Thanks, Madam Chair.
My name is Derek Nighbor. I'm president and CEO at Forest Products Association of Canada. I am participating today from our FPAC head offices here in Ottawa, built on the unceded Algonquin Anishinabe territory.
Canada's forest sector is a $76-billion sector that brings over $34 billion worth of sustainably sourced Canadian products to the world each year. We're across more than 600 forest-dependent communities across the country and directly employ just under 230,000 Canadians.
I know a number of members of the committee. I see MPs Sheehan, Martel, Masse and Hoback, who know us pretty well, but for those of you who don't know, we're a world leader and are unique in many ways in our approach to sustainable forest management. I had the privilege of chairing my global colleagues from 28 countries around the world, and one of our big differentiators in Canada is our public land component. Over 90% of the lands that forest operations happen on are under the purview of provincial government laws, regulations and policies. Operating on provincial Crown land brings with it significant obligations and commitments to use local science, secure input from indigenous and non-indigenous communities, make sure these local values are incorporated, and manage for dozens of important values from biodiversity conservation to flood and fire risk mitigation and supporting birds, mammals and fish that call the forest home. Plans are developed on the land base considering 100-to-200-year time horizons. Not many industries plan in those cycles. As I said, those plans on public land are approved by provincial governments.
Our sector sees a lot of alignment with the federal government's priorities and ready-made solutions, as Susan and Jason spoke to, to help decarbonize our economy, to support effective conservation, to sustain and create well-paid jobs in rural and northern Canada especially, and to advance reconciliation with indigenous peoples.
In terms of indigenous peoples and their engagement, those communities are core to the success and the future of our sector. It is not only the indigenous youth who are representing that significant cohort in terms of talent in the future, but also today indigenous peoples also directly control 10% of Canada's wood supply, and that continues to trend upward. There are also numerous joint ventures, co-management arrangements, employment programs and revenue-sharing agreements within indigenous communities across the country, not to mention over 12,000 indigenous workers and over 1,400 indigenous-owned forestry businesses operating from coast to coast.
Susan alluded to the net-zero-carbon economy opportunity, and as Jim Carr used to say when he was minister, there's no path to net-zero carbon without Canadian forestry and forest products. Our solutions are across the value chain, and they include everything from mitigating fire risks that are carbon spewing, to producing lumber and wood products that lock in carbon for generations and also using what would otherwise be wood waste—whether it be sawdust, bark or wood chips—to make things like paper, biofuels, bioplastics and to power electricity grids and district heating systems.
We're pretty blessed in Canada—there are over 9,000 trees for every Canadian, and Jason talked about that 3:1 planting ratio in Alberta, and how replacing more than we take ensures we're going to keep our forests as forests forever.
There's been a lot of talk today about softwood lumber. I'm going to talk about another trade issue that's facing our lumber sector and our pulp and paper sector. It and its potential impacts are things I think this committee and the Government of Canada need to be clearly aware of. I'm talking about discriminatory pieces of anti-Canadian forestry legislation that are currently active on the floors of the state legislatures in California and New York. They are designed to restrict Canadian forest exports to those states through state procurement channels. When I took this job a few years ago, I didn't anticipate needing to do advocacy work in Sacramento and Albany, but here we are. As I said, if these bills were to pass, the precedent-setting nature and what some of the activists would try to do to influence U.S.-based customers and other state governments would be disastrous for Canadian forestry families and communities.
I'll give you a little more of the specifics. Over the past year, we've been working in collaboration with industry, labour and indigenous partners against bills in California by Assemblymember Kalra. One bill was vetoed by Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, only to be reintroduced weeks ago along with a bill by State Senator Liz Krueger in New York State. When we saw the bills emerge one right after the other with very similar language, we knew there was some kind of coordinated effort, and it's become clear to us that the U.S.-based anti-Canadian resource organization Natural Resources Defense Council has been instrumental in drafting these bills.
I want to raise these bills. We're very concerned about the potential impacts on our workforce and our ability to operate on the land. The discriminatory nature has clearly been called out by industry and labour partners, and we need the federal government to stand with us to ensure that we don't have even more trade problems with our neighbours to the south.
Thank you, Madam Chair.