A decades-old border dispute involving Quebec and Labrador has resurfaced, this time over the management of wildlife.
A detail from a map on a Quebec government website shows parts of southern Labrador within Quebec’s jurisdiction.
(CBC) The Quebec government’s website features a map illustrating some of the results of a program tracking hundreds of migrating caribou.
The program was a joint monitoring project between the governments of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.
However, a map attached to survey results — posted on the website of Quebec’s Natural Resources Department — shows large parts of southern Labrador as being inside the Quebec boundary.
John Ottenheimer, Newfoundland and Labrador’s minister of intergovernmental affairs, said the map is the latest in a line of claims that Quebec has made about its boundary and Labrador.
"We don’t like it," Ottenheimer told CBC News. "We’ve seen this over the years — it happens time and time again."
On previous occasions, Quebec has sometimes used maps showing no border marking Labrador at all.
"Our province has written Quebec in the past on this issue but we take comfort in the fact that the Constitution is on our side and the law is on the side of this province, and we know where the border exists," Ottenheimer said.
The boundary between Labrador and Quebec evolved until its current form was determined by a committee of the British Privy Council in 1927.
Labrador had come under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland, at the time a dominion affiliated with the British empire. Newfoundland entered Confederation with Canada in 1949.
Quebec never recognized that 1927 decision, putting it at odds with the Government of Canada.
Officials with the Quebec government did not agree to a recorded interview, although an official with Quebec’s natural resources department said maps used on the departmental website are official maps of the province.
