Timber Supply — Issue No. 3 — Wednesday, May 30, 2012 (HTML)

Present: John Rustad, MLA (Chair); Norm Macdonald, MLA (Deputy Chair); Harry Bains, MLA; Donna Barnett, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Bill Routley, MLA; Ben Stewart, MLA

Others Present: Larry Pedersen, Technical Advisor; Jim Snetsinger, Technical Advisor

2. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

• Dave Peterson, ADM, Tenures, Competitiveness and Innovation & Chief Forester

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
TIMBER SUPPLY


CONTENTS
Page
Briefings: Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations	23
A. Nussbaum
P. Martin
D. Peterson
J. Snetsinger
S. Laaksonen-Craig
L. Pedersen
A. Lidstone

J. Rustad (Chair): Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our committee meeting — the Special Committee on Timber Supply. We have an agenda in front of us, and I think, hopefully, we'll have enough time today to be able to get through the agenda and the presentations.

I just wanted to start by saying that there were a couple of documents that were cited Monday with regards to some of the quotes. It was the Provincial-Level Projection of the Current Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak: Update of the Infestation on the 2010 provincial aerial overview of forest health, and two other ones. They're a fairly lengthy read, but I ask that the Clerk's office make them available to us for anybody that would like them for some casual reading, I guess, over the weekend before our next meeting next week.

Those will be available here if anybody would like them, and the Clerk could hand them out at that stage.

I guess the first thing I should ask is: is everything okay with the agenda? Is everybody comfortable with the layout of the agenda for today?

That's good. I'm not seeing anybody raising their hands about it. One item — No. 2 on here, which is the proposed site visit and orientation tour. We had talked as a committee about the possibility of going out into the field and seeing what all these issues are that we're talking about — kind of getting a little bit of a hands-on experience for it.

The ministry staff has put together a couple of options for us. When we get to that stage, we'll have a chance to look at it, but I just wanted to mention it and mention that we're still sort of looking at the seventh as a possibility. So when we get to that, maybe think about your calendar as to whether or not that day can work for you as well.

With that, I guess we should probably go around and do a round of introductions for the committee members that are here. I'm going to start on my left here with Bill.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you very much. We also have our two special advisers here, if we could let you introduce yourselves.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you. I just want to recognize, as well, that we have Bob Simpson here as an observer for the committee proceedings today.

With that, our witnesses today, of course, are Dave Peterson — thank you again for coming today; Pat Martin, the manager of inventory section; Albert Nussbaum, the director of forest analysis and inventory branch; Allan Lidstone, director of resource management objectives branch; and Susanna Laaksonen-Craig, the executive lead for forest sector initiatives.

A. Nussbaum: Good morning, again. We didn't quite make it through the timber supply review program presentation so I thought I'd take you back into…. We'll do a quick recap of where we were, and then we'll finish the presentation up.

Again, this is a program that I've been working with and on now for probably 20 years. The TSR review program has evolved but has been in play for quite some time and has withstood quite a number of challenges. Tricky situations that have arisen over time have been addressed with this process, and it has definitely withstood legal scrutiny and public scrutiny. With that, I'm going to dive back in.

As we discussed on Monday I sort of did a quick skate over the pond as to what is timber supply, the provincial context for forestry in B.C. I touched on the legislated requirements that define that the chief forester set AACs. We talked a little bit about what an AAC is. I spent some time on the timber supply review process.

Today the new material we're going to hit on is sort of what the inputs are to timber supply, and then look at a specific timber supply forecast that is sort of germane to a mountain pine beetle unit with no…. It isn't a specific unit. It's just sort of a mockup so that we can talk about what you might see.

Again, just as a quick reminder. What is timber supply? It is the measure and flow of timber out of the forest over time that can be produced sustainably, making sure that
[ Page 24 ]
we leave enough to meet other values.

What is an AAC? It's the allowable annual cut — the amount of timber permitted to be harvested annually from a particular area. In this scale they are usually defined for a timber supply area or a tree farm licence.

Okay. So that's what we're talking about. The legislation that defines the need for AACs is set out in section 8 of the Forest Act, and it provides the authority for the chief forester to determine the annual allowable cut. It's supposed to be done at least once every ten years but can be done sooner if necessary, if concerns dictate that a revisitation is required.

Again, there are tenures that are outside of what the chief forester's jurisdiction is, and they're generally set by the executive director and district manager. That's for woodlots, community forests and First Nations woodland tenures.

I want to emphasize that in determining the AAC, the chief forester, regional executive director and district managers are independent statutory decision-makers. Of course, in my experience, working for a number of chief foresters now, they are definitely impartial and very, very careful about how they set these, without any political influence.

Again, the objective of the timber supply review program that is in my shop is to deliver the information that the chief forester requires to make a defensible, unbiased decision. We need to assemble the economic, environmental and social information that is required to support the determination. We need to ensure that First Nations consultation is done appropriately so that we don't face a legal challenge and that the public interests and concerns that are expressed are either addressed by the AAC determination or raised to the chief forester for his attention.

