Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 4th, 2020

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

Thank you.

I'm going to turn to Dr. Lewis again and pick up on her comments about non-commercial species and biodiversity and try to link that with our efforts to FireSmart communities across Canada that are on that forest interface. I'd like to see if there are some best practices she would put forward for the forest sector on both FireSmart in communities and on allowing non-commercial species to grow. We hear of forest companies using herbicides to remove deciduous shrubs and trees and how that might affect, for instance, forest fire behaviour in those areas.

Could I have some general thoughts on those subjects, please?

[Dr. Kathy Lewis]

One of the issues that we have with very homogeneous forests, especially ones that are primarily made up of conifers, is they tend to be quite flammable compared to hardwood species like birch and aspen. Especially around communities, there's a great incentive to try to include birch and aspen in the forest as a way to protect the communities because they are...we call them asbestos trees sometimes. They tend to be quite fire resistant.

We have to be careful about making sure that we don't just plant hardwoods everywhere because we want to have resistance to fire, because many of our industries cannot use hardwoods. My discussion is around trying to make sure that we have at least some small industries that can utilize those products as well so that we're not just taking up space where we can grow conifers. We can do two things at once. We can provide FireSmart around communities, but we can also utilize some of those species for developing various kinds of wood products.

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

Thank you.

[Dr. Kathy Lewis]

Did that answer your question?

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

Yes, thank you very much.

Finally, Monsieur Villeneuve, I think it was you who said that in planting two billion trees, the impacts would be 20 years out and would only be five to 10 megatonnes. I just wanted to clarify that.

[Claude Villeneuve]

Yes, that's exactly what I said. Trees capture little carbon when they are young and then they have a period of growth that can last from ten years to 70 or 90 years, depending on the species. In that period, they work well. After that, they are less effective but they maintain the carbon throughout their life.

However, carbon is still accumulated in the ecosystem. The soil reservoir and the reservoir of decomposing biomass also are quite significant in the fight against climate change.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Cannings.

Mr. McLean, I believe you're next for five minutes.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll go right at Ms. Daviet here. Do you think it's appropriate for an organization calling itself the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society to accept substantial funding from a notorious U.S. organization that has shown significant political bias to advance its own economic interests?

[Florence Daviet]

I'm sorry; I'm not aware of that and cannot answer your question.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

We're talking about the Tides Foundation funding you. Of course, Tides.... If you look at where the actual funding comes from, you see that it comes from some economic interests. Are you at all aware of the economic interests behind your donors?

[Florence Daviet]

Most of our donations come from private Canadians who support our organization and who support the goals of our organization.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

How much do you get from Tides every year?

[Florence Daviet]

I do not know.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Can you find that out, please, because I think it's important when you're getting this much money from a U.S. organization that you understand how much that actually is and where the money comes from.

[Florence Daviet]

There are a lot of forestry companies and other industries that get money from foreign interests. Certainly that's a question that we can all ask ourselves.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

It is actually a cross-border industry in North America, and the U.S. does take a lot of the forestry industry's revenue right now in tariffs. A lot of this is driven by economic interests on both sides of the border, and I'm sure you're aware that taking money from somebody who might be benefiting from that might be suspect as far as your input goes, wouldn't you say?

[Florence Daviet]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. I don't agree with what you're trying to say in this situation, but I'm happy to—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Well, tied up in the U.S. Treasury right now is $4 billion that actually belongs to Canadian lumber companies that have to trade with the United States market. That's a World Trade Organization dispute going on, which we think we're on the right side of, yet we continue to get a lot of push-back domestically from organizations that don't see that the economic interests of the United States are at heart here. Are you aware that you are part of that?

[Florence Daviet]

I don't think that I'm part of that. We do support Canadian forestry companies. We work with them. We have worked with them on trying to advance on multiple issues that they themselves have been wanting to advance on. I think CPAWS works a lot with numerous forestry companies in Canada and supports the actions they're taking when they're moving forward on biodiversity questions.

From my perspective—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay. Thank you. I need fast answers.

I'll switch now to Tree Canada.

Tree Canada, you talked about what it costs to plant a mature tree versus a seedling, and I think you mentioned up to $1,000 per tree. When you look at a budget of $3.5 billion for a billion trees, what kinds of trees do you think those will be? Will they be diverse or will they be just thrown into one patch of land as quickly as possible?

[Danielle St-Aubin]

I can answer that.

The cost of a tree varies. I would anticipate that the government would want to maximize its dollars and plant trees that are diverse, and in various areas of the country at the most effective cost, I would assume.

From our perspective, we rarely plant thousand-dollar trees. I was just giving you a range of what is possible. We're currently working with, for example, Winnipeg, which is trying to replant a million trees, and they're trying to reduce the cost of each tree as much as possible in order to get as many as possible into the ground.

We also use volunteers, because it's not just the cost of the tree that is important. It's also the cost of getting it into the ground and the cost of maintaining that tree—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I'm sorry, Ms. Aubin. Yes, but to plant them, what would you say? If you're looking at three and a half billion dollars divided by a billion trees, it's three and a half bucks a tree. What kind of tree do you plant—diverse, size, etc.— for three and a half bucks a tree?

[Danielle St-Aubin]

Well, the type of tree that's planted will really depend on where it is planted, I would say.