Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette and Natural Resources and Forestry Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina have informed Canadian Environment Minister Stephen Guilbeault that Quebec will not take part in the consultation meetings surrounding the drafting of a possible emergency decree to protect the caribou.
In a six-page letter sent on Wednesday, Charette and Blanchette Vézina reiterated that the emergency decree announced by Ottawa a month ago represents a “unilateral and illegitimate decision by the federal government, which is categorically rejected by Quebec.”
Ottawa’s move “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 used to define the scope of the order-in-council, 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 there will be “a loss of at least 2,000 jobs in the planned provisional zones alone.”
These job losses would result from the projected reduction in allowable cut.
For Quebec as a whole, the federal decree on caribou would result in a 4.1 per cent drop in allowable cut, 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.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on July 24, 2024.