Evidence of meeting #19 for Natural Resources in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank all of our witnesses for coming to appear before the committee. It is important that we have this opportunity to meet with you. I'm going to pursue the line of questioning raised by my colleague.
The Bloc Québécois speaks French here.
I could speak to you in English, but I'm not supposed to.
My question is directed mainly to Mr. Gray.
You say quite rightly, Mr. Gray, that at the moment oil development is taking priority over lumbering—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Monsieur Ouellet, just a minute.
Channel six is the English channel. Please turn it to channel six and turn the volume up.
Sorry for interrupting, Monsieur Ouellet.
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
At the moment, lumbering activity is taking a backseat to the development of oil and gas and mining and is hampered by climate change, which has given rise to the mountain pine beetle problem in B.C. and other diseases in the Maritimes.
In Canada as a whole, is there a balance between factors that hinder development and sustainability of the forest? Can it be said that in 20 years, not in 50 or 100 years, we will have the same amount of wood available for logging as we have at the moment?
Chair, Conservation Committee of the Board, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
That's a good question.
I think the big wild cards in that equation centre around climate change for sure, because I think we've yet to see how their impacts are going to play out. The mountain pine beetle is a really good example of that. Native species--no one would have guessed that if you change the temperature regime slightly, this thing can go crazy and eat half of central British Columbia and maybe move across to the boreal. That is a huge wild card. And there are other factors besides: changes in insect outbreak or fungus or bacteria that could have an impact on forest health and our ability to extract forest resources.
Given that we know we're going to have significant climate change and that some of these ecosystem impacts we haven't foreseen are going to occur, we need to be managing our forests in a way that creates resilience. There has been a lot of discussion of this in British Columbia. The chief forester in British Columbia has talked pointedly about the need to move forest management there to one that is much more cautious to be able to maintain a harvest level and wood flow in products and community benefits that can be sustained in the face of a high degree of uncertainty because of climate change.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
If you had to recommend a forest policy to the government, you would ask that the necessary steps be taken to conserve the resource. We should not do the same thing we did with the fishery. People thought there was no problem, and so much fishing was allowed that eventually the resource was depleted.
Chair, Conservation Committee of the Board, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
I'd say that to keep it simple we need to complete a protected areas network in this country, control areas where we are not exploiting the resource, that are left in a wild state so we can study how natural forests work under climate change scenarios, provide places for wildlife to continue to live, and lower our harvest levels to that conservative benchmark. What that would be would depend on where you are in the country. But this is broadly recognized to be a problem. Quebec has very much addressed the issue of overharvest; too high a harvest level can't be sustained. In British Columbia, given what's happened to their forest, given the pine beetle outbreak, they're talking about the same thing: lower harvest levels, more areas that are off limits to industrial activity period. So you have some resilience built into the system.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Thank you.
Since we do have a limited resource, Ms. Blenkhorn, we cannot engage in lumbering activities to create jobs. In other words, it is not a source of job creation, it is an extraordinary source of energy for our country. If we want to keep the resource in its present form—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Maritime Lumber Bureau
Are you referring to energy?
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Just as we have to look at the resource in terms of the way it is used. We cannot use it and maintain we are creating jobs, it is just that simple. That is not possible if we want to preserve the resource. The greatest resource is energy. In this context, should Canada be focusing first and foremost on research and development before exporting goods to the United States?
Let me give you an example. In Canada, we could use wood for construction purposes. There is no need to change the code, because this provision is already in it, but it is possible to use steel in building as well. We could use biomass to heat our large buildings. But we are letting it rot, or using it to make ethanol. It is well known that energy is lost whenever there is significant processing.
Should we start by using the wood we have in Canada and using inventions such as the ones being developed by Mr. Pelton and Mr. Rosenberg, and others using composite materials, before we export our logs or two-by-fours to the United States, as we always have?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Maritime Lumber Bureau
I totally agree with the concept of using what material we can in Canada. We've done a number of activities. As you've said, we have building codes in Canada that will allow for four-storey non-residential buildings made of wood. But the simple reality is our population can't support the volume of material we have produced in the past. And if we are going to continue at those levels even with reductions, or unless the forest resource is going to hit a balance of which portion is used for ethanol fuels and which portion is for construction materials, maybe then we focus on Canada. I think we need to approach these on a North American basis so we do not relive experiences of recent years when markets closed to us overnight.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you very much.