The chief forester will identify where information needs to be improved, where he has struggled during the determination. He'll provide some direction on what he would like to see updated prior to the next determination. Ultimately, the whole process is designed to make sure that the chief forester can arrive at a determination and be confident in that determination.

I'm going to just skate over this slide very quickly. Then we'll move into the new material that I wanted to cover off today. So again, the timber supply review program or process that is spearheaded out of my shop…. This is sort of the integrating slide. As you can see, the timber supply analysis is one component. The information collection and timber supply analysis is one component.

Then you have socioeconomic information that also comes to bear, and again, that was around community dependence, employment numbers and the like. There's the information that we receive through the public review and First Nations consultation process.

All of that information comes together and is presented to the chief forester. Then the chief forester, of course, has to consider his legislated framework when he's making his determination to ensure he meets the requirements of the legislation. He has to consider the socioeconomic objectives of the Crown as expressed in the two letters I touched on the last time we talked. Then he has to express his decision in the form of a written rationale, which is available for all to examine and think about.

I'll just carry on here quickly. There are a number of reports that are created during this process, and there is a lot of opportunity for First Nations, the public and stakeholders at large to look at them and comment. So it is a transparent process.

So what do I think the strengths of the timber supply review process are? I truly believe it's an independent, professional decision. It is rigorous, and it is informed. That doesn't mean the data is perfect. It uses the best available information and science, but it doesn't wait for perfect information. What has happened historically is that if we wait for perfect information, we tend to get into a situation where decisions are forestalled so long that things become critical. So you have to work with what you have.

Regular and defensible AACs are what this process produces. There have been hundreds of determinations and very, very little court activity on them. It's a very public and transparent process.

Between the inventory program and the analysis program, I have over 40 professional foresters supporting this process. They take their jobs with utmost sincerity, I assure you. If you meet them, you will hear their opinions and professional views.

Now I'm going to dive into the new material we didn't manage to cover last week. I'm just going to talk very briefly. I'm not going to go deep, because we could probably spend several days on the information inputs to the process alone. My analysts take months worrying about the data that goes into the process.

There are three very significant components that go…. This is only into the timber supply analysis component. Again, we talked about the socioeconomic data and that, but what I'm talking about now is the data that goes into the timber supply analysis.

It can be generally categorized into three components. There is land-based information, there is growth and yield information that describes how the stands are expected to grow, and there are management practices that occur on the landscape. These three come together in the timber supply–modelling framework to define timber flows.

The land-based descriptions include a definition of what's inoperable. That means unharvestable — non-productive, non-forested, not sufficiently restocked areas, riparian areas, watersheds, old-growth management areas, wildlife habitat, roads, trails and landings.
[ Page 25 ]
The list goes on.

It really is a description of the land base, and it's made up of many, many GIS layers that describe the forest, with the forest inventory being sort of the first core layer, with everything else laid on top. These databases are developed each and every time we go into a timber supply review. They're updated, and the latest information we have is pulled.

Then yield tables are created for all of the stand types in that forest that remains in the timber-harvesting land base. That allows us to grow the forests' future forward, harvest them, regenerate them and place them back on what we call a yield curve, which defines their growth.

The third component is management practices. Again, just to remind you, the TSR program, or process, and the AAC that the chief forester determines are not supposed to be speculative in nature. It's supposed to reflect current performance. So a lot of the defining of inputs into the process is to define the current practice. That's documented, like I said, and provided for public review in the form of an information package.

Basically, at the beginning of the process you have to get into the details of the regeneration that's actually occurring. What is occurring? What's being regenerated? In what time frame is it? What's the plantation history? What are the silvicultural treatments that are occurring on that land base? What are licensees harvesting and not harvesting? When do they tend to harvest stands? What are the attributes of the stands they'll harvest and the ones that they won't?

Forest cover requirements. That sort of defines the constraints that might protect other values. We also look into unsalvaged losses — things like fire losses and beetle losses and the like.

So it's huge amount of data. I wouldn't want to get the committee too deep in the detail, but all of this is publicly available for all of the determinations, and we can provide it. If any questions come up, we can provide you with what was done.

I'm going to talk now about a little bit of a stylized watershed and how the model sort of reflects that watershed. I'm going to talk about a hypothetical watershed here. It's basically a defined piece of land. There'd be a number of these watersheds that would make up a timber supply area or a tree farm licence, generally.

You can see that the first thing we do is try and figure out what's alpine. So that would be this layer on the outside. Obviously, that is generally not treed.

Then there is also a band of timber that tends to be inoperable in nature. It's stuff that we generally don't harvest because it is just below what we can economically action. It could be that the slopes are unstable as well. It's just not suitable for logging, so that's an exclusion around the outside.

