Allison Hanes: In a climate emergency, Quebec’s leaders should debate on the environment

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Sixteen minutes.

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That was all the time Quebec’s political party leaders devoted to the defining crisis of our time during the TVA debate of the 2018 election campaign. Maybe there were a few extra minutes tacked on during the face-offs hosted by Radio-Canada or English-language media consortium, but certainly not enough given what is at stake.

If many environmentalists lamented that climate change was a major blindspot when Quebecers were preparing to vote that failed, the extent to which it was given short shrift became glaringly apparent days after election day. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released one of a series of alarming reports warning that the worst effects of global warming would be felt sooner and at a lower temperature than previously believed. It also cautioned that the world was running out of time to change course.

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Since then, the scientific consensus has only become more dire, the tipping point even closer than imagined. But that clanging alarm bell in the late fall of 2018 caused a lot of ordinary Quebecers who hadn’t been paying close enough attention to wake up to the looming threat — and wonder what they’d done.

Just as concern about the climate emergency went mainstream, Quebec elected the Coalition Avenir Québec, a party without much of a credible plan to address the catastrophe. Newly minted Premier François Legault was considering downgrading Quebec’s emissions reduction targets to more “realistic” levels and had pledged to expand highways.

Four years have flown by and with another election on the horizon this fall, Equiterre and a coalition of environmental organizations, made a pitch on Monday for party leaders to commit to a debate focused exclusively on climate change.

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Not only would this recognize the magnitude of the worsening climate emergency, it would also ensure the issue doesn’t fall off the radar among other competing priorities during the campaign — including the ongoing pandemic, health care reform, language tensions, immigration, and even a recent resurgence of sovereignty talk.

The environment is no longer a matter like any other. The devastating effects of global warming affect almost every other part of Quebecers’ lives, including health care, public security, agriculture, transportation and municipal affairs. It is the lens through which every other policy and decision will increasingly have to be examined and should be weighed. So a dedicated debate is certainly warranted.

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Legault, however, was as quick to reject the idea on Monday as his rivals were to accept.

Hey, he’s already let it be known he’s a busy guy — too busy to participate in an English-language debate as he did in 2018. Whereas frosty relations with the anglophones over the recent passage of Bill 96 are unlikely to thaw enough that he’ ll reconsider the invitation to attend the English event, there’s still a chance Legault might change his mind over refusing to participate in the environmental debate.

Public opinion and political pressure have forced his hand before on climate change.

A public panicking over the grim IPCC prognostications began to mobilize almost immediately after Legault was elected. A hastily called march in Montreal on a dreary day in late November drew an astonishing 50,000 people. Celebrity producer Dominic Champagne got 175,000 Quebecers to sign his Pacte pour la transition in just a few short weeks after the 2018 election.

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Legault, however, remained skeptical and dismissive until subsequent demonstrations — 150,000 students in the spring of 2019, half a million people six months later — unequivocally convinced the CAQ government that climate change was a concern it could not simply ignore.

The CAQ has come a long way since then, though not nearly far enough. Quebec has taken the bold step of outlawing oil and gas exploration in the province, but still wants to build a third fixed link between Quebec City and Lévis that will increase emissions and promote sprawl. It has seen the ecological and economic potential of electrifying transport with the province’s vast hydro power, but it has not grown more ambitious about upping its emissions-slashing goals. It nixed a proposed liquified natural gas pipeline to the Saguenay, but it has failed to set up a full-fledged returns program for wine bottles.

Not attending the debate at all or sending a minister in his stead would deprive Legault of the chance to take credit for his accomplishments while giving the opposition parties more fodder to target his record.

But a climate change debate is essential to hold all Quebec political leaders to account for what they plan to do as the clock ticks down to the point of no return in the uphill battle to save the planet.

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