Le biologiste Pierre Dumont a vécu à Montréal et travaillé dans les eaux autour de l’île pour la majeure partie de sa carrière, et pourtant, le fleuve Saint-Laurent reste encore plein de mystères pour lui. Il se spécialise en faune marine des basses terres du Saint-Laurent, ce qui inclut le chevalier cuivré, un poisson en péril qui n’existe qu’au Québec.

Ses frayères sont les eaux au sud du barrage Saint-Ours, qu’il rejoint grâce à une route commençant à l’embouchure du Saint-Laurent, continuant vers le sud pour retrouver la rivière Richelieu, puis empruntant une passe migratoire pour poissons (une structure composée de bassins en escaliers qui permet au poisson de contourner le barrage) construite en 2001.

« On ne sait pas s’il prend cette route à chaque année ou au deux ans. Mais, donc, j’ai 10 ou 12 ans, je descends le fleuve et j’arrive à Sorel. Qu’est-ce qui me dit de faire ça ? Je ne le sais pas. J’aimerais être poisson des fois pour le deviner », a dit Dumont. Alain Branchaud, un autre biologiste, décrit le chevalier cuivré comme un Québécois typique, oscillant entre les fêtes nationales. « Il hésite entre le 24 juin et le 1er juillet pour aller se reproduire … Si c’est un peu plus chaud, il va se reproduire plus à la Saint-Jean. Si l’eau est un peu plus froide, ça va être plus vers la fête du Canada », dit Branchaud, directeur général de SNAP Québec, la section provinciale de la Société pour la Nature et les Parcs du Canada.

Après la frai, les chevaliers cuivrés peuvent rester dans la rivière Richelieu ou retourner vers le Saint-Laurent où les herbiers sont une source d’alimentation. Ce poisson unique est équipé de molaires qui peuvent briser les coquilles des mollusques desquels il s’alimente dans les herbiers sous-marins situés dans les zones avec des courants doux.

Ce garde-manger, et avec lui les habitats d’autres espèces menacées, telles que la rainette faux-grillon de l’Ouest, seraient endommagés par l’expansion proposée du Port de Montréal à Contrecoeur, une ville juste en dessous des 10,000 habitants, environ 40 kilomètres en aval de la métropole. Pendant des années, si ce n’est des décennies, l’Administration portuaire de Montréal a poussé un plan afin d’accroître leur capacité de 60 pourcent. Cette proposition a reçu un grand coup de pouce lorsque le 11 septembre, le premier ministre Mark Carney a annoncé que l’expansion du port pourrait être l’un des cinq projets d’infrastructure dont la mise en place serait accélérée grâce au Bureau des grands projets créée en juin, moment où le gouvernement a passé la Loi visant à bâtir le Canada à travers le projet de loi C-5. Cette recommandation positionnerait le projet comme étant d’intérêt national, promettant ainsi un examen fédéral dans les deux ans et tous les enjeux et conditions environnementales n’entrant en compte qu’après le feu vert.

Les travaux préparatoires dans la nouvelle zone terrestre du port sont censés commencer ce mois-ci, tandis que l’administration portuaire attend le permis de Pêche et Océans Canada pour débuter les travaux en zone aquatique. L’administration a reçu la nouvelle que la demande a été complétée le 28 août et devrait recevoir une réponse d’ici le 28 novembre.

La même journée où Carney dévoilait sa liste de grands projets, le Centre Québécois du Droit de l’Environnement a décidé de poursuivre le gouvernement fédéral en justice afin de remettre en question le bien-fondé de la loi C-5, déclarant que la législation donne au gouvernement des pouvoirs excessifs qui portent atteinte à la démocratie et à la protection de l’environnement. Selon Branchaud, si le permis de Pêche et Océans Canada est donné, SNAP Québec pense également poursuivre en justice le gouvernement fédéral pour avoir enfreint la Loi sur les espèces en péril, puisque le projet empiéterait sur l’habitat essentiel du chevalier cuivré. Le poisson a été inclus dans la Loi sur les espèces menacées du Québec en 1999, et a également été inscrit comme à risque sous la Loi sur les espèces en péril au niveau fédéral en 2007. En 2022, un rapport de Pêche et Océans Canada a montré qu’un rétablissement était possible grâce à un programme de frayage artificiel — bien qu’il soit dépendant du fait d’éviter ou réduire les menaces à ses habitats.

Pour sa part, l’administration portuaire a déclaré que, pour le moment, vu qu’elle est en attente du permis de Pêche et Océans, il n’y a pas d’intention d’utiliser la Loi visant à bâtir le Canada pour contourner la loi environnementale. « Il n’y a pas de plan B, il n’y a qu’un plan A qui est de respecter le processus et la loi», un représentant de l’Administration portuaire de Montréal a dit lors d’une conférence de presse le 1er octobre.

L’expansion de Contrecoeur permettrait l’entrée et sortie additionnelle de ce qui serait plus d’un million de conteneurs maritimes de taille standard, par an. C’est une affaire dont le coût s’estime à $2.3 billions qui proviendront en partie du gouvernement fédéral et provincial, leurs parts respectives étant de $150 millions et $130 millions (le reste du financement n’a pas de source claire attribuée).Cependant, des groupes environnementaux comme SNAP tout comme des experts en affaires questionnent le besoin même de l’expansion, vu que les quais bondés de la fin de la pandémie sont maintenant de l’histoire ancienne et le nombre d’importations continue de baisser. En 2024, 4.8 pourcent de conteneurs en moins que l’année précédente étaient gérés dans le Port de Montréal, le plus grand dans l’est du Canada. Un des arguments de la part du premier ministre québécois François Legault et d’autres défenseurs est que la capacité accrue est nécessaire pour diversifier les marchés parmi les perturbations commerciales avec les États-Unis.

Le chevalier cuivré a vu son habitat être transformé par les humains pendant des siècles et ne tient qu’à un fil

Un scientifique et pêcheur de Montréal fut le premier à mettre l’attention du gouvernement fédéral sur le chevalier cuivré en 1942. Bien avant ça, le poisson était déjà important pour les communautés autochtones de la région. « Depuis les années 1950 la limite de la communauté vis-à-vis des impacts cumulatifs sur les droits de pêche autochtones dans le fleuve Saint-Laurent a été dépassée. Plusieurs de ces impacts et ceux d’autres projets qui seront certainement liés au projet à Contrecoeur iront s’ajouter à l’impact existant sur la qualité de l’eau, les milieux humides, les poissons et leurs habitats », a déclaré le Conseil Mohawk de Kahnawà:ke dans une lettre à propos de la proposition d’expansion du port adressée à l’agence gouvernementale s’occupant des évaluations environnementales en 2019.