Then, within that, I'll call it the green…. This green outline here is what is still…. That's sort of where there are trees of suitable size to harvest, but it doesn't mean you can harvest all of them. Clearly, the model has to set areas aside for other values. Allan is going to go into this in more detail, so I'm just going to hit it once from a modelling perspective, and then I'll let Allan speak to it in more detail.

You can pretend this is a watercourse down the middle here. There is a band of land around that watercourse, which is excluded from harvest in order to protect that stream and the integrity of that stream, the shading of that stream. That area is completely removed from the model. Then within that you can see that we've identified some old-growth management areas on this. There's one right there. You can see that that old-growth management area is partially in the THLB, but it's also in the non-contributing component of the forest, the area we said was inoperable.

Allan will speak to this more, but when we were trying to place constraints for non-timber values, if we can get the service from the inoperable forest to meet those requirements, we'll start there. If we can't, then we'll dip into the timber-harvesting land base and take some of that. Allan will speak more to that.

What's also demonstrated on this chart…. Those are land base exclusions. Now I'm going to talk about forest cover constraints. That's a different way of slowing the harvest in the forest to meet non-timber values. One of the things we have on here…. These areas that are sort of lighter green are visual areas. They aren't excluded from the timber-harvesting land base. They remain in the timber-harvesting land base. But the rate at which you can harvest those is slowed due to the visual values that those areas represent for the public. So that's how those are demonstrated.

Then the other thing we have is a habitat corridor. You can hardly see it on here, but just bear with me here. It sort of creeps up here. There is a forest cover constraint on that to allow access for wildlife to migrate. It is a forest cover requirement as well. You can harvest in there, but you can harvest in there at a slower pace so that you maintain cover for wildlife.

Right in the middle here you can see some more overlap. What we have here in this case is some First Nations values that are also reflected in this riparian strip.

So it's a busy land base out there. There is overlap in these constraints. So the model basically deals with constraining the forest for non-timber values in one of two significant ways. Allan will talk more about why the constraints are there, so I'm going to leave that. But it's either removed entirely or the harvest rate is slowed to allow for the forest to maintain certain characteristics that meet the non-timber values — a certain amount of old growth, not too much of the forest in a young condition, and so on.

We could probably talk about this quite a bit, but I
[ Page 26 ]
think I'm going to leave Allan to take it from here. I just wanted to introduce the idea and articulate that there is…. Quite often, when you're talking about constrained areas, they serve double and triple duty, so you have to be aware of lifting those constraints. You could have multiple impacts on multiple values, and Allan will speak more to that.

Now I'm going to talk about a very stylized forecast for a mountain pine beetle unit. This reflects none of the units you are currently looking at, so you don't have to get hung up on the numbers. That's why there are no numbers here. But let's assume for a moment that….

Time is on the x-axis at the bottom here. On the y-axis is the harvest rate. This is the magnitude of harvest, and this is time. The very first thing we have here is what I call a short term, and that's this little stack in here.

Generally, in a mountain pine beetle unit, the short term is predicated by the amount of dead pine you've got on the landscape and the desire to get it harvested and get the forest regenerated. Quite often it has an uplift or something associated with it, so you can see the level of harvest is fairly high and probably above what it was historically. What we have here is a fleeting resource of damaged pine that sort of has a stamped shelf life on it. Eventually, it will become degraded enough that it won't be harvestable, so the desire is to try and get it off the land base.

That is the short term. You're going to see sort of a spike in…. This a harvest forecast, and it shows a spike in harvest activity for the first little while, and we'll call that the short term. In my world, in mountain pine beetle unit, short term can be anywhere from a couple of years to maybe 20. It depends on how long licensees can stay in that profile.

Then there tends to be a drop, and this one looks fairly precarious. We'll be talking about what the options are to flow the fibre in the mid-term. It's going to be one of the things that you probably become aware of. But generally there's a drop. There's a drop because there is a lack of mature timber left in that landscape to support a high harvest level due to the mortality.

Basically, you have a drop. This is what I call sort of the rationing period. What you're harvesting during this period is existing mature stands that were not killed. It is sort of the green residual forest that is remaining on the landscape after the beetle is done with you. This is a rationing game.

What you're waiting for is second-growth stands to come on stream in earnest, which is the long-term fibre. This transition, from existing mature stands to second growth here, is demonstrated with this sort of building of fibre so that this block is represented by the second-growth forest, this is represented by the existing mature forest that wasn't killed, and this one is dominated by pine forests that were killed.

Short-, mid- and long-term is how we define it. mid-term is often somewhere between 30 and 60 years, and the long term, in our world, can be 100 years. So that's what you're going to be looking at.

Just remember that the reason…. The short term is really about pine. The mid-term is about non-pine and rationing. And the long term is about returning to a more traditional contribution of second-growth stands — a more rational sort of forecast in our historic sense of thinking.

