The federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, does not believe that the significant increase in the number of exploration titles for potential deposits granted by Quebec in the last two years is incompatible with the fight against climate change. On the contrary, these claims are necessary in a context of electrification of transport, he argues. Words criticized by environmentalists.
“I don’t think it goes against the current” of our fight against climate change. “The mining boom that we are seeing is very much linked to our collective efforts to free ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels, which involves the electrification of transport. However, to electrify, we need minerals, including critical minerals,” said Mr. Guilbeault on Wednesday morning during a press scrum held on the sidelines of the Montreal Climate Summit.
The Minister also recalled that these mining projects, before taking shape, “will have to go through the prism of a very rigorous environmental assessment” in order to ensure that their impacts on natural environments are limited. “So yes, if we want to free ourselves from our dependence on oil and move towards electrification and we want to have our iPhones and our computers, we need these critical minerals there, but we have to do it well,” said added the Minister.
Criticized remarks
However, “what is obvious is that we cannot claim to make mines of the future with the laws of the past,” retorts the co-spokesperson of the Coalition Quebec better mine Rodrigue Turgeon.
In interview at Duty, the latter argues that the supervision of the mining sector put in place by the Government of Quebec “flouts the ancestral rights of the Aboriginal peoples”, the mining claims being granted without consulting them beforehand. There are also “very few environmental inspections that are carried out independently” on sites intended for mining projects, he notes.
“And I haven’t even touched on the fact that the municipalities are not informed in advance of the handing over of mining claims” on their territory, adds Mr. Turgeon.
There are mining claims that completely block the realization of protected area projects
The latter thus finds it “quite questionable” that Minister Guilbeault does not question the way in which the issuance of mining claims is carried out in Quebec. All the more so, he affirms, since a large part of the exploration titles granted in the mining sector in Quebec do not concern critical minerals used, among other things, in the electrification of transport.
Over the past two years, the number of mining claim holders has increased by 65%, which raises concerns in several municipalities where these exclusive rights to carry out exploration work for mineral substances have been granted.
These titles, which allow mining exploration over a total area of 16 million hectares of Quebec territory, are of particular concern to the Society for Nature and Parks of Quebec, which fears that they will have the effect of blocking several development projects. protected areas. These permits also cover thousands of square kilometers of caribou habitat.
“There are mining claims that block the realization of protected area projects in their own right and that raise a lot of issues in terms of social acceptability,” said Greenpeace Canada spokesperson Patrick Bonin. met by The duty during the Montreal Climate Summit.
Moreover, while recognizing the role of the mining sector in the electrification of transport, the expert believes that the priority of public authorities should be, at the base, to encourage citizens to use their cars less. “We cannot simply want as many vehicles and swap gasoline vehicles for electric vehicles because there are major production impacts, particularly in terms of GHGs. We need to reduce the general vehicle fleet” in favor of public and active transportation, says Mr. Bonin.
Third link
On this subject, Minister Guilbeault recalled that “300 public transit projects” are currently under construction in the country, “including several here in Montreal”.
He was thus referring, among other things, to the extension of the blue metro line to Anjou and to the Metropolitan Express Network, the first section of which will come into operation in the coming weeks.
As for the third link envisaged between Quebec and Lévis, which should ultimately be reserved for public transit, Ottawa is not against the idea of financing it. But it is still necessary that a specific project be submitted to him, mentioned Steven Guilbeault. “We will see what the Government of Quebec will present to the federal government as a project, but for the moment, there is still nothing that has been tabled. »