La lettre disait que le Kaniatarowanenne, ou le fleuve Saint-Laurent, est important pour les Mohawks depuis la nuit des temps. Le chevalier cuivré n’est qu’un des aliments que la rivière offre, nous dit la lettre, de même que la sauvagine, l’anguille, l’esturgeon, le doré jaune et les moules. Des siècles de dégradation environnementale et de développement ont pollué le Saint-Laurent et ses tributaires, dit-elle encore, rendant la pêche et la récolte dangereuses et enfreignant les droits constitutionnels des Mohawks, résidents de Kahnawà:ke — juste au sud de Montréal — inclus.

Aucune des trois Premières Nations qui furent consultées sur la proposition a accepté d’être interviewée par The Narwhal, mais dans sa lettre, le conseil a souligné que les dégâts de dragage aux herbiers qui servent d’alimentation au chevalier cuivré ne sont qu’une parmi de nombreuses inquiétudes soulevées par Kahnawà:ke à propos du projet. En juin, le grand chef de Kahnawà:ke Cody Diabo est allé à Ottawa pour protester contre la loi C-5, et a dit à l’APTN que Carney a refusé sa demande pour une rencontre.

Les scientifiques expliquent que la baisse du nombre de chevaliers cuivrés est sûrement dû à une confluence de facteurs : l’agriculture qui répand des pesticides et des herbicides dans les eaux, des activités sportives en plus grand nombre dans les espaces de reproduction ainsi que le développement. Les préparatifs de Montréal pour l’exposition universelle Expo 67 ont aussi radicalement modifié le paysage, comprennant des excavations, des remblayages et l’utilisation du DDT, un pesticide qui depuis a été banni au Canada. Des fouilles archéologiques ont découvert des restes de chevalier cuivré dans des sites de préparation alimentaire autochtones et à une auberge du Vieux Montréal, ajoutant la pêche aux possibles facteurs de stress.

Branchaud voit cette liste comme une suite de coups individuels qui ont été reçus : un coup vous mettrait en colère, puis un deuxième vous déstabiliserait et un troisième pourrait vous mettre KO. « Le chevalier cuivré, on est rendu à 123 coups de bâton sur cette population, on ne peut pas se permettre d’en donner un autre », a-t-il dit.

En 2021, Pêche et Océans Canada a donné à l’Administration portuaire de Montréal une liste de 330 conditions pour que l’expansion soit approuvée. Parmi celles-ci, l’administration portuaire doit compenser pour les herbiers détruits par le projet, un superficie que l’administration planifie doubler. Le travail de dragage qui fera des dommages à l’habitat essentiel du chevalier cuivré est censé commencer en 2027, même si l’Administration portuaire affirme que l’établissement fructueux d’herbiers compensatoires à l’Île aux Boeufs, soit 25 kilomètres en amont de la rivière, viendra en priorité.

« On pourra développer, durant un an et demi à deux ans, tous les travaux compensatoires pour rattacher le chevalier cuivré aux nouveaux herbiers. … Il y a deux choses qu’on regarde. C’est sa performance et sa propagation », a dit Paul Bird, le directeur commercial de l’Administration portuaire lors d’une conférence de presse en début octobre.

Dans un rapport d’avis scientifique de 2021, publié par SNAP Québec, quatre scientifiques se sont opposés à l’expansion proposée à Contrecoeur par peur qu’elle mène à l’extinction du chevalier cuivré. Ils disent que les conséquences néfastes du projet sont sous-estimées et les bénéfices tirés des mesures de compensation comme au mieux hypothétiques. La valeur du remplacement des habitats de poisson est questionnée ailleurs au Canada également : en Colombie Britannique, des scientifiques estiment qu’un manque d’entretien fait entrave au succès.

La construction et le dragage du Saint-Laurent feraient aussi une sédimentation et perturberait les contaminants enfouis dans les profondeurs, y compris des composés de butylétain — des perturbateurs endocriniens qui pourraient porter atteinte au cycle reproductif déjà compliqué du poisson. Il n’y a que quelques centaines de spécimens connus de l’espèce de chevalier unique à cette partie très occupée du Saint-Laurent et quelques-uns de ses tributaires, des eaux pour lesquelles Branchaud est en première ligne de défense. En 1998, il a fait partie d’un effort concluant pour changer le nom du poisson de suceur cuivré à chevalier cuivré — une refonte qui a connu son succès grâce à une attention médiatique accrue, ou encore des campagnes de levées de fonds, telles que le lancement d’une bière appelée Rescousse avec le poisson sur son étiquette.

Branchaud croît que l’expansion du port arrive à un moment où le chevalier cuivré est déjà aux soins intensifs. Il voit la proposition de restituer une partie de l’habitat essentiel comme étant tellement grande qu’elle pourrait finir par nuire à d’autres espèces sans réellement apporter une contribution de taille à la protection du poisson menacé.  Lors de la conférence de presse, un représentant de l’Administration portuaire de Montréal a déclaré : « On vise à intervenir sur 0.9 hectares, l’équivalent d’un terrain de soccer d’herbier. L’habitat complet du chevalier cuivré, il fait plusieurs milliers d’hectares ».

Branchaud est en désaccord. « Imagine que l’habitat du chevalier cuivré est une personne. Les différentes parties de l’habitat essentiel seraient le cœur et le cerveau. Est-ce que tu accepterais de te faire enlever un petit bout de cœur ? Et ne sois pas inquiet, nous allons t’en greffer un autre, disons dans le dos », a-t-il dit … « [Le représentant] n’est pas scientifique et ne comprend pas ces concepts ».

Les habitants de Contrecoeur ont d’autres inquiétudes vis-à-vis l’expansion du port, ayant créé le groupe et site web de Vigie Citoyenne Port de Contrecoeur/Montérégie. Leurs soucis par rapport à leur qualité de vie comprennent environ 1,200 camions lourds qui passeraient à travers la ville quotidiennement, ainsi que la perte de 20,000 arbres et 675 mètres de littoral.

Le gouvernement municipal a affirmé sa volonté de voir le projet aboutir, citant le gain économique.  « Cependant, le plus important à cette étape-ci est que le projet se réalise dans les règles, sans compromettre l’environnement naturel et la qualité de vie des Contrecoeurois. Nous prenons au sérieux notre rôle, et tenons à rassurer les citoyens que la Ville veille au grain », a-t-il dit à The Narwhal dans un courriel.

Au-delà de la protection du poisson endémique, auquel il a déjà dédié une partie considérable de sa carrière, une des inquiétudes principales de Branchaud est que l’accélération de ce projet ainsi que d’autres avec la loi C-5 pourraient esquiver les lois environnementales, même si l’administration portuaire dit que ce n’est pas le cas pour l’instant. Pour le biologiste, ceci irait en contre des valeurs concrétisées en loi à travers la Loi sur les espèces menacées en 2002.

