Evidence of meeting #112 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 provincial.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Bradley Young  Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association
Kent Hehr  Calgary Centre, Lib.
Ziad Aboultaif  Edmonton Manning, CPC
Keith Atkinson  Chief Executive Officer, BC First Nations Forestry Council
Diane Nicholls  Assistant Deputy Minister, Chief Forester, Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development of British Columbia

11:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today.

We have a couple of visitors, from both sides, so thank you for being here today.

I know that Ted will be along shortly. He's anticipating the lunch we'll be having today.

We have one witness in our first hour: Bradley Young, from the National Aboriginal Forestry Association.

Mr. Young, thank you for joining us. I'm not sure if you've appeared before a committee previously, but we're a friendly lot. The process is that you are given up to 10 minutes to make a presentation, and then we'll open the table for questions.

The floor is yours.

11:05 a.m.

Bradley Young Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

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.

11:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

Thank you very much, Mr. Young.

You made reference to some images you want to use. Are they pictures only?

11:15 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

They are. I can put them up on the screen—

11:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

No, the reason I ask is that if there are words with them, they need to be translated.

11:15 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

They're English only. My apologies.

11:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

No, there is no need to apologize. It's a common occurrence; don't worry about it. If everybody is okay with using the images, we will have them translated later, as is our custom.

Are there any objections? No.

Mr. Harvey, go ahead.

11:15 a.m.

Liberal

TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today, Mr. Young.

What role do you feel indigenous-led organizations that make up part of your group could play in controlling forest pests and managing the ecosystem in a way that's perhaps unique compared to traditional management techniques utilized by the traditional industry stakeholders?

11:15 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

I'll give you an example of some direct experience I've had with this as a land-based research director in the west out of the Foothills Research Institute.

Parks Canada noticed the first iterations of the mountain pine beetle. The overflights were just coming over the mountains. The landscape was already being turned orange in B.C. and the scientists and elders were saying that they were coming over the mountains and you couldn't stop them. They asked the indigenous elders and businesses in the region what they should do.

The indigenous leadership, businesses and elders said, “The story is in the later chapters here. You should have never prevented us from continuing to utilize fire every spring and every fall as the snows left and came. That's when we would use fire to control the insects and to increase energetic flows on the landscape. The only thing you can really hope to do is to use prescribed burning to try to save what you can at a stand level, but it's going to be very hard because the forest has been allowed to run wild.”

Parks Canada came up with a response, a summer project, and they came back to the elders and said they were going to burn some areas where there's a high likelihood that the mountain pine beetle is going to nest. They're already there and we know they're going to overwinter and then they're going to continue west. The elders said not to start a fire in July. Parks Canada said that's when they have their summer students and their firefighter crews. The elders said not to do that because the sun is at the height of its power and the insects are going to be at the height of their power. The fires are going to get away. The fires got away. This was in the late 1990s, and it almost went across into the provincial lands from Jasper.

The mechanism there of federal, provincial and business leaders asking indigenous people and coming together in a coordinating group and working through the mechanics of it—that is the answer, sir. That's already in place in provinces and regions through the forestry entities and the first nations groups that have accommodated provincial and territorial governments. Forest management groups are already doing this.

We just have to supply resources, and we have to let those groups, those partnerships, come up with the solutions.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB

Do you have stakeholder businesses within your group that have taken advantage of the federal indigenous forestry initiative?

11:20 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

Yes, there is—

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB

Also, whether you do or you don't, do you feel that this is a tool that indigenous-led organizations or chiefs and councils could use to build capacity as we try to manage different forest pests in different jurisdictions across the country?

11:20 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

Definitely. There's a logical coordinating corporate memory—knowledge memory, I guess—in place through the indigenous forestry program. Before that, we had the first nations forestry program, and before that we had this thing called something like the interim land and range agreements from Indian and Northern Affairs back then.

The memory is there, in terms of government programming and structures and people. It needs to be invested in, in a much more direct manner, I would say. In the last part of the previous government, the indigenous forestry program went all the way down to.... It was in the millions of dollars of funding. Obviously, when you're looking at just one fire that can cause a billion dollars of damage, you can look at that and say that it's probably an underinvestment, a million dollars nationally. That's not a lot of butter to spread over a lot of toast.

We have suggested a number, $20 million to $30 million, that should go in. Obviously, you wouldn't want to just do one thing with that. You would want to let the creativity of first nations businesses and regional priorities come through, and there's an organizing mechanism in place through that already.

I think it needs to be strengthened, sir, and I think it needs to be cross-purposed as well.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB

I have one last question. We've spent quite a bit of time in the indigenous and northern affairs committee talking about the indigenous fire marshal's office and the strengthening and creation of a more robust indigenous-led fire service across the country. How big of a role do you think that separate organization can play in rural and remote communities across the country? Do you think there is a synergy between fire control and pest management?

11:20 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

I think it's fantastic that those discussions are proceeding. The fire marshalls and the firefighting units in a lot of the rural first nations communities are, to me, some of the last iterations of the older societies that were tasked with protecting the indigenous communities. It's just a modern iteration of old social structures in place.

For it to be purposed maximally to look at pests and fire and all of this, you would have to have the larger coordinating group that they would fit in with. They could fit in with the forest-based entities in the region, the provincial authorities there, the territorial authorities, and make it a cross-member, multi-entity task group. That's how you would get the best performance and the best reception and effectiveness of that group.

