Natural Resources committee  On the carbon footprint, in British Columbia we have carbon targets, just like the federal government does, in our CleanBC plan. Certainly long-lived wood products fit into that. As well, certainly planting of trees and doing forest management the right way feed into that, wildfire mitigation being key to that and the utilization of the fibre rather than burning it in slash pile burnings.

Natural Resources committee  I'm pleased to say we've had good success in British Columbia with these programs. The one thing I have brought to the attention of my colleagues in the federal government is that, for British Columbia, we have some severely impacted communities, where mills have closed down and now they're brownfields.

Natural Resources committee  On the clean fuel standard as it's progressing with the federal government, we were quite concerned about the initial draft because it would potentially add a greater regulatory burden to our sustainability and our ability to offer forest biomass into the clean fuel standard. We've worked with the federal government quite extensively and made our position quite clear on where the opportunities exist in that regard.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, through the low-carbon economy leadership fund with the federal government and the participatory program that we've created in B.C. from that, the forest carbon initiative, that's exactly what we do. It is very much focused on forest management activities that sequester more carbon.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. We have been working with industry extensively over the last six years when the epidemic started with the spruce beetle. The difference between the spruce beetle and mountain pine beetle is that mountain pine beetle typically are in all-pine stands. That's just the nature of the ecosystem, and how the species progresses.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I think we have a really good partnership with the federal government on building markets. We're really focusing on mass timber, which I think is great for Canada; however, when you think of the majority of the products of mass timber, they're based on two-by-fours, dimensional lumber or a raw material.

Natural Resources committee  You are correct. We have an infestation of spruce beetle, as I alluded to in my opening remarks, partly because of the climate changes we're seeing and the changes to our ecosystems. It's similar to what we saw with the mountain pine beetle with regard to epidemic populations increasing.

Natural Resources committee  Good morning, everyone, and thank you for inviting me to present to you today on the factors that can contribute to the economic recovery of the forest sector in Canada. I am Diane Nicholls. I'm the assistant deputy minister and chief forester for the Province of British Columbia.

Natural Resources committee  It's a very general question and I'm not sure how to answer that. Again, it depends. British Columbia is in a unique situation, in the sense that most of our lands are Crown-owned and we have expansive forests out there. As compared to other countries, the challenge involves the magnitude and the number of pests that are happening in our forests, all at one time.

Natural Resources committee  Do you mean with respect to forest health management?

Natural Resources committee  To begin with, most privately managed forest lands in British Columbia are quite small areas in comparison to the Crown lands there, and because they're private lands, they are governed by regulations. I wouldn't say the regulations aren't as stringent, but they're more results-based.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. I was remiss in not mentioning remote sensing. We do use remote sensing, and that's also part of the aerial overview surveys. The information I have from our folks who work with this is that it offers a level of indication of forest health—whether there is an issue there or not—but the difficulty is in differentiating the cause.

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. When I go around and speak, one of my comments is that we can certainly learn from the past and what we did, but we can't depend on that for the future because our ecosystems are changing. In British Columbia, we have fantastic researchers, who have leaped ahead because we now have climate-based seed guidelines that look at the projections about where the climates are changing, how they're changing and where those seed sources should be changing along with them, to make sure that what we're planting comes from a seed source that is a resilient forest for that new climate.

Natural Resources committee  Would you like me to go first?

Natural Resources committee  Those are interesting comments, and that is a valid debate that is always ongoing when you have catastrophic losses like the ones we've seen. I can tell you a story about what we're dealing with in British Columbia currently. As I said, we had the mountain pine beetle go through, and at that time the provincial and federal governments made the decision—with the support of the people, obviously—that because British Columbia is so forestry-dependent, we should try to get as much economic value off these dead trees as we possibly could, while at the same time trying to mitigate any potential losses into the future, trying to be on the leading edge of the infestation.