Companies that collect Quebec’s blue gold at low prices better watch out, warns the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette. He intends to table a bill in February operating a “significant increase” in water royalties and lifting the veil on the quantities of water pumped by the private sector.
This is one of the three priorities that the elected CAQ has set for the next six months. It sits alongside the tabling of the updated version of the Quebec climate plan, expected in the spring, and the caribou protection strategy, scheduled for June, he said in an interview with The duty.
Last year, Benoit Charette presented Bill 42 to the National Assembly, “mainly aimed at ensuring the revision of the fees payable for the use of water”. Tabled at the end of the parliamentary session, the legislative text, which did not specify the value of the royalties, never had the chance to be adopted, for lack of time.
However, the Minister of the Environment, reappointed this fall, maintains his position: the three million dollars paid annually in royalties by companies that draw water from Quebec’s rivers and lakes are “insufficient”. to the point of being “ridiculous”. “We are talking about several hundred billion liters of water withdrawn year after year. I cannot qualify the increase that will be proposed, but I can tell you that the current situation is nonsense, ”he underlines in broad strokes.
Mr. Charette will not wait to introduce his new bill. “In reverse, I would say that it’s a good thing that we didn’t pass the first bill, because we’re coming up with something a lot more substantial and substantial. […] This is something that I would like to see presented somewhere in February, in the first weeks of the parliamentary session, ”says the elected representative of the Coalition avenir Québec.
He will also take the opportunity to try to lift the seal of confidentiality on the quantities of water withdrawn each year by bottlers who do business in Quebec, such as Amaro, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Last year, the Court of Quebec opposed it, arguing that this data was of a confidential nature. “Quebecers will now be informed,” he summarizes.
New functions
Newly responsible for the protection of animal species and green spaces, Mr. Charette also acknowledges having taken “steps” behind the scenes during the last CAQ mandate to split the fire Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks, confides-t- he at To have to.
Criticized by several environmental organizations for being too loyal to foresters, this ministry was reorganized last fall when the Cabinet was appointed. Wildlife and parks now belong to Minister Charette, while forests have fallen into the hands of the Minister of Natural Resources, Maïté Blanchette Vézina.
The decision to review the government structure “will help to achieve better consistency,” says Mr. Charette, who is careful not to say that deforestation will stop overnight. “There will continue to be logging, and I support them in many cases, because they are important for the vitality of our regions. Except that you have to do it intelligently, ”he argues.
The new title of the member for Deux-Montagnes does not fit on one line — Minister of the Environment, the Fight Against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks. His mandate will not be easy either. By June, he will have to present a strategy to safeguard and protect the herds of woodland and mountain caribou, which are melting like snow in the sun and risk extinction.
Conversely, I would say that it’s a good thing that we didn’t pass the first bill, because we’re coming up with something a lot more beefy and substantial
According to an inventory of active caribou populations made public Monday by Quebec, the picture is not improving. On the North Shore, the so-called “Outardes” population of woodland caribou has declined by an average of 11% per year from 2018 to 2021. In Gaspésie, mountain caribou are resisting: there were a few dozen in 2021, but the prospects of extinction are dim. still and always real.
“The solution is rarely as simple as some would like to suggest,” says Mr. Charette. It is not enough to say: we stop logging, the problem is solved. Because if it were only that, we wouldn’t take into account the environments that depend on forestry. »
The CAQ minister agrees: the data published at the start of the week is “not good news”. “The decline is certainly worrying, but we feel that the decline is slowing down,” he says.
But he intends to make up for the delays accumulated in recent years in wildlife protection. In December, he announced at the United Nations conference on biodiversity (COP15) to add 27 animal species to the list of threatened or vulnerable species in Quebec. Others should follow.
“Presumably in the year 2023, [notre comité consultatif] will submit a list of new species to us. We did a catch-up last December, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be other updates,” explains Mr. Charette.
Revise the law?
Except that currently, the law does not guarantee any protection of the 37 classified species, estimate the environmental groups. They ask the minister to reopen the Threatened or Vulnerable Species Act to strengthen it.
Mr. Charette says he is open, but is cautious. “When it comes to a legislative change, it’s often a year, if not more,” replies Mr. Charette. Because adopting the law is one thing, but then adopting the regulations resulting from the law can take two or three years. I wouldn’t want to lose two or three years. »
Still captain of Quebec’s greenhouse gas reduction operation for 2030, Benoit Charette hopes to table an update to the Plan for a Green Economy in April. The development of this new government green plan, which last year provided for only half of the measures necessary to achieve Quebec’s environmental targets, is going well, he says.
Do the next four years represent the “last chance mandate”, as Québec solidaire said during the election campaign? Mr. Charette does not answer directly. “The alarmist or strictly partisan discourse, the election being behind us, I invite people to put it aside,” he said.