Creation of new wetlands | Quebec wants to increase the pace

Quebec wants to correct the situation in order to accelerate the restoration and creation of wetlands. The Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, will announce this Friday a review of his program, which to date has an envelope of $113 million, but barely 3% of which has been spent since 2017.

The Minister’s announcement is intended to stimulate demand for wetland restoration and creation projects in the province. To date, just over $3.7 million has been allocated to such projects, including $807,767 for pre-feasibility studies.

The Press revealed last October that Quebec had raised nearly $100 million in compensation for the destruction of wetlands and that only 2.6% of these funds had been reinvested for the restoration or creation of wetlands.

Since June 2017, the Act respecting the conservation of wetlands and bodies of water provides for the payment of financial compensation when a proponent obtains authorization to fill in wetlands to carry out a project. These sums are paid into the State Environment and Water Resources Protection Fund.

The law has set a goal of no net loss of wetlands, but does not specify a deadline for achieving this goal.

Quebec funded up to $25,000 for pre-feasibility studies and up to $1 million for wetland restoration or creation projects. These maximums will be revised upwards: to $75,000 and $3 million, respectively.

Projects can now be submitted at any time and not only at specific times, as has been the case since the beginning of the program.

More changes to come

The Minister of the Environment, the Fight Against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks, Benoit Charette, said he consulted several municipal stakeholders to collect their complaints about the program to restore and create wetlands and water.

“We arrive with solid material that has been validated. We know that we are opening up to new possibilities with the new criteria that we are putting in place. But if, if necessary, we need to further promote the possibilities with a particular region, we will do so. But we are clearly meeting the expectations that were specified to us,” he stressed during an interview with The Press.

However, the Minister says he is aware that this revision of the program does not solve all the problems. It promises to adjust in order to achieve the objective of no net loss of wetlands set by law.

“We arrive with corrective measures which are important, while being aware that we are not fixing everything. We have a particular dynamic in areas that are highly urbanized. We will continue to look at how to answer this question. So there will probably be other changes,” says Benoit Charette.

“A not insignificant pot”

Last December, the minister said he was open to reviewing the regulation on wetlands to prevent more losses in certain regions. “In even more vulnerable regions, I mentioned Laval, Montreal and Montérégie, in urban centres, I asked if we couldn’t adapt the regulations specifically for those areas so that there is no more casualties,” he told The Press.

“We didn’t want to wait to have answers to all the situations before already correcting the shortcomings that could be,” said Mr. Charette on Thursday.

The minister says he has no targets for the number of projects that would be approved or the amounts of money allocated by March 31, 2025, the deadline for submitting a request for funding.

But he reiterates his objective: the sums collected must be used to finance projects to restore or create wetlands.

“Casing nothing, it’s still a pot that is not negligible that is amassed through the royalty system,” recognizes Benoit Charette.

However, the sums raised which will continue to accumulate may not be enough to meet the demand, judge several experts.

“It’s greenwashing,” said the director general of the Society for Nature and Parks, Alain Branchaud, last October, during an interview with The Press. According to him, the current system does not work because it does not take into account the real costs to society when wetlands are destroyed.

According to Anne-Sophie Doré, lawyer at the Center québécois du droit de l’environnement, the value of the ecosystem services of wetlands is not taken into account in the calculation of compensation in Quebec.