A week ago, at the time of the COP26, Quebec won the first prize of the Leadership Awards 2021 from the Coalition Under2, an international organization dedicated to achieving carbon neutrality in 2050 and which brings together some 260 so-called governments. subnationals – states, regions and cities – as well as 300 multinationals.
It is the “climate partnerships” that Quebec has concluded with its neighbors that have earned it this distinction. We think in particular of the preliminary agreement for the supply of electricity with New York and this other contract, however rejected by referendum by the citizens of Maine, with Massachusetts. Obviously, the organization is akin to a glorified chamber of commerce, but Quebec nonetheless cuts a fine figure on the international scene with its impressive renewable energy resources.
At COP26, Prime Minister François Legault reaffirmed that he had “evolved” with regard to the environmental issue. He announced in Glasgow concrete commitments to reduce Québec’s GHG emissions by 5.4 million tonnes per year, in particular with the purchase, at a cost of 5 billion, of thousands of electric urban buses. The Prime Minister was able to boast of having given up on the exploitation of hydrocarbons in Quebec. More importantly, he argued that Quebec was a favorite land for companies who wanted to green their activities and that reducing GHGs, although it entails costs, was “an extraordinary business opportunity”. Seen from here, the communication operation was most successful.
At the same time, The duty taught us that on the cowshed, far from international areopagus, the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC) had helped the City of Longueuil to destroy the habitat of a threatened species to extend an urban boulevard there. However, the City had in hand an unfavorable “wildlife opinion” from biologists from the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks (MFFP), who considered that the construction of a section of Boulevard Béliveau would destroy “a nerve crossing point” and Chorus Frog’s “breeding habitats”, 90% of the habitat of which in Quebec has already disappeared.
This is where the expertise of MELCC officials came into play. They recommended that the City submit a “declaration of conformity” rather than a “request for authorization”, as it had done, and thus override the negative opinion. The procedure enabled the City to drain this wetland and carry out its work. The Environmental Law Center has obtained a temporary injunction to stop the work, but the damage is done, the work being almost finished.
It was the Couillard government that amended the Environment Quality Act to transform MELCC officials into “guides” for developers. It was difficult to imagine that this role of facilitator would allow them to find loopholes in the law which they administer to contravene if not its letter, at least its spirit. The fact that the department’s expertise is used to destroy wetlands and the habitat of endangered species speaks volumes about the Quebec government’s inconsistency in environmental matters.
The Caquista government has just invited Ottawa to get involved. Delayed, the federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, announced that he will use the provisions of the Species at Risk Act to protect the habitat of the chorus frog. The minister intends to recommend that the Trudeau government use an emergency decree. This is not the first time that Ottawa has gone to the front to protect this species. In 2017, the federal government adopted an emergency decree to stop a real estate project that straddled Candiac, La Prairie and Saint-Philippe, in Montérégie. The Minister of the Environment at the time, David Heurtel, rebelled by denouncing this snag on “cooperative federalism”. The little 2.5-centimeter batrachian is sort of the canary in the mine, an indicator of the destruction of wetlands and urban sprawl stimulated by real estate developers and their allies, the municipalities.
The current federal intervention in Longueuil is certainly humiliating for the Caquista government, which prides itself on autonomy. But when MELCC officials, acting like devious lawyers, find loopholes to destroy the environment, something is deeply flawed.