Mr. Chair, Madam Vice-Chair, MPs, committee members and staff, thank you very much for inviting us to contribute to the study that is under way.
My name is Bradley Young, and I'm the Executive Director of the National Aboriginal Forestry Association. I come from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation and Swampy Cree Tribal Council territory in northern Manitoba. I would also like to take this time to recognize the traditional territory of the Algonquin nation, Kichi Sipi Aski, otherwise referred to as Ottawa.
First, here is a little background on NAFA. We are a non-governmental, first nations-controlled organization focused on indigenous forest management, including research, advocacy, policy, and associated economic development. It is the creation of genuine wealth and health through world-class business and natural resource management that our 300-plus members and over 1,200 indigenous forest sector businesses are focused on.
In Canada, 80% of over 630 first nations communities call the forest home. Coupled with the aforementioned businesses, this is the forest stewardship potential that NAFA works hard to support. In no other natural resource sector do we find the confluence of geography, population, history, culture, experience, and increasingly the successes that we find in the forest sector.
The other natural resource sectors in Canada are important. However, let us remember that 24 Sussex, the Prime Minister of Canada's official residence, Gorffwysfa, was built by Joseph Merrill Currier, a forest sector businessman and member of Parliament.
No longer packers of water and mere hewers of wood, Canadiens, including a significant indigenous forest sector, now steward over 200 million cubic metres of wood supply nationally, spread over 347 million hectares of forest land.
Increasingly, the provincial and federal Crowns and numerous first nations governments are reconciling interests and rights on the land with the indigenous forest sector's economic sub-aggregate, pointing the way to an additional $2.4 billion of GDP. In the real world, this translates to significant employment growth potential: approximately 5,100 family-sustaining, nation-building jobs.
To arrive at this horizon point, it has taken a complex and uneven process in Canada's forest, with indigenous nations consistently repatriating stewardship responsibilities.
Though diverse, Canada's three orders of government—federal, provincial, and indigenous—have been running a longitudinal experiment on reconciliation, with the indigenous forest sector catalyzing many innovations. Nationally, the experiment has different approaches, with the indigenous proportion of individual provincial wood allocations ranging wildly: from as little as a 0% share of the wood basket in jurisdictions such as P.E.I. and Nova Scotia to almost 20% of the provincial tenure in Ontario, over 30% of provincial tenure in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and a high-water mark of eight million cubic metres—forgive the forestry technicality—or about 12% of British Columbia. In the north, we now have first nations and Métis governments partnering on a corporate basis, splitting ownership rights fifty-fifty over 100% of the commercially available tenure in the Northwest Territories.
Our most recent tenure report, which I'll put up on the screen later, has more statistics, and we can go into detail in the question period.
Bringing it all together, on a national basis, 10.5% of our fibre basket is now indigenous-held, representing 19.2 million cubic metres of tenure. Coupled with the overwhelming physical presence of indigenous peoples and communities in the bush, indigenous peoples in the forest have an overwhelming interest in sustainable stewardship of the forest, being increasingly responsible both for forest management and for responsible economic development.
As a past forest-level research director, I am happy to see that witnesses for this study have included numerous experts on pests, including the Foothills Research Institute. The word “pests”, as you are all well aware, carries some pretty heavy ideological connotations. Indigenous elders don't use terms like that, instead referring to the little ones as man îcosak, or some other respectful indigenous nomenclature in Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Haida, etc. These names do not translate into “pest”; rather, they place the insect family within the circle of life and readily acknowledge that in many ways they are both much more powerful and much more fearsome than humans can ever hope to be.
Through experience, indigenous confederacies of Turtle Island have learned to respect these little ones, developing and refining over millennia landscape-level anthropomorphic pyrotechnology that in turn was and is respected by insects everywhere. In plain English, under the guidance of knowledge keepers, indigenous peoples managed the landscape, including the little ones, from coast to coast to coast, with knowledge, fire, and respect. Interestingly, combined with the increasing amount of indigenous-Canadian partnership, we have the right team of governance, businesses, and experts ready to approach this forest sector situation.
