Evidence of meeting #137 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forest.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)
You're out of time, Joe.
We'll go to Mr. Lake next.
Mike Lake Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before we start this, I have a quick point of order question for the chair.
When we invited the minister to come on supplementaries, did we offer up this day? Was this one of the days we offered up?
Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)
We asked what her availability was, and I think we gave her through to the end. We knew it wouldn't be next week, so it was up until today.
Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
So she could have come today. I notice that, at this very moment, Seamus O'Regan is appearing before the veterans committee, and Carla Qualtrough is appearing before the government operations committee.
Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)
Are you talking about the supplementaries?
Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
I'm asking on a point of order, just because I want to be clear on what days we.... The minister hasn't appeared. We had Minister Petitpas Taylor appear this morning at the health committee. I just want to get some clarity about what opportunities were offered, because the minister was there today and still wasn't able to make herself available for us, as the committee of the environment, to ask questions about the supplementary estimates.
That's concerning to us on this side. I know it doesn't seem to concern the members on the other side, but that's my question.
Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)
An invitation went to the minister inviting her, and we weren't able to secure her.
Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)
Then the estimates were reported back, and with the votes yesterday, they are done.
Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
Okay. There are these three meetings happening today where ministers are appearing on the estimates. For the committee to consider, maybe we want to broaden and extend the opportunity for her to come and at least talk about her estimates, even if we're not voting on them, at some point in the future.
I will leave that point of order now.
Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
On the specific subject matter, it was fantastic listening to everybody here.
Mr. Thurlow, I imagine you will be back again soon, since we're doing a plastics study next. It will be very interesting to—
Senior Advisor, Government Affairs, Dow Chemical Canada Inc.
I will be here to help.
Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
You might as well recycle your speech. You might as well just bring it back again, and you will be able to use it again.
On the issue of wood, I'm always interested, just in general, in the issue of our forests as a carbon sink. We've talked about the fact that a third of our greenhouse gas emissions over the last few years—in that neighbourhood or maybe a bit less—have been caused by forest fires.
I would like to hear some of the experts here talk about a comprehensive approach that might include a forest fire management strategy and, at the same time, a use of wood strategy. How can we manage our forests to minimize the chance of fires?
I'm not an expert on this at all, but probably the way we do our foresting can minimize the size of our fires and the ability of fires to spread as much as they do, and at the same time maximize the amount of forests we have for sinks.
Maybe you can talk about the role that a world-class forest management strategy would have in reducing Canada's overall emissions.
Jean-Pierre Martel Vice-President, Strategic Partnerships, FPInnovations
It's interesting that you're saying “world-class forest management”. We believe that in Canada we have world class. If you look at certification, we're the best in the world in terms of third party certification. We do believe that managed forests are very well managed, and this has been demonstrated through third party certification. That's one thing.
Second, around fires and the role of fires, mainly we manage fire in this country, but it varies from one province to another. North of certain limits, we just let it go, because we cannot manage everything, and there are big fires. South of that line, it's basically focusing on trying to reduce the impact on municipalities, communities, and remote communities. That's the first focus. In some cases, this has been successful, and in some, not that successful.
At FPInnovations, we have a program in Alberta testing equipment but also a FireSmart program in some municipalities and some regions in order to manage vegetation around those settlements, so there's a way of doing it, and—
Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
Before you go on to that point.... You say that north of a certain point you just let them go, if they go. I imagine there is a natural impact of fires, and the forest will regenerate and all of those things.
However, if you take into account the greenhouse gas emissions caused by those fires when we just let them go, should that be something we should start paying more attention to?
Vice-President, Strategic Partnerships, FPInnovations
That is a very good question.
If you look at the way we do carbon accounting in this country, we have some of the best carbon accounting, and the rules and principles around that are being defined. Currently, I believe there is an ongoing conversation among provinces and also the Canadian Forest Service and Environment Canada, in terms of defining what system we should be using.
There are things we control and others that we don't control, like forest fires that aren't induced by humans or if you have lightning going to the ground, so it is very difficult to manage it, other than doing more protection.
The way we have been approaching it is to reduce the impact on settlements. One of the areas that we also need to be careful about is that, when you do invest in forest management, it's a long-term investment. You get into plantations and silviculture, so there is a real investment in this and we need to make sure that we protect those investments as well.
Currently, it's more focused on settlements, people and municipalities, which is the right thing to do, but we also need to think more about how we protect those forests that we've been managing for a very long time.
Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC
Karel talked about being smart. I'm an Alberta member of Parliament and when I think about what we're talking about there, management-wise, it's going to take some money to make investments to develop the innovation to tackle some of these big issues. Forest firefighting costs money, obviously.
One of the things that don't seem smart to me is a world where we're buying 750,000 barrels of oil every day from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Nigeria, then shipping it to Atlantic Canada for use by Canadians, and shipping our money to countries like Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Nigeria, and even to the U.S. and Norway, which we could be using to invest in innovations like this.
Could you speak to the level of investment that would be required to fund those sorts of programs that, again, would save us these hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that are being caused by forest fires? What would that strategy look like, in terms of investment? Does anybody at the table want to tackle that?
Vice-President, Strategic Partnerships, FPInnovations
That is an excellent question. I don't have the answer.
I think there is an ongoing conversation with Natural Resources Canada, which is looking at what the potential cost is, but at this point in time, unless some people around this table have some knowledge around this, no—
Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)
That takes us to the end of the time, unless somebody has a brief comment they can offer.
Thank you.
Mr. Stetski, you're up next.
Wayne Stetski Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
Thank you.
Thank you for being here today.
I'll start with Mr. Murray, who comes from Revelstoke, in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia.
To those of you who haven't been there, it's situated in the Selkirk Mountains. It has amazing snowmobiling and the longest downhill ski run in North America, and great mountain biking. Also, in the community, there is an energy system that is quite beneficial.
I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about how you think wood pellet energy can benefit municipalities, from your experience.
Executive Director, Wood Pellet Association of Canada
Generally speaking, at a community level we can look at very small-scale residential or we can look at a medium or large scale, in institutions and commercially.
Generally with biomass, there are two options: You use either chips or pellets. If you talk to the operators of the boiler systems, chips are less expensive, but it takes more technical know-how to manage and more space to store the fuel; also, it's dirty and so on.
Wood pellets are very homogeneous. They're dry, compact and easy to store. For smaller scale, particularly in Atlantic Canada, where there isn't much natural gas distribution, we found the use of boilers in those kinds of systems very beneficial. You install the boiler, and it is very easy to operate, and at low cost.
I'm not sure I can add much more than that.
Kootenay—Columbia, NDP
One of the challenges is supply, as you mentioned.
Now, management of forests, of course, is largely provincial in nature. Getting access to a forest company's tenure can be challenging.