Natural Resources Committee on Sept. 25th, 2018

[William Anderson]

Again, that will depend on what we know about the biology of the species and how quickly it moves naturally versus human-assisted movement. It would depend on how established a particular pest is.

A risk assessment would be done to determine the likelihood of success if we wanted to go the eradication route, as we did early on with the Asian gypsy moth in Vancouver and Toronto. That would involve regulating the site. In the case of Toronto, we cut down many of the host trees so that the Asian long-horned beetle would not have a source of food. Then we do monitoring and surveillance for five years, and we follow international standards and commitments to be able to declare that we've successfully eradicated that pest.

In other cases, as with the brown spruce longhorn beetle, we have a strongly established pest that we're not in a position to eradicate because of the associated costs. We understand and appreciate that the pest itself moves at a certain rate that is greatly accelerated by human-assisted movement, whether it's from logs moving between sites to a pest-free site or from firewood, so we put restrictions on those sites to slow the spread because we know the natural biology of the pest means it will move slowly. We buy time by not accelerating that movement with human intervention.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Cannings, go ahead.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you all for being here before us today.

I have a lot of questions, but I'll try to get through things quickly.

I'm from British Columbia, and the mountain pine beetle is a big deal for us there. Before I got this job, I was an ecologist and I worked a fair bit with the forestry industry.

What I saw with the mountain pine beetle locally was that we had research areas where they threw everything at mountain pine beetles in the Cascades. They were using very high-intensity, expensive treatment methods, such as pheromone trapping and local burning, and the issue just got bigger and bigger. It didn't matter what we did. To me, that was the lesson we learned, especially from the last big outbreak.

I'm looking at the maps here of its spreading across Alberta. Is there anything we can do to stop the spread there? Friends of mine are employed in this and making good money trying. What is the real strategy there, or are we just stuck with something and should hope to get some early cold winters and cool, wet summers?

[Derek MacFarlane]

I can start, and maybe Jean-Luc can pick it up.

Yes, absolutely. The normal cycle for the mountain pine beetle is eight to 10 years. It certainly lasted longer in B.C. and the last outbreak was definitely more severe. The traditional method is to cut, pile, burn, and get rid of the single trees, and amend the harvesting regimes to focus on beetle-infected wood, if you can. But at this point there really aren't a lot of new types of control methods that we can use. TreeAzin has been applied, but that's hundreds of dollars per tree. It's not practical in the forest. It might be in higher-valued types of trees.

Jean-Luc, do you want to comment?

[Jean-Luc St-Germain]

In some parts of Alberta, the mountain pine beetle is becoming endemic to these forests. It's been there for a couple of years and it's expected that it's there to stay. In areas where populations are pretty high and doing damage, traditional control approaches are applied to manage beetle populations and their impact, so trees are cut and burned.

In eastern Alberta, it's a bit different. There are more opportunities to contain the beetle by applying the same types of approaches, supported by intensive monitoring of the beetle population, to significantly slow the spread eastward into the boreal forest. There are opportunities, because in this area the pine forests are more sparse. They are not as continuous as you would see in B.C., for example, and the climate is a little less suitable. There are some factors that make the mountain pine beetle less successful, but there is still a risk that the mountain pine beetle will spread into the boreal forest.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Right.

I just wanted to ask you, Mr. MacFarlane, about your comment about how there's this belief that the mountain pine beetle kills swaths of forest and then those forests become more prone to fire. As an ecologist, I've never seen any scientific evidence for this. It seems to me that when they're red and there are needles on they're susceptible, but once they drop their needles I think fire would have a harder time going through there than through a live green forest. But I keep hearing this being repeated, and I just wonder if you know of any science on that. I've looked in the literature and haven't found anything to support that.

[Derek MacFarlane]

No, I think you're absolutely right in your comments. In terms of greener foliage and foliage on the lodgepole pine, for example, it's more prone, I should say, if it's dying.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Yes.

I'll move to Mr. Anderson.

You mentioned some of the tree pests that are coming into Canada. One of the worst examples we saw in B.C. was back in the 1920s. I guess we didn't know any better then, but we imported all these white pines from Europe that had white pine blister rust, which basically destroyed the white pines of western North America and still is a big problem.

I assume we don't bring in any forest trees now for our nurseries, and most of that is done in-house. I have nurseries in my riding that do a lot of business with the United States. They bring in small plants from the United States, grow them up, and then export them back to the United States. I'm just wondering about the Fortress North America strategy. Do we co-operate with the United States on those issues? What are the differences, say, between a shipload of stuff coming from Asia versus a truck coming across the border in southern British Columbia?

[William Anderson]

I will say there is the ability to trade with Canadian goods or wood products or logs, but there would have to be a risk assessment that would go with it and strict criteria that would have to be followed by the exporting country in order to meet our requirements before that can happen.