« On est entré avec la nouvelle loi, on s’est donné la possibilité de contourner tout le cadre législatif environnemental du pays, bâti sur plus de 150 ans », a dit Branchaud. « La loi visant à bâtir le Canada pourrait éventuellement devenir la loi ayant détruit le Canada, non seulement au sens propre de détruire des éléments de notre patrimoine naturel mais aussi détruire toute cette démocratie-là qu’on a construite ».

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Biologist Pierre Dumont has lived in Montreal and worked in the waters surrounding the island for most of his career, yet much about the St. Lawrence Seaway is still shrouded in mystery for him. He specializes in marine wildlife in the St. Lawrence Lowlands, including the copper redhorse, an endangered fish that lives only in Quebec.Its spawning grounds are the waters south of the Saint-Ours Dam, which it reaches via a route that starts at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, goes south into the Richelieu River and then through a fish ladder — a structure of step-like pools that helps fish bypass dams — built in 2001.“We don’t know if they take this route every year or every two years, but let’s say I’m [a 10 or 12-year-old copper redhorse], I swim down the fleuve and get to Sorel. What makes me do that? I don’t know. I’d like to be a fish sometimes to figure it out,” Dumont said.Another biologist, Alain Branchaud, describes the copper redhorse as a typical Québécois, wavering between national holidays. “It hesitates between June 24 and July 1 to reproduce. … If it’s warmer, it will spawn on Saint-Jean-Baptiste [Day]. If the water is a bit colder, it will wait until closer to Canada Day,” Branchaud, general manager of SNAP Québec, the province’s chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, said.After spawning, the copper redhorse might hang around the Richelieu River or loop back to the St. Lawrence where grass beds act as food sources. The unique fish is equipped with molars that can break the shells of mollusks it feeds on in underwater beds of grass, located in areas with a gentle current.

This pantry, along with the habitats of other at-risk species such as the western chorus frog, would be damaged by the proposed expansion of the Port of Montreal in Contrecoeur, a town of just under 10,000 about 40 kilometres downriver from the city. For years, if not decades, the Montreal Port Authority has been advancing a plan to increase its capacity by 60 per cent. That proposal got a big boost on Sept. 11, when Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the port expansion could be one of five infrastructure projects fast-tracked via a referral to the Major Projects Office created in June, when the government passed the Building Canada Act through Bill C-5. This referral would position the project in the national interest, promising federal review within two years, with any environmental or other conditions coming only after approval. 

Preliminary work on land for the new port is set to begin this month, as the port authority waits for a Fisheries and Oceans Canada permit to carry out work in the water. The authority received notice that its application was complete on Aug. 28, and should have an answer by Nov. 28. 

The same day Carney unveiled his major project list, the Quebec Environmental Law Centre sued the federal government to challenge the validity of Bill C-5, saying the legislation gives the government excessive powers, which jeopardizes democracy and environmental protection. If the Fisheries and Oceans permit goes through, Branchaud said SNAP Québec also plans to sue the federal government, for violating the Species At Risk Act, since the project infringes on the copper redhorse’s critical habitat. The fish has been included in Quebec’s Loi sur les espèces menacées since 1999, and was listed as endangered under the federal Species At Risk Act in 2007. In 2022, a report from Fisheries and Oceans Canada showed that recovery was possible thanks to efforts including an artificial spawning program — though it hinged on avoiding or mitigating threats to its habitats. 

For its part, the port authority said that, for the time being, given that it is expecting to be granted a Fisheries permit, it doesn’t intend to leverage the Building Canada Act to bypass environmental law. “There is no plan B, there is only a plan A, which is respecting process and the law,” a Montreal Port Authority spokesperson said at a press conference on Oct. 1.

The Contrecoeur expansion would allow for the coming and going of the equivalent of more than one million additional standard-sized shipping containers every year. It’s a $2.3-billion effort to which the federal and provincial governments have committed $150 million and $130 million respectively (sources for the remaining funding are unclear). 

But environmental groups like SNAP and some business experts have questioned the need for the expansion altogether, as overflowing docks seen during the later part of the COVID-19 pandemic are a thing of the past and imports are currently dropping. In 2024, 4.8 per cent fewer containers were handled in the Port of Montreal, the largest in Eastern Canada, than in 2023. The argument from Quebec Premier François Legault and other proponents is that increased capacity is needed to diversify markets amid trade upheaval with the United States. 

Copper redhorse has seen its habitat altered by humans for centuries, and it is hanging on by a thread

A Montreal scientist and fisherman first brought the copper redhorse to the federal government’s attention in 1942. But the fish was important to Indigenous people of the region long before that. “Since the 1950s, the community’s threshold for cumulative impacts to aboriginal fishing rights on the St. Lawrence River has been breached. Many of the impacts likely to flow from the Contrecoeur project will add to existing impacts on water quality, wetlands, fish and fish habitats,” the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke stated in a letter about the port expansion proposal to the federal agency in charge of environmental assessments in 2019. 

The letter said that the Kaniatarowanenne, or St. Lawrence River, has been important to Mohawk “since time immemorial.” Copper redhorse is just one of the foods the river used to provide, the letter said, along with waterfowl, eels, sturgeon, walleye and mussels. Centuries of environmental degradation and development have polluted the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, it said, making fishing and harvesting unsafe and infringing on the constitutional rights of Mohawk people including the residents of Kahnawà:ke, just south of Montreal. 

None of the three First Nations consulted on the proposal agreed to be interviewed by The Narwhal, but in its letter, the council noted dredging damage to the grass beds that copper redhorse feed from was just one of many concerns Kahnawà:ke had about the project. In June, Kahnawà:ke Grand Chief Cody Diabo went to Ottawa to protest C-5, telling APTN Carney declined his request for a meeting. 

Scientists say a confluence of factors likely explain the dwindling numbers of copper redhorse: agriculture that leaks herbicides and pesticides into the water, increased recreational sports in breeding grounds and development. Montreal’s preparations for the Expo 67 world fair saw massive alterations to the landscape, including digging, in-filling and the use of DDT, a pesticide that has since been banned in Canada. Archaeological digs have uncovered remains of the copper redhorse at Indigenous food preparation sites and at an Old Montreal inn, adding fishing to possible stressors. 

Branchaud likens this list to being dealt individual blows: one hit might just make you angry, but a second smack might destabilize you and a third could knock you out. “The copper redhorse has received about 123 blows and we can’t afford to give it another,” he said.  

