The Green Ledger, Part 1: Importing Fracking
Quebec banned fracking. Then kept buying its product.
Originally published in Le Journal de Montréal, Wednesday 8 April 2026.
For several months, I have been speaking publicly to expose, document, and question certain decisions that directly affect Quebec’s energy future, the agricultural community, and the use of public funds.
What I am finding, through the facts and the documents available, is not a simple difference of opinion. It is a real gap between the stated objectives, the policies adopted, and the reality on the ground.
The text that follows is the first part of a series of investigations. It rests neither on impressions nor on hypotheses, but on data drawn from the public record.
And what that record reveals is troubling.
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Every day, roughly 1.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas enter Quebec from American shale formations in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, extracted by hydraulic fracturing, a practice that Quebec law prohibits on its own territory.
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Énergir S.E.C. is the only natural gas distributor in Quebec, a regulated monopoly that serves every home, every farm, and every business connected to the province’s gas network.
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Quebec regulation requires Énergir to deliver rising percentages of renewable natural gas: 1 % by 2020, 2 % by 2023, 5 % by 2025. These are not aspirations. They are regulatory obligations recorded in the file of the Régie de l’énergie.
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The actual results in the Régie de l’énergie file: renewable gas represented 0.6 % of the volume of Énergir’s network in 2022-2023.
Regulatory targets and observed deliveries
| Period | Regulatory target | Volume delivered | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| By 2020 | 1 % of network volume | Not publicly reported | Not applicable |
| 2022-2023 | 2 % of network volume | 0.6 % of network volume | 70 % below target |
| 2023-2024 | 123.5 million m³ | 33.7 million m³ | 73 % below target |
| By 2025 | 5 % of network volume | Target year in progress | Not applicable |
| By 2030 | 10 % of network volume (proposed) | Not applicable | Not applicable |
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The delivery target for 2023-2024 was 123.5 million cubic metres. Énergir delivered 33.7 million. The gap is about 73 %.
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Roughly 95 to 97 % of what flows through Énergir’s pipes is therefore fossil gas, shale gas extracted by fracking, from the same formations that Quebec law forbids developing on our own soil.
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Quebec’s PSPGNR subsidy program was designed precisely to close this gap, by financing agricultural biomethane producers to inject locally produced renewable gas into Énergir’s network and reduce the province’s dependence on imported shale gas.
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The quotas are far from being met. Dependence on shale gas continues. Questions about the management of PSPGNR funds and about the interests its outcomes have served are now before the Quebec courts. This series will document what the public record reveals.
Quebec made a clear choice: to ban fracking on its territory. But in practice, it continues to depend on it every day to supply its own energy network.
This is not a marginal inconsistency. It is a structural contradiction.
At some point, a choice must be made:
- Either we fully accept the consequences of our decisions
- Or we stop pretending that the current system matches the ambitions we proclaim
The energy transition cannot be a speech. It must become a measurable, coherent, and transparent reality.
And if it is not, we must have the courage to ask the question.
Who really benefits from the system in place, and at whose expense?
Paul Sauvé, farmer GNR Shefford, GNRShefford.ca
This is Part 1 of the Green Ledger, an ongoing series of analyses concerning Énergir, Quebec’s renewable natural gas program, and the public funds that underpin them. Further revelations are to come. All data are drawn from publicly accessible sources. This content was produced by GNR Shefford.