We should recognize the dangerous spectre of imbalance that climate change represents. The interspecies responses that we are witnessing are clear signals that things are not well. The speed and scope of this challenge are chaotic, scientifically speaking, requiring the use of syncretic adaptation at very broad but also localized levels.
A fitting picture of the stakes can be summed up in our collective recollections of the pine beetle-pressured, tinder-dry forest conflagrations over the past two years out west. Ash fallout, producing pitch-black midnight at high noon on a summer day, is a pretty dramatic wake-up call.
Indigenous forest managers, with provincial and federal partnership, should be increasingly supported to maintain balanced, energetic ecological flows in the various forest zones of Canada. Knowledge-holder experts from both worlds, indigenous and western, working together, will need this support to run experiments.
NAFA's advice is to prefer partnerships already in place and proven. Nationally, some of the best teams are already assembled in B.C., on the Prairies, in Ontario, in Quebec, in the Atlantic and in the north. My written submission has detailed names and a listing—and I'll also put it up on the screen in the question period—of indigenous entities and businesses that are in place right now. They have a high state of preparedness and are already in the forests now.
The partnership circle, as we all understand it, also includes the Government of Canada, through Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, Indigenous Services, and Natural Resources Canada's Canadian Forest Service. Responsible provincial ministries are also convening under first minister sub-councils, including the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers and the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment.
However, the federal plow should lead the way here. Why don't we think about a reinvigorated indigenous forest sector program at Natural Resources Canada's CFS, partnered as per last iterations with CIRNAC and ISC, with additional contributions from the provinces? We think that a modest $20-million to $30-million investment, tailored to the partnership ecosystem described above, could greatly assist us in preparing for increasingly complex and dramatic iterations of the environmental pressures that the little ones are signalling for us.
Let us not forget that indigenous groups are already investing in this type of solution structure. For example, leading indigenous forest managers, such as the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, through Mistik Management Ltd., set aside a levy in the range of 75¢ to $1.25 per cubic metre of harvest to support local indigenous family engagement with forest management planning. This is to guarantee robust internal consultations with grassroots indigenous peoples, who are constitutionally recognized rights holders of the land. They also know about the land and insects, and the things you have to do to maintain yourself over millennia in the bush.
Hundreds of thousands of indigenous individuals are still utilizing their forest lands. Resultantly, indigenous and non-indigenous forest entities sharing the landscape have pioneered innovative administrative structures and processes critical to studying and doing anything in the forest. Now we must build on these proven knowledge-creation structures and be additive nationally.
Taken as a whole, first nations have a unique opportunity to contribute to Canada's forest innovation, including insect management, in a concrete, proven and growing way, from our solid footing in the forest.
We want to remind honourable parliamentarians that we have lived in the bush in the midst of all the natural resources for millennia. Right up to today, we have contributed to the well-being of our land and resources. Now we are increasingly managing and developing them. Our population is young, expanding, and ready for constructive nation building.
We should not squander these resources and let them go up in smoke. We need to maximize and sustainably manage them. Furthermore, we need to tell the world about what we are doing so they can learn from our response to climate change and its corresponding forcing of insect life in the forest. From Canada to Iberia, Scandinavia and Oceania, climate change and insects are sending a clear message to human beings. Take it from indigenous peoples, from our songs, our histories, our elders: The last thing we need in Canada is to be overwhelmed and utterly humbled to the point of starvation by the little ones again.
With over 19.2 million cubic metres of wood under first nations' control nationally, now is the time to work in partnership with first nations to support the critical indigenous forest sector as never before. NAFA is playing a leading role in this discussion, and as we work in partnership with our members and supporters, this is the vision we want to pursue: knowledge creation, investment and world-class management resulting in genuine wealth and health generation for us and our partners regionally, nationally and internationally, in government, industry and society.
