Finance Committee on Sept. 27th, 2010

[Daniel Paillé, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

I hope that the Justice for Girls people have already set up a trust fund that accepts donations from local people. In fact, I am sure that after having heard your testimony... I represent an urban riding in the south of Montreal where poverty is visible. How do you get local people to get involved? A trend I see in my community, and that you see in yours, is that people are okay with projects like this as long as they're not in their community. They think these kinds of projects are good for the neighbour. What are you doing to get community residents involved in the kinds of projects you undertake?

Ms. Czapska?

[Asia Czapska]

As you've said, I think for a lot of people, when they actually hear about homelessness and youth homelessness, especially homelessness of girls, there maybe isn't as much of a resistance to housing like that, not as there would be for different kinds of housing. So it really depends.

Then, as to how you work with a community, you just do, right? You just try to explain why there is a need. You try to explain to the community that this will not have a negative impact on their community to have housing like that. Sometimes I think it depends on the kind of housing, because you also create mixed housing.

I mean, I agree with you about not creating ghettos and just talking more widely about social housing. It's important to not create ghettos and to actually have mixed neighbourhoods.

[Daniel Paillé, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Merci.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We'll go to Ms. Cadman, please.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Martin and Mr. Bassermann, you said that the area that's covered by the pine beetle is 23 times that of metro Toronto. Can you give me how many acres that would be--a tangible?

[A voice]

In hectares.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Hectares would be good.

[Donald Bassermann]

I appreciate that it was asked in acres, though, because I'm still trying to make that age adjustment.

It's 16.3 million hectares.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

That's incredible.

[Donald Bassermann]

It's a huge piece of real estate.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Yes.

Now, is this accessible to us, or is it way up in the mountains so that we can't get at it?

[Rhona Martin]

If you were to drive probably two and a half hours from here, heading up to Prince George, it would start there, around Merritt. You would see the devastation there.

There are miles and miles and miles of deforested land. It is absolutely heartbreaking.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

With this wood, is there any way of using it? Can we use it for furniture, or...?

[Rhona Martin]

Many of the communities have value-added industries. For a while there was what was considered the blue-streaked pine and it was making furniture. It was kind of the fashion to have that. There are pellets being made for heat. They have tried to extract every ounce of valuable fibre out of it that they possibly can, and Mr. Bassermann can elaborate on that.

[Donald Bassermann]

Just to take a futuristic look to answer your question, it is one thing to deal with the wood as it's dying now, and throughout our entire region we are working as desperately as we can to do that. One of the significant things, when that wood is no longer available to us, is the future of this region. What will sustain the community? What will sustain the people there?

As we are transitioning from a significantly forest-based economy, we need the opportunity to move into other areas of opportunity: agriculture, tourism, mining, oil and gas, social services. We need to transition into those kinds of activities when that wood is no longer available to use. We anticipate a 40% drop in available wood province-wide, sooner than later.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Can we reforest?

[Donald Bassermann]

That is in fact a part of the mitigation strategy. The cost of doing that is significant. That 16 million-plus hectares is an awful lot of trees to replant, and the silviculture programs that we are encouraging, not only regionally and locally but provincially, are attempting to address that. We still have a significant way to go.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

Justice for Girls, you've been around for eleven years. Have you made any progress?

[Asia Czapska]

We absolutely have, but I should explain that we do all kinds of work. We do a lot of work with young women, for example, in youth custody and in advocating for girls who are in youth prisons. Actually, the progress that we've made has been around the treatment of girls and the policies of youth prisons. For example, in British Columbia it used to be that we had young men and young women in the same living units, a huge risk for sexual violence. We had male guards supervising girls alone in living units, things like that. Because of our advocacy, some of those things have changed in B.C.

I would encourage you to actually look in your community at what's going on with youth prisons and see if you have mixed gender living units, if you have male staff supervising young teenaged girls. That's one of the things.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

I've been involved with Covenant House for quite a while. Have you heard of it? Do you work with it at all?

[Asia Czapska]

Covenant House, absolutely. We've been at different meetings and different strategy meetings before, but we usually specifically work to advocate for girls only housing. They are one of many youth organizations.

We would like to see more organizations that work specifically with girls, obviously, and that do the same kind of work we do.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, Thank you, Ms. Cadman.

Mr. Pacetti, for a brief round.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Just briefly on the beetle action, as somebody from Montreal, Quebec, it's not something I really understand. Ms. McLeod asked you the question, Mr. Bassermann, but there was a lot of money put in, and if I look at your diagrams, the problem seems to be getting worse instead of better. What's going on?

[Donald Bassermann]

It's a huge area. There is a significant economic impact. Many small communities are involved. Many small communities cannot sustain their basic infrastructure, schools, health care, social services, let alone their culture and so on.

What we are trying to do, as three organizations speaking for the collection of local governments across this massive area, is to find ways of mitigating the long-term effect of all those dead trees. We are trying to find opportunities to create employment, though it will be different employment in all of those communities, so that people can continue to live, enjoy appropriate education, enjoy appropriate health care, and those kinds of things.