Evidence of meeting #10 for Natural Resources in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forestry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
No, this would be part of the public session, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Okay.
Let's carry on with the witnesses and we'll cross that bridge later on. As long as you can hear them, that allows us a chance to go ahead now.
I was just about to turn the—
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
One second, please. IT has some input.
Mr. Chair, I'm told you have to have your audio set to floor.
Can you hear that?
Madam Clerk, can you explain that to him in case it's broken up?
The Clerk
Yes, certainly.
Mr. Maloney, can I ask you to put your audio on the floor audio as opposed to interpretation? We're going to check that out and see if that helps with the issue.
Liberal
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
Madam Clerk, your voice is coming in and out for me as well.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
I turned off the interpretation and I can hear just fine.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Will that affect our interpretation? That is the question.
Conservative
Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
It's only doing it for me now that I've switched it to English. I had interpretation off and it was fine before.
Conservative
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
The interpretation works very well. I can hear very well, Mr. McLean, as long as I'm on the French channel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Okay.
I can hear the translation when Mario is speaking French. I just can't hear Greg when he's speaking English unless I turn it to “off”.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Okay.
Perhaps I will defer to IT here if there's a solution.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Let's suspend for a few minutes to see if we can get this worked out.
The meeting is suspended.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Our meeting has resumed. Thank you, everybody, for your patience. Technical problems occur from time to time. It's a good way to start the year, I suppose.
Thanks, Mr. McLean, for relocating so we can proceed. Did you want to continue saying what you were attempting to say before, when I couldn't hear you, or do you want to carry on with the witnesses?
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I would like you to set aside 10 minutes at the end of this public part of the meeting and deal with something you may have wanted to deal with in the in camera session, about the notice of motion that was put on the table at the end of last week concerning the Keystone XL pipeline.
I can read the motion, but I think everybody on the committee has received it. If we could deal with that at the end of this meeting as a point on the agenda, I think that would be the way we could handle it best.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I think the proper process for that is.... We have an agenda, which includes committee business at the end. The rules don't allow members to introduce motions on a point of order, as far as I'm aware, but they are permitted to do so when their time comes to ask questions.
On that basis, why don't we go to our witnesses and get the meeting started?
It's 11:26 now. We have a little over an hour. I'd prefer not to lose any more time if we can avoid it. These witnesses have been kind enough to take their time to join us today.
Vice-Chancellor Lahey, let's try this one more time. You have the floor for five minutes.
Professor William Lahey President and Vice-Chancellor, University of King's College, As an Individual
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—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm going to cut you off. I was waiting for a time to do it that was least disruptive. That would be it, so thank you very much. I appreciate your concern about the time limits.
We'll go to Mr. Connors on behalf of Gitxsan Development Corporation.
Sir, you have the floor for five minutes.
Rick Connors President and Chief Executive Officer, Gitxsan Development Corporation
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm Rick Connors, president and CEO of Gitxsan Development Corporation. We're a first nations for-profit company out on the west coast, in northwestern B.C.
There are four areas that we've identified, and we've been working with these four areas for a great number of years now. I have a little over 40 years of experience in forest products since I worked for Canadian Pacific Forest Products up in Thunder Bay, back in the 1980s.
One of the areas is easing log export restrictions. A lot of these are very specific to the west coast, but they're endemic from the perspective of what we're dealing with on a continuous basis here. Ninety per cent of the logs harvested in B.C. are milled domestically, with the remaining 10% exported in their raw form. The primary reason is that for certain grades of logs, the economics do not support their being sold domestically.
Due to log export rules, companies are forced to make deals with local sawmills whereby mills will not block their log export applications, but only if the logging companies agree to sell to them at discounted rates. Generally, there is a significant loss here. They put up a bid on the logs and we must sell those to them at a loss. This results in all kinds of detrimental effects to the logging company, including, obviously, losing money.
Easing log export restrictions would provide greater certainty to log producers and licensees, giving them a greater incentive to increase investment and stimulate growth in the industry. It's one of the areas we're very passionate about out on the coast.
The second area is stumpage reform. Timber is a Crown resource, and forestry companies must pay the government stumpage based on the volume of timber harvested. It's also important in the context of the ongoing Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute to prove Canadian companies are not subsidized versus their U.S. counterparts, who operate primarily on private lands.
Stumpage is meant to be reflective of the value of the timber and the operating costs for the area, but unfortunately in many areas of our province the stumpage amounts being charged are much too high and sometimes exceed 50% of the total delivered cost. That's without taking into consideration the appraisal areas. We require some appraisal reform in that area, which is like moving a mountain.
By reducing stumpage rates, companies would be able to harvest more timber, stimulate growth in the industry and carry on a very healthy stimulus from silviculture programs and reforestation.
The next area is the need for streamlined and clear first nations consultation. Even though we're a 100% first nations-owned corporation, we manage a 386,000 cubic metre forest licence. In terms of getting permits, each permit for logging must go through the first nations consultation process.
Unfortunately, the consultation process is a moving goalpost. It's not fair for either the first nations or the logging companies, because it simply is not strict and defined enough to clarify all the fuzzy areas around the permitting process, and there's no defined context in terms of how long it will take to get a logging permit—a cutting permit—approved. As a direct result, you cannot put down timelines for this and it's hard for a company to lay that down. It's not fair to either party.
The government needs to resolve these issues to provide licensees with the certainty they need regarding permit issuance, so that they can make further investments and stimulate growth.
Last but not least is the pulp and the low-value timber. There is a presence of high quantities of pulp and other low-value waste fibre. In the past, it was utilized by the pulp mills, but with the demise of pulp mills in the local area here, it's a constant challenge for many of the licensees. Each year, millions of cubic metres of material is burned in waste piles, so there's a wildfire and forest fire management aspect to this, not to mention the positive implications in terms of utilizing that fibre for alternative resources.
The government needs to invest more money in this, into next-gen technologies like torrefied pellets and bioheat for rural and remote communities, because that's literally where it rests.
These types of initiatives not only reduce the use of fossil fuels in Canada, but they also begin to optimize the utilization of our forests, making better use of what has been considered waste stream product, turning one man's garbage into another man's gold. It's critical so we can turn the forestry waste stream into a revenue stream for licensees.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. There's much more information. We have white papers on each of the subject matters if requested.
