The issue of wetlands illustrates, like many others, environmental mismanagement in Quebec and the subjection of nature’s needs, even the most glaring ones, to the imperatives of uncontrolled economic development. The protection of biodiversity, which involves rigorous protection of the remaining wetlands and riparian environments in southern Quebec, is an issue whose seriousness Quebec has been minimizing for half a century and for which it should take the measure of its responsibilities a few weeks from now. of COP15 on safeguarding planetary biodiversity.
Just think of the destruction of the natural banks of the St. Lawrence, our rivers and our lakes by constructions and lawns over the past 50 years, which have all benefited from “regularizations” afterwards. Just think of the very recent authorizations given by the Ministry of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks – the name is growing faster than the budgets! — to cities like Laval and Longueuil, and to dozens of other private promoters to eat away at what remains of the metropolitan biological capital.
But the ministry contravenes in an even more systemic way the spirit of the law of 2017, which integrated the protection of wetlands into the Law on the quality of the environment. The objective was however clear: the State must aim for “zero net loss” in terms of wetlands. This law was not immediately adopted when Quebec, under pressure from economic circles, began to relax these rules in the regions less affected by development: they still have a good amount of wetlands, so we can “scrap a few with less remorse. A logic that now extends to lakes, which mining companies can legally fill with toxic waste.
A disguised financial gift to promoters
Then we decided to demand financial compensation rather than obliging, when possible, developers to recreate wetlands equivalent to those they want to destroy. With the money collected, Quebec claims that it will do all the work for them or that it will permanently protect environments that are already healthy, which in no way reduces the environmental liabilities that we want to correct.
The problem raised by such financial compensation, which Quebec reduced last year, does not only concern wetlands. The same exception allowing a developer to purchase a right to destroy such an environment also applies to threatened plant species, under a recent amendment to the Act respecting threatened or vulnerable species (section 18 ). This possibility also exists for wildlife habitats under the Act respecting the conservation and development of wildlife (article 128.7) and this even includes species designated as threatened or vulnerable.
Granting additional protection to healthy wetlands implies that the government does not believe in its own protection rules provided by law. But there is worse. The money collected in compensation, and little used up to now (2.6% of the 100 million raised), will not make it possible either to recreate areas equivalent to those destroyed or to guarantee long-term productivity as well as floristic diversity and fauna equivalent to that of the destroyed habitats, which is nevertheless the underlying objective of the law.
Indeed, by constantly delaying the moment to take action, the cost of land explodes, just like that of labour. Who will pay the difference? Taxpayers. Unless, of course, we reduce the restoration objectives to respect the budgets, which will inevitably be the chosen solution. The government’s strategy in this area is not only a disguised financial gift to promoters, which resembles the system of indulgences of the Middle Ages, but also a clear and clear departure from the polluter-pays principle, enshrined in the Sustainable Development Act.
The protection of natural environments, capable of supporting a productive and diversified flora and fauna, rather requires that promoters internalize the entire cost of environmental compensation in their projects instead of passing this bill on to citizens and the environment. Quebec must therefore return direct responsibility for offset projects to the promoters instead of transferring it to the ministry, which must instead retain its responsibility as environmental controller instead of becoming an entrepreneur that no one will control.
Proponents would themselves have to pay experienced consultants to identify suitable wetlands for restoration, which is no small task. They must then restore them or create new ones with their consultants and, above all, ensure their productivity and long-term biological diversity, a slight oversight of the regulations…
A necessary long-term follow-up
However, rebuilding a marsh or a habitat necessary for the maintenance of threatened species, plant or animal, represents an enormous challenge and the results of which, in many cases, will only be perceptible decades after the destruction of the initial habitats. In the event of failure, what measures should then be applied to avoid or compensate for a permanent loss, with what financial support and after what period?
It is not enough to create urban ponds, surrounded by reeds, in uninhabitable environments for wildlife, or to build landscaped enclosures. We need real new environments, hydrologically and biologically functional, connected to other biotopes, to ensure their real vitality. Mining companies are required to monitor the flow of their tailings piles over the long term. There is no reason why developers should not be required to assume similar long-term responsibility for created or restored natural environments.
In this area where the state has minimized the problems for decades, it must be admitted that the government and the ministry give the public the truth. The ministry specifies on its own website that when analyzing a project, it emphasizes the “avoid-minimize-compensate” approach. Obviously, by the repeated use of an anglicism in the form of a political slip, he admits to “minimizing” the problem, which justifies him to demand insufficient compensation…
This vision must be abandoned by a clear affirmation and effective measures, included in the regulations, of the need to protect and restore the natural environments necessary for the preservation of Quebec’s biodiversity. This should be part of the more general framework of a local biodiversity protection policy, the essential complement to our policy to fight against climate change and to the National Water Strategy.