The M.R.N.F. mistake: 

I disagree with the complaints office on most of the answers they gave me.  They try to make me out to be an idiot who is totally out in the left field on all accounts. I am personally against the development on our territory. It is the Minister of development who is putting the environment and the citizens out in order to try to make a profit.  The environment has to produce at all cost, for the government reserves, by putting a dollar sign on each tree, each fish and for every moose antler. They want to make our Quebec lakes and our forests a mega center for tourists, where four wheelers, snowmobiles, sail-surfing and motor-boats will soon invade our territories. This circus of recreational tourists has already started, with excessive fishing on our lakes, the uncontrolled land leasing, with the amount of four wheelers and snowmobiles. If we have cottages in the forest, it is because we want peace and quite.  

We have invested a great deal of money to obtain this peace and quiet so I believe these are the rights for every citizen. Unfortunately, the Minister of Development threatens to deprive us of this peace and tranquility for economic profit and money brought in by the tourist development will end up in the coffers of the state. The tourist development project will soon be a reality, whether we want it or not, and will threaten our rights to peace and our primitive way of living. It allows us to connect with nature and Mother Earth and helps us to decompress from our hectic and stressful lives in the cities. It is like a medication and/or therapy that are essential.                                 

A lot of animal species are starting to, if not already, disappear from the territory. Moose, the wolf, the walleyed pike and the grey trout are actually seriously endangered because of uncontrolled land leasing accompanied by excessive fishing and of the strains of excessive hunting on our territory. All of this for our provincial and municipal governments profits, even at the detriment of nature and the ecosystems. The uncontrolled land leasing and construction of cottages on Lake Lortie is an example. Twenty years ago, there were no cottages on Lake Lortie, twenty-two years later, no less than 40 cottages exist on the lake which is about 5 to 6 km in length by a few hundred meters in width.  

When you pay the high price to have a cottage on Lake Lortie and you see your neighbours face and on either side of you, about a hundred meters, well I’m sorry but in my books I do not count that as having peace and tranquility in the forest. The MRNF and the Minister of Development are anticipating adding another 20 cottages on Lake Lortie for 2007-2008. In 2008 it will really look like a camping ground or a mobile home park. It will become a village that will only be missing a church, a school and a post office. They prefer to cram people side by side on forest land because it will be easier to manage and will bring in all kinds of taxes. And by the way, the MRNF failed to let us know that they never did any kind of environmental study of the effects that such a development will have on the wildlife, an irreversible impact for sure.  

The MRNF is not developing presently on Lake Manouane because they are trying to reintroduce the grey trout that is threatened by extinction. So indirectly they recognise that the uncontrolled land leasing and the excessive fishing have an impact on the environment and the wildlife. According to the MRNF, the reintroduction of the grey trout project in Lake Manouane ends in 2008. Therefore, I think the MRNF will reopen fishing of the grey trout for the 2009 season. The question that I ask is: will the MRNF give excessive land leases to people and contractors on Lake Manouane who will be allowed to exploit excessively the lakes resources? It is very disturbing for the future of Lake Manouane. Admit it; it is contradictory with their tourist development projects. 

The Lake Lortie is not the only lake to suffer from the excessive and uncontrolled land leasing and many lakes in Quebec have actually suffered from the same situation. In my opinion, it has heavily mortgaging our natural heritage and it can only be catastrophic for the environment. It is pleasant having a cottage in the forest, without electricity, where it is possible to watch the animals and to fish, but when everything around you is dead, saturated, even destroyed, what use is it to have a cottage then? Forestry companies make us pay to have access to their roads and they don’t even maintain them.  We are in the middle of the forest, without electricity or any services.  We are paying for a new sports center for the City of La Tuque and most of us won’t even step foot there. We pay for garbage management to the City of La Tuque and we pay school tax however there is no school bus service or garbage trucks that come in our area. Taxes have increased 300% in the last 20 years with no services provided in return. They support the uncontrolled land leasing with the objective to get more control and more taxes. 

In the past, when a region named N.O.T. Champlain (non-organised territory), taxes were not high but since the Quebecois party had wanted to eliminate an imaginary national deficit, they succeeded in assembling far away regions closer to city centers or urban centers, by inventing the MRC. We are victims of camouflaged and legalized theft by our municipal and provincial governments.  This allows them to increase taxes on cottage owners and impose without our permission, an abusive regulation in addition to paying school taxes when the nearest school is about 160 km from our respected cottages and they didn’t forget to include a garbage disposal tax to finance the MRC Haute Mauricie dump situated on Lake Chateauvert and Casey, administrated by the said City of La Tuque.  Another phenomenon of mentality is ‘NO GARBAGE IN MY BACK YARD’.  By putting the dump at Lake Chateauvert and at Casey, it does not attract the eyes of journalists. They prevent any embarrassing questions. Will things get better? Hope is sceptical. They want to control our wallets by using our money and while they place a dollar sign...$, on trees and animals, things will not get better.  

Do we have the means, we, the cottage owners, to change septic tanks every 3 years at the cost of thousands of dollars? This is imposed by a gang of decision-makers, who are disconnected from reality, sitting in their offices and very well paid I may say, with the only thing to do during their day is to continue to hound us, the poor tax payers and to think of cruel methods on the best way to tax what is eliminated from our bodies, while we sit on the family throne in the forest? The majority of cottage owners are unsatisfied with governmental politics whether they are municipal or provincial. We pay too much tax for services that we do not receive in return. We are paying a high price for our tranquility in the forest.  

We ask the authorities involved to cease immediately the uncontrolled land leasing in order to preserve what is left of the resources and to guarantee our tranquility and our privacy in the forest or at least what is left to preserve. It is not in a mobile home park where we want to build our cottages but in an area that is clean and healthy. The tourist spot that the MRNF is encouraging at Lake Lortie is not a developed and intelligent decision that respects the environment and the individuals.  We predict that in the next 10 years, if things do not change, we will have to visit the moose in a zoo or in a museum. What we perceive, with this uncontrolled land leasing, is only a question of making profits and large sums of money at the expense of the cottage owners.  

We ask that the tourist development on Lake Lortie cease, which is already saturated with cottages. We want to preserve our privacy and our tranquility in an area that is clean and healthy and not to have the impression of being suffocated like in the city.  If this is what the MRNF wants, we would like to know. With what they propose on the territory, well we may as well have the cottage in Joliette or on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal, because it would cost the same but at least with all the services included and for the same kind of peace and quiet they are now us offering.  

To all the bureaucrats in ties, who decide our outcome, you who have no experience of the forest but what you have read in books, sitting in a heated university, we call upon you and ask you to use your common sense in order for us all to preserve, together, the territory, the fish, the moose, the wolves and to maintain an equilibrium in our fragile environment for generations to come. What your university did not teach you is that nature does not depend on us, we depend on nature. 

I’ll end by saying that I would like to share with you an Indian proverb:

WHEN YOU HAVE CUT THE LAST TREE, WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER DRINK THE WATER FROM THE RIVERS, WHEN YOU HAVE TAKEN THE LAST FISH AND HAVE EATEN THE LAST ANIMAL, WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER BREATH CLEAN FRESH AIR AND WHEN YOU ARE POWERLESS WHILE WATCHING YOUR GRANDSON DIE IN THE ARMS OF HIS MOTHER, ONLY THEN WILL YOU REALISE THAT YOU CANNOT EAT YOUR MONEY.