Good afternoon and thank you, Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Kate Lindsay, and I'm the vice-president of sustainability. I'm pleased to be here to represent the Forest Products Association of Canada as part of your study on disaster mitigation and to provide context on the role of forest management in supporting disaster mitigation and adaptation in the face of climate change.
FPAC provides a voice for Canada's wood, pulp and paper producers nationally and internationally in government, trade and environmental affairs. Let me give you a quick snapshot of how important the forest products sector is to Canada's economy. It is a $69 billion a year industry that represents 2% of Canada's GDP. The industry is one of Canada's largest employers, operating in 600 forest dependent communities coast to coast. We directly employ about 230,000 people across Canada.
The sector is also important when it comes to the Canadian environment. As custodians of almost 10% of the world's forests, we take our responsibilities as environmental stewards very seriously. Canada has the most independently certified forests in the world: 166 million hectares or about 43% of all certified forests. In fact, repeated surveys of international customers have shown that Canada has the best environmental reputation in the world.
Climate change is emerging as a signature issue of our time. To respond to that, the forest product companies have been ahead of the curve by aggressively reducing their carbon footprint and running more efficient facilities. In fact, pulp and paper mills have cut greenhouse gas emissions by an impressive 66% since 1990, an equivalent of nine megatonnes of CO2 per year. The sector does not use coal and barely any oil—less than 1%. We now have more than 30 facilities that generate green electricity from biomass residues at the mill sites.
Following Canada's commitment under the Paris Agreement, the forest products industry pledged in May 2016 to remove 30 megatonnes a year of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. That's about 13% of the government's emissions reduction target. We call this initiative the “30 by 30” climate change challenge, and we're proud to be part of the solution.
The effects of climate change have had and will continue to have an impact on our sector. Whether negative impacts such as forest fires and insect outbreaks, or positive impacts such as accelerating the transformation of the sector to produce value-added bioproducts, today I would like to focus my comments on the management of our forests to both mitigate climate change and build resiliency and help mitigate disasters such as wildfires and flooding.
Canada's forests are truly an astonishing resource. They represent 348 million hectares of forest land. The forest absorbs a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide, and by doing so, helps regulate the world's climate systems. We are continually looking to support and enable the forest sector to optimize carbon absorption. In some areas of Canada, this will include more active management of forests to sequester carbon: harvest the wood, which locks in carbon, and renew the forest so the cycle can repeat itself. In each forest or forest region, careful planning ensures that features such as wetlands and riparian areas are maintained and managed to allow these features to further enhance carbon mitigation but also to help with flood attenuation and protect drinking water.
At the very same time, the forest industry is utilizing the products from this renewable resource over the working landscape to transition to a low carbon economy with innovative products such as bioplastics, biofuel and tall wood buildings to displace more carbon-intensive products.
To further enhance the carbon sequestration of natural infrastructure such as wetlands, peatlands and watersheds, we have a long-standing relationship with academics such as the Saskatchewan Research Council and partners such as Ducks Unlimited Canada. We have been working with these partners to quantify the carbon sequestered and to codify forest management practices that conserve and enhance these features in providing carbon sequestration as well as the many ecosystem services.
As per the component of your study on the role of nature and natural spaces in mitigating disaster, I would also like to highlight a significant potential unintended consequence of the preservation of nature. As you can appreciate, there's a variety of ecosystems across Canada.
Much of the forested area in Canada falls within disturbance-driven ecosystems. These are primarily wildfires, but also forest pests and wind blow-down. Thus these ecosystems have naturally had stand-replacing fires across much of the forested landscape through history.
In more recent history scientists believe our forests are under greater stresses such as drought and disease, likely due to climate change, and this has resulted in more catastrophic fires such as the fires in British Columbia in 2017 and 2018. Due to fire suppression and forest preservation in the form of protected areas and conserved areas, there are also more forests that are older and denser, producing more fuel for the forest pests and fires. Compound that with the expansion of towns, cities and infrastructure and this is a growing challenge for community safety.
This area, known as the “wildland-urban interface”, will require new and different approaches to management and emergency preparedness.
I would like to highlight one example that illustrates some of the proactive work needed to help mitigate fire disasters. Jasper National Park, located in west central Alberta, is an iconic natural space managed by Parks Canada. For many years Parks Canada and the Town of Jasper have had growing concerns about fire safety. Since 2003 Parks Canada has been managing fuel by implementing a FireSmart plan, for the most part utilizing tree removal and prescribed burns, but the plan was no longer addressing the scale of the risk. Mountain pine beetle moved into the park, with significant damage in 2017-18.
The community was asking for further action, and in March 2018, Canfor, a forestry company located in Alberta, won a bid to use large-scale forest management to create a firebreak above the town of Jasper within the park. It was an unlikely partnership, but over the last year the project has involved careful planning and the harvesting of over 300 hectares of forest. As of this week the project is nearing completion and the objectives have been met. The harvest has significantly reduced the fuel-loading to mitigate for fire for the town residents and park visitors, but also the ecological values, such as maintenance of soil and wildlife habitat, quality have been met.
This is just one example of where the creation of natural spaces such as parks and set-asides have to be considered carefully and/or for which management treatments may be required to mitigate fire and flooding risk in those areas in the adjacent communities.
There are existing broader tools that can be used, such as FireSmart at the community level and vulnerability assessments at the forest management unit or regional level. We encourage governments to look at expanding and supporting these approaches.
We believe there is a responsibility and role for professional foresters to support community safety and stability and we encourage a national dialogue on addressing innovative ways and investments to address wildfire risks in the future.
Thank you for your attention this afternoon. I would be happy to address any of your questions.