Many of these forecasts initially, before the mountain pine beetle — particularly in the Interior — were quite flat. They would have started at the same point and virtually gone indefinitely at the same level. But because of the loss of pine, we've sort of blown a hole into the mid-term. This difference here is really the losses that were incurred by the mountain pine beetle.

Okay. With that, I'm going to move on. You're going to see lots more, and we're going to chat more about those on Wednesday, I am sure, next week.

My closing remarks. I think the timber supply review process and the AAC determination that flows from it, these decisions…. They strike a balance between the economic, environmental and social values that society holds. They've withstood legal challenge in almost every case. It's a transparent process. People have a chance to engage, and they do. There are many stakeholders that engage in this process.

They address changes in policy, uncertainty in management through regular review, and they also address risk and uncertainty through sensitivity analysis to see how sensitive the decision is to changes in assumptions. I think that the TSR process has truly fostered a less contentious and a secure environment for the forest sector and all the stakeholders within it.

When this process was initiated in earnest in the early '90s, there was a tremendous amount of angst about this process from licensees and even non-licensees in the sense that they thought that this process was somehow rigged or something. There were shadow analyses done of our work. It was incredibly scrutinized.

I think the process has withstood that type of scrutiny, and the level of angst associated with this process has dropped off because of the rigour. I think that's how we've survived it. These are people looking at it from many different perspectives, whether it be NGOs or licensees.

So I don't think everybody is necessarily totally happy with the process, but they thoroughly understand it. I think we have a much less contentious environment as a result.

J. Rustad (Chair): What I'd like to suggest is that we go through the other presentations, and we could save
[ Page 27 ]
questions for later if everybody's okay with that.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): A question, then. We have all these slides. So we can come back on the slides if we want to highlight them? Does that work for everyone, or do you want us to go through one thing at a time? What works better for people?

It seems to me that it might work better to go after the presentation. I know we've already drifted away from that with the inventory.

J. Rustad (Chair): Right. Technology being what it is, I think we've got the ability to be able to come back to slides.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just with it fresh in mind it might be…. I mean, I'm open. We can jump around if you want.

J. Rustad (Chair): Whichever you…. I'm at the will of the committee. Whatever you would like to do.

H. Bains: I do understand the constraints of time, but I think it would be more prudent to ask questions as we complete one presentation, otherwise you get lost in all the others. You may not be able to go back to the thought that you may have at this particular time. But I'm okay if everyone feels that we could do it at the end.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Well, we've got three hours. Why don't we go through this one? It's fresh in mind.

J. Rustad (Chair): Sure, why don't we do that. My only thinking on that is future or further presentations could very easily answer some of the questions. That's the only thing I was thinking about. But let's start with some questions, and we'll get the top of mind stuff off.

Now, Bill, you had a number of questions that you had still remaining on the timber supply. Do you want to start off with those questions, and then we'll go into this side?

J. Rustad (Chair): We'll go back to inventory because I know there are a number of questions, so if we're going to be doing this bit by bit, then perhaps it's best we don't just wait until the very end to go back to the beginning and ask questions.

Under inventory funding one of the things that we've looked at, of course, is that in the past several years since 2006-2007 inventory funding was $13.3 million, and then it went down by 2009-2010 to $4.6 million, then to $6.1 million in 2010-2011. This year it's $9.7 million.

We've heard from some folks that are directly involved in it, that have done that work. Certainly, experts in the field suggest that a minimum kind of funding would be in the range of $15 million to support all of the important inventory functions. Now, I'm not in inventory, so I wait with great anticipation about the answer to some of these questions.

Again, what we're hearing is that as a result of lack of stable funding, this has forced the forest analysis and inventory branch to essentially adopt a risk-based strategy for program spending and for staff to a minimum level.

My first question is: does a risk management approach to inventory spending allow the FLNRO to make informed decisions in response to the pine beetle impact?

P. Martin: There are a number people here who could speak to that, so maybe I'll provide a brief answer, and perhaps others will supplement.

I think the essence of the risk-based approach as you describe is that we are ensuring that we tackle the most important problems first.

We have moved from a system where we are just sort of trying to update all inventories, re-inventory areas uniformly, in sync, to one where we're trying to focus our resources on those areas that are most out of whack as a result of, for example, mountain pine beetle, and to make sure that we are improving those areas first.

That is a bit of a switch in the way the program's run, but I think it's a smart way to go. I'll ask if anyone wants to add to that.

D. Peterson: I will, to the extent that I can. I actually think that at some time, certainly, you can have a chance to ask the two technical advisers who have been in the position that they have had to make informed AAC determinations in the past, based on the information they've got in front of them. But the bottom line is that's one of our roles, whether it's AAC determinations or anything else. As forest managers, we make informed decisions as best as we can based on the information we have in front of us.

