Evidence of meeting #111 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 forests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Okay, that's very interesting, thank you.
I would just like to ask for a little bit of clarification. What is the Canadian Council on Invasive Species comprised of? Mr. Whalen was asking a few questions in that regard, but how did you start? Did industry decide to put a council together?
Chair, Canadian Council on Invasive Species
No.
Environment Canada had triggered a national invasive species forum in Ottawa 10-plus years ago. The question then—to build on what's called a national alien invasive species strategy for Canada, which was led by Environment Canada—was, what more did Canada need?
One of the top recommendations that came out of that was the call for a non-government national voice for invasive species. This is what it should look like, and this is what their mandate was. That was put together and brought back to another national forum over the next year or two following that. The federal and provincial governments were very clear in saying, “We need something outside of government to complement our work inside government.” Obviously non-profits like us have no authority, but we have the ability to influence in a different way.
Conservative
Chair, Canadian Council on Invasive Species
None. We don't want authority. You have lots around this table.
Conservative
Chair, Canadian Council on Invasive Species
I'll use an example from British Columbia that I'm personally familiar with. There is a brand new beetle—it's an urban forest concern—called Japanese beetle. We held a workshop and brought attention to it. The call for action was to have a multi-party committee that would respond to it. It brought together federal government, provincial government, the industry, local government, and indigenous to ask, what more do you want to do about this Japanese beetle?
That's the role of a non-profit organization. Sometimes we can facilitate an action. That's easier for us to do. Sometimes we can bring in and hold dollars outside of government, which are easier to spend. We've done it—held money that can be spent and isn't tied to fiscal year end, because that beetle cycle might not tie in to March 31 too well.
Chair, Canadian Council on Invasive Species
No, it doesn't work so well. That's where we can help out.
We can engage Canadians in a different way than governments can. It's quicker for us to respond on our website. It's quicker for us to respond to people than, often, governments can. That's just life.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Do you find that you have sufficient engagement with the stakeholders and with decision-makers, both private and government?
Chair, Canadian Council on Invasive Species
There's way more that we could do.
In the last five years, invasive species have become a much more high-profile issue in government and industry. I think the path forward is big, and there's still lots of work to be done.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Ms. Wallin.
Dr. MacLean, in your presentation you indicated that 2% of landowners don't want help with an infestation of spruce budworm. How do you deal with that, or don't you want to deal with that? Are you happy with that?
Prof. David MacLean
We've put a lot of effort into trying to communicate what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it, and the consequences of not doing it. Under our provincial regulations, any landowner has to be contacted and has the opportunity to opt out of any of our treatments. We've been working with that.
This past year, I think we had about 400 individual woodlots with budworm on them that we wanted to treat. In some cases, we've had people opt out in one year and then decide to opt in again in a subsequent year.
Conservative
Prof. David MacLean
Sometimes it's because they don't like the current government, or they don't like any government, or they don't want any meddling, or maybe they're ultra-concerned about any sort of pesticide use. That would be another thing.
We go to great pains to try to explain that the pesticides we're using.... Bacillus thuringiensis is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that's cultured. It's not a poison. The insect has to eat it. It's the same thing with tebufenozide. It's a growth regulator that's specific to budworm. It's a much easier sell than in the days of DDT or chemical pesticides, but some people don't want anything.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
They are private landowners.
How about when you're dealing with provincial or federal landowners? What's their response, typically, when you have identified an infestation and you'd like to do something about it?
Prof. David MacLean
We haven't come up across national parks yet. We haven't had any budworm in them. In New Brunswick, we have Kouchibouguac National Park and Fundy National Park, and we're starting some discussion with them. That may be an issue. We would try to convey the consequences—what would happen to their forests if we don't do anything, and why we're doing it.
We came to an issue with protected natural areas in New Brunswick, where there's a scientific advisory board for that. Normally these areas would be set aside and nothing would be done to them. There were some issues about the idea that we're not letting budworm run its normal course within them. The regulations are such that the provincial minister makes a decision on that, and he has opted to have treatments conducted in protected natural areas. We've had a lot of issues trying to talk to their scientific advisory board to get their input and explain why.
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you both for coming here today. It has been very interesting. I learn a lot at these committee meetings. I learned from Dr. MacLean. I know that, in British Columbia, the western spruce budworm eats Douglas fir and now, I find that the eastern spruce budworm eats balsam fir. I would ask you why it isn't called the fir budworm, but I wanted instead to go to your comments about forest resilience, planning for the future and perhaps talk about a federal role there.
As Ms. Wallin was saying, in British Columbia, we have the mountain pine beetle epidemic that has radically changed our forests and the future of our forest industry. Not only did it kill a lot of trees, but the salvage operations afterwards produced a lot of clear-cuts. I'm sure a lot of those clear-cuts are being replanted to lodgepole pine instead of a mix.
There was a lot of concern registered by forest scientists, at the time, about what these forests would look like in the future, if we continued that salvage the way the plans were. As you know, lodgepole pine is a seral species that harbours all these young firs and spruces, which may be 80 or 100 years old sometimes. When we clear-cut the dead pines, we lose 50- and 80-year-old very diverse resilient forests underneath.
Could you expand on your ideas about the silviculture aspects of that? How should we be planning for the future, with how we design what we're planting, for the biodiversity of those forests and how that might help us with future insect infestation?
Prof. David MacLean
That's a good question. I think the answer to your question comes from understanding the successional patterns that are associated with different levels of outbreak and the relation of species to site characteristics.
Within our project, there has been quite a bit of interest in looking at beneficial effects that have been observed with having mixed species, as in hardwoods mixed in with balsam fir. We've seen it over and over again, when we have a Ph.D. student determining the mechanism of it, but it seems to be associated with parasitoids and a richer parasitoid diversity in these mixed species. Some of them require other hardwood alternate hosts in that, so there is definitely a benefit of that.
We've found that it occurs not only within stands, but it also occurs across landscapes. If you have a plantation that's next to a mixed wood stand, there may be a benefit, within a certain range of that.
Planning the forest landscape also gets into products and what you're trying to grow and what you're going to use them for, so that partly has to be considered, as well as planning for diversity across it and trying to cultivate that. One of the things that you would try to do is alter the age-class distribution, as well as the species composition, on a landscape basis.
There have been lots of theories about that for decades, but as I indicated on my last recommendation, it's very difficult to do on a meaningful scale because it really requires a large landscape. I think that is where one of your recommendations could be to try to facilitate that through partnerships in different regions across Canada with different forest pests.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
In terms of changing the age-class distribution, I assume that would be a move away from bigger clear-cuts and more to selective harvesting in smaller patches or something like that. Is the Forest Service doing research on those sorts of long-term things? I understand what you mean about planning for the economic end of things. Most mills in my riding are keyed in on certain species, so they don't want other species to be grown. They're keyed in on pine or they're keyed in on Douglas fir. Is the federal government doing that? Forests are a long-term thing. I think this is where the government could play a role.
Prof. David MacLean
There may be some of them. I think there could be more. Part of the difficulty is that it can't just be the federal government. It has to be in partnership with provinces and with whatever industry is the licensee for that land area, and they have to buy into it together, but I think it could be facilitated through the federal government.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I'll move to Ms. Wallin.
You mentioned the gypsy moth several times. I know you said we don't have the gypsy moth in B.C., but every year we do have a few.
Chair, Canadian Council on Invasive Species
Right. I correct myself. It's not established.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
No, it's not established, and I know it gets hit as soon as it's found. Is that something that your group coordinates across the country? Is there a gypsy moth team? How does that work?
