Sophie Chatel was elected as MP for Pontiac in 2021, and during that time, one of her main focuses has been securing ecological infrastructure and making her riding both “green” and prosperous.
In an exclusive interview with the Ottawa Compass/iPolitics, Chatel talks climate and discusses how her background with carbon pricing adjustments with the United Nations and environmental taxation at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has set her up to explore how she could secure the ecological infrastructure in her riding.
“I wanted to discover this in my riding because how does this international global transition succeed if we cannot succeed locally?” she said. “And that became sort of my quest and my objective: to bring my community to succeed in this transition on the local level.”
The key for Chatel was ensuring her riding’s ecological infrastructure could support the economy, since she says climate and economic success go hand-in-hand.
“You cannot build an economy out of thin air. It has to be grounded in environmentalism, and it costs a lot when you don’t take care of your ecological infrastructure,” she said. “In terms of forest fires, floods…It takes all the energy to be climate resilient, as opposed to growing your economy.”
Chatel’s two pillars are “green” and “prosperous”, the two priorities both in her work at home and on Parliament Hill that she says are linked more than many realize.
Many of the projects she’s working on involve Indigenous stewardship and protection of natural lands in her region. In October, Senator Galvez tabled a bill in the Senate — backed by Chatel — to expand protections of the Gatineau Park and strengthen collaboration with the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation.
The bill will allow the NCC to request the services and collaborations of businesses and workers from the local Anishinaabe community to help with the protection of the park and create employment for the community.
“I was hoping that the government would do such a bill, and that’s when I realized that it was so hard to get it on the priority list, and in a minority government having a regional bill was difficult, so I decided to take the pen,” she explained.
One of the other big projects on Chatel’s desk is bringing together all levels of government, including Indigenous leadership, to craft a “roadmap” to understanding the region’s biodiversity and hitting its environmental targets. The project received $2 million from Environment Canada and launched in November.
“It’s a Truth and Reconciliation topic, too, because it’s led by the Indigenous community. And although the official launch was (a few weeks ago), they were working all spring and summer going across the Outaouais region, working with scientists and collecting Indigenous guardian scientists, collecting the data that was missing, and working with the municipality to gather their data,” Chatel explained. “I think this project will be a model for the rest of Canada for collaboration.”
Despite targets from the federal government, Chatel said this work around biodiversity happens at a local level, and this is where MPs come in. In addition to collecting data, Chatel said she feels she’s writing a “guide” for other MPs who want to do this collaborative work.
“I find one of the most precious functions that an MP has is to resemble people of the community and work together.”
When it comes to her prosperity pillar, Chatel said leadership must also represent communities on issues of economic development. Her meetings with “important economic actors” to address housing and development.
“It’s not just to…have great ideas, but it’s after that to have a small group and say, ‘Okay, what did we hear? And how can we translate that into concrete measures?’ Then we go back to the larger group to test whether we got this right, and then we send it to the Department of Finance in the Budget Consultation,” she said. “I was really pleased to see some of our suggestions find their way in the budget. Maybe we were not alone in suggesting it, but it was successful.”
Some of the measures she advocated for were financing additional investment in infrastructure, making federal land available for housing and encouraging similar GST credits for owners of rental units as those of condominiums.
“When you meet the community, you get ideas. Not all of them find their way, but some,” she said.
Prosperity also includes food security and developing her region’s agriculture sector, she said. With climate change continuing to rise to the top of Canada’s priorities, she said securing the country’s food economy and working with farmers in the Outaouais region is more important than ever.
“Right now, a lot of our food consumption depends on the United States…So I’m thinking, if we want fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, we have to develop our agriculture,” she said. “So I’ve been speaking with hundreds of farmers, trying to first understand their reality, their perspective and local challenges, and trying to understand what it takes to have a strong agricultural sector.”
By encouraging housing development on federal property, rural land can continue to be protected from densification, she added. But the farmers are also aligned on moving the economy towards decarbonization, which Chatel said is the easiest and least intrusive way to move towards a prosperous economy.
“The only way to be successful in tomorrow’s economy is to decarbonize. The world is moving in the right direction, whether the government wants that or not,” she explained. “What we need as a government is to ensure that we are successful and we come ahead of it and not get stuck in yesterday’s economy and become obsolete.”
The carbon pricing system, she said, despite being the least intrusive way to reach these goals, has been politicized with “simple slogans.”
“Everybody wants a tax cut, right?” she said. “If ever a Conservative government gets elected, they’ll be confronted with a big dilemma, because… If you don’t use the carbon pricing system, then you’ll have to replace it with something else.
“There will be more regulation, more dictating the market and being intrusive. So I don’t know what will be the outcome,” she continued. “But you know, for somebody that has a tax background, has worked in finance, has worked at the OECD with countries to help their economy decarbonize, I can tell you it’s one of the most effective ways to do them, the least intrusive and the least painful.”
with files from Marco Vigliotti