In 2021, Fisheries and Oceans Canada gave the Montreal Port Authority a list of 330 conditions required for the expansion to move forward. One was that the port authority compensate for grass beds lost to the project, which the authority plans to double in size. Dredging work that will damage critical copper redhorse habitat is set to begin in 2027, though the port authority says the successful establishment of compensatory grass beds at l’Île aux Boeufs, about 25 kilometres upriver, will come first. 

“Over a period of a year and a half to two years, we will be able to develop all the compensatory work to link the copper redhorse to the new grass beds. … We will be keeping an eye on two things: performance and propagation [of the grasses],” Paul Bird, the port authority’s chief commercial officer, said at a press conference in early October. 

In a 2021 SNAP Québec report on the impacts of the project on the copper redhorse, four scientists opposing the proposed Contrecoeur expansion said they feared extinction of the fish. They described the project’s negative effects as underestimated and the benefits of compensatory measures as hypothetical at best. The value of replacement fish habitat is questioned elsewhere in Canada, too: in B.C., scientists found a lack of upkeep hinders success.

Construction and dredging of the St. Lawrence would also create sedimentation and disturb contaminants buried deep, including butyltin compounds — endocrine disruptors that could harm the fish’s already difficult reproduction cycle. There are only a few hundred known individuals of the species of redhorse unique to this busy stretch of the St. Lawrence and a few of its tributaries, which Branchaud has been at the forefront of defending. In 1998, he was part of a successful effort to rename the fish from copper sucker to copper redhorse — a rebrand that paid off in increased media attention and fundraising campaigns, like the launch of a beer called Rescousse, or rescue, with the fish on its label. 

Branchaud sees the port expansion arriving at a time when the copper redhorse is already on life support. He thinks the proposition to relocate part of its critical habitat is so large it could harm other species while not doing much to protect the endangered fish. At the press conference, a Montreal Port Authority spokesperson said, “We plan on taking action on 0.9 hectares of grass beds, equivalent to a soccer field. The copper redhorse’s habitat is many thousands of hectares.”

Branchaud doesn’t agree with that sentiment. “Imagine that the copper redhorse is a person, and parts of its essential habitat are the heart and brain. Would you accept having a small piece of your heart removed? But don’t worry, we’re going to graft another piece to your back,” he said. … “[The spokesperson] is not a scientist and does not understand these concepts.” 

Contrecoeur residents have other concerns about the port expansion, creating the Vigie Citoyenne Port de Contrecoeur/Montérégie group and website. Their quality-of-life worries include the estimated 1,200 heavy trucks that would roll through town on a daily basis, as well as the loss of 20,000 trees and 675 metres of shoreline. 

The municipal government has said it wants the project to work out, citing the economic boost. “However, the most important thing at the moment is for the project to be carried out in compliance with rules, without compromising the natural environment and quality of life of Contrecoeur’s residents. We take our role seriously and want to reassure our citizens that the municipality is vigilant,” it told The Narwhal in an email. 

Along with protecting the endemic fish to which he has devoted a considerable part of his career, top of mind for Branchaud is how the fast-tracking of this project and others through Bill C-5 could circumvent environmental law, even if the port authority says that option isn’t currently on the table. For the biologist, that would go against the values concretized into law in 2002 with the Species At Risk Act. 

“We arrived at this new law that gives us the option to bypass the country’s entire environmental legislative framework that was built over 150 years,” Branchaud said. “The law to build Canada could eventually become the law that destroyed Canada, not only in the literal sense of destroying our natural heritage, but also the democracy we built.”

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Coburn Mountain, standing at 1,133 metres above sea level in the Kennebec River watershed, is beloved by inhabitants of the sparsely populated Maine North Woods. The area’s streams are home to some of the largest populations of brook trout in the state, and the remote forests allow bears, moose, golden eagles and the odd lynx to fly and roam freely.

These are all species that have been spotted by John Nicholas, a New Jersey-born resident of Winthrop, Maine who owns a 45-acre plot of land in the Upper Enchanted Township, about 175 kilometres north of his full-time home. He escapes with his wife Nancy to their cabin on this secluded land during the warm months to go fly-fishing for trout, and he points out that 97 per cent of the brook trout in the United States are found in his state. 

When Nicholas first heard about the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line, known as NECEC, the retired government worker wrote a letter of opposition to the Maine Board of Environmental Protection. In it, he enumerated his reasons for challenging the project, including the fact that the transmission line would become an eyesore in the picturesque mountains and cause irreparable harm to the trout’s habitat. 

“They were going to construct this … transmission line over an excess of 2,000 streams, and the streams, this is where the brook trout spawn,” Nicholas says over the phone. 

From the get-go, the transmission line faced objections and roadblocks from an unlikely opposition that unites conservationists, oil and gas companies, First Nations and residents on both sides of the American political aisle. In 2018, Hydro-Québec, was contracted by the New England-based energy company Avangrid to transport 1.2 gigawatts of hydroelectricity from Québec to Massachusetts. This was meant to be done via a 233-kilometre-long transmission line, being built by Avangrid, also the parent company of Central Maine Power, and Hydro-Québec, which produces 94 per cent of Québec’s power and is owned by the provincial government. It was designed to help Massachusetts reach ambitious emissions-reduction goals.

But the project has been at a standstill since last fall. A referendum last November gave voice to Mainers who voted 60 per cent in favour of stopping the project. At that point, the Québec company had spent in the neighbourhood of $500 million clearing land and building infrastructure, while Avangrid had committed to conserving 40,000 acres of forest, in accordance with the permit conditions of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. 

Last May, the project’s proponents headed to the Maine Supreme Court to challenge the referendum’s legitimacy, and a verdict is expected to be delivered this month, with plenty hanging in the balance. One way or another, how the court sides on this issue will have considerable impact beyond the future of this project. The decision could set a precedent for investments in large-scale projects in the state altogether. A ruling that deems the referendum legitimate wouldn’t necessarily terminate New England Clean Energy Connect — there have been considerations of burying the transmission line through Vermont, as they plan to do where the line crosses Maine’s Kennebec Gorge, at much greater cost. 

However, it would be the end of Hydro-Québec’s work in Maine, according to Serge Abergel, the company’s U.S. chief operating officer who’s seen every bump in the road up close. Sitting in a quiet boardroom in Hydro-Québec’s Montreal headquarters, Abergel’s frustration with the process is under control, but visible. He points out that just 30 per cent of eligible voters showed up to cast a ballot in the referendum.“If you’re in a place where such complex issues can be summarized into one little question and thrown for referendum to people who don’t necessarily have all the tools required [to fully understand the project], and then you get a little turnout … how can you ever be sure?,” he says, questioning how any company could invest in Maine with confidence. 