My short answer to your question would be yes. We believe that this risk-based approach does give us that ability to do that. As you get around to the communities and you get a feel for the kinds of decisions that are needing to be made around this issue, I think you will get a better comfort, as well, with the level of background information that we have that informs our decisions.

B. Routley: Next is…. It really deals with the fund-
[ Page 28 ]
ing issue. Should forest inventory not be a core function of the FLNRO and therefore deserving long-term, adequate, stable funding? The fact that it's been fluctuating and dropped to $4.6 million at one point and has been all over the place…. I did hear the response at one point that of course, inventory would always want more money.

We've got chief foresters. We've got a whole room full of professionals. The professional foresters, the silviculture contractors — just about every professional group that I have talked to — say: "We don't have adequate inventory information." So if the professionals….

We've got a province right now where we're basing everything on professional reliance. Surely, somebody can answer the question. Is the core funding level enough, or should it be more in the range of $15 million, like one professional suggests, who is now unfettered, free, not restricted by any chains of government accountability or whatever, can't be fired — that $15 million is a more appropriate number?

If we can't…. Every decision that this group is going to make is, again, back down to inventory. So I'm really concerned about this.

Back to the question, which is: doesn't it deserve long-term, stable funding? I don't know. Maybe you can't answer that as a bureaucrat. The retired chief foresters can certainly tell us about their comfort level with inventory information. It would be interesting, at least, to hear what somebody has to say.

J. Snetsinger: Thanks, Bill. You know, forest inventory is a very important aspect of making forest management decisions. There's no question about it. Forest inventory has long been a core activity inside the B.C. Forest Service, whatever form or function it was in, and it continues to be so.

As Albert was saying, there's a good cadre of individuals inside his shop and sprinkled throughout the province that deal with forest inventory. There are consultants.

The question about how much it should be is always sort of intriguing. The $15 million figure, to me, is…. I don't know exactly how you come up with $15 million.

For me, in the past, as a chief forester, I've always taken the information that's been presented at the time in doing an AAC determination, asked about the accuracy of the information, the status of it and what are some of the uncertainties associated with it. Those kinds of issues all come into my decisions — previously, as a chief forester — making AAC determinations.

Historically, when we didn't have the major perturbation of the mountain pine beetle and the funding envelope was set at a higher amount than it is today, we did have a schedule where we were re-inventorying every TSA on a certain timeline. Some of those just didn't make a lot of sense, particularly as we got in the mountain pine beetle.

We had schedules to re-inventory places like Fort Nelson and the Cassiar and places where there just wasn't a lot of activity. Today I think the forest analysis and inventory branch is doing the best job that they can with the money that they've got, prioritizing those TSAs where the information needs to be updated.

The other point I would point out is that the inventory that's used for the strategic decisions that the ministry has to make, whether it's chief forester decisions or any other kinds of forest management–level decisions, is quite different than what those on the ground need to make operational decisions.

Foresters in companies and working for consultants and whatnot need to take that forest-level information and, they need to go out into the woods before they lay out cutblocks. They need to do stand recces, and they have to understand the difference between a strategic-level forest inventory and an operational forest inventory. There are differences.

The level of funding is one where it has fluctuated, but I think the agency is making the best out of the information that they have. The statutory decision-makers use that wisely, and they're prioritizing and making the best use of the funds that they have.

B. Routley: By the way, the $15 million came out of their public report. In February of 2012 the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals put out an assessment on the state of forest inventories in British Columbia, and they had a public overview document. It was in that document where they, as a professional association, recommended that the minimum be $15 million.

As I've just stated, the number has been a lot lower. I'm not necessarily comforted. I mean, I'm still hearing that it's based on more of a risk-based strategy rather than a core function of what should be an ongoing process. Do you as professional foresters have any control? Can you say: "I want more of my budget put towards core funding for inventory"?

A. Nussbaum: We have, and we do. I think, to be honest with you, given the challenges that the province has faced, it has recognized the inventory as a core function. I feel it does. It puts an emphasis on it at a time when revenues are pretty scarce.

I think that the $15 million is a professional opinion, as is every other. We were intimately involved with the author of that report. We met with him. We talked extensively with him. He acknowledges in that report, if you read the full report, that all that is, is an average of inventory funding over time as an assessment of what might be adequate.

It is debatable. It is not a definitive number. As you'll find in this game, there rarely is that one four-decimal-
[ Page 29 ]
place number that makes everything right. My personal view is that with something equivalent to what we have this year in a steady state and with the changes in technology over time, we can do a pretty darn good job — $10 million annually, consistently.

That's my personal opinion, and that's debatable by others. So if you talk to others, they'll say: "Well, maybe $15 million is more appropriate." I think what Jim hit on is very important. Also, whenever you talk to somebody, make sure you check the scale at which they use the inventory. Are they using it at a stand level, landscape unit level, strategic scale, district scale, TSA level, provincially? Every one of those will have a different level of information that's required to satisfy it.

