Election Issues
We Cannot Leave Our Fate in the Hands of Cartel Party Governments
Montreal, climate strike action, September 23, 2022
The demands of the youth and working people of Quebec for climate justice are prominent on their minds at a time disasters are hitting the people of the world, including eastern Canada and Quebec and the Legault government's "2030 Plan for a Green Economy" is comprised of more schemes to put even more money into the hands of wealthy private interests.
The youth, who are front and centre at the actions to humanize
the natural environment and often the main organizers, have no
illusions about party governments in power when it comes to climate
change. Their hopes that courts would defend them were also dashed in
July 2022 when the Supreme Court
of Canada refused to hear their application to institute a class action
against the government of Canada on behalf of all Quebec residents aged
35 and under "for the insufficiency of its actions in the face of the
climate crisis."[1]
The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) website talks about "Initiatives to fight climate change," including reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the "purchase and sale of GHG emission rights" by large corporations. This refers to aluminum smelters, foundries, steel mills, cement plants, pulp and paper mills, oil refineries, mines, maritime, land and air transport companies, which are all major polluters.
For those who are familiar with this scheme, it's called Quebec's cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emission allowances (SPEDE), a carbon market including Quebec and California. What it means is that companies in these sectors of the economy benefit from the right to pollute. The only condition is that if they exceed a certain threshold set by the government, they must purchase credits to compensate for having exceeded the limit.[2]
In other words, these companies can continue to pollute as long as they pay a fine. When this system was developed in 2006 by the Jean Charest Liberal government, the claim was that it would still encourage large polluters to seek technological solutions to reduce pollution. And who pays for these technological changes? The answer is that the money is to be taken from the Green Fund set up by the Quebec government at that time. On a yearly basis, large sums of money, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, are generated by the various companies and individuals entitled to participate in the "buying and selling of GHG emission rights" at auctions held four times a year between Quebec and California.
This "Green Fund," now called the Electrification and Climate Change Fund (ECCF), is a windfall for the big polluters who can in turn request subsidies from the various Quebec government departments to supposedly reduce annual GHG emissions. Thus, in the documents made public in the past on the Green Fund by the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, we learn that for the period between 2008 and 2013, transportation monopolies such as Canada Steamship Lines, Bombardier and CN, mining monopolies such as Rio Tinto and the Alouette aluminum smelter, pulp and paper mills owned by Kruger and others, have been able to pay for ships, locomotives, the bulk transport of alumina, the transport of wood at the expense of the Government of Quebec's Ministry of Transport, to the tune of millions of dollars. In other words, the amounts paid in fines by these large industries for the right to pollute are returned to them in the form of state subsidies.[3]
Some industrial GHG emitters are even exempted from paying
these fines to the Quebec government because they are "exposed to
strong national or international competition." As revealed last August,
89 companies in the pulp and paper, mining, aluminum, metallurgy,
cement, pelletizing and steel
industries are exempt from the air and water environmental standards
contained in the law. Many of these companies are owned by
foreign-owned oligopolies including: Rio Tinto, Arcelor Mittal,
Lafarge, Tata Steel, Kruger, Cascades and Resolute Forest Products.[4]
It should come as no surprise that once the election is over, a similar scenario will be proposed by the party in power to oppose the reduction of toxic metal emissions from the Glencore-owned Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda. Already, between 2009 and 2014, this mining corporation received over $1 million in government subsidies from the Green Fund for its operations in Deception Bay, Nunavik, where it extracts nickel from four underground mines, including Raglan and Katinniq.[5]
Through Bill 44, An Act mainly to ensure effective governance of the fight against climate change and to promote electrification, sponsored and adopted in October 2020 by the Legault government, it is now the Minister of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change who has full powers to distribute the sums generated by the Green Fund to wealthy private interests, without having to disclose to whom these amounts are distributed. Thus, Radio-Canada reported on December 9, 2021, in an article entitled "Le Fonds vert toujours aussi opaque [The Green Fund As Opaque As Ever]," that the Quebec government's Public Accounts provide only a highly summarized overview of the Green Fund. "For the 2020-2021 fiscal year, more than $1 billion was spent by the various departments without us knowing exactly why. During the same period, revenues obtained mainly from a gas tax were $761 million," Radio-Canada reports.[6]
On the CAQ's website under the heading "The CAQ on the environment: best record in history?," there is not a word about the fact that in December 2021 the Legault government, at the request of the narrow private interests which control mining corporations such as Glencore and Vale, arbitrarily increased the air emissions nickel standard fivefold, in contradiction with the World Health Organization's international standards, the norm accepted by the international scientific community.
Phrases such as "developing a green economy" are used to imply that the methods used are sustainable and respectful of the natural and social environment, when in reality they in no way respond to the demands of the people for a healthy and safe environment and for accountability for decisions taken in the past by the party in power.
The path taken by the cartel party slated to form a majority Legault government is disastrous because it is under the control of narrow supranational private interests. It is in contradiction with building a self-sufficient, diversified economy, one which is under the control of the people and in the service of their needs and well-being. All of this reveals that the protection of the natural and social environment and the prevention of climate disasters require that it is the people who must take up the renewal of the decision-making process at all levels.
Fernand Deschamps is the PMLQ candidate in Verdun.
Notes
1. "La Cour suprême refuse d'entendre l'appel d'Environnement Jeunesse, Le Devoir, July 29, 2022
2. "Le marché du carbone au Québec : mythe et réalité -- Fernand Deschamps," Chantier politique, May 25, 2015
3. PAREGES -- List of Accepted Projects 2008-2013, Ministère des transports du Québec
6. "Le Fonds vert toujours aussi opaque," Radio-Canada, December 9, 2021
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 21 - September
30, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520213.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca