Quebec’s disastrous forest reform bill was killed, but the threat remains

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