Several major environmental issues are ignored, or barely touched on in the leaders’ debates. Overview.
Changing our lifestyles
Parties often claim to base their decisions on science. To help decision-makers take the path to carbon neutrality, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests encouraging citizens to change their way of life. Eating vegetable proteins, wasting less food, heating and cooling better, using active and public transport: what can a government do to make these changes a reality?
The Liberal Party of Quebec is proposing an ambitious energy efficiency project — how to convince the population to heat less during very cold weather? Will the PasseClimat imagined by the Parti Québécois, for unlimited access to public transit at $365 per year, change behaviors, or is it rather the quality of service that counts?
Adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis
Whether or not it reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, Quebec will suffer the impacts of the climate crisis: heat waves, heavy rains, coastal erosion, forest fires, floods, etc. This means, according to experts, that there is an urgent need to adapt.
The bill may also be salty. An example ? The Ministère des Transports du Québec has identified less than 273 road segments vulnerable to coastal erosion. However, the question of adaptation remains the poor relation of the climate discourse of the various parties. In its “Plan for a Green Economy”, the CAQ intends to devote barely 5% of the $7.6 billion planned for it by 2027. In their program, the Liberals emphasize their intention to develop “strategies regions” against erosion. The Parti Québécois wants to “reinforce the adaptation of our communities” and Québec solidaire intends to restore “natural infrastructures”, such as those which make it possible to reduce heat islands, that is to say green spaces in urban areas.
Better manage our residual materials
Even though recycling bins are part of our daily lives and compost bins are more and more present, Quebecers continue to send a lot of garbage directly to the dump or to incineration. The landfilling of waste in Quebec has even experienced “a marked increase” in recent years, concluded the Bureau of Public Hearings on the Environment last January.
According to the most recent report available, that of 2019, each Quebecer produced the equivalent of 724 kilos of waste in a single year. Organic or recyclable materials are also found in large quantities in landfills. For example, the province sent no less than 1.2 million tonnes of recyclable materials to the landfill during the year 2019-2020. To improve the results and recovery rate of various containers, the CAQ modernized the deposit system for various glass and plastic containers. It also undertakes to generalize access to the brown bin by 2026, in order to improve the recycling of organic materials. Same thing for the training led by Dominique Anglade, who also mentions the idea of reducing the place of “single-use plastic”. Québec solidaire also offers a “deposit” on technological products such as cell phones. Recyc-Québec’s 2018 report, the most recent available, specifies that the recovery rate was barely 9% for these devices.
Protecting biodiversity
Quebec benefits from vast natural land and sea spaces, but also from a wide variety of ecosystems and wild species. But these environments are more than ever threatened by development and the impacts of the climate crisis. In this context, all parties in the running are committed to protecting 30% of Quebec’s natural environments by 2030, with the exception of the Conservative Party of Quebec.
The parties also promise to prioritize the natural environments of the south of the province, which have severely declined in recent decades. What will be the concrete measures to achieve this, beyond the targets set in the political programmes? The CAQ promises 525 million new money, and the Liberals are committed to better protecting wetlands. Solidaires and PQ members commit to taking action to ensure the survival of endangered species, including the woodland caribou. But overall, the Act respecting threatened or vulnerable species is sorely lacking in teeth, according to experts.
Improve air quality
Although the quality of the air has caused a lot of ink to flow this summer, this theme is discreet in the electoral campaign. In mid-August, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) government finally announced that it will require the Horne Foundry to discharge a maximum of 15 ng/m3 of arsenic in the air, but within five years. What will be the requirements for the eight other companies that have the right to emit more pollutants than according to the provincial standards?
In Quebec, nickel emissions are the concern. Most of the opposition parties have already criticized the CAQ for having made it possible to quintuple the tolerance threshold for nickel in the air. Will they talk about it again tonight? Québec solidaire could also recall its proposal to create an independent air quality auditor position.