Meeting between Legault and environmental groups | “It is not a super champion of the environment that we had in front of us”

(Quebec) Environmental groups have not obtained any gain or major advance from their first official meeting with Prime Minister François Legault late Wednesday afternoon, at his office in Quebec.

“It is not a super champion of the environment that we had in front of us, despite his recognition of the importance of the climate crisis we are facing”, summarized Patrick Bonin, of Greenpeace, at the end of this Meeting also attended by nine other representatives of environmental organizations.

They would have hoped for firmer commitments and clear additional measures to reduce pollution and make the transition to carbon neutrality.

Environmental groups have been calling for this meeting since the start of the Caquist mandate in 2018, but it was not until Wednesday that it materialized.

“It leaves us a little hungry because we have the impression of having a discussion that should have taken place three years ago,” said Mr. Bonin, in an interview with The Canadian Press.

While acknowledging that the government has “walked”, the spokesperson for Greenpeace deplores that the Caquista government still gives precedence to the economy over the environment.

During the interview, the issue of land use planning, financing and public transport, the protection of biodiversity, the climate crisis and the importance of adding new measures to reduce pollution was discussed. greenhouse gas emissions.

And there was an “elephant in the room,” said Mr. Bonin: the expensive Quebec-Lévis tunnel project, which environmental groups are slaying.

In short, to end on a positive note, Mr. Bonin said the Prime Minister was “listening” and “open”. There is “clearly a desire for collaboration”, he summed up, even if there was no “love at first sight.”

With less than a year before the elections, environmentalists hope not to have been summoned out of “pre-electoral interest”, but rather to translate into firmer electoral commitments to tackle the climate crisis, he concluded.

Besides Mr. Bonin, took part in this meeting Alain Branchaud, of the Society for Nature and Parks (SNAP Quebec), Alice-Anne Simard, of Nature-Quebec, Christian Savard, of Vivre en Ville, Colleen Thorpe, of Équiterre, Geneviève Paul, from the Center québécois du droit de l’environnement, Karel Ménard, from the Common Quebec Front for an ecological management of waste, Leïla Copti, from COPTICOM, Marc Bureau, from the National Group of Regional Environmental Councils, and Sabaa Khan, of the David Suzuki Foundation.