Natural Resources committee  Good afternoon and thank you. It's my pleasure to be here to speak to you on behalf of the First Nations Forestry Council. Although we've been asked to speak on the regional economic development theme, you'll hear aspects of all three themes in this presentation. We believe that

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much for the question. We're quite excited about what we're calling now the first nations forestry workforce initiative. After a number of years of looking at the upcoming demand in the forest sector for the workforce, we took it upon ourselves to get involved in

Natural Resources committee  Yes, absolutely. We've put in funding applications; we've had challenges. Western diversification is a good one. It has an envelope for education. We have one on the table now, hoping it will make it through the online submission, although we have not had very good success with

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. I would have to say that innovation in the sector doesn't directly satisfy what our leadership is looking for. I made the comment in my report that of recent days and years, we've seen innovation mostly to be finding new markets internationally. That

Natural Resources committee  Yes, thank you for that question. I raised that point because back in 2008 we were very actively involved in federal transfer funds to the province, and the mitigation effort that was going to happen, the previous commitment for 10 years of mitigating the mountain pine beetle ep

Natural Resources committee  Yes, absolutely. In fact, as an organization, we did partner a number of years ago with the BC Bioenergy Network, which generously offered some resources for us to participate in looking at small-scale combined heat and power bioenergy facilities for first nations. We have more t

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much for raising that point. Overall, there has been a declining availability of resources for first nations, not just in the forest sector but for all our organizations. It makes it very challenging for us to provide the product that we want to build a relationsh

Natural Resources committee  I'd reiterate the numbers I shared earlier. This is an extremely good opportunity. The research we've seen for the labour market shows.... I talked about 14,000 new workers in the next five years, just about 3,000 workers a year in B.C. alone, and that is only the replacement nee

Natural Resources committee  Good afternoon. Can you hear me all right?

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to contribute to your hearings regarding the secondary supply chain products in the forest sector in Canada. It is my pleasure to speak to you today on behalf of the BC First Nations Forestry Council. We are a non-profit society here in B.C.

Natural Resources committee  What I was referring to is the challenge we're having with the lack of manufacturing facilities in B.C. We have seen very little investment in the last couple of decades to replace the older, primary forest manufacturing facilities. Instead of welcoming that and seeing that inves

Natural Resources committee  Our experience with recent versions of the softwood lumber agreement is that each time we go through a softwood lumber agreement, smaller companies end up dying and going out of business and we get a reduced number of larger companies, so we have fewer and fewer corporate holders

Natural Resources committee  The main one I talked about was the bioenergy. Because of the mountain pine beetle epidemic, we had resources and investment to work, so we prioritized our efforts and wanted to participate in the bioeconomy by utilizing the dead pine. Numerous small ventures were created through

Natural Resources committee  Great. Thank you for that question. I think that's part of what I was challenged with in presenting to you today. What it really boils down to, in our opinion, is about the federal framework on policy for the manufacturing sector, the federal commitment to a reconciliation with

Natural Resources committee  Thanks for that. It's actually been one of the keystone programs of our organization in the last six years to try to enhance the potential for aboriginal people in the forest sector workforce. The manufacturing sector has been an interesting component that we've been really c