I wanted to say to the folks from James and Elk Lake that my colleague Charlie Angus sends his greetings, as he couldn't be here this morning.
It seems to me that we have a fundamental issue here on a community level that we need to address in a major way if we're going to respond to some of the concerns that you put on the table today. Certainly I've been in many communities across northern Ontario over the last few months, talking to leaders of industry and political and union leaders as they look desperately for an answer. These folks have made investments over a number of years, both in their work and in buying homes, and some of them have started up small businesses—and overnight, these are worthless. They are wondering where they should go and what they should do and if retraining will actually do anything for them, and all the rest of that. I'm sure it's the same in New Brunswick and eastern Canada. Communities are desperately looking for anything that will give them some hope.
I know that different levels of government are coming forward with proposals. There's the billion dollars talked about at the federal level. The provincial government has come forward with a number of initiatives on energy, and there's money out there for new technology—although for a company that is down and done, new technology isn't going to help much, although I guess an investment in upgrading for the future would be good.
I know there are some people, particularly from northwestern Ontario and within the union movement, the CEP, who have called for a summit on forestry so that we can get all of the players around the table and find a way to coordinate efforts and make sure that we're not working at cross-purposes, or to figure out a way to maybe even stack some of these, so that we can finally get something that's substantial enough to make a difference. There's also a call out by folks for a national forestry strategy.
Maybe you could respond to both of those ideas or requests that I'm hearing, and let us know what you think about the summit and the strategy.
Reeve, Township of James, Township of James and Town of Elk Lake
I've talked about the idea of a summit for a long time; I've been an advocate for the forest industry. We have an opinionated public, but they're just not very well educated in the resource sectors—and those are all of the resource sectors.
We started the TERRA program, “Teaching Environmentally Responsible Resource Activities”, back about 12 or 13 years ago at the high school. They had carpentry and they built kiosks and talked about the good, the bad, and the indifferent of the forest industry; they developed all of those sites and put them in. It was in English. There were all of these different types of subjects. It was a hands-on thing, and there were a number of students. We have to get that educational aspect out there, that there's something about these industries—which is not being taught in the schools at all. That program is still continuing today, and it takes a different bend, depending on the teacher. It could be on the bird banding and looking after Hilliardton Marsh, or a different one; it depends on where the teachers are from. We currently have one going with the high school in Englehart.
To get to the point of a forum, something is needed. We even have to start at the ground level. Let's start educating and showing people that it is a good industry, that there are a lot of things there. As a company, we're an R and D point for one of the major equipment manufacturers; they bring all of their new technology and we try it out, and that's where it's learned from. We have a lot of high-tech people coming through the area, so a forum to bring together all of the ideas of individual communities and companies would be a perfect situation.
How many people would want to do that right now with the industry down? Timing has to be right for a forum like that. It has to be in the spring, when the thaw is on and companies are traditionally shut down, which is when you'd probably get the biggest turnout. If you try to do that at the wrong time of the year, it probably won't be as successful. But it definitely is warranted, and I'm sure you'd have the forest industry; and it has to include not just the big players, who are definitely the bread and butter of it all, but also go right down so that we bring our educators to the table too, for something like this.
The second part was...?
Community Development Forester, Township of James and Town of Elk Lake
I think it's warranted, and that it would be worthwhile proceeding with that, but the state of the union right now is such that we have to do something now. A strategy is something you can work on concurrently with things like the summit and working towards some of the short-term solutions. So I'd certainly support the idea of putting that strategy together on a broader national level, but it's not going to solve the problem that we have today, where industry is running out of cash to get through this crisis.
Community Development Forester, Township of James and Town of Elk Lake
Sorry, just with respect to that summit, I had the opportunity to speak at the CEP session in Kapuskasing in the summer. That did come up, and we supported it then. Just to put a plug in for Elk Lake, we also have a facility there that would be the perfect venue for something like that, either in the full scale or the pre-meeting, the preparation for it.
Conservative
NDP