With respect to how we work with the U.S., we work very closely. I think we take a North American perimeter approach with respect to how we see the ability for pests to come in through Asia or other countries. We collaborate very much. I mentioned the certification program that we're looking at for the Asian gypsy moth, for example. That is in coordination and using the same criteria and help between our two countries to ensure that we're keeping that pest out, doing the same things, and actually working together with those countries that export to us to ensure that they're following the rules and understand what's expected of them.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay, good.

I have a very quick question for the New Brunswick folks. I understand you're getting in early on the cycle. Is there any evidence from the past experience in New Brunswick that trying to attack it at the peak of the cycle may just extend the cycle, dampen down the peak but keep it going longer? Is that a risk?

[Chris Ward]

Do you want to take that?

[Chris Norfolk]

I'm not aware of any evidence that shows that we prolonged the outbreak cycle through our efforts as the outbreak progressed through the late 1970s and 1980s. It could be that there were some indirect effects, but I'm not aware of them myself. I can speak more comfortably about the results we've seen from the most recent outbreak, which started in the New Brunswick area around 2013, and the positive aspects we've seen in this early intervention at the beginning of the cycle.

We do have a fairly extensive scientific record of the progression of outbreak cycles and populations as they move through Atlantic forests. In particular, I'm thinking of the large-scale control, if you will, that was effectively Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia during the last outbreak cycle. We do have effective controls that we look at to try to understand population dynamics and impacts.

Specific to your question, I'm not aware of anything conclusive.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Whalen, we'll go to you.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming. It's good to know that we have the right people at the table for our first meeting on this important topic.

With this conversation, I'm thinking back to when I was in high school. I had an opportunity to go to a national debating seminar in British Columbia. We were talking about sustainable development. That was our theme. We were talking about a forest pest. It must have been.... Was there another beetle that was on the go back in the 1980s, the Douglas something, maybe a Douglas fir beetle?

[Derek MacFarlane]

Was it the spruce beetle?

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

It could have been.

It was a different thing we were talking about, but it's the same issue over and over, where with climate change we're going to see a migration of pests and we need to manage it. How bad is this problem in the western U.S.? How are they managing their forests better than we do ours, since we don't continually read in the papers about the mountain pine beetle in American timber stands?

[Jean-Luc St-Germain]

In the U.S., the mountain pine beetle has been a very severe problem over the last decade or even more, and they are facing the same problems we are, with the addition that many of the areas that are affected are recreational areas—national parks, for example—so they also have to deal a bit more with safety issues for visitors in these areas. They are applying similar approaches to manage the mountain pine beetle and other pests. There's a lot of collaboration between Canada and the U.S., a lot of exchanges of scientific knowledge and technology. I would say our approaches to managing forest pests are fairly similar.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

When we look at the overhead shots of these forests after they've been infested, it's pretty clear to the naked eye which trees are sick and which ones aren't, so presumably there are technological measures that could be used at a certain stage in the life cycle of the beetle to establish where they are. Why haven't the tactics that are being used in New Brunswick been used in British Columbia, and now Alberta, to target areas of infestation? Shouldn't we just be harvesting all these trees regardless, so they don't become fuel for the massive forest fires we've seen?

[Derek MacFarlane]

The “slow the spread” strategy in the eastern part of Alberta, which was developed through the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers' forest pest working group, is in a sense a similar approach that is being applied in New Brunswick.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay.

[Derek MacFarlane]

One output from the early intervention strategy in New Brunswick will be how we can apply this to other pests across the country and elsewhere. It is an experiment. If it works, hopefully it's going to be applied to other pests. It was too late for B.C. It wasn't even thought of in B.C. when the B.C. outbreak started.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay. I find it hard that to micro-target pests wasn't thought of, but maybe the ability to do it was not there. To think that it wasn't thought of.... Even in my debating in the 1990s I'm sure we talked about it.

When we look to New Brunswick, you guys have neighbours with more severe problems than yours: Quebec. When you talk about this $300-million solution to a $15-billion problem, are we talking about it for the region as a whole or just for the scope of the problem within New Brunswick? Over what time period are you looking to expend these funds?

[Chris Norfolk]

We quantify those costs, as well as the solution costs, over the scope of the entire outbreak cycle. We're looking at a 30-year period, which is what we use to simulate the impact and quantify the cost. Those figures are relevant to all Atlantic provinces. That's the scale of the proposal that the Healthy Forest Partnership put forward. It would be outside the province of Quebec, but inclusive of the Atlantic provinces.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I know that in areas like La Baie-Des-Chaleurs, to a large extent you're managing infestation as it crosses the border. If we were going to take an approach that transitioned the Atlantic Canadian defence into Quebec and into Maine, what dollar figure are we looking at to manage it ecosystem-wide rather than on a province boundary-wide basis?