur, Lise Boulianne, as a cry from the heart.
Essential, say First Nations
These remarks heard on the first day of special hearings of the parliamentary committee on caribou shocked Chief Ghislain Picard, representing the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL).
“Everyone is subject to disinformation campaigns that make it difficult for us to make a decision that is to everyone’s advantage. […] “What is being said today is not scientifically supported,” he lamented.
An international study concluded that most caribou herds in Quebec are at risk of extinction due to industrial logging that disrupts their habitats, such as the mature coniferous forests where they feed. Experts from the Quebec government also concluded in 2020 that the Pipmuacan caribou population is in an “extremely precarious” state.
Chief Picard simply does not believe the Quebec government’s estimates that 2,000 jobs are at stake. He deplored the fact that Quebec did not sufficiently consult the Aboriginals in this matter, which was confirmed by the Superior Court.
Instead, he gives his full support to the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, who has the legal responsibility to issue such an order if he finds that the species is declining. Mr. Guilbeault “was the only one to take seriously” the First Nations’ grievances, says Ghislain Picard, according to whom Aboriginal people have ancestral rights in terms of protecting biodiversity.
“If the caribou and its habitat were to disappear, it is a part of the identity of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh that would disappear with it,” added Chief Gilbert Dominique, from the Innu community of Pekuakamiulnuatsh, in Mashteuiatsh, on the shores of Lac-Saint-Jean.
Economic impacts
Elected officials from all parties were also able to hear on Monday the president and CEO of the Quebec Forest Industry Council, Jean-François Samray, warn them against a decree that would have negative effects on all Quebec businesses. “We have to listen to science. Biological science and also social science and economic science.”
A manager from Chantiers Chibougamau assured that his company was adopting exemplary behaviour in the forest, without understanding why the decree was also imposed on the Val-d’Or herd, since it is in captivity. The Chief Forester of Quebec was also present in Ottawa to share his calculation according to which the proposed decree would reduce Quebec’s annual forestry possibilities by approximately 4%.
Conservative elected officials repeated their hostility toward the “job-killing decree,” while the Liberals instead reiterated the importance of ongoing consultations to better define the measures imposed on Quebec. The Bloc Québécois insisted on the idea that this issue is a provincial matter. The New Democratic Party (NDP) was sympathetic to Indigenous demands.
Minister Steven Guilbeault is due to come and answer the committee’s questions on his emergency order in September. The federal government has also extended its consultations on its emergency order until September 15, which Quebec has snubbed. Ottawa has indicated that only a provincial strategy to save the species could put an end to its draft order.