Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 4th, 2020

[Florence Daviet]

Thank you.

Ecosystems are complex, of course. Certainly in the boreal forest, as we well know, fires are a natural part of that ecosystem, but I think, as the previous speaker noted, there are some things that we have done in our forests that may potentially be making them more flammable in some ways. We need to recognize that, and we also need to reduce the risk from human activities that cause fires. Whenever you have a road, you start having people, and those people bring multiple risks of fire in some cases. It's always about trying to balance between those different risks and recognizing that fires are a natural part of our ecosystem while also making sure that we're managing it so that it doesn't harm communities, which is obviously a huge risk. At the same time, it's an important part of those ecosystems' functioning.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

I'm sorry, but I have a few questions that I want to ask a few of the witnesses here.

I'll ask Tree Canada something now.

You had a great presentation as well on our urban forests. When you talk about planting an urban tree, you're talking about planting a tree that isn't a seedling. When we talk about two billion trees, I think most Canadians are talking about planting seedlings and having those absorb carbon over the life cycle, but in your case, Tree Canada, you talk about planting more mature trees for an urban canopy purpose. That 10-year-old tree, for instance, has how much more CO2 absorbency in its more advanced life cycle than a seedling?

[Danielle St-Aubin]

I can start to answer that, and maybe Adrina can help out.

We have various programs. Some of them are seedling programs. Larger trees tend to follow a bit of an S-curve. Between 10 and 20 years of age, the tree will absorb the most carbon. There is no tracking at this point from an urban setting with regard to how much an urban tree absorbs over its lifetime. It obviously depends on the tree, the species, where it's planted and how long it lives.

I don't know if Adrina wants to add to that.

[Dr. Adrina Bardekjian]

No, that's accurate, Danielle. Thanks.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

What would be the cost of planting, as an urban tree, a 10-year-old tree versus a seedling?

[Danielle St-Aubin]

Again, that depends on the species, but you could go anywhere from a $40 potted stalk to a $1,000 bigger tree.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

In the context of a two-billion-dollar reforestation project, what would more or less be the absorbency?

[Danielle St-Aubin]

Do you mean the cost of it? We would be looking at somewhere between $25 to $100 a tree.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay.

I'll move now to Carbone boréal. It was a very interesting presentation. I really appreciate the science that you brought to the equation here.

For the quantification that you talked about—a gain of two billion trees, and where we would plant those in our ecosystem—can you see there being the land base for those trees to prosper? If those trees prosper on land that isn't forested right now or that isn't being reforested by companies that are already harvesting trees and then required to reforest, what is exactly the ability of those trees to absorb more CO2 than is being absorbed by the current timber stock?

That's for Mr. Villeneuve.

[Claude Villeneuve]

To be able to quantify the gains in CO₂, afforestation must be practised on land deforested since at least 1990. Such areas are abundant in the boreal forest. In Quebec, about 1.7 million hectares of the commercial boreal forest are open forest spruce-moss stands.

It is believed that Canada's forest can support 2,000 trees per hectare. However, this isn't ideal. There's also land that has become unsuitable for agriculture, which is much more productive although it covers far fewer hectares. Municipalities also have areas that could be advantageously reforested.

However, we must be careful and think long term. If we plant a tree today, the carbon stock will be built up over time, with the growth curve having a maximum capture period. Then, the carbon will have to remain stored for 100 years. So, we have to think about species that live a long time.

It's important to keep in mind that if two billion trees were planted in Canada today, the maximum uptake of CO₂ would occur between 2040 and 2080. Assuming a maximum uptake of two kilograms for the least productive species to 10 kilograms for the most productive species, planting two billion trees would at best remove a maximum of 5 to 10 million tonnes of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere, which would be equivalent to the total emissions from Canada's aluminum smelters.

It's a relatively minor annual contribution—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks, Mr. Villeneuve. I'm going to have to stop you, unfortunately.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

That's very interesting, though.

Thank you very much, Mr. Villeneuve.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks, Mr. McLean.

Mr. Sidhu, we'll go over to you for six minutes.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today.

It's definitely a very engaging conversation. There's lots to learn here, not only for our generation but for future generations such as my children's. It's very exciting.

My question is for Ms. Abusow. It's great to see your organization engaging so many youth. The extra funding in the fall economic statement for more youth opportunities is something that I'm very excited to see.

I see that your organization offers a number of different certifications and operates a certification database. Can you share more with the committee about why it's important that you offer these services?

[Kathy Abusow]

Yes. One aspect of our program is environmental education and career and skills development, which is what we started to speak about. The certification side is another aspect of our non-profit, and that's to ensure sustainable supply chains.

