Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon, everybody.
I was asked to speak for a little bit about an independent review I conducted on forestry practices in Nova Scotia between August 2017 and August 2018.
Just for a little context, Nova Scotia is about 30% Crown land and 70% private land. The issue instigating the review was the percentage of harvesting by clear-cutting on private land in Nova Scotia, where pretty close to 90% of the harvesting is clear-cutting. On Crown land, about 65% of the harvesting is clear-cutting. The percentage of harvesting overall breaks down pretty consistently with the two land tenure types. About 30% of harvesting is on Crown land and about 70% is on private land.
The essential issue in Nova Scotia is that the majority of our forests are called Acadian forests, meaning they're constituted by forests that are multispecies and multi-age forests. They only get to be that way if they are left relatively undisturbed over long periods of time, because it's a successional dynamic. The trees that grow in first create the conditions that the trees that grow in next require to grow, and they tend to become the big, gorgeous, valuable trees.
Clear-cutting is inimical to those kinds of forests because it cuts all of the trees. If it's perpetuated over time, it means that the forests' natural succession dynamics essentially don't get the opportunity to operate. Ecologically and from a biodiversity point of view, this is serious, because our ecosystems and biodiversity have evolved over time to operate or live with these Acadian forest types, as opposed to forests that tend in their nature to be more single-species forests—in particular, spruce forests. We have some of those in Nova Scotia as well.
At a very high level, my foundational conclusion—and the government here has said that it embraces this conclusion—is that forestry practices shouldn't balance environment, social and economic objectives as if they are of equal value. We need to give priority to ecological and biodiversity health, because this is foundational to everything else we want to accomplish, including having a healthy forest in the long term. If we don't have healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, in the long term we'll have degraded forests.
There are many recommendations. I can't possibly review them all in five minutes. At a very high level, I proposed the adoption of a new paradigm, which I called “ecological forestry”. I proposed the recommendation of something called the “ecological triad”. The triad means that as much of the forest as possible is managed in one of three categories, hence the triad.
One leg of the triad is purely for conservation: parks, wilderness areas, nature reserves and things of that sort. Another leg is forestry, either in its natural condition or actually created through plantations to be amenable to intensive forestry, including clear-cutting.
In the middle is the next or middle leg. It's not very elegantly named. We called it the “matrix”. The idea there is that the only kind of forestry that would happen would be forestry that replicates what is called the “natural disturbance regimes” that affect Acadian forests. Those disturbance regimes are things like wind, pests and other kinds of things that bluntly kill trees naturally. In the Acadian forests, those natural factors tend not to flatten whole stands of trees. They knock down specific trees or small groups of trees. In that matrix area for Acadian forests, the recommendation is that we only use selective forest techniques—something called shelterwood harvesting—and basically little or no clear-cutting in that matrix part of the triad.
I'm conscious of my time, so the last thing I'll say is that a key recommendation was that this triad be implemented comprehensively and as soon as possible on Crown land, so that two legs of the triad would result in Crown land being significantly dedicated to ecological and biodiversity protection. There would also be some intensive forestry on Crown land. The government would work with private landowners to implement the triad over time on private land by encouraging education and supporting the choices that landowners themselves want to make in terms of which category of the triad they would like to manage their land with.
An overriding concern in Nova Scotia is the finding that our forests are not as productive as neighbouring forests in places like New Brunswick, Maine or other places that have the Acadian forest type. While this triad model and the emphasis on ecology could be seen as limiting the industry, it's ultimately about having higher tree productivity—trees that grow faster and more diversity of tree types—so we can be well positioned to have a forest industry not only in the short term, but in the long term. We would also have a forest that is amenable to whatever that future industry might look like, because of the diversity of tree types that would be at our disposal.
I'm going to talk until I'm cut off, but—