A contentious forestry bill was finally overturned by the right-leaning populist government of Quebec, Canada’s French-speaking province. This proposed piece of legislation, known as Bill 97, aimed to significantly increase the amount of timber that the province’s forests extract.
At least one-third of the province’s forests would have been open to logging but also would have permitted other activities, including recreation, while another third would have been for private industrial logging interests. Conservation would have been the last third.
Civil society and indigenous people vehemently opposed the bill. Months of organized, broad-based resistance paid off.
The fact that the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) coalition’s priorities were even being considered when it was proposed to begin with indicates that the bill was abandoned. In order to protect the interests of the logging industry, it thinks it is appropriate to bulldoze over environmental laws, climate change, and indigenous rights. Even if it officially denounces the president of the United States, it is clear that it supports Trumpian politics.
The fight against Bill 97 can teach us a lot about how to prevent the passage of similar legislation and Indigenous voices from being ignored once more.
People win when they unite across differences.
The Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL) immediately rejected Bill 97 when it was introduced. It claimed that it had been consulting with the government on forest management for more than a year and that its recommendations had been utterly ignored. As it sought to reclaim unceded lands for the logging industry, the bill directly violated the rights of indigenous people.
The release of Bill 97, which means “our land,” was a blow to the Nehirowisiw people (also known as Atikamekw), for the Nehirowisiw people’s long-standing fight to preserve their relationships with Nitaskinan, which is located 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Montreal. The deliberate destruction of both the physical conditions of their existence and the foundations of their cultural worlds would have been equivalent to a form of cultural genocide if the legislation had been passed.
Innu, Abenaki, and Anishinaabe land defenders joined the Nehirowisiw to form the MAMO Alliance, which saw the bill’s destructive potential while it was still being drafted. In both the Nehirowisiw and Innu languages, MAMO means “together.”
The alliance sent eviction notices to 11 logging companies that were operating without their permission after the bill was introduced. It also raised tipis as symbols of resistance and solidarity. They organized protests and imposed roadblockades.
Quebec’s civil society also took to the streets. Environmental organizations, wildlife biologists, fish and game retailers, labor unions, and artists also made comments. The blocksades were supported by Montreal’s university students and social justice organizations.
AFNQL, unions representing 20, 000 forestry workers, and environmental organizations co-wrote a public statement just days before the bill was scrapped, denouncing the government’s decision to ignore their criticism.
Due to this inter-societal mobilization, the government was forced to rely on its customary rhetoric, which pits “unreasonable and hostile natives” against the well-being of settler society.
Bulldozer environmentalism is a real threat.
Bill 97 also made a case for bulldozer environmentalism, which claims that destroying nature can lead to positive environmental effects.
Bill 97’s introduction contained assertions that it had unsubstantiated environmental benefits. For instance, Maite Blanchette Vezina, the CAQ minister of natural resources and forests, claimed shortly before the bill was overturned that doing intensive logging in priority management zones would “benefit” the forests from the effects of climate change.
However, environmental research  disagrees with the idea that old-growth and mature forests can store more carbon for energy. For instance, a recent study found that older forests can help sequester significant amounts of carbon, while older forests can store significantly more carbon per hectare than younger forests.
We saw a well-known colonial mindset that views land as a purely economic resource and not as a living ecosystem under the pretext of Bill 97’s environmental concerns. A colonial, extractive, and Eurocentric view of the world is expressed by splitting forests into zones to re-engineer them for economic purposes. This contrasts with indigenous knowledge of the land as a whole. This implies that indigenous worldviews are incompatible with protecting one area of land only to destroy another.
In this regard, Bill 97 is comparable to other obscene legislation that has recently been introduced. The Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, or Bill 5, by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, which purports to stifle environmental protections and respect for constitutionally protected Indigenous rights, is just one example. Additionally, it gives the government the authority to establish special economic zones where existing social and environmental laws can be lifted.
Similar legislation applied at the national level is Bill C-5, which would allow the government to quickly advance significant projects while avoiding environmental protections.
In the name of national security and a Trumpian “build, baby, build” mentality, such bills aim to give private industries the authority to decide how to exploit public lands. Canada is rushing headfirst to hand over land and grant extractive industries the freedom to operate as they please, from “sovereign” artificial intelligence data centers to liquified natural gas pipelines and mining projects.
In the process, it even goes beyond the traditional performative theater of consultations with First Nations and other stakeholders, passing gag orders, stifling dissent, disregarding legal decisions, completely disregarding environmental impact assessments or parliamentary debates, and disregarding previous laws relating to indigenous peoples’ rights.
Bill 97’s zombie phase: preparation and preparation
It is premature to celebrate Bill 97’s end. Within a year, a revised forestry reform bill is anticipated. In the months to come, the CAQ government is likely to make proposals that are comparable or even more draconian.
For this reason, advocacy needs to continue and concentrate on removing industry-priority logging areas. Indigenous people, ecologists, labor unions, and rural outfitters who live and work on the land and are most familiar with the forest must form truly cooperative partnerships.
Quebec’s forests should not be able to be managed by the government and its supporters of the industry. Under no circumstances should logging be permitted in a habitat where threatened species, like woodland caribou, are endangered.
Finally, it is necessary to give priority to indigenous communities’ territorial territorial rights as part of forest care.
Not to say that trees shouldn’t be cut for wood should be a part of responsible forestry reform. It would be disastrous if plastic and concrete were to be used to replace wood products. Responsible timber management is possible and achievable while promoting forest regeneration.
Forest management refers to caring for the land as a creator of life rather than just as a creator of wealth in the face of global ecological crises that result in wildfires, climate change, mass extinction, and threaten our collective well-being in the future. It’s not the planet that needs to adapt to the economy, according to renowned Canadian ecoologist David Suzuki. The opposite is true.
Source: Aljazeera
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