Whether it's a Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 company, they know that sustainably managed forests are part of the solution for many of the things that we've talked about today, such as climate change, species recovery and sustainable communities. They want to ensure when they're sourcing forest products that they've been certified to ensure they've been managed for economic, environmental and social needs.

We provide the standards, and organizations such as KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and others have teams of foresters, ecologists, indigenous relations specialists, etc., who certify those forests. That gets tracked through the supply chain to the end-user to provide the assurance the forest is sustainably managed.

It's critical to their success. Many global brands—the Consumer Goods Forum, worth a trillion in revenue and market value—insists on certification, because forests can also be poorly managed. There can also be illegal logging and degradation of forests. They know that forests can be part of the solution, part of the circular economy and part of the bioeconomy. They also know that poorly managed forests that aren't regenerated are part of the problem, so that's why our certification program and others as well are really critical to providing that assurance.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

I note that you operate one of three different certification systems in Canada.

[Kathy Abusow]

Yes.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Briefly, why do we have different forest certifications? Can you speak to similarities or differences between them? I was on your website and I see a lot there. That's why I'm asking.

[Kathy Abusow]

Yes, absolutely.

In Canada, the Canadian Standards Association has a sustainable forest management standard. There is the Sustainable Forestry Initiative standard, which is ours, and there is the Forest Stewardship Council standard. Just as we have lots of organizations that try to alleviate poverty or world hunger and just as we have many car manufacturers, many organizations and many approaches are needed for this problem to ensure assurance. All three of these standards are globally recognized and endorsed by global organizations, and, just like in anything else, different corporations will lean on one or the other for specific needs.

We have great strength in terms of our supply chain and biodiversity management and recovery. In our standards, we put a lot of research and investment into conservation collaborations to help recover species, which a lot of organizations value. We ensure that sustainably managed forests don't just maintain species but recover species, and we work with ECCC and others for that.

We also do significant activities in indigenous relations and community development. There are about 40 indigenous communities across Canada that utilize our standards, and we're developing more training programs to facilitate that growth. In fact, we've put out a specific indigenous module for indigenous communities to use with our standards.

Those are some of the reasons organizations work with SFI. It's also because we have a broad program with other services, such as skills development, job creation, etc.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

You've mentioned all these certifications. I'm assuming that there's a competitive advantage and that all these companies would sign on, but I'd like to hear more from you on that.

[Kathy Abusow]

Right now, we are the largest single standard globally, and certainly skill makes an incredible difference. Part of being the largest means that you have to collaborate with a wide variety of organizations.

I started this conversation by saying that SFI advances sustainability issues through forest-focused collaborations. I think one of the reasons we've been successful is that we don't try to solve problems alone; we work with environmental groups, government agencies, researchers and academics, and we support a lot of research and investment and try to figure out how you recover species, how you maintain water quality and how you sequester more carbon.

In fact, on a new standard that is under revision, climate-smart forestry practice is now embedded in it. That wasn't in our last standard. We're always working to collaborate and to figure the issues of the day and how we can update our standards to be relevant. In our last standards revision five years ago, we focused on elevating indigenous rights and recognition. We're constantly adapting and improving our standards through collaboration to set high standards that meet market expectations, conservation expectations, customer expectations and, frankly, societal expectations, because in Canada 94% of this is public land. It's important that we get this right and that we work together to manage our forests sustainably.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

That's great. Thank you very much, Ms. Sidhu. I appreciate that.

We are going to Mr. Simard for six minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I don't want to start off on the wrong note, but chauvinism means that I will have to ask Mr. Villeneuve a question, because I am quite proud of what the chair on eco-advising is all about and, more importantly, of Carbone boréal. These two organizations are both located in my riding and at the university where I used to work.

Mr. Villeneuve, could you explain Carbone boréal to us in two or three minutes?

[Claude Villeneuve]

Thank you for the question.

Carbone boréal is an initiative focused on basic scientific research. The organization has five objectives. The first is to establish a network of experimental plantations where scientific work can be done. We're planting about 200,000 trees a year, and already more than 1.3 million trees have been planted. This also allows us to use carbon market mechanisms to subsidize research. So we are going to make offsets. We can offset emissions by holding events and doing other things, and the money raised will fund research. I invite you to visit the website to learn more.

We are creating capital so that in 30 or 50 years from now, students can still receive scholarships to continue studying our forests, thanks to the interest on the capital. We encourage training, highly qualified personnel, master's, doctoral and post-doctoral students, and we are raising public awareness through a variety of activities, including news columns and conferences around the world.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Villeneuve, I'll make a connection between what you're doing and what Quebec is doing because I think there's a fairly interesting link there.

You say that we must maximize the use of our forest resources to replace what is produced from fossil fuels. I think Quebec is moving in the same direction.

Could you and my friends from CRIBIQ explain in a few minutes the advances and possibilities concerning bioproducts?