Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 1st, 2021

[Scott Doherty]

I'll try to be quick.

I agree with Mr. Connors. There are also opportunities in those pulp mills to do a lot of those things. The government should be looking for ways to take some of the pressure off the capex that Mr. Connors was talking about.

I wouldn't agree with any of the easing of the exports or some of the things you said around forest management. I agree that there are a lot of pulp logs out there. There are also a lot of pulp mills out there that are starving for fibre to run. The government needs to find a way, both provincially and federally, to ensure that fibre gets to the pulp mills and to those places so that we can continue to operate those mills and find the way to transform the industry.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Simard.

Mr. Cannings, it's over to you.

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

Thank you very much to all the witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to start with Dr. Lahey, about the study that he produced in Nova Scotia. I'm from British Columbia, as are Mr. Zimmer and Mr. Weiler and others. As you know, I'm an ecologist by trade, and I know things are very different across the country in different forests. Also, of course, there's a difference in terms of tenure and things like that. I think our forest tenures are almost 90% Crown, with very little in the way of private, except perhaps on Vancouver Island.

I'm just wondering if you could comment on how applicable your findings would be across the country. Some of the forests in my riding may have pretty high species diversity—10 species of trees. In others there may be only two or three. However, they do exhibit the same things you were talking about. When you let them proceed naturally, you get that very diverse stand, age and mix of species. When, of course, we clear-cut, we basically just get lodgepole pine here, pure and simple.

I'm just wondering if you could comment on how applicable those findings are across the country and whether you've had a lot of interaction with other colleagues from across the country on what the best way forward would be for forestry across Canada.

[Prof. William Lahey]

I'm afraid I haven't had much conversation with people across the country, which would help me answer that. I could say that my advisory team included people from Nova Scotia, Maine, Ontario and British Columbia—all of whom knew more about forestry than I did. I'll make that very clear from the beginning.

In response to your question, and relying very heavily on that expertise, the mechanisms might be different and in fact would have to be different, based on things like forest type, tenure regimes and economic conditions. The basic objective is that we need more forestry that's designed to, at a minimum, maintain, if not enhance, the resiliency and the health of ecosystems and biodiversity. In my opinion, it needs to become an imperative right across the country if we want healthy ecosystems, biodiversity, forests and forest products, not just 20 or 30 years from now, but hundreds of years from now.

I firmly believe that this is increasingly the case as our forests come under more and more stress, including from climate change, but all kinds of other stresses as well.

The last thing I'll say is that, at least in Nova Scotia, we have a history, since the introduction of pulp mills, of having a one-size-fits-all forest management strategy. Nature, everywhere, is more complex than a one-size-fits-all forest management strategy. Whether it's a triad model, as I recommended in Nova Scotia, or some other model, I think we need to fit our management approaches more to what the forests are capable of giving us and capable of absorbing.

I'll just end by saying that the Mi'kmaq foresters I met with said that it all comes down to listening to the forests. The forests will tell you what they can give if you take care of them. That was a very important underlying theme of the work that I did.

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

How have your recommendations been received? Have they been listened to? Has it changed the way forestry is being done or is conceived of being done in Nova Scotia?

I know it hasn't perhaps been more than one or two years.

[Prof. William Lahey]

The simple answer is, not yet, although we have a government that has said it embraces the new paradigm I recommended.

I'm in a unique position, because when the government responded to my report, saying they were going to implement it, they also said that I was going to evaluate their implementation. That's the exercise that I am currently engaged with in Nova Scotia, with the help of lots of forestry experts.

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

Okay. Thank you.

How am I doing for time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have a minute exactly.

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

I'll move to Mr. Connors.

I'm sure many of us on this committee have indigenous forestry operations in our ridings. I know that every first nation group in my riding has a forestry company attached to it.

How you would say those indigenous forestry companies are doing, at least in British Columbia? Do they need more tenure? How does that work when they're coming up against the Interforests, the Canfors and the West Frasers?

[Rick Connors]

I don't believe the answer there is more tenure, because you need to be an expert in the area to really make a forestry operation work. You need to have those partnerships with a West Fraser or a Canfor.

I think the most beneficial issue that could ever come to the traditional territories of various first nations is to have a champion like West Fraser to basically employ—as they do in many different areas—and provide the training programs and that stepping stone into forestry for the first nations, so that meaningful relationships are developed with the community, as opposed to just believing that any first nation company can be a forestry company. It's not that simple, and it needs to be melded with what exists.

We need to have support and a good relationship between local industry and the first nations themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks, Mr. Connors and Mr. Cannings.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Now we're moving into a second round of five minutes each, starting with Mr. Patzer.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Greg, do you want to jump in here?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

No, go ahead.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay.

Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us. I'm going to start off with Mr. Connors.

Mr. Connors, I saw on the website that there are congratulations in order for you on your retirement at the end of the year, so congratulations on that.

[Rick Connors]

Thank you.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We were talking about access to mills from unceded territory and from different tenures. What kinds of issues are being faced by foresters in northern B.C., and across the country in general, with access to mills?

[Rick Connors]

That's a great question.

