The emergency measures to protect forest caribou that Ottawa plans to impose on Quebec will harm Quebec’s energy development and jeopardize the province’s achievement of carbon neutrality by 2050, the Legault government says in a new salvo against the federal government.
“An emergency decree could compromise our efforts to produce green energy,” particularly wind energy, say Quebec ministers Maïté Blanchette Vézina and Benoit Charette, respectively responsible for Natural Resources and Forests, and the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks.
This new argument appears in a letter sent Wednesday morning to the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault, and of which The Press got copy.
Ministers Blanchette Vézina and Charette affirm that Quebec is doing enough to protect caribou and will boycott the consultations led by Ottawa aimed at refining the emergency measures that the federal government intends to impose for the three herds at risk in Charlevoix, Val-d’Or and the Pipmuacan reservoir.
“The issuance of an emergency decree represents a unilateral and illegitimate decision by the federal government,” the two ministers wrote to their counterpart, stating that the management of public lands and the species found there “falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Quebec government.”
Further details will follow.