The Minister of the Environment Benoit Charette has just won the “Prix Normandeau” for greenhouse gas production. Remember that the former Liberal minister had affirmed, to justify shale gas exploration, “that a cow emits more CO2 in the atmosphere than a well. It’s factually proven.”
Charette has just announced that it will regulate to prevent municipalities from reducing greenhouse gases (GHG)!
Several municipalities wanted to restrict new natural gas connections, a very good idea, but the CAQ is opposed to it.
Benoit Charette is nevertheless a minister in a government which has earned real recognition, given by none other than Al Gore, for its fight against climate change…
So how can we explain that the CAQ is now going against the global movement to reduce GHGs and fight climate change?
The Legault 1.0 government had banned the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons and this deserved to be highlighted internationally.
But the Legault 2.0 government, the one we have suffered since the day after his re-election 18 months ago, is totally different.
His new motto seems to be “I don’t care”!
When it comes to the environment, blow after blow, the CAQ is going backwards and undermining public confidence like never before.
Whether it is a legislative change to avoid analysis by the BAPE of the Northvolt battery factory project or the constant approval of projects that destroy wetlands, the masks are falling.
The CAQ now does not care about protecting the environment and defending future generations.
Principles ignored
Quebec’s Sustainable Development Act was innovative when it was adopted.
It remains one of the most avant-garde in North America.
This law sets out the principles which must guide government decisions, such as the polluter pays principle as well as that of the protection of biodiversity.
However, one of the lesser known principles of this law is “subsidiarity”. It is a principle according to which powers and responsibilities are delegated by the state to the appropriate level of authority so that the public obtains a concrete result.
Thus, municipalities in Quebec are increasingly playing the role of environmental protector that the provincial and federal governments refuse to play, whose failure to apply the laws is described – and denounced – almost daily.
These are the cities that are moving
Municipalities are closer to the problems and are taking action.
The Supreme Court made a momentous decision in 2001 when it upheld the jurisdiction of the small Quebec municipality of Hudson to regulate pesticides and the companies that sprayed them everywhere.
It is not only in large cities like Montreal or Quebec that important environmental decisions are made.
The decision to regulate new natural gas connections comes in particular from a small municipality in the Laurentians, Prévost, which was also the first to require that merchants take measures to restrict the sale of single-use containers. We must encourage them, not prevent them from acting.
The pretext of “energy security” put forward by Benoit Charette, to justify this reversal, is simply pathetic.