Lynn St-Laurent, Hydro-Québec’s senior communications advisor, chimes in that time is of the essence too. If Massachusetts is sent back to the drawing board to figure out how to get hydroelectricity into the state, “those are all years and hundreds of millions of dollars that keep coming into the coffers of fossil fuel companies. The more you delay, [the more] that model works for them.” 

Costly campaigns about a clean energy project

The transmission line is meant to supply power for approximately one million homes. It’s an energy switch that, according to the Maine Public Utilities Commission, would lead to an emissions reduction equivalent to removing 700,000 cars from the road, since 46 per cent of New England’s energy comes from gas. But though both Massachusetts and Maine have adopted decarbonization plans to reduce emissions by 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, the grip fossil fuel companies have on both states is still firm. And their funding of the project opponents suggests they’ll fight to keep it that way.

Three energy companies with natural gas facilities in Maine — Calpine, NextEra Energy and Vistra Corp — have helped finance the pro-referendum campaign to the tune of nearly US$28 million. Looking at how much is on the line for fossil fuel producers, it’s a drop in the bucket. A 2020 report by Stepwise Data Research found that these companies stood to lose approximately $5.5 million a month if the New England Clean Energy Connect project was completed. The New England Power Generators Association’s president, Dan Dolan, last year expressed concern to Bloomberg that the flood of Hydro-Québec’s cheap power into the region would become a financial problem for the rest of the local energy sector. The Narwhal asked all three energy companies for interviews, but none replied.

For their part, Hydro-Québec and other transmission line proponents have spent nearly US$50 million fighting the referendum. The combined sum from both sides resulted in the most expensive ballot in Maine’s history. With 412,086 votes cast, each one was worth $428.06.

The project’s opposition ran a campaign that often spread misinformation about the transmission line.  like that coal would be burned to provide energy in Québec to make up for sales to New England. In fact, this transmission line was designed in the first place to distribute Hydro-Québec’s surplus output. 

“What’s frustrating is that you bring science, you bring facts and you’re countered by all sorts of false assertions, allegations. It’s very difficult to push back on them because they’re not based on anything,” Abergel says. 

Spending an astronomical sum on its end of the media campaign didn’t prevent the Canadian company from making blunders, though. The opposition’s attempts to frame it as a foreign corporation profiting from Maine, careless of its wilderness, was helped along by its own missteps.

Take a 2020 ad, in which Hydro-Québec used imagery of picturesque Baxter State Park, featuring the state’s highest mountain, Mount Katahdin, without permission. It was a bad move — that mountain, Coburn Mountain and evergreen-dominated forests have become emblems pitting Maine voters against the energy project, and the transmission line would pass about 95 kilometres from the mountain at its nearest point. The park publicly announced it has no affiliation with the project, but that was just one of Hydro-Québec’s many local representation missteps.  

“Their ads got so much worse. By the end it was like, ‘if you are against this corridor, you’re really someone who supports Trump.’ The anti-corridor people didn’t even need to do any publicity at that point,” says Ellen Baum, president of the board of Friends of Baxter State Park, who wrote an op-ed in the Portland Herald denouncing the unauthorized image use. 

Richard Barringer, the former Maine commissioner of conservation, has supported the transmission line from the get-go. The principal author of the brief submitted to the Supreme Court of Maine, he recalls that Hydro-Québec’s CEO, Sophie Brochu, told him she didn’t only want to build a transmission line, she wanted to build a relationship with the people of Maine. But the COVID-19 pandemic complicated travel for the electricity company’s representatives, making it hard to take that humanized approach.

On the flip side, local opponents including Tom Saviello, the former Republican senator of Maine, had plenty of facetime with locals and were able to grow concerns about environmental preservation. The movement became aligned with well-known environmental organizations, including the state’s chapter of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Council of Maine. 

Barringer doesn’t see logging and building on the transmission project’s right-of-way as a conservation issue. “It is not what I consider wilderness. It’s a … for the most part, very well managed industrial forest, and it’s been that for close to 150 years,” he says. 

Barringer denounces what he considers misunderstanding and misinformation woven throughout the referendum process. “It doesn’t allow for rational discourse, it almost always turns upon emotional appeals to fear, anger and distress, and that’s what the media campaign did,” he says. “It just appealed to the fear of loss of this pristine wilderness, and mostly anger at Central Maine Power Company,” he says. 

Before the referendum was in the works, frustration with the power company had long since been brewing, he says, namely because of poorly organized and rolled out new billing and metering systems that made consumer bills skyrocket. 

The fact that Central Maine is a subsidiary of Avangrid, which is itself owned by the Spanish company Iberdrola, and Hydro-Québec is Canadian, helped line up a jingoistic one-two punch for the oil and gas companies through the groups their deep pockets support. Though these energy corporations are American, they are based in Texas and Florida, but that didn’t stop the message of keeping energy supply in-state from being spread, in part by a political action committee called Mainers for Local Power.

It also didn’t help the project that many felt Maine was being treated as a drive-through for a foreign company looking to get to a neighbouring state. “I think that they [see] it as just an extension cord from Massachusetts. I think there’s resentment about that,” Nicholas points out.

Long-standing local resentments proved a hot button to push, too. “There’s a very strong anti-Massachusetts feeling in this state because we once belonged to Massachusetts, and getting away from it was painful,” says Barringer, who saw these negative sentiments firsthand when he worked in the legislature. 

A video on the National Resources of Maine website calls the project a bad deal for Maine, stating that bringing Canadian power to Massachusetts would be detrimental for locally produced green energy and the sector’s related jobs. However, antipathy towards Massachusetts disregards the fact that New England has a pooled system of energy distribution, meaning the electricity would be used by Maine too.

Back in Canada, Hydro-Québec isn’t beloved across the board, either. Indigenous communities have objected to the company’s proposals and projects on their territories for many decades, including the flooding of (Pessamit) Innu Nation lands to build a dam in the 1960s and ’70s. 

Now, five Québec First Nations — Lac Simon, Kitcisakik and Abitiwinni (Anishnabeg Nation), Wemotaci (Atilamekw Nation) and Pessamit (Innu Nation) — officially oppose the transmission line going through their lands. In a press release from July 2021, they state Hydro-Québec and the Government of Québec “persist in ignoring the ancestral and constitutional rights of our First Nations on whose lands more than 36 per cent of the electricity destined for export to the United States is produced, without any of our communities having been consulted, compensated or accommodated.” 

The political attaché for Lac Simon, Ghislain Néquado, told The Narwhal the nations’ position remains unchanged. 

Barringer adds that his backing of Hydro-Québec isn’t unconditional and relies on the fact that they are using existing structures. “If we were starting up de novo, I could not support what Hydro-Québec did,” he says.  