I think some of the contention you hear about the adequacy of the inventory has to do with people trying to use it for different purposes, sometimes definitely beyond the resolution that it was collected. But trust me. I know Ian Moss very well, and I know his professional opinion and view. I respect his view of $15 million, and he would probably respect mine at $10 million.

J. Rustad (Chair): Actually, Bill, if I could, I just want to interject with a question as well, and I don't know if anybody else has any other questions.

On the inventory, one of the things that I've been curious about is, of course, in the areas that have been impacted by the pine beetle. There can be understorey that is coming up in terms of the complexity of a stand. That, of course, could mean that instead of a dead stand being at zero, it could be ten or 20 or some other number in terms of the age, which could potentially change the supply impact on the mid-term.

I'm just wondering. How much information does our inventory have currently about some of the complex components of a pine beetle–killed stand?

You know, as we saw in my presentation on Monday, one of the main approaches we use involves the interpretation of aerial photographs. Of course, small trees are difficult to see on these aerial photographs. They're small, and they're screened by the larger trees even if they're dead.

I made reference in my talk on Monday to some technical challenges that we have. The mountain pine beetle has created certain stand types that have really challenged us as inventory professionals. We're working on it, obviously, because we know this is a critical issue. In ground sampling we can reliably detect, obviously, all trees present, regardless of their size. So that component of the inventory — we are able to estimate the stocking levels of small trees in areas.

Some of the innovations that I mentioned on Monday…. We are attempting to develop the capability to take high-resolution photographs and be able to detect small trees better and also apply some sophisticated methods to potentially develop maps of the level of stocking of small trees. But it is a challenging situation for conventional inventory.

A. Nussbaum: I'd like to also add that it is very important to know what the stocking situation is of every stand in the forest. However, when it comes to mid-term timber supply, very, very small trees are not going to contribute to mid-term timber supply.

What's going to define mid-term timber supply is intermediate or overstorey trees, the main stand component. The beetle has impacted these stands, and the residual stand that is there that is significant in size is what will define mid-term. Small understorey trees aren't going to come up in the time frames that mid-term defines and contribute to solving the problem.

Everyone needs to understand that the stands that'll define mid-term are stands that…. It's really the residual of what's green, what remains, and how quickly second-growth stands are growing in at the back end of that mid-term period I showed you on that chart. Germinants aren't going to make any difference here — or even smaller understorey trees. They just can't get there fast enough. So if you have a really impacted stand with an understorey — a real, true small understorey — it isn't an equation, in my view, in the mid-term.

J. Rustad (Chair): I know, but everybody has questions, and I'd rather have an opportunity to rotate through as opposed to just carrying on for one member, if that's okay with the committee members.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): It's just that there are groups of questions — right?

B. Routley: Government is saying that the inventory is designed to be used for strategic purposes rather than to serve operational or planning purposes. My question is: is that the current position?

P. Martin: When we say that, what we are trying to do is distinguish between some kinds of operations where
[ Page 30 ]
you need very specific information on the condition of the forest in a particular area. Jim alluded to this earlier.

If you are laying out an area that you're going to harvest, the provincial inventory is…. You have to get to a level of accuracy beyond what we can provide in the provincial inventory. If you want to know, within this 20-hectare area, what is the quality of trees that are there and the volumes, you'll need to go in and conduct your own timber cruise.

That is what we're trying to distinguish between when we say that the inventory is for strategic purposes. Now, many planning exercises are also at a strategic or somewhat broader level, and yes, the inventory is meant to support those and is used to support those — some of the things that Al Lidstone will talk about later today.

B. Routley: I guess as a follow-up to that…. I gather your answer is yes, that it's strategic purposes. If inventory is only supported at this level, how can we make good, informed decisions on the ground?

I mean, there are different ways to discuss the same thing. I would say that for many questions, we start with the inventory as a sort of a broad way to identify where stand types are and where different components of the vegetation and the ecosystems are. Then when more detailed information is needed about a specific location, one has to go and conduct a survey of that spot to get more accurate information.

B. Routley: I've just got a couple left. The question is: has FLNRO asked forest professionals whether the inventory products are accessible and sufficient for supporting decisions?

P. Martin: Yes, indeed. We interact with professionals continuously. We make it a focus of our efforts to reach out and talk to people about what our plans are, make sure we understand what their interests and needs are. We pay particular attention to making sure that the information products we generate — the maps, the databases, GIS layers — are accessible to people. We know that our success as a program and the support that we enjoy as a program derives from people being able to utilize our products.

B. Routley: Well, I think you would agree that the professional foresters association represents the group. We have a province that is relying on…. We have a professional reliance model — correct? We've got an association that says it's $15 million they'd like to see. We've got a professional association that says we do not have good inventory information. That's what the professional group is saying.

