Caribou moves through the Algar region in northeastern Alberta in 2017. Cole Burton / The Canadian Press
Federal Environment Minister Stephen Gilbo’s ultimatum to the Quebec government to protect the caribou is a sign that Ottawa is losing patience with provinces that are not fulfilling their responsibility to protect wildlife, experts say.
Rachel Plotkin, a caribou expert at the David Suzuki Foundation, says Gilbo’s threat to create a unilaterally protected habitat in Quebec for declining herds is a “shot in the nose” that shows Ottawa is ready to stand firm after years of good play.
“As a campaign participant who has been involved in trying to maintain instruments under the Risk Species Act, I am very excited to see that a minister seems to be finally ready to use these instruments,” she said in a recent interview. .
Plotkin says the federal government has asked provinces to draw up plans to protect critical caribou habitats in 2012. However, she said, Ottawa is reluctant to force them to comply, although herds continue to decline due to the destruction of habitats.
“This shows that the federal government is tired of waiting for the provinces to do the right thing (and) their patience is running out,” she said.
In a letter dated April 8, Gilbo gave the Quebec government until April 20 to submit its plan to protect the caribou and their habitat. If the plan is deemed insufficient, Gilbo said he would recommend the cabinet issue a decree to protect parts of the animal habitat in Quebec, despite objections from the province.
Speaking north of Montreal on Thursday, Gilbo said that while Ottawa had recently reached an agreement with Alberta on a defense plan and was negotiating with British Columbia and Ontario, “unfortunately the Quebec government does not seem to have much will to find common ground.”
He emphasized that he still hoped to reach an agreement with Quebec to avoid the need for a decree.
Jeremy Kerr, a professor of biology at the University of Ottawa, said Gilbo’s move was “a stark reminder to wake up that the provincial environment ministries actually have to fulfill their responsibilities.”
He said the federal environment minister would not make a reckless decision to impose Ottawa’s will on a province – especially the province that most strongly opposes federal intervention.
“If the federal minister wants to get into this kind of potentially controversial situation with Quebec, then the minister is ready to do it potentially everywhere,” Kerr said in a recent interview.
Anne-Sophie Dore, a lawyer with the environmental law group Center Quebecois du droit de l’environnement, said Ottawa had issued emergency orders to prevent imminent threats to the species, including by halting construction projects in southern Quebec to protect the western choir frog. But the action Gilbo is considering has not been taken before, Dore said.
Unlike emergency orders, the decree would protect “habitats in their entirety” and could last five years, she said. The Endangered Species Act, she added, sets penalties for non-compliance with the order, adding that Quebec has a chance to try to challenge them in court.
Gilbo said on Thursday that the protection order would cover about 35,000 square kilometers in Quebec. It is not necessary to leave the whole land untouched, he said, but “additional measures” will have to be put in place to ensure the caribou’s survival.
Kerr said the decree could contain a number of different elements, “from the cessation of land use activities that hinder the survival of caribou in these areas, to a kind of requirement that the management of these areas be very different from what it is today. ”
He said countless studies have shown that caribou need dense, old forests that provide food and shelter from predators.
But governments are reluctant to restrict industrial activities such as logging, which replace older trees with younger ones and create pathways that allow predators easy access to caribou prey. To protect the caribou, there is no doubt that industrial work on their territory will have to be significantly reduced, Kerr said.
Quebec Prime Minister Francois Lego said on Tuesday that Gilbo’s ultimatum was another example of the intervention of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in provincial jurisdictions. Quebec, he said, has an independent caribou protection commission that seeks to strike a balance with “protecting jobs that are important in certain regions of Quebec.”
But Kerr, Plotkin and Dore say successive Quebec governments have shown they are reluctant to take significant action unless forced to do so.
“The status quo cannot continue if we want to have a future in which wildlife survives and recovers,” Plotkin said. “We hope that this federal shot in the nose will cause these changes.”
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