Ottawa’s plan to respect its nature protection commitments made at COP15 in Montreal does not include any chapter on Quebec, since the Legault government did not wish to collaborate.
“I find it a little disappointing that the Quebec government decided not to participate,” lamented the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, on Thursday.
The Montreal minister had just unveiled “Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy”, a 210-page document which details how the federal government intends to “curb and reverse” the loss of biodiversity in the country. It is accompanied by a bill, C-73, tabled Thursday, which proposes to force the government to report on its conservation progress.
However, a footnote to the document presented indicates that “the government of Quebec considers itself [comme] excluded from the application of this 2030 Nature Strategy”.
All other provinces have provided Ottawa with a summary of their nature protection measures, and each of them has a chapter dedicated to them in the federal strategy. Indigenous territories and groups also had a voice.
Not an exclusive skill
“Quebec has decided not to provide information for this strategy, considering that it is a competence [exclusive] of the government of Quebec, which is absolutely false,” railed Minister Guilbeault, pointing at the voluminous document in front of journalists, during a press briefing in Ottawa.
“There is no one on the planet who can say: ‘I’m going to do this alone in my corner [protéger la nature] in isolation”. We must work in partnership. »
The former environmental activist praises the efforts of his government, “on the right track” to achieve its objective of protecting 30% of Canada’s marine and terrestrial areas by 2030. The strategy unveiled Thursday recalls that one in five species is threatened in Canada, including the “iconic boreal caribou”, also called woodland caribou.
The caribou is also mentioned 31 times in the report. In the absence of an annex on Quebec, only the caribou conservation efforts carried out by the federal government, indigenous groups, Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland are recorded. -and Labrador, the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Nunavut.
The federal strategy supports at length the importance of collaboration between provincial and territorial governments, since the latter have jurisdiction over the species present on provincial Crown lands, the development of natural resources, and “land planning on the major part of the lands and coastal areas of Canada.
Still no decree
The Quebec government missed the ultimatum launched by the federal government regarding the protection of the caribou, required by May at the latest. Despite this, Minister Guilbeault did not want to say when his government will be ready to force Quebec’s hand with a decree. There is a “process to follow,” he explains.
“If I come to the conclusion that the habitat of a species is not sufficiently protected, I have a legal obligation to go to the cabinet and ask for emergency measures to be put in place , that an emergency decree be adopted. After that, it’s up to the cabinet to decide what it wants to do and when it wants to do it. »
Quebec is committed to protecting at least 65% of woodland caribou habitat, under existential threat, in particular because of the activities of the forestry industry. The efforts made so far by the Quebec government to save the species “do not pass the bar,” Steven Guilbeault reiterated Thursday.
The Legault government also refused to participate in a federal scientific report aimed at assessing the status of the protection of the woodland caribou, due to lack of an agreement on the recovery of the species between the two levels of government, reported The duty this spring.
Even absent from the new federal strategy for nature, Quebec also made commitments to protect nature during the UN Conference on Biodiversity, COP15 in Montreal, such as protecting 30% of the territory. The office of the Minister of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks of Quebec, Benoit Charette, had still not responded to questions from Duty at the time these lines were written.