Quebec municipalities criticize use of Green Fund to repay debt

Baie-Saint-Paul Mayor Michael Pilote (right) is criticizing Quebec Premier Francois Legault's government for using the Green Fund to pay down debt. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

The Quebec Federation of Municipalities (FQM) is criticizing the Legault government’s plan to use the $1.8 billion surplus accumulated in the Electrification and Climate Change Fund to repay debt.

The government’s decision to use part of the Green Fund for purposes other than combating climate change is worrying Baie-Saint-Paul Mayor Michaël Pilote.

“At first, everyone was very happy to see this fund created. It provided a recurring source of money and made it possible to finance municipal climate plans,” said Pilote.

But due to the government’s recent decision, the “financial base” for funding climate change mitigation and adaptation in municipalities is likely to be smaller, said the mayor of Baie-Saint-Paul, who is a member of the FQM’s executive committee, on Tuesday.

Pilote was responding to a question from Liberal MNA Virginie Dufour during consultations on the revision of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets at the National Assembly.

“This worries us because we are mobilizing people and working in various RCMs and municipalities across Quebec to develop climate plans, and now we have hired resources, and if we are subsequently unable to carry out these actions because we no longer have the money, there will be demobilization and we will not achieve our objectives,” lamented Pilote.

He added that the actions that municipalities are not taking to mitigate climate change ’will catch up with us one day."

The mayor of the municipality, which has experienced various episodes of extreme weather in recent years, including flash floods that claimed the lives of two firefighters in the spring of 2023, was invited to speak on behalf of the FQM on the first day of consultations on the revision of Quebec’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target.

A fund dedicated to climate change

The Ministry of the Environment’s website states that the Electrification and Climate Change Fund “is a special fund entirely dedicated to the fight against climate change.”

As such, the fund “targets concrete and efficient measures to reduce GHG emissions, adapt to the impacts of climate change and electrify the economy.”

It also states that “all revenues from the carbon market are paid into the fund” and that “other sources also contribute to the fund, including contributions from the federal government from the Low Carbon Economy Fund (LCEF).”

However, in his economic update on Tuesday, Finance Minister Eric Girard confirmed that the $1.8 billion in accumulated surpluses from the Electrification and Climate Change Fund will be transferred to the Generations Fund to pay down debt, rather than being used to combat climate change.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Nov. 26, 2025.