Evidence of meeting #109 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Mr. Chair, I would love to give him a few more minutes to let him finish on the question that Mr. Whalen was asking. Ten seconds wasn't very long, and I think we would all be willing to listen to that answer.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
I think Mr. Briand got my question. He just didn't get a full opportunity to answer.
Maybe you can elaborate, Mr. Briand, on how your company can assist the government in developing recommendations to do landscape management, and also on the role your company already plays and what further role your company can play in helping us manage the forest fire risk in the future.
12:50 p.m.
Chief Forester, West Fraser Mills Ltd.
As I was mentioning, we already study a fair bit around how the natural cycles would affect the patterns of the forest in the areas we manage. They vary a lot from region to region, so we need to understand the specifics. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. There are different parts of the province, even within Alberta, where those strategies may be different.
Incorporating and recognizing the forest fuel types that are generated through your activities—fuel from a fire perspective—and modelling those over time to see if there are treatments we can do that would create larger landscape-level breaks is something that we have been talking about more and more. We are definitely interested in pursuing those.
Again, the opportunity is more obvious in some places than in others, but I can say that we've been putting in a lot of effort, and different provinces across the country have been expending a lot of effort around communities in recognizing those fire risks and the fuels around the communities to help them be less prone to these fires rolling through.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Richard Cannings
Okay, thank you very much.
I'd like to thank Mr. Briand and Monsieur Bélanger for coming before us today.
With that, the meeting is adjourned. See you all next week.