Posted yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
The Program Innovation Bois (PIB) can bring a new spirit to the wood processing industry capable of making a lasting difference for forest communities. Your reasoning is logical, even plausible.
But is this industrial approach sufficient? The very acronym of this program reveals a sectoral bias. It undermines your claims to the sustainability of the forest and the communities that live there. What are your commitments to the territory?
The whole saga surrounding the woodland caribou demonstrates a lack of sensitivity to the importance of the territory in terms of management. Since 2003, jobs have been prioritized over caribou habitat. As the cuts rejuvenate the forests, they become inhospitable to the caribou. But this also jeopardizes the maintenance of long-term jobs. What to do ? For herds put in pens, I admit my incompetence. But elsewhere, as for the Pipmuacan caribou group on the North Shore, it is up to the actors on the ground to establish compromises. Your local planners, the representatives of the companies concerned and the spokespersons of the Innu communities concerned should come to an agreement in full knowledge of the consequences with which they will have to live. These arrangements will set an example elsewhere in the territory. But in advance, the choices will be difficult. Scientific evidence indicates that there will be effects on both harvest and caribou habitat.
However, here, it is important to let territorial interlocutors mark out the possibilities. By the way, I can’t recommend a stay of a few nights in a camp with the Innu enough. It is an enriching experience as to the meaning of territory. It inspires respect.
When it comes to identifying acceptable scenarios, the notion of social acceptability resurfaces spontaneously. Remember that it is built before being measured. How ? Through the participation of the public concerned by a project. Curiously, the expression social acceptability is absent from the consultation policy on the management of the forest environment tabled by your ministry in July 2021. Building the acceptability of an integrated forest management plan necessarily involves the co-creation of a vision desired for the area. Believing that it is sufficient to properly explain the methods of wood production intervention is illusory. This wandering perhaps explains the popular demands that have regularly emerged in the media in recent years.
If the will for integrated forest management rests solely on an information system about the maintenance of timber harvesting, we have a problem. Talk to people in Saint-Mathieu-du-Parc, Trois-Rives or Chute-Saint-Philippe, for example. In the latter case, an octogenarian threatening to become “The man who hammered nails” illustrates with panache the limits of your policy to reflect the singularity of the territories with regard to the people who live there. In this vein, one can also wonder where the policy of local forests is. More than ten years after a vast and enthusiastic consultation, the possibility of seeing geographic communities managing forests remains a disappointing fad.
Minister, I am writing this letter to you to express concern. So many dilatory gestures made with regard to your obligations to perpetuate the forest heritage do not bode well. Your task is obviously to guarantee a production of wood. But it also includes the responsibility of registering the people of Quebec in the forest territory.