Environment Secretary Benoit Charette dismisses criticism and allegations by an energy specialist who has resigned from the Legault government’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change. He denounced “a kind of censorship,” a lack of vision and transparency, ineffective programs, and a lack of questioning about the way Quebecers use energy.

Members of the Advisory Committee on Climate Change, an organization tasked with advising Minister Charette, are “completely” independent, the minister said during a crowd on Wednesday morning.

“The government does not interfere in any way with the committee’s activities. In addition, in recent years he has prepared several reports that we have been able to analyze carefully and we have already implemented several measures contained in these reports,” defended the minister.

He added that “we do not interfere in any way with the governance of the committee and the issues the committee examines.”

“A kind of censorship”

Pierre-Olivier Pineau, who resigned from the committee a week ago, has a different version than the minister’s.

The professor in HEC Montreal’s Department of Decision Sciences and Chair in Energy Sector Management on Tuesday denounced “a kind of censorship”, a lack of vision and transparency, and programs to combat climate change.

The committee recently worked to produce an independent report on the government’s climate action. According to Mr. Pineau, it would have been appropriate for the committee to review and criticize certain spending by the Green Fund, which became the Electrification and Climate Change Fund (FECC). Janique Lambert, Commissioner for Sustainable Development, pointed out last year that 80% of planned FECC spending is for projects that “do not have appropriate indicators or targets”.

Professor Pineau wanted the committee to summarize the criticisms of the FECC, the effectiveness of the various programs, their indicators and their targets “because Quebec is not reducing its greenhouse gas emissions as it should”.

He believes that the Environment Department staff, who were responsible for documenting the committee’s opinions to take stock of the government’s actions, “did not have the leeway to present and document the ideas discussed at the Advisory Committee on Climate Change.” .

“I got the impression that there was some sort of censorship, that the issues we had been working on in the subcommittee were no longer in the documents we were discussing, and that worried me, and I had that “I’ve lost some hope that the committee could do independent critical work on the results of the Quebec government’s climate action,” the researcher summarized.

According to Minister Charrette, “It is the criticism of a person who is no longer a member of the Committee”.

The minister added that he is in contact with the department, which in turn communicates with the members of the committee.

“What we have repeated to its director and its president, Mr. Webster, is that the government will always be there to meet the needs expressed to us, be it in terms of staff or funds,” explained Benoit Charette.

The Advisory Committee on Climate Change is chaired by Alain Webster, Professor in the Department of Economics and at the Center universitaire de formation en environment et développement sustainable at the Université de Sherbrooke.

The Canadian press attempted to get an interview with Mr. Webster and the other members of the committee, but the news outlet had not received a positive response at the time of this article’s publication.

Professor Pierre-Olivier Pineau, who is a co-author of The State of Energy in Quebec each year, called the committee “dysfunctional and unproductive.”

He also regretted that government programs to combat climate change do not allow us to question our relationship with energy consumption.

According to the professor, “For an energy transition, we need to go beyond simply improving the technical efficiency of the devices around us, we need to rethink our energy use, and that’s not what these programs are doing.”

Stephane Blais, The Canadian Press

Environment Secretary Benoit Charette dismisses criticism and allegations by an energy specialist who has resigned from the Legault government’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change. He denounced “a kind of censorship,” a lack of vision and transparency, ineffective programs, and a lack of questioning about the way Quebecers use energy.

Members of the Advisory Committee on Climate Change, an organization tasked with advising Minister Charette, are “completely” independent, the minister said during a crowd on Wednesday morning.

“The government does not interfere in any way with the committee’s activities. In addition, in recent years he has prepared several reports that we have been able to analyze carefully and we have already implemented several measures contained in these reports,” defended the minister.

He added that “we do not interfere in any way with the governance of the committee and the issues the committee examines.”

“A kind of censorship”

Pierre-Olivier Pineau, who resigned from the committee a week ago, has a different version than the minister’s.

The professor in HEC Montreal’s Department of Decision Sciences and Chair in Energy Sector Management on Tuesday denounced “a kind of censorship”, a lack of vision and transparency, and programs to combat climate change.

The committee recently worked to produce an independent report on the government’s climate action. According to Mr. Pineau, it would have been appropriate for the committee to review and criticize certain spending by the Green Fund, which became the Electrification and Climate Change Fund (FECC). Janique Lambert, Commissioner for Sustainable Development, pointed out last year that 80% of planned FECC spending is for projects that “do not have appropriate indicators or targets”.

Professor Pineau wanted the committee to summarize the criticisms of the FECC, the effectiveness of the various programs, their indicators and their targets “because Quebec is not reducing its greenhouse gas emissions as it should”.

He believes that the Environment Department staff, who were responsible for documenting the committee’s opinions to take stock of the government’s actions, “did not have the leeway to present and document the ideas discussed at the Advisory Committee on Climate Change.” .

“I got the impression that there was some sort of censorship, that the issues we had been working on in the subcommittee were no longer in the documents we were discussing, and that worried me, and I had that “I’ve lost some hope that the committee could do independent critical work on the results of the Quebec government’s climate action,” the researcher summarized.

According to Minister Charrette, “It is the criticism of a person who is no longer a member of the Committee”.

The minister added that he is in contact with the department, which in turn communicates with the members of the committee.

“What we have repeated to its director and its president, Mr. Webster, is that the government will always be there to meet the needs expressed to us, be it in terms of staff or funds,” explained Benoit Charette.

The Advisory Committee on Climate Change is chaired by Alain Webster, Professor in the Department of Economics and at the Center universitaire de formation en environment et développement sustainable at the Université de Sherbrooke.

The Canadian press attempted to get an interview with Mr. Webster and the other members of the committee, but the news outlet had not received a positive response at the time of this article’s publication.

Professor Pierre-Olivier Pineau, who is a co-author of The State of Energy in Quebec each year, called the committee “dysfunctional and unproductive.”

He also regretted that government programs to combat climate change do not allow us to question our relationship with energy consumption.

According to the professor, “For an energy transition, we need to go beyond simply improving the technical efficiency of the devices around us, we need to rethink our energy use, and that’s not what these programs are doing.”

By Stephane Blais, The Canadian Press