Quebec refuses to participate in caribou consultations

Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette and Natural Resources and Forests Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina have informed Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault that Quebec will not participate in consultation meetings surrounding the development of a possible emergency decree to protect caribou.

In a six-page letter sent Wednesday, Charette and Vézina reiterated that the emergency decree announced by Ottawa last month represents a “unilateral and illegitimate decision by the federal government, which is categorically rejected by Quebec.”

Ottawa’s approach “constitutes an unspeakable affront and runs counter to respect for the constitutional division of powers between the two levels of government,” according to the two ministers.

Not only will Quebec not participate in the consultations, but “the federal government will have to fully assume the economic and social consequences of its decision,” the ministers argue.

Among these consequences, the province estimates that could be “a loss of a minimum of 2,000 jobs in the planned provisional zones.”

Ottawa “should thus bear the brunt of bringing over 2,000 families into precariousness,” reads the letter addressed to Guilbeault.

These job losses would result from the projected drop in allowable cuts.

In Quebec, the federal decree on caribou would cause a 4.1 per cent drop in forest potential, which is equivalent to 1.4 million cubic metres of wood per year, according to an analysis published last week by Quebec’s chief forester, Louis Pelletier.

The federal government instead plans to impose a decree on Quebec to force the province to protect caribou in three distribution areas: Val-d’Or, Charlevoix and Pipmuacan.

In Val-d’Or and Charlevoix, the caribou live in enclosures year-round with nine and 30 individuals respectively and the Pipmuacan herd has less than 300 animals.

The caribou population has been declining in Quebec for several years mainly due to logging. The forest roads destroy the habitat and encourage the movement of the caribou’s natural predators such as bears and wolves.

Last April, Quebec announced its intention to invest $59.5 million to implement caribou protection projects for three of the province’s 13 caribou populations.

However, Guilbeault expected the Legault government to table a protection strategy for all caribou populations, as stated in the agreement in principle which was signed in August 2022 between the federal and provincial governments.

According to the agreement, the measures in place should make it possible to “achieve 65 per cent of undisturbed habitat” in each of the caribou’s distribution areas.

Despite a series of announcements to protect the species, Quebec has not presented a strategy that would allow this objective to be achieved.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews