Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre mentioned respect for Quebec’s skills and the protection of forestry jobs to energetically denounce the plan to force the protection of caribou on Quebec territory by decree on Tuesday.
“How many Quebecers will lose their jobs because of this radical and liberal decree? », Launched Mr. Poilievre in French during his very first intervention in the question period.
The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, responded by specifying that the federal government has the responsibility to protect threatened species throughout the country. That same morning, his Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, asked him to obtain for the first time a protection decree under the Species at Risk Act.
As reported The duty, Ottawa considers Quebec’s strategy aimed at preventing the disappearance of the woodland caribou insufficient. If the minister’s request is accepted, a decree could be published “in the very near future,” Steven Guilbeault said Tuesday morning.
“This decree allows the federal government to literally take control of a given territory where we find the habitat of a species that is not sufficiently protected. So it’s a decree that gives a lot of power to the federal government. »
Outraged Conservatives
The deer was the subject of no less than five questions from the official opposition in Ottawa, in French, on Tuesday. Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus alleged that a caribou protection decree could “destroy the forestry industry of Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean.” »
His colleague Richard Martel, elected in Chicoutimi — Le Fjord, requested the resignation of Steven Guilbeault, “a minister from Montreal who never understands our regional issues. It’s as if he wanted to close our regions! »
“When will this minister stop interfering in Quebec’s jurisdiction with his radical ideas? “, for his part chanted Bernard Généreux, to the applause of his conservative colleagues.
Their comments echo those of the Quebec Minister of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks, Benoit Charette, who deplored the day before that this action amounted to “intervening in Quebec’s jurisdiction”, while fearing for “the socio-economic impacts” for the forest regions of the province.
The Bloc calls for dialogue
The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet Blanchet, was less categorical in his criticism of the federal government on Tuesday, even if he said he tried to convince it not to impose itself on the issue. He would have preferred that the levels of government continue along the path of dialogue.
“We do not have the means to pay for the failure of sacrificing woodland caribou for the benefit of industry, or of sacrificing jobs for the benefit of woodland caribou. You have to do both,” he demonstrated during a press scrum. Mr. Blanchet argued that he has mastered the issue, since he was already Quebec’s Minister of the Environment.
Remarks made two years ago by his MP for Avignon-La Mitis-Matane-Matapédia, Kristina Michaud, resurfaced in the chamber on Tuesday, since the Conservatives read in them support for the protection actions of the federal government.
She said on the airwaves of a TVA station in Eastern Quebec in 2022 that the caribou issue represents “a good example of levels of government working together”, which was interpreted as recognition that Ottawa should get involved in the matter.
The Trudeau government argues that its collaborative efforts with Quebec on the issue of caribou protection have reached a dead end. The government led by François Legault, in Quebec, has failed in its promise to restore the caribou by protecting 65% of its essential habitat. Instead, he was content to launch consultations this spring, and refused to participate in the federal nature conservation plan.