It needs to be supported. It needs to be strengthened because, as you know, in many rural first nations and indigenous communities, there's no local RCMP detachment and no emergency response in place outside of volunteers. With the drying landscape that we're seeing right now, they could be the core of the first responder corps that we need for some of the conflagrations, which we know are coming. We can say that now. We know that there are increasing conflagrations coming on the landscape. We don't know when and where, but they're there.

I'm happy to support that question and that idea.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB

Thank you very much, sir.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

Mrs. Stubbs, go ahead.

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Shannon Stubbs Conservative Lakeland, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Bradley, thanks for being here. I just want to note your comment there about the frequent lack of front-line law enforcement and first responder resources in rural, remote and indigenous communities.

I was really grateful for the support of the Liberals and all the parties, including an amendment accepted from the NDP, to move a motion in June for the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to undertake an assessment of exactly that issue in rural, remote and indigenous communities. I'm not a permanent member of that committee, but it's undertaking that study right now. I think I'll feed your comments from this committee into that one, just for its consideration as it goes forward and focuses on that issue too.

As a person from northeast Alberta, I certainly appreciate your testimony. It's always great to hear examples of very successful and long-term partnerships of indigenous communities with all kinds of responsible resource development in Canada, whether it's mining, energy or forestry.

I wonder about your comment about the increasing opportunities for fifty-fifty partnerships with private sector forestry developers. Are there any examples of partnerships that you wanted to highlight in particular or expand on in detail?

11:25 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

If you look at a little bit of history there, the joint venture partnership model is in place and it implies that any joint venture is a partnership. In the forest sector, that's how most indigenous groups entered into the sector. Right there, at a fundamental level, it's already a collaborative effort. That has only grown into the national imagination of indigenous groups, but also international indigenous groups looking at the Canadian model.

Every region has examples of joint venture partnerships and partnerships between indigenous and non-indigenous business groups in the forest sector. What we're seeing now is the indigenous maturity, sophistication and, frankly, equity and business strength coming, so that indigenous groups are now becoming the senior partners in the partnership matrix, which is something that you would logically see over time.

This is where the increasing numbers for tenure under control are happening. In Alberta, it's not quite as advanced as some of the other regions. I'd say that the most advanced regions are Ontario, Saskatchewan and B.C., for some of the advanced indigenous forest sector manufacturing and also management business groups that are taking that leap to the next level.

Quebec and Alberta, strangely enough, seem to have the same provincial policy prescription of about 30 million cubic metres of provincial tenure each. They accommodate indigenous groups there with about one million cubic metres of volume. In the forestry world, that's very low levels of accommodation. Compare that to Ontario, where 20% of tenure is held by indigenous groups, or Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where it's over 30% of the tenure. You're getting job creation. You're getting manufacturing investment, and you're getting better forest management.

This longitudinal experiment in the provinces is where we're starting to see the different outcomes of different policy prescriptions. I'll submit our tenure report to the committee, to the clerk, so you guys can take a look at that. I don't want to get too much further into that, other than to say that in my submissions you'll see that there are some very high-profile indigenous business groups and entities that are really paving the way.

Interestingly, the world is noticing now, gentlemen and gentleladies. We have indigenous business groups and national governments from around the world on the back of our trade agreements: the renewed CPTPP and CETA. The SLA is always a little more difficult into the U.S. Where there are indigenous groups and national governments trying to figure this out in the world, they are looking at the Canadian government and asking, “How can we replicate some of this?”

Provincially, I would say that we have to get the provinces to look across their borders and ask, “How is this working? How are you getting these returns of employment, of manufacturing and of better forest management?” Part of that is the forest management groups. How do we do it better? How do we account, in our region, for the type of forests we have, the type of climate change pressure we're seeing, the kinds of insects, and the kinds of dynamics that you can only get with local, regional engagement at a deep level?

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Shannon Stubbs Conservative Lakeland, AB

Thank you.

I'm glad to hear that people are looking at Canada, which is a world leader on those issues and many others related to responsible resource development, particularly with regard to partnerships with indigenous communities.

I was interested in your account of the history and your attempts to continue to be able to practice controlling insects through controlled viruses at specific times of the year. I just wanted to let you know that last week a member of this committee made the suggestion that there shouldn't be any action taken. He said, “Why are we trying to manage an ecology when we don't even know what it's meant to look like...and nature will take its course? I'm trying to understand why we should not just in some sense leave well enough alone”. He questions whether or not there should be any action taken at all.

I wonder if you have any further comments on traditional practices of managing insects and forests. Also, being from northern Alberta, I know there were recently historic forest fires there that had impacts on the local communities, but also disproportionately on indigenous communities in the region. I don't know if you have any comments on that issue as well.

11:30 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

I'm going to have to ask you to keep your answer pretty short, though.

11:30 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

How long do I have, sir? Do I have a minute or two minutes?

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

No. You have about half a minute.

11:30 a.m.

Executive Director, National Aboriginal Forestry Association

Bradley Young

There's wisdom in that, in terms of respecting nature, but there's also the immediacy for communities that are living in big, same-age-class forests that are stressed and that are undergoing forcings from the natural world. That is not a natural dynamic, actually. That's a recent dynamic that has only emerged in the last 400 years here on Turtle Island. Our people have a longer horizon and you have to go deep into the archeological record to look at it, where you actually need to manage the landscape with a little more complexity, with fire, with water, with wind, with the different elements of nature writ large, and that's a complex answer that is best provided by the experts in that locality and in the region, and which we can learn nationally.

However, to tell a community that's basically sitting in the middle of matchsticks that are ready to go up that we shouldn't do anything, I think, sirs and madames, is a recipe for loss of human life and devastation.