Quebecers have been discovering in recent days the personal tragedy experienced by a hundred residents of La Baie, in Saguenay, following a landslide that engulfed a house and forced the hasty evacuation of the occupants of 76 other residences. In the urgency of the moment, they had no choice but to grab their personal effects, pets and essential goods. Even if it means leaving behind their aquarium, their plants, their memories… as well as the retirement fund and the security that a house represents.
On the unstable hill of a district of La Baie, an unpredictable future awaits 190 of our fellow citizens. These disaster victims, helpless before fate, deserve assistance. But this one was very thin. They were entitled to $20 per day of relocation, while most of them will have to wait two to four months before the soil stabilization work is completed and they can return home. For the most unlucky, whose house is irrecoverable, the maximum compensation for the permanent loss of their house was set at $285,000.
During his visit to La Baie, the Prime Minister, François Legault, fortunately increased these meager sums by increasing the daily allowance to $40 and increasing to $385,000 the maximum redemption value of the five houses deemed unrecoverable. Furniture will also be reimbursed. Even with these changes, those affected will feel the effects of the landslide on their personal finances and on their souls.
No budget envelope will be large enough to appease the suffering, anguish and disarray of the Baierive residents evacuated at the gates of the mild summer season, a usually festive and relaxing time in Quebec. Some have been living on ballot for even longer, with the first evacuations dating back to the end of April.
It would be risky to draw definitive conclusions on the causes of the landslide, which occurred on June 13th. Among the hypotheses raised, the abundant precipitation of snow and rain would have contributed to the weakening of the soils, already fragile due to their clay composition.
The resurgence of floods and floods is a direct consequence of a known but still trivialized phenomenon… We are surreptitiously entering the field of climate change, which forces us to analyze the landslide in La Baie from a broader perspective.
Global warming is not abstract. It was Montreal that recorded a historic heat wave in mid-May. It is the shores of the Magdalen Islands that lose an average of half a meter per year to the invisible claws of erosion. It is Saint-Paul-d’Abbotsford which must impose a moratorium on new residential construction because the wells are not sufficient to meet the current demand for drinking water.
We can continue to put bandages on the sore to relieve the immediate distress and inconvenience: financial compensation programs for the victims, soil reinforcement works, construction of dikes, water delivery by truck, etc. But these will be, precisely, only bandages.
Scientists and environmentalists have been calling for a radical decarbonization of our economy for ages. In Quebec, the last municipal elections saw the emergence of a new generation of elected officials, who are transposing the fight against climate change into land use planning and transport planning policies. Within the Legault government, they face certain interlocutors who see densification as a fashion, the third link as an environmental project and the forest caribou as an animal of enclosure.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Center universitaire de recherche en analyze des organizations (CIRANO), more than two-thirds of Quebecers attribute a “great or very great” risk to climate change. Conversely, barely 13% of Quebecers trust the actions of public authorities in the fight against climate change. However, the survey was conducted before the Legault government announced its intention to put an end to hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation activities.
When it comes to the environment and the fight against climate change, the Coalition avenir Québec arouses more mistrust than enthusiasm. In her defense, she represents a worried population, of course, but not to the point of profoundly modifying their lifestyles. It is the squaring of the circle.
For several years now, we have noticed that climate change is happening “in the backyard” of municipalities and that it is influencing our daily lives. The duty of assistance at La Baie is commendable, but it should be accompanied by a collective duty of vigilance. This unpredictable future awaits us all.