Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, committee members.
Thank you for inviting Nature Québec to speak today.
Nature Québec is a non-profit environmental organization that has been focusing on the conservation of natural environments and the sustainable use of resources since 1981. Our team of 30 professionals is supported by a network of volunteer scientists. Since 2019, I have been the executive director of the organization, which brings together 145,000 members and supporters. I'm a biologist with a master's degree in caribou biology.
Nature Québec supports the emergency order being considered by this committee, given the lack of action by the Government of Quebec to adequately protect the habitat of the caribou herds. These herds are on the verge of extinction following the indefinite postponement of the comprehensive strategy to protect the caribou that has been promised since 2016. There are growing concerns that indigenous nations risk losing their identity, culture, traditional activities and ancestral rights if the caribou disappear. In our view, the federal government has not only the legitimacy to issue such an order, but also a legal and moral obligation to do so. Quebec played a dangerous game and opened the door wide to this order.
At Nature Québec, we make sure that each of our positions and recommendations is based on science. When it comes to caribou, the science could not be any clearer. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that the boreal caribou herds are declining, and there is a scientific consensus on the causes of that decline. They are primarily logging and the network of logging roads that cause habitat disturbance and increased predation. These facts were corroborated in 2021 in a literature review produced by biologists employed by the Quebec government's Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks.
We wanted to remind you of the scientific consensus right off the bat, because we have unfortunately heard witnesses at this committee question that consensus and make totally false statements about the state of the caribou herds and the causes of their decline. Like the chief of the Essipit Innu Nation, we are concerned that no scientists who have studied caribou have been heard by this committee. If the committee wants to know if the herds are really declining and if it is true that logging has an effect on the caribou, you should ask scientists, not forestry industry representatives.
Naturally, we at Nature Québec understand the concerns of the forestry industry and, above all, the communities that depend economically on the forest. We are in particular solidarity with the residents of Sacré‑Coeur, who are feeling a lot of anxiety right now. We want to make it clear, however, that this is not a choice between losing the caribou and losing Sacré‑Coeur, or even the entire forestry industry in Quebec, as some witnesses have suggested. That is a false dichotomy. We believe that the Government of Quebec is doing everything in its power right now to maintain this false dichotomy and worry the public by burying the solutions.
Solutions to limit the socio-economic impact of the order exist, and the Government of Quebec has known about them for a long time. In 2016, the Government of Quebec presented its action plan for the management of the boreal caribou habitat. In a summary document, or placemat, which we can forward to you afterwards, the Government of Quebec announced that it would analyze the socio-economic consequences of its action plan. The placemat is where the government announced for the first time that it was going to adopt a caribou protection strategy, which we have been waiting on for eight years. Most importantly, it was here that the Government of Quebec announced that it would conduct a systematic review of other timber supply sources when consequences on forestry potential were unavoidable. I quote from the document:
All alternatives will be assessed systematically, with a view to mitigating supply reductions for the affected mills: timber production strategy, sustainable yield concept, appropriate delimitation of management units (MUs), use of timber from the private forests, timber shipments, use of unharvested volumes (2008-2013) to mitigate the impacts, and so on.
Not only did Quebec neglect to conduct the analyses, it is now burying the solutions. The first step in limiting the socio-economic impact of the order is to conduct a procurement analysis for each mill. The Department of Natural Resources and Forestry is currently burying this information. Measures could subsequently be put in place to offset that impact. The Government of Quebec knows what they are, and it alone can implement them. By not putting forward these solutions, by releasing exaggerated figures on potential job losses, by using a crude rule of thumb to estimate the consequences, the Government of Quebec is fanning the debate, encouraging disinformation and creating unnecessary stress for workers and communities that depend on the forest. We understand that some members of the committee want to protect provincial jurisdictions, but we must not blindly protect Quebec's incompetence and lack of leadership on the issue of caribou and sustainable forest management.
Thank you.