The Quebec Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, arrived in Ottawa on Tuesday presenting himself as the victim of an unjust federal decree “which sets back the cause of the caribou”. He asks the Bloc Québécois to more firmly demand its abandonment.
“I would like the Bloc Québécois, in a very assertive manner, to demand the withdrawal of this threat of decree. I would like the Bloc Québécois to say that the money supposedly left on the table is an illusion,” declared Mr. Charette during a press briefing held at the federal parliament.
The Quebec Minister of the Environment traveled to Ottawa to meet with federal elected officials and assure them that his government is doing enough to protect the caribou. He argues that a federal decree to protect the species would be devastating for the economy of the affected regions. He did not inform his federal counterpart, Steven Guilbeault, who knew nothing of this visit that morning. ” Unfortunately, [le ministre fédéral de l’Environnement] hasn’t heard our message in recent weeks. We said to ourselves: why repeat? » justified Mr. Charette.
The Quebec minister met representatives of the Conservative Party of Canada, which mentioned the caribou issue among its reasons for defeating the government in place, and of the Bloc Québécois, the second opposition party, which these days finds itself in good shape. position to bargain for the survival of Justin Trudeau’s government.
The final form of the caribou decree should be known at the end of the year, while Ottawa examines the results of the consultations that have just ended. The federal government assures that it will renounce this decree if Quebec presents its own caribou protection plan.
The Bloc defends its record
“He has a recent tendency to tell me what I should do or not do,” reacted the leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, who defended his record in the matter. “Quebec, in a document they sent us, they say the same thing as us,” also reacted Bloc MP Mario Simard.
The party made several outings during the summer to ask to abandon — or at least delay — this decree that Ottawa intends to impose in forest regions of Quebec. Mr. Blanchet also suggested acting as a mediator himself to find an agreement between the two levels of government.
These efforts were, however, overshadowed by comments published on the X platform early Tuesday which shocked Minister Charette. Yves-François Blanchet argues that “the decree on the caribou is suspended and will not return in 2024, and probably not at all”, while boasting of having obtained “money to finance the preservation, transformation and the transition of certain practices in the forest”.
The Trudeau government is proposing to Quebec the payment of $443.4 million by 2028 for various nature conservation projects, details a letter obtained by the Dutyas long as his government agrees to conclude an agreement on a caribou protection plan by Christmas. A misleading promise, according to Quebec, since it compiles money promised in a variety of federal programs, such as the federal program to plant 2 billion trees, in which Quebec does not participate.
“It’s an illusion, nothing more, nothing less. We are confusing extremely different files,” argues Mr. Charette.
He estimates that the real amount proposed by Ottawa for the caribou is limited to 78 million dollars, an amount which is very far from compensating the anticipated negative effects of the decree on the economy, which would reach 900 million, according to some estimates. In addition, the amounts provided for nature protection are not attached to as many conditions in the other provinces, denounces the minister.
Change the law?
To Minister Guilbeault, who affirms that the Species at Risk Act forces him to issue such a decree when he notes that a species is on the threshold of exception, Benoit Charette replies that the law must be modified. “When a law is poorly thought out, we change it. Federal law is poorly thought out. »
According to him, it is unthinkable to apply a single protection recipe over the 35,000 km2 of territory where the three caribou herds covered by the federal decree live. These herds are present in regions with realities too different for a “uniform national approach” to apply, he said, coming in particular to the defense of Sacré-Coeur, on the Haute Côte-Nord, where the cooperative operates. of Boisaco workers.
This company questioned the very relevance of protecting the critical habitat of the woodland caribou before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa. Indigenous communities, for their part, support the federal approach of a decree to protect the caribou.
Benoit Charette was also scheduled to meet representatives of the New Democratic Party (NDP) on Tuesday, but did not yet have a confirmed meeting with Liberal elected officials at the time these lines were written.