Natural Resources committee  Sure. I think it's apparent that when the local communities own the tenure, they spend it within their region usually, whereas some of the bigger licencees have a lot of fibre but are going overseas and investing and not necessarily recycling that money in our economy. I know that McLeod Lake Indian Band spends a significant amount of money to buy harvesting equipment, to purchase locally in lots of areas, so they're giving back to the economy.

Natural Resources committee  I think it has to go with the communication piece that Mr. Beck talked about to reach the community and provide them with the opportunity. I know from my previous dealings with McLeod Lake that we planted 1.6 million trees annually just on our own forested lands, so there is some ability to be of assistance in that.

Natural Resources committee  No, I haven't, and I'm not informed about it at the moment. I haven't had any experience with it, but I do know that during our time, being able to access funds for plant development and increased production was a goal of ours. We were trying to find the money to help promote our path forward.

Natural Resources committee  I think it's come down to the fact that economics has been a major piece in the financial viability of bioplants, but I think, as you said, requiring some of the major licencees to use that or provide that for the proponents would be a benefit, because, as I said, the waste of the additional fibre supply just doesn't make sense anymore.

Natural Resources committee  From my previous dealings with foreign interests, I think they don't always have the same ideology as the community, and that has posed a bit of a challenge. We were able to develop some relationships when we were operating Duz Cho Forest Products, and we developed those relationships so that we could ship that fibre over to China.

Natural Resources committee  I don't have the silver bullet for that one. I think there are a lot of variables that go into it, but having discussions with.... I've talked with Len Stratton. He's the B.C. timber sales manager and he's here in Prince George. He says that one of the best ways for us to start to solve some of these challenges is being able to have the discussions about what will work and having a number of parties coming to the table and being able to find the solutions as we go forward.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, we have used government funding. I have not been involved with McLeod Lake since 2017, but we had grant writers who would help us to access whatever monies we could. A lot of the time it was more efficient and effective to use our own monies. For instance, the funding for the cant mill that we built was 95% McLeod Lake Indian Band's own source funding.

Natural Resources committee  I think the government is definitely working towards solutions. Part of the solution is just the cultural shift, and change is inevitable in anything. As we get to some of the issues with climate change and as we go forward, that's automatically going to force change. There can be some things that contribute, that could help to promote that.

Natural Resources committee  From what I've seen with a couple of individual local companies, they're moving to more selective logging and forest practices, taking all of what they call “guts and feathers”, which is everything other than the saw log. Utilizing that instead of throwing it away or burning it and putting CO2 into the atmosphere just is not what we can do.

Natural Resources committee  I think access to fibre is one of the biggest things that could make an impact. With some of the opportunities we had in Mackenzie in starting up Duz Cho Forest Products, we were able to employ a number of our members, as well as non-members, within the community. We also had synergies with the pulp mill.

Natural Resources committee  We were able to develop a training program with the District of Mackenzie. We were allocated a joint forest licence. We used those funds to help fund some of the training and push through, I think, 10 individuals from the local community into operation jobs and training, which also provided them with skills to go elsewhere.

Natural Resources committee  First of all, it's a renewable resource, and if we manage it properly, we're going to be able to see multiple generations of benefits from that. I can't stress enough that the McLeod Lake Indian Band started out with a very small opportunity. We actually had to protest to get it.

Natural Resources committee  Stumpage has definitely been an issue, and with the deterioration caused by both the pine beetle and the spruce beetle, we as a community have done a lot of logging to try to get that to market before it deteriorated. We had a longer life span with the pine beetle; the spruce bark beetle has a way shorter life span, so we got as much as we could.

Natural Resources committee  Hi, everyone. Thank you for today, and thank you, Mr. Chair, for your introduction. My name is Derek Orr. I have a little bit of background in forestry and economic development. I grew up in Prince George and was able to eventually become the chief of McLeod Lake Indian Band, which was a major player within northeastern B.C. in forestry.