To save a handful of woodland caribou, Ottawa seems willing to sacrifice the jobs and in some cases the hometowns of hundreds of Quebecers
The federal government is considering an emergency decree to protect woodland caribou that would cost Quebec and its rural regions dearly. Thousands of families who work in the forest sector in the Saguenay, Côte-Nord and Abitibi regions could suffer serious consequences.
Unfortunately, it would seem federal officials put greater weight on saving caribou than saving humans’ jobs. The decree, which has now been through the compulsory consultation stage but has not yet been issued, aims to protect three herds comprising a total of 265 caribou — about four per cent of the estimated 6,162 woodland caribou found in Quebec and just a fraction of one per cent of the more than 30,000 in Canada.
The proportion of caribou protected by the proposed federal intervention may be very small but the edict’s effect on rural areas would be very large. According to an analysis by the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests, the required reduction in the volume of logging would result in the loss of well-paying jobs for at least 1,990 Quebec workers.
For the rest of this column: https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-federal-caribou-decree-will-hammer-rural-quebec