In her report tabled on Wednesday, the Commissioner for Sustainable Development, Janique Lambert, harshly criticizes the management of the Electrification and Climate Change Fund (FECC), which is unable to monitor the evolution of the performance of almost -all of its actions, in the absence of valid indicators and targets.
The warning is all the more serious since the Minister of the Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change, Benoit Charette, in presenting the new Plan for a Green Economy, had praised the rigorous calculations, endorsed by the Ministry of Finance , which structured its annual reporting. This plan should lead Québec to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 37.5% by 2030 compared to 1990. Fueled essentially by carbon pricing, which affects, in particular, gasoline prices at the pump, the FECC has a substantial envelope of 7.6 billion for the 2022-2027 implementation plan.
Among other things, the commissioner criticizes the CAQ government for having blindly integrated the actions of the 2013-2020 Climate Change Action Plan into the current implementation plan “without having previously assessed their performance or made adjustments when required”. These actions relate to expenditure amounting to 5.4 billion, or 80% of last year’s envelope of 6.7 billion, or 71% of the increased sum this year. The Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC) does not ensure effective and transparent management of the FECC, observes Janique Lambert, and is not in a position to monitor the actions financed by the fund and the Achievement of the ultimate objectives of the Green Economy Plan by 2030.
Minister Benoit Charette reacted casually to the report, saying Wednesday that it was “a photo that dates from the 1er April 2021” and that the portrait had since changed. The Commissioner replied by pointing out that her findings, established last February, were still current.
For its part, the MELCC defended itself by pointing out that the actions of the FECC are based on the SEQUENCE model (Quebec’s energy system, environment, climate and electricity), which oversees the Ministry of Finance. , and that many of these actions are similar to those found in all state climate action plans around the world because they are “recognized as the most effective and efficient”.
Sanctioned at the end of October 2020, Law 44 abolished the Liberal Green Fund, of sad memory, to replace it with the FECC. In the summer of 2018, a management board concluded that the Green Fund had squandered more than 1 billion and that more than half of the actions carried out by 15 ministries should be stopped or reassessed. Four years earlier, the commissioner for sustainable development had sounded the alarm about the mismanagement of the Green Fund and its projects, whose objectives were “neither precise nor measurable”. Quebec has also failed miserably to meet the 2020 targets for reducing GHG emissions. History seems to be repeating itself: the CAQ government risks falling back into the ruts of the previous government.
In addition to these findings, Commissioner Lambert notes that the MELCC does not exercise “effective integrated governance” that would allow it to ensure “coherence and coordination” of the various actions at the government level. In fact, compared to other departments, the MELCC suffers from a congenital weakness that the Legault government has not remedied.
If the commissioner’s criticisms of the MELCC are severe, they are undoubtedly more so of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (MERN). Responsible for the implementation of the 2030 Energy Policy, adopted in 2016, the MERN “does not effectively and efficiently manage” its deployment and flouts its constitutive law by not exercising “integrated governance” of the energy transition. Due to the cancellation or postponement of measures provided for in the master plan, the MERN will not achieve the results planned for March 31, 2023. It will miss the energy consumption reduction target by 13%, the consumption of petroleum products and 10% of GHG emissions.
The CAQ government did not stand out for the ambition of its objectives in the fight against climate change or for the audacity of the measures it proposed. But its Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, promised concrete and quantifiable results within the set deadlines. However, the Sustainable Development Commissioner has just cast doubt on the Legault government’s ability to meet its environmental commitments.