NECEC opponents aren’t convinced hydroelectricity is clean energy

Abergel objects to what he considers untruths about hydroelectric energy that weighed on the referendum process. One of these is about the risk of methane releases from the reservoirs that supply Hydro-Québec’s power. 

It’s true that methane is released when hydroelectric dams are created by flooding forests and riverbanks, and the plants present decompose. But a 2021 study, co-written by a Hydro-Québec scientist, on greenhouse gas emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs, argues this is less of an issue in northern regions than tropical locales because there is limited vegetation to decompose. St-Laurent pointed The Narwhal towards the study, published by Professor Annie Levasseur from Montreal’s École de Technologie Supérieur, which also found that cold water contains higher oxygen levels, which result in carbon dioxide being created primarily rather than methane during the breakdown process. 

St-Laurent, Hydro-Québec’s senior communications advisor, told The Narwhal that research shows greenhouse gas emissions are most acute for the first five-to-10 years when the affected flora is actively decomposing. Hydro-Québec’s facilities were constructed mostly in the 1970s, so affected vegetation has long since completed its cycle. St-Laurent said while the company can’t entirely rule it out, “we currently have no plans to build a new hydropower plant. There are no such projects in the project cue — and keep in mind these projects take 10-to-15 years to design and build.” 

“We can’t exclude any new construction in the future. However, as it stands, we’re focusing our efforts on energy efficiency, increasing the power of some of our existing facilities and developing new wind projects.” 

Barringer acknowledges that other sources of clean energy exist, but said the amount of hydroelectricity Hydro-Québec can provide is needed to support more intermittent renewables. “You can have a mixture of things — greater battery capacity, more conservation, more solar, more wind — but you need a certain amount of baseload capacity,” he says. 

Abergel said that’s why the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line is crucial for meeting decarbonization goalposts in the not-so-distant future. “If it takes 10 years to get a project like this permitted and built … we have less than 10 years to act right now. And we need many more like this,” he says.

The strife over New England Clean Energy Connect is a clear example of how the fight against  climate change has fractured and become more complex. The line no longer runs tidily between believers and deniers, battling to find a middle ground while there’s still enough left to conserve. 

Updated on July 18, 2022, at 9:22 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to correct a line stating that cold water contains lower levels of oxygen. In fact, cold water contains higher levels of dissolved oxygen, which helps biomass in hydroelectric reservoirs decompose into carbon dioxide rather than methane.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada’s new environment and climate change minister has some first-hand experience when it comes to living in a resource town that goes through boom and bust cycles.

Steven Guilbeault, 51, hails from La Tuque, a small town of 11,000 people in north-central Quebec, about 290 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

As a young boy, he climbed a tree to stop loggers from cutting it down — perhaps foreshadowing a 2001 stunt, scaling the CN Tower to draw attention to the pressing issue of climate change.

In his new role, Guilbeault will have his work cut out for him. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has assigned the minister 40 distinct tasks in a mandate letter that is perhaps the longest one sent to any minister in the federal cabinet. It all means that Guilbeault will need to work with other federal cabinet ministers and stakeholders to assist energy workers in transitioning away from fossil fuel jobs.

He tells The Narwhal that it’s a mission that hits home.

“I come from a small pulp and paper town, mono-industrial town near Lac Saint-Jean which has gone through a series of shock waves because of what has happened in the forestry industry,” says Guilbeault, who took over the federal portfolio in October. 

Guilbeault studied industrial relations, computer sciences and then political science at the Université de Montréal in the early ‘90s. While there, climate activism started to shape Guilbeault’s career and, in 1993, he and several colleagues established Action for Solidarity, Equity, Environment and Development — the forebearer to Équiterre, Quebec’s leading environmental organization. He later acted as Greenpeace Canada’s director and campaign manager for 10 years, which spurred him to the highest point of the Toronto skyline. 

Though we both now live in Guilbeault’s Montreal riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie, I speak to the minister over Zoom as the latest wave of COVID-19 is sweeping across Quebec. Guilbeault’s embattled bicycle hangs on the wall behind him. 

Last November, when the minister appeared on a hybrid session of parliament with this same background, Conservative MP Ed Fast accused him of making a political statement. After I comment on the fact that he hasn’t changed his decor, Guilbeault quickly points out that his — year-round — chosen mode of transportation never made waves during his two years as heritage minister. 

But today, Guilbeault is the driver of the Trudeau government’s climate plan, putting some leaders, oil and gas companies and their allies on edge. Meanwhile, some of his former allies say he betrayed the environmental movement by joining the governing Liberal party in 2019 after it orchestrated the takeover of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and expansion project.

“Sometimes you decide to work with people with whom you don’t necessarily agree on everything, but if you find common ground, and if you think that by working together you can move the dial along, then you do it.”

I spoke with the minister about a looming ban on plastics, slashing pollution from industry, being labelled a climate alarmist for recognizing what’s now common sense, and how the word “compromise” became a go-to word in his vocabulary. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You once stood side-by-side with CEOs of oil companies on a stage as Rachel Notley unveiled her government’s climate change plan for Alberta. How has that experience prepared you for your current role as environment minister and what do you hope to accomplish with the oil and gas industry?

It wasn’t the first time I worked with industry, it wasn’t the first time I worked with oil companies, it certainly wasn’t the first time I worked with provincial or other levels of government. But I think it certainly shows that I can work with people who have views that are not my own. Certainly it shows that I’ve worked with the Alberta government before and that I’m perfectly happy and capable of doing it again. And in terms of how I intend to work with oil companies, I mean I intend to work with these companies or the sector as I will with any other sector. 

We have to decarbonize our society and that includes transportation, and we’ve made a number of commitments on that, some previous to the last election campaign but certainly since then as well. We want to decarbonize the steel sector, the cement sector, the auto sector, the aluminium sector and the oil and gas sector. So I will be working with them as I would be working with others. 

It is true that oil and gas and transportation are our two biggest challenges in Canada, which is why when you look at our approach, you’re seeing more measures towards these sectors than towards others. Not because others aren’t important, we’re doing stuff in the building sector, we’re doing stuff on landfill, but both these sectors are 50 per cent of our emissions so they should receive a large portion of our attention. And for those who said that the cap was unfairly targeting the oil and gas sector, I’d said look at transportation, we are putting a cap on the transportation sector as well because at least for light duty vehicles, new sales will have to be zero emissions, 100 per cent by 2035, so in essence we’re also putting a cap on that sector as well. 

In your recent ministerial mandate letters, there are several ministers who have been tasked with setting up a Just Transition Fund for workers in oil-producing provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador. What is your message to workers whose jobs might not exist, two, five or 10 years from now and do you think your government is working fast enough to help them? 