Now we've got high-level bureaucrats that want to debate that, but after all, we're selling our products worldwide, and we've got an association that says we don't have the correct information. Again, they're obviously saying the inventory products are not accessible and sufficient to support ongoing decisions. Is that correct?

A. Nussbaum: I think it's categorically incorrect. If you read the report, it actually speaks to the progress that we've made in that area. If you look at the overview report, it actually has areas where things have gone reasonably well and things where there's room for improvement. One of the areas that we actually got accolades is on access.

I think another area we didn't get kind of the kudos was that we don't do enough public reporting about what's going on in the estate. But when it comes to access to data, we got a very good review by Ian Moss, and there are other areas where we showed strength.

I think it is not all bad news. I think it is a report that points out progress. It points out that there's still lots of work to be done, and that's the way I take the report.

B. Routley: But you would agree that they've said there isn't sufficient information.

A. Nussbaum: Okay. I'm saying that at the strategic scale, we think it's adequate. I think if you want to use it for operational planning, it's inadequate.

B. Routley: So you're telling me you disagree with the professional foresters. You no longer have professional reliance. Do I have that correct?

A. Nussbaum: I think that Ian Moss and I actually see it the same if you go back and read the report. I'd love to go into it in depth with you. We read it with great care. I believe that we're actually far more in agreement as to where we are with the inventory than is being portrayed here right now.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Remember that we're all laymen here. We're trying to understand how this works. If the AAC determination is to apportion timber rights, then how can we say that an incomplete or outdated inventory at the operational level is okay at the strategic level? In the end, you do have to….

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Are you…? Okay. I thought one of my colleagues was correcting me. Maybe you are a professional forester?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Oh, okay. I don't mean to disparage other members of the committee. I was speaking for myself. I'm a layman. It's complex, and we're trying to get to the bottom of it.

What I don't understand, and the question is…. You're saying that the information is okay at a strategic level, at a broad level. But in fact, there has to be timber that is found on the ground. What overlies the work that we're doing here….

I'm sure, Albert, that you know this. It does deal with some fairly specific implications for Burns Lake — right? We are talking about decisions that are going to be made where you're looking for very specific information.

The question is — and it's an important one: how do you say that it's good at a strategic level when we're going to have to deal with it at an operational level, where you're saying that it's not good enough?

Is it fair to say that that is a difficult thing to put together? In the end, people have to find the timber on the ground. What we hear from some licensees is that when they actually go to get the timber, they can't find it, even though the AAC determination indicates that it should be available.

Again, I realize that other than one of my colleagues…. Certainly, for me, you're talking to a layman. It doesn't make sense to me that that lack of operational inventory is not a key factor for what we're talking about here and what we're trying to get to the bottom of here.

A. Nussbaum: I'll start with the "We can't find the wood" comment. Then I think maybe I'll turn it over to one of my esteemed ex–chief foresters to talk about strategic versus operational, because I think they've grappled with that many times.

I hear regularly from licensees that they can't find wood. But really, what they're telling me is, "We can't find economic wood" — okay? There is wood out there on the landscape.

Part of the TSR process is this difficult definition of what is harvestable and what isn't. The way TSR views what's harvestable is over an economic cycle, over a full business cycle. We have been in a very low economic period for a very extended period of time — unusually so, in my career — with commodity prices at near-record lows for four or five years.

So they will be having trouble finding wood, because the low-cost wood that they've been able to action, they've actioned.

The AAC is not predicated on $225 a thousand board feet for lumber indefinitely. It's not, because if it is, the AAC is probably too high. It is predicated over a full business cycle.

There is rumour on the horizon that we might see prices in the future that are in excess of what we've ever seen, and that would make the way licensees view that land base considerably different. They view it through the hourglass of what they're contending with this quarter.

My contention there is that what they're having trouble with is not finding wood but finding economic wood at the current price. That's something that we're going to trip over as we go into the technical briefings.

With regard to the second part of that question, which is around the operational nature, I can try and take that on, but I'll see if anybody else wants to take that on.

J. Snetsinger: Well, I think Albert did a good job of explaining the issue that we hear from industry foresters, operational foresters, trying to find the wood on the ground. They really are dealing with their current situation of the day. Knowing that they have to go out and lay out cutblocks to feed their mills, they're looking for the most economic chance to do that.

In the timber supply review process we take the inventory and we look at the history of harvesting patterns in that particular operating unit for the last number of years, over a number of business cycles. That includes many ups and downs, as you know. During up periods in the cycle that timber profile is more accessible, and during low parts of the cycle the economic profile shrinks somewhat and the licensees react accordingly.

We've historically, the last three or four years, been in a real tough period in terms of economics, as you well know — historic low lumber prices, low demand, mountain pine beetle degrading stands — and it's been really tough for industry foresters to find those economic opportunities on the land base. The inventory says it's there, but it's there over business cycles, a number of business cycles.

