Unlike the song My beautiful fir tree, king of the forestswe see that at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests, the king is the forestry industry.
She is in the process of giving us a nasty blow thanks to all the power granted to her by this ministry and her minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina.
The Society for Nature and Parks (SNAP Quebec) is right to request an investigation.
Forest regime
This has been going on for decades, but the current reform of the forest regime may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
The opacity of the process as well as its content are strongly denounced by workers and their unions, environmental groups, indigenous communities and several scientists.
Only the industry is rubbing its hands.
No wonder, since the recommended solutions seem to come straight from the brief of the Quebec Forest Industry Council (CIFQ) submitted during the process of reflection on the future of the forest!
At his request, the ministry is abandoning ecosystem management to increase harvests in the short term, regardless of the medium-term impoverishment of workers and biodiversity.
Not to mention the rights of indigenous communities on their territory which they are right to want to protect.
So much the worse for the disappearance of the caribou! It is just one of the many consequences of poor management of our forests.
Asian influence
The forestry lobby is one of the most powerful in Quebec. We obviously think of the CIFQ where Domtar plays a leading role.
Five members of the CIFQ board of directors represent Domtar (via its Resolute Forest Products sector), including its vice-president.
You should know that Domtar now belongs to a single owner, Indonesian billionaire Jackson Wijaya, founder of Paper Excellence Group.
Its short-term profits are its main concern.
Boreal Forest Alliance
The forestry industry intervenes extremely effectively with regional elected officials to the point of having managed to make them believe that its interests are also those of the forestry communities!
She made the Boreal Forest Alliance the spokesperson for her ideas with the government of Quebec and Canada.
Bringing together municipal elected officials from Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean and the North Shore, including many prefects, the Boreal Forest Alliance is funded by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
So by us the taxpayers!
Its positions, modeled on those of the industry, have been repeatedly denounced by experts, in particular because they spread false information on the status of the woodland caribou and on the role of forestry in reducing GHGs.
More recently, the Boreal Forest Alliance managed to obtain a right of veto for the MRCs and cities affected by protected area projects submitted to the Ministry of the Environment.
This indirectly gives control to the forestry industry!
It seems to me that we’ve been fooled enough. It is time to launch an investigation into the toxic influence of the forestry industry on our public policies.
Let’s leave future generations with a forest heritage that will allow them to benefit from it in turn.
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