Our society has gone through a number of technological transformations since the industrial revolution. It’s not the first, unlikely to be the last one. And I mean ultimately just transition is about how do we adapt our workforce to changing technological conditions in the workplace. We could not be talking about climate change and still be having conversations about the need to make sure that people are properly trained, people are properly ready for the jobs that will be in vogue in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years. 

The difference this time is that I think in many cases before we didn’t really see [technological changes] coming or we didn’t want to see them coming, this time we do. We know it’s happening, it’s happening around the world, it’s certainly happening in Canada and, in answer to your question, are we doing enough? I’d say not yet. I’d say we need to do more and the fact that you’re seeing this in many ministers’ mandate letters is a clear sign that this is a priority for our government. 

Speaking of the mandate letters, you might have the longest of all the ministers in cabinet.

I’ve heard, I haven’t compared them, but yeah. 

Something like three dozen items. Have you given yourself any personal deadlines or goals of how to achieve everything on your list?

Well, I mean some deadlines are self-imposed. We have a commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2023. So in some cases they’re very clear. In others they’re not necessarily as clear, but on a number of either legislative or regulatory measures we want to implement, we have said we want to do this in the very near future. As a minority government, it would be optimistic to think that we have more than two years. We might, but at this point I’m not assuming that this is the case, so I have to do everything that I can to ensure that we deploy as many of the measures that we’ve announced. Certainly on climate, but on plastics, we want to see movement very soon on that, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, I have announced we’ll be tabling the bill, a similar version to the one that was tabled by minister Wilkinson, that will happen early in the New Year when the House resumes. 

Are you able to speak more about the movement on plastics that we’re going to be seeing more of soon?

Well, we had committed to present regulations by the end of 2021. [Editor’s note: the regulations were published on December 25, with public comment open until March 5.] The initial rounds of consultation we did while elaborating the regulations, we received something like 24,000 submissions, which is probably one of the highest number we’ve ever received on anything at Environment Canada. And the overwhelming majority of these comments were in favour of governments doing more to combat plastic pollution. So we will be moving ahead with banning a certain number of single-use plastic items. 

And, rightly so, people are focusing on that, but I think there is also a broader conversation that needs to happen in this country about how we recycle. We’re at roughly nine per cent of plastics being recycled, how do we get to 90 per cent by the end of the decade?

And that work has started, last week at the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, plastic pollution was on the agenda; How do we better co-ordinate between the federal government, provinces and municipalities to ensure that we have higher levels of recycling to ensure that the plastics that we’re using in this country are not only recyclable but also recycled all across the country, which is not the case right now. So banning certain substances is super important, but we also need to do better on the recycling side. 

This past year, as we all know, B.C. has experienced some of its worst wildfires quickly followed by record disastrous torrential rain, landslides, flooding. Do you have climate adaptation plans for these kinds of issues and similar ones to come elsewhere?

Yes. Well, you know, there are those instances in life where you don’t want to be right and many of us 30 years ago were talking about climate change and talking about upcoming climate impacts and people were saying you’re out to lunch, you’re an alarmist creating problems that are not there. And 30 years ago, scientists with the information that was available, thought that the type of things we’re seeing today would happen in 2050 or something like that, but it’s happening now, unfortunately. 

Fortunately, our government has invested around $4 billion over the last few years in various climate adaptation and resilience programs. That money has started to be deployed. We’ve started investing in nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change. Just west of Montreal the big park we’re doing with the City of Montreal, this park was done interestingly enough using infrastructure dollars. Traditionally in Canada, infrastructure dollars were for concrete and pavement and now we’re using this to build parks that will help us alleviate spring floods. And we’ve done a series of these projects and we will be doing more and more of those. 

More broadly, at the beginning of [2021], we started consultations on a national adaptation strategy. There are five working tables that are composed mainly, at this point, of experts in the field. And the federal government is present at these tables, but we’re not chairing them, it is chaired by experts. We’re looking at different elements of the adaptation, of a national adaptation strategy, infrastructure, human health, resiliency. These consultations are coming to an end soon and then we will start working with provinces, territories and municipalities, Indigenous Peoples too. And it’s deliberately not called a federal adaptation strategy, it’s a national adaptation strategy and we want to have something agreed upon with provinces and other stakeholders, territories by the end of 2022 so that it can guide our work in the coming years. 

The prime minister gave you until March to come up with a plan to meet Canada’s 2030 climate change goals. By the time people read this article, that will be less than three months away. What do you think the hardest part of meeting this goal will be?

I think the work we’re doing right now is some of the hardest work we’ll have to do. … We’ve been able to remove what would otherwise have been 30 million tonnes [of emissions projected for 2030], which is almost equivalent to half of what Quebec emits every year. So our plan is starting to work, but we need to do more and we need to do it faster, clearly. That’s certainly a message we heard during the last election campaign. 

I could talk to you about X measure or that sector, but ultimately, take Clean Fuel Standards for example. We’ve been having public consultations on this for five years. One of the things I told stakeholders when I was in Toronto recently and then in Calgary, one of the things I told the department as well is we don’t have that luxury anymore. We don’t have five years to consult every time we want to introduce a new measure. I told you earlier that my timeline is two years, so in the next two years, more stringent methane regulations, zero emission vehicle standards, net-zero grid by 2035, cap on oil and gas, and obviously phasing out fossil fuel [subsidies], all of these things must be in place in the coming 18 months. I mean, maybe 2024, but that’s the type of timeframe we have to work with. And it’s going to be tough because, on the one hand, some people are going to criticize us for not giving them enough time to be consulted, but the state of climate change is such that we need to learn to do things faster and that’s certainly true of us as a government, but it’s going to be true of many stakeholders. 

[After this article was published, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole seized on this section of the interview alleging that the minister had said he wanted to phase out fossil fuels in 18 months. The minister later posted a clarification on Twitter explaining that he was referring to a government promise to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.]

I mean, who knows what’s going to happen by 2100. I think we’ve made a commitment to being carbon-neutral, like most of our trading partners and the vast majority of emitters, by 2050. Some like India have said 2070. Ultimately, what is important is what does the atmosphere see? And if the atmosphere sees less emissions, then we’re succeeding, which is why we’re putting a cap on pollution. 

So your tight timeframe ironically reflects…

Yes, time is not my friend. 

You’ve now been on the job as the environment minister for over a month now. In some of your recent comments to journalists you have stressed that you are still an activist, but that you’re taking on a role as a minister for all Canadians. What kind of compromises have you had to make so far, and how do you justify accepting a job that requires you to make compromises on the positions you took publicly in the past?