The chief forester has the opportunity to partition timber. Certainly, in my past decisions I've partitioned timber geographically because it's had very little activity in it. But by the same token, during the right economic conditions it can be utilized. I've partitioned it via species, again because of economics, and partitioned timber pine versus non-pine in mountain pine beetle units to make sure that we were appropriately actioning the non-pine over time.

My personal opinion is that when you hear that, it's not because the wood isn't on the ground. It's about the economic realities that the licensees are dealing with.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just one last question.
[ Page 32 ]
It's something that Chairman Rustad said last meeting.

Just to clarify. You were saying that the TFL inventories do not fall under the ministry. I'm confused on that point. I know that that wasn't the case before, but I thought it was the case now. So just a question of clarification: do they fall under the ministry, the TFL inventories, or not?

P. Martin: Well, as the way we organize ourselves changes through the years, the delivery model, as we say, changes through the years. Currently our approach is that where there's a TFL that is in an area where we're focusing our inventory efforts and it's out of date, we will inventory that area. That's currently our approach.

J. Rustad (Chair): If I may, just to clarify, because you're going on a comment of mine. In terms of calculating the annual allowable cut — please correct me if I'm wrong on this — the TSA is the component that contributes to the annual allowable cut. The TFL, or the area base, is a separate cut calculation.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, so the inventory for that calculation is split off.

P. Martin: Yes, you're correct. That's a separate management unit. Yes, the TFLs are.

B. Routley: I would like to follow up on the interesting conversation. I think it highlights one of the conundrums that we've got in the management of forests. We've been managing for volume, not essentially for value or for industry. It's only one of the components that goes into it. Certainly, value isn't really one of the measurements, necessarily. It's primarily just volume-based.

When you are doing these inventories and running around with a sketch pad, I'm troubled by the notion that we've heard anecdotally that we're still counting as available for the annual allowable cut forests that have burnt, forests that are second-growth — say, five-, ten-, 15-year-old, 20-year-old, whatever, trees that are immature. Again, at a sivilculture contractors meeting I heard up to 50 percent dead stands.

Is that correct? Is what I'm hearing wrong? You're the inventory specialist, so you can tell me. Is it incorrect information that I'm being told — that there is a possibility that some stands that we currently believe are merchantable timber don't exist because they've either burnt or had other infestations?

At one time I know that the scientists were telling folks that second-growth stands were not going to be subject to the same beetle infestations, but now we know that that's incorrect. So are there stands that are being counted as healthy forest that really, for the important purposes of this committee, we should think carefully on because they may not actually exist?

P. Martin: Well, when there is some sort of damaging event in a stand, it may take a while before the various cycles of inventory activities that I've described catch up and document and record that event. So it is possible that a stand could have some damage and it won't be until we get back in to either remeasure the growth-monitoring plots in those stands or to conduct a re-inventory in that area that we are able to capture all of that damage.

A. Nussbaum: From a TSR perspective, the process goes out of its way to use whatever information is available to describe what isn't in the inventory.

For example, you've mentioned: do young stands contribute to the calculation because they haven't been depleted from the inventory? One of the products the branch creates every year is what we call a depletion tile, which uses both what's recorded in results data, which is data the licensees submit with regard to their harvesting, with satellite detection of where we see forests harvested and all other sources that give us a hint as to whether there's been a change in the forest that might not be recorded in the inventory.

That information is used to deplete the inventory beyond what Pat can provide to us. So we try to make darn sure that those young stands, if they aren't there, are not contributing to the calculation. We go to great lengths. In addition to that, we use other data sets.

You asked about damage in young stands and if it's reflected in our modelling. The answer is that we have forest health specialists that have provided us with additional information as to what's happening in those young stands. That information, while it's not in the inventory yet, is certainly captured in the modelling, and we do reflect the damage in our growth estimates.

So we do everything possible and we use whatever data we can find, the best available information we can, to try and make sure that we're as close to the truth as possible. Is there a possibility a few stands sneak by? The answer is: sure, there certainly is. But we do our darnedest to make sure that that doesn't happen.

B. Routley: If there's a catastrophic fire in the province in an area that is certainly of interest to the ministry, what's the time lag between that event…? Obviously, it's very public, so you would know about it. How long does it take to go out, survey the damage, either by sketch pad or whatever other means you use, and to actually record that catastrophic event as a loss of timber supply in the
[ Page 33 ]
modelling? Is it a year? Is it two years? Is it five years?

A. Nussbaum: As far as I can tell, it's done annually. The level of detail as to what's lost usually takes some time to catch up, but certainly, the boundaries of those fires are mapped annually, and they're part of that depletion tile I talk about. They are integrated into that disturbance layer that we use to make sure we capture as much as possible.

B. Routley: Well, I'll give you relief from my voice, and we'll listen to Harry for a while.

J. Rustad (Chair): Actually, before we listen to