2026 Regional Award

Gary Baker, IAIA CEO: Hello, again. Here we are with another awards video. This time we are here to celebrate the Regional Award for 2026. I am delighted to be joined by Jean Hébert, the director general of AQÉI, who are the regional award winners this year. I won’t try and pronounce AQÉI in its original French — I’ll leave that to Jean. This is someone you will get to know very well over the next few months and weeks because they are the Affiliate co-hosts of the Québec City annual conference coming up. So this is a good opportunity to get a first conversation with him and learn a bit more about both AQÉI and also maybe a little insight into Québec City, as well. So Jean, congratulations on the award and welcome to this video. Let’s start with telling us more about AQÉI — how it’s set up, what it’s done. I know it’s got a long history. So really over to you — tell us more.

Jean Hébert, representing AQÉI: Thank you, Gary. I’m very pleased to meet you today. Thank you for the introduction and for the award as well. We thank IAIA for giving us the Regional Award this year. So, AQÉI in French is the Association Québécoise pour l’évaluation d’impacts — the Québec Association for Impact Assessment, if I translate it. It was created 35 years ago, so we celebrate this year our 35th anniversary — so it’s a well-established organization in Québec. In fact, it was created in 1991, just a few years after we welcomed for the first time the IAIA annual convention in Montreal in 1989. IAIA was a kind of an inspiration for us to create an association that will gather the French speaking practitioners in Québec.

So it was done in 1991, and we reach now about 600 members — practitioners from the consulting firms, the federal and Québec governments, analysts, the students and teachers that are interested in impact assessment, as well. We think that we gather most of the people in Québec that are interested in impact assessment. Every year we organize an annual conference, and we gather about 200 people each time on different topics. We have monthly webinars as well on specific issues in impact assessment. We have training workshops as well. We have a monthly newsletter and website that we update regularly. We give scholarships. And we also have special projects that we are able to put forward with special funding, mainly from governments.

We have, for instance, two special projects right now. One that we call the Professional Certification System – we are trying to put in place a certification system for environmental impact assessment practitioners; we are working on that for many years. We also have another project that we call Better Communicating Environmental Assessment, going on for a few years now. We have different communication activities that are intended to better explain what is impact assessment, what each main partner is doing, what the government is doing, what the consulting firms are doing in impact assessments — we try to explain who is doing what. We are also thinking about a new way to write impact assessment reports, as well, to make it a document that is more accessible for the general public, the media people, and the decision-makers. So we are going forward with that kind of thinking to make a new kind of impact assessment report more accessible.

Gary: I’m interested — we hear a lot within Canada as to the state of sustainability and impact assessment generally, and the power of the state at the state level versus what federal is. How do you assess that or gauge that within Québec now as to what is the state of sustainability and impact assessment within the state itself versus what’s happening at national level?

Jean: We can feel that impact assessment these days is not very popular. There’s a lot of the various governments — the federal government and the provincial government in Québec — are trying to go around the regular process of impact assessment in order to put forward some projects more quickly, projects that are considered as national interest, for example. So we are not very enthusiastic about that because in parallel we think that there’s a lot of efforts to do impact assessment more quickly but in a genuine way, I would say, and without escaping anything. There’s a lot of willingness in part of the people involved in impact assessment to be more efficient. So we should let those innovations be put in place instead of trying to go around and have a special process to put forward some specific projects. So we are advocating this idea these days to both governments in Canada.

Gary: Good luck with that.

Jean: Well, it’s not specific to the Canadian context. It’s a trend that we can see in many countries in Europe, as well. So we’re not alone. So the IAIA annual convention is a good thing to get together and to exchange about our common challenges in the field of impact assessment.

Gary: That’s a very good segue into talking about that. If you knew how much effort it was, would you still have put forward the proposal? There’s a lot of work that goes into the annual conference. And obviously, we’re now into the finish — or the start line is in sight in terms of it fast approaching. Have you enjoyed the process? Are you looking forward to it? It’s been fun to work on so far.

Jean: Yes, yes. Well, it’s the fourth time that we will welcome the IAIA conference — two times in Montreal and it will be the second time in Québec City. So we enjoy the process and we work very well with the IAIA team. You have a good team — very well experienced. So far, everything is going quite smoothly. We have the regular challenges of putting together a major event, and we were looking to beat all the records, all the previous records, and we were quite successful with that. We have the most training sessions proposed, the most technical visits as well, and we have the most session proposals as well and then we have beating the record of attendance. We are close to 1,400 already, so maybe we will reach 1,500. It’s the all-time record for an IAIA convention. So we are very pleased for that. And Québec City is a great city to hold a conference. I’m sure that the participants will enjoy their stay in Québec City. The main theme this year is quite relevant, as well — disinformation, misinformation, communication and impact assessment. It’s a major part of what we do as practitioners when we perform an EIA. We have to communicate and we have to deal with facts and scientific facts mainly. So we have to be careful about misinformation that is growing these days.

Gary: Yeah — interpretation, as well as what is truth exactly? Well, look, it’s only a quick snapshot just to get an idea as to what AQÉI is up to. People will get a chance to get to know you much more and the team that you have working with you.

Congratulations again on the award. It really is very richly deserved. It’s been very interesting learning more about the history and how long you have been established. There really are very close parallels with IAIA and AQÉI in terms of obviously what we set out to do, what we’re trying to do, and how we go about it. It’s been great to work with you and the team so far, and I look forward to seeing you in a few months in Québec.

Jean: Thank you. Yeah, it’s coming soon.

Gary: Very, very soon.

Jean: We’re getting excited. Thank you, Gary.

Gary: Thank you for that, Jean.