Even before coming into politics, I would often compromise. I mean, when you’re with a group of people at Équiterre or Greenpeace, did I get 100 per cent of what I wanted 100 per cent of the time? Of course not. People have different views in terms of how to do things, tactics, strategies, so you compromise. I think the key thing is never to compromise on your values and on what you believe in. As a father of four, I can tell you I never get 100 per cent of what I want and if that’s true in my family, I cannot understand how it could not be true in a country of 38 million people. 

So I mean compromises are a part of what it means to live in a society, but you can’t compromise on your values. You can find accommodation on the implementation of things. 

Earlier when we started talking you referenced when I was on stage with premier Notley and the contentious issue for many of us environmentalists who decided to be on stage was the cap on oil and gas. If you recall, the cap was set at a higher level than the level of emissions in those days in Alberta. Some environmentalists really criticized me and others who were on stage saying that the cap was too high and of course I would have preferred a cap that was lower. On the other hand, industry would have preferred a cap that was higher than what they got, but overall I felt that everything that premier Notley was proposing at the time, a price on pollution, phasing out coal, more renewables, more efficiency, the cap, I thought that a higher cap than what I would have wanted was better than no cap at all and the sky being the limit. I’m willing to make those types of compromises. But never about what I believe in. 

Oil Change International released a report last October saying that Canadian fossil fuel producers receive more public funding and renewable energy funding than any other G20 country. And now you’re meant to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2023. The governments in Canada have been promising to phase out these types of subsidies ever since former prime minister Stephen Harper signed on to a G20 commitment in 2009. So what makes this time different? 

As you know, the timeline that G20 countries set for themselves to phase out these subsidies is 2025. So when people say you haven’t met that promise, it’s true, but we’re not in 2025 and we’ve decided to do it two years earlier. What’s different? Umm. Well it’s in my mandate letter and the mandate letter of the finance minister. It’s an instruction that the prime minister gave to us, it’s a campaign promise. So not delivering is simply not an option. 

And since we’re talking about Stephen Harper, in 2015 he made a commitment at the G7 to end the use of fossil fuels by 2100. How come Harper was able to make a promise to end fossil fuel use, and Justin Trudeau is avoiding doing that?

As you know, natural resource extraction or usage is largely a provincial jurisdiction. But the Supreme Court in the carbon pricing case clearly stated that when it comes to pollution, and climate change pollution, the federal government has a role to play. It’s not a magic wand that we can wave any way we want. We have to use this power with clairvoyance, but that’s why we’re going after pollution. And then, we’ll see what happens to production. 

Rightly so, when we talk about climate change in Canada, we do talk about oil and gas production, because we’re a large producer, but we also have to look at what we’re doing on the demand side for these products. We’re investing record levels in transit, never in the history of this country have more public transit projects been in the works. Three hundred projects under construction now, about 1,000 in preparation, what we’re doing on electrification, what we’re doing on emissions for light duty vehicles, these measures will have significant impacts on the demand, and the net zero grid by 2035, these will have significant impact on fossil fuel demand in Canada. 

And of course, some would say well, Canadian companies can just export their oil to other countries who aren’t doing those things. Theoretically they could, but the reality is that what we’re doing here in Canada, we’re seeing similar things happening in the U.S. and in Europe and clearly some countries are ahead of us [on electric vehicles], like Norway, but one out of two electric vehicles that are sold in the world is sold in China right now. So my question to these people is who, where will the demand be if all the major economies of the world are reducing their demand for fossil fuels? I think, we, companies and provinces that are highly dependent on these resources need to start thinking and looking at what the world will look like in 10, 15, 20 years from now. To think that the past will guarantee what will happen in the future is not necessarily the most responsible thing for these people to be doing. 

Over the past 20 years, you went to many UN climate summits and often criticized the Canadian government for not doing its fair share on the international stage. What do you think activist Steven Guilbeault in 1997 would have told Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault at the 2021 summit in Glasgow?  

I mean in those days we had no pricing, we had no investment in transit, very little investment to speak of in clean tech, no regulation, certainly no legislation to phase out coal use in Canada by 2030, no regulation on methane, we weren’t doing anything on EVs. If you look at my track record, I’ve never shied away from saying congratulations to a government or a company that I felt deserved it. But, I would also say you’ve got to do better and you’ve got to do it faster. 

How will the Canada Water Agency and updated Canada Water Act address Indigenous Peoples’ access to clean water, which is something that came up a lot recently in elections?

Well, I mean, I can only answer this at 20,000 feet because we only started working on this, but clearly ensuring that everyone in Canada has access to safe, drinkable, fresh water is a priority. As you know, we’ve managed to lift a little over two thirds of the boil water advisories that were in place when we came into power in 2015, and we’re working to eliminate the others in the coming years. So how exactly will the water agency deal with that is a good question, one that I can’t really answer right now, but certainly Indigenous Peoples will be consulted on the elaboration and the mandate of this agency. 

[Editor’s note: Before his 2015 election, Trudeau promised to end all boil water advisories in Indigenous communities by March 2021.]

There are other former environmental activists that have taken on ministerial roles in government, if we think of Peter Garrett in Australia and Nicolas Hulot in France. When Hulot resigned, I’m sure you know, he said he could no longer keep lying and that he hoped the government would learn something from his resignation. Are there lessons that you take from these people who’ve followed similar paths?

As a Francophone, you can bet that I’ve been asked about Nicolas Hulot about 100 times and I know him. When I was at Équiterre, Équiterre worked with Fondation Nicolas Hulot pour la Nature, certainly at the time I think he was nominated ambassador for the French government in the lead up to Paris in 2015. 

I can’t speak on behalf of Nicolas and I don’t know what were the dynamics within the French government when he was there. He said he felt alone, I certainly don’t feel alone. I mean you now have the natural resource minister, who was environment minister, who was before that minister for fisheries and oceans. You have the minister for fisheries and oceans who used to be the B.C. environment minister and someone who did tree-planting as a living, like as a business, before coming into politics. You look at the mandate letter of pretty much all of my colleagues at the cabinet table and everyone has the responsibility to work on climate change and that was the case in 2019 as well. 

When you look at the 2020 Climate Change plan, the enhanced climate change plan, when you look at the number of ministries and ministers that were involved in this plan, they obviously had environment, natural resources, transportation, finance, economic development, I’m forgetting some I’m sure, international trade, it has become a whole of government approach. Again, I don’t know how things were for Nicolas with the Macron government, but what I can tell you is that I have a lot of allies and I have a lot of support around the cabinet table when I’m trying to move forward legislation or regulation, and that makes a whole difference.

Updated on January 12, 2022 at 12:58 p.m ET: This story was updated to provide additional context regarding comments made by the minister in the interview about the phase out of fossil fuels. The minister says he meant to say that he intends to phase out fossil fuel subsidies over the next 18 months. Minister Guibeault posted his own comments towards this on Twitter, which have been linked to in this story.

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