The Minister of the Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change, Benoit Charette, who has just been given responsibility for Wildlife and Parks, took advantage of the holding in Montreal of the 15e Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) to unveil the updated list of threatened and vulnerable species. Better late than never since this list, drawn up on the sly by a confidential committee, has not been reviewed since 2009 for wildlife species.
In an interview with Radio-Canada, the Minister presented the announcement as “a catch-up” and undertook to replace the three vacant positions on the Advisory Committee on Threatened and Vulnerable Wildlife Species in Quebec, which were not hadn’t listened for a long time. It was embarrassing for the Quebec government to come to COP15 with an outdated list, a consequence of having ignored the committee’s recommendations for years.
Quebec could take inspiration from Ottawa by formalizing the disclosure of recommendations and its agenda. The Federal Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) publishes an annual report and the federal government is required to respond to its recommendations in a timely manner.
On the eve of the opening of COP15, which took place on Tuesday, the CAQ government announced its intention to recognize 27 vulnerable or threatened wildlife species. The Chorus Frog is moving from Vulnerable to Threatened status, which is consistent with the designation under the federal Species at Risk Act. In this area, Quebec and Ottawa exercise concurrent jurisdictions. The designations sometimes differ. Thus, two species of cetaceans, the right whale and the blue whale, are endangered, according to Ottawa, while they are only species “likely to be designated as threatened or vulnerable” for Quebec. As for the woodland caribou, a threatened species, it only appears as a vulnerable species in the Quebec list. In this regard, the CAQ government remains behind.
However, the Quebec and federal governments agree to set the percentage of territory to be protected by 2030 at 30%. in particular to the contribution of the vast territories in the Far North. The effort must now focus on the creation of more protected areas in southern Quebec. For its part, Canada protects 13.5% of its land territory and 14% of its marine territory. The adoption of this 30% threshold is part of the negotiations taking place at COP15, which, no doubt, is of very great importance. While a million species are vulnerable or threatened in the world, the preservation of biodiversity is just as crucial an issue as the fight against climate change.
Tuesday, at the opening of the conference, François Legault announced the granting of a sum of 650 million for a “Nature Plan 2030” aimed, in particular, at protecting endangered species and creating new protected areas, the one going with the other. The Prime Minister has pledged to support Indigenous leadership in the establishment of protected areas. With such an openness, one would expect him to announce the protection of the Magpie River, which the Innu and the local community are determined to remove from the clutches of Hydro-Québec, a site that the Crown corporation reserves for the possible construction of a hydroelectric complex.