The band system and the hereditary system never meld, because you have an elected chief in one area, and then you have the hereditary system. We saw this with the Wet'suwet'en and the Coastal GasLink project, where the duty to consult is to the Crown, which they did halfway, but they didn't consult with the hereditary chief, and that created lots of problems.

That's exacerbated in particular when you have a first nation the size of the Gitxsan, where I have 65 hereditary chiefs and 33,000 square kilometres of traditional territory that's claimed, and the hereditary system is matriarchal in our case. The actual hereditary chief is responsible for the management and the well-being of the wilp group, and has that chief name that adheres to a certain tract of land, which although they may all agree upon.... It's still difficult for me—I've been dealing with them for 13 years now—to understand how we can put together our Canadian government with their self-governing nature on the traditional territory.

Forestry is one of the industries that suffer every time, because you may have the wilp group of, let's say, 300 members and the hereditary chief says that it's okay to go cut and gives a blessing—because the consultation was done; the accommodation is done; there's some meaningful employment; perhaps they have some environmental stewards there on the property in the territory watching, overseeing the operation—but yet there are two individuals who decide they're going to blockade, and they're going to shut it down because they don't agree with the hereditary chief. There is no simple answer to any of these issues; really there isn't.

I've seen it operate very smoothly where the house group is harmonious, and if the hereditary chief says that in fact this is going to be part of the operation and they're going to harvest some trees there, it goes fantastic and the wilp group benefits because they get a stipend on a per cubic metre basis typically. They do some meaningful things, and there are people who get employment from that.

Again, there's not really an easy answer to that one, but it is one that needs to be explored because that uncertainty is what causes so much uncertainty for business and whether they choose to do all the recce work, spend the money, put an application in, only to be blockaded. That's not fair to either group of people.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you. I appreciate the answer.

Mr. Chair, that's all I really had for this round. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Weiler, it's over to you.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for joining our committee meeting today.

I want to pick up that really interesting discussion that Mr. Connors was engaged in here. I can imagine it's a very challenging thing to balance all these different concerns.

As one of the four areas you've identified, you mentioned that streamlining and consultation are a priority. I'm curious about what role you see with the federal government to assist in some of the streamlining.

One of the areas that I know some of the nations within my riding are quite advanced on is working together with different orders of government on land use planning throughout. It's a subject matter that's also quite common in environmental assessment, that is, to do a strategic environmental assessment where you're looking at the whole land base, and then using that as a starting point rather than individual areas.

I'm curious if this is something that the Gitxsan are exploring, and if you see that fitting into some of your priority areas to identify with geomining consultation.

[Rick Connors]

Mr. Weiler, again the answer is not simple. Land use planning is definitely part of what we're doing right now with the new governance model, where they've broken up the entire 33,000 square kilometres into nine watersheds, and the nine watersheds are responsible for their own governance. This streamlines the process of what happens when a proponent comes into the territory and says they want to harvest in this particular area. They talk to the hereditary chief; they get the recce work done; they do the consultation, the accommodation. Then the government sends the consultation package, as it were, saying that if they don't hear anything in 30 days, then it's okay and the permit is approved.

Typically, what happens is that somebody sends a terse email that says they don't agree; they just don't know what they're not agreeing to. What we've done—and I believe it would be prudent for the government to do the same sort of thing—is make sure the first nation has experts at its disposal to interpret this documentation. It's like giving me a manual on my car and saying, fix A, B, C. I open the engine and ay-ay-ay. That's exactly what they do when they open these things. We need to have an expert to provide that guidance to the first nations so they can interpret it. Often it's an easy answer; they just don't understand it.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I appreciate that answer. As someone who has worked for a lot of first nations in my legal practice across the province, I know that the number of referrals some first nations get from natural resource companies can be very overwhelming. A lot of times that ends up going to lawyers, so having that local capacity is key.

I would like to switch gears a little. As part of these committee meetings, we've been looking at some of the federal government programs through NRCan that have been supporting the forestry sector. We've heard some really positive news stories about the indigenous forestry initiative. I'm wondering if you can elaborate on how the IFI has supported the Gitxsan in making investments, and whether you have any suggestions on how this program could be improved to be even more effective for the community.

[Rick Connors]

Yes, the IFI has been instrumental for us, as have a number of other programs. Specifically, we've been focusing on what I'm going to call the development of a bioheat industry within the Gitxsan traditional territory and a bit beyond, too. We have the highest concentration of bioheat devices in Canada. We have just installed 10 big commercial units within Hazelton itself, doing an arena, a recreation centre, a car wash, a gas bar, an office building, a college—as a direct call because we ran out of pellets last year.

One of the plants down towards Houston had a problem, and they decided not to bag pellets anymore. So through IFI funding and the support of IFI and others, we purchased a pellet delivery truck—the only pellet delivery truck in B.C., actually. We've done deliveries from Kitimat all the way down to Houston. All along the Highway 37 corridor, we have residential clients and commercial clients. The only thing we don't do is bag pellets. We're trying to do that efficiently. We provide people with a 300-pound plastic reusable drum. Those aren't easy to get around. We do need to figure out this part. But business is booming from a pellet perspective. We'd love to enhance that operation, too, but the bioheat is really critical.