The federal government is considering exempting Hydro-Québec facilities and projects from its decree protecting woodland caribou under the Species at Risk Act.
“It’s very likely,” Kaitlin Power, press secretary for Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault, confirmed to The Canadian Press on Friday, confirming information first reported by Radio-Canada.
In a written statement, Minister Guilbeault justified that the government takes “consequential decisions with [l’]goal” of making Canada’s energy sector carbon neutral by 2035.
“It is worth remembering that Environment Canada’s assessment of imminent threats to caribou identified logging and the proliferation of forest roads that fragment the habitat as the main risk factors, and not the energy sector,” he notes in passing.
The news comes as the environment and sustainable development committee continues to hear from stakeholders, including conservation groups, a sawmill and a First Nation, on the order.
The Bloc Québécois intends to take advantage of the meeting to present a motion to have a meeting added to “study the potential effects of an emergency decree on the deployment of clean energy projects and on the infrastructure necessary for the proper functioning of these networks.”
The member for Jonquière and Bloc Québécois critic for Natural Resources and Energy, Mario Simard, who is to table the motion, is calling for “a global and integrated approach.”
He writes that “the protection of any threatened species is intimately linked to the protection of the environment as well as to the capacity to put forward green strategies for replacing fossil fuels with clean energy projects such as wind, biomass and hydroelectricity.”
A “drama” for the economy
The caribou population has been declining in Quebec for several years and logging is the main cause of this precariousness, particularly due to forest roads which destroy the habitat and encourage the movement of the caribou’s natural predators such as bears and wolves.
Before federal elected officials on Monday, a mayor from the Côte-Nord estimated that a decree to protect the caribou would amount to a “tragedy” for the economy of her community.
Conversely, the Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador Ghislain Picard saw it as a necessary measure to ensure the survival of threatened herds. Like another Indigenous chief, he mentioned that the relationship between Indigenous peoples and caribou is a question of identity.
Despite a series of announcements to protect the species, Quebec has not presented a protection strategy for all caribou populations that would make it possible to achieve the objective set out in an agreement with Ottawa.
A consultation on Ottawa’s draft decree is underway until September 15 and should lead to the final version.
François Legault’s government has decided not to participate in the consultation. It believes that its own measures to protect the declining species are bearing fruit.
On this subject, the minister’s press attaché stated that Hydro-Québec “is beginning” to participate in the consultations, which allows its projects to be taken into account, and that until now Quebec has refused to provide its maps.
According to the provincial government’s calculations, Ottawa’s decision will result in the loss of “a minimum” of 2,000 jobs in the areas currently being planned.