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Last month, the right-leaning populist government of Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec finally scrapped a controversial forestry bill. Known as Bill 97, this proposed legislation was aimed at significantly increasing the volume of timber extracted from the province’s forests.
It envisioned handing over at least one-third of the province’s forests for exclusive use by private industrial logging interests while another third would have been open to logging but would have also permitted other activities, including recreation. The remaining third would have been for conservation.
The bill faced stiff opposition from civil society and Indigenous people. Months of organised, broad-based resistance paid off.
The bill was abandoned, but the fact that it was even proposed to begin with is an indication of where the priorities of the governing Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) coalition lie. It believes that it is justifiable to bulldoze over environmental regulations, climate action and Indigenous rights to serve the interests of the logging lobby. It clearly espouses Trumpian politics, even if it officially denounces the United States president.
Important lessons can be learned from the fight against Bill 97 to ensure that Indigenous voices are not ignored again and similar legislation is not passed.
When people mobilise across difference, they win
When Bill 97 was introduced, the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL) issued an immediate rejection. It argued that for more than a year, it had consulted with the government on forest management and given it recommendations, which were completely ignored. The bill directly infringed on the rights of Indigenous people as it sought to prepare unceded lands for takeover by the logging industry.
For the Nehirowisiw people (also known as Atikamekw), the emergence of Bill 97 was yet another blow to their longstanding fight to protect their relationships with the animals, plants and waterways of Nitaskinan, meaning “our land” and located about 400km (250 miles) north of Montreal. If the legislation had passed, it would have amounted to a form of cultural genocide – the deliberate erasure of both the foundations of their cultural worlds and the material conditions of their existence.
Seeing the destructive potential of the bill while it was still being drafted, groups of Innu, Abenaki and Anishinaabe land defenders joined the Nehirowisiw to form the MAMO Alliance. MAMO means “together” in the Nehirowisiw and Innu languages.
After the bill was introduced, the alliance erected tipis as symbols of resistance and solidarity and issued eviction notices to 11 logging companies operating without their consent. They established blockades on roads and organised protests.
Quebec’s civil society also sprang into action. Environmental groups, wildlife biologists, fish and game outfitters, industry labour unions and artists also voiced opposition. University students and social justice collectives in Montreal organised support for the blockades.
Just days before the bill was scrapped, AFNQL, unions representing 20,000 forestry workers, and environmental groups co-wrote a public statement calling the legislation “unacceptable” and denouncing the government’s decision to ignore their criticism.
This cross-societal mobilisation made it impossible for the government to rely on its usual rhetoric that pits “unreasonable and hostile natives” against the wellbeing of settler society.
The threat of bulldozer environmentalism is real
Bill 97 also demonstrated the dangers of what we call bulldozer environmentalism: claiming that the destruction of nature can have an environmentally positive outcome.
The introduction of Bill 97 was accompanied by claims of its environmental benefits that did not add up. For example, Maite Blanchette Vezina, the minister of natural resources and forests for the CAQ, who resigned just before the bill was scrapped, claimed that handing forests over for intensive logging in priority management zones would be a “better” way to sequester carbon and would “vaccinate the forests from the impacts of climate change”.
However, environmental research contradicts the notion that logging mature and old-growth forests generates more carbon storage potential. One recent study, for example, concluded that mature “forests store far more carbon per hectare than younger forests” and preserving such forests can help sequester significant amounts of carbon.
Under the veneer of environmental concern in Bill 97, we saw a familiar colonial mindset, which embraces the idea of treating land as a purely economic resource and not as a living ecosystem. Dividing up forests into zones to re-engineer them for economic purposes reflects a colonial, extractive and Eurocentric understanding of the world. This contrasts with Indigenous knowledge of the land as an interconnected whole. This means that protecting one part of the land only to destroy another part is incompatible with Indigenous worldviews.
In this sense, Bill 97 was no different from other destructive legislation recently put forward. One example is Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, or Bill 5, which seeks to accelerate mineral extraction projects framed as being of “strategic importance” by gutting environmental protections and respect for constitutionally protected Indigenous rights. It also empowers the government to create special economic zones, where existing social and environmental regulations would be able to be revoked.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Bill C-5, which would allow the government to fast-track major projects by circumventing environmental protections, is similar legislation applied at the national level.
Such bills aim to give private industries the right to make decisions on how to exploit public lands, all in the name of national security and a Trumpian “build, baby, build” mentality. From “sovereign” artificial intelligence data centres to liquified natural gas pipelines and mining projects, Canada is rushing headfirst to hand over land and give carte blanche to extractive industries to do as they please.
In the process, it’s even doing away with the typical performative theatre of consultations with First Nations and other stakeholders, implementing gag orders, stifling dissent, ignoring legal judgements, outright dismissing environmental impact assessments or parliamentary debates, and ignoring prior legislations on Indigenous peoples’ rights.
Preparing for the zombie of Bill 97
Celebrating the end of Bill 97 is premature. A revised forestry reform bill is expected within a year. The CAQ government is likely to propose something similar or even more draconian in the months ahead.
That is why advocacy needs to continue and focus on taking priority logging zones for industry off the table. Forest management must be made truly collaborative by involving independent coalitions of Indigenous people, ecologists, labour unions and rural outfitters who live and work on the land and know the forest best.
The government and its industry backers should not be allowed to manage Quebec’s forests. Under no circumstances should logging be permitted in habitat identified as sensitive for threatened species like the woodland caribou.
Finally, prioritising the ancestral rights of Indigenous communities to the territory must be part of what caring for the forest means.
Responsible forestry reform is not to say trees should not be cut for timber. A world where concrete and plastic replace wood products would be disastrous. Responsible timber management is possible and can be achieved while ensuring forest regeneration.
In the face of global ecological crises that spawn wildfires, climate change, mass extinction and threaten our future collective wellbeing, forest management means caring for the land as a creator of life and not simply a creator of wealth. As renowned Canadian ecologist David Suzuki stated, “it’s not the planet that should adapt to the economy. It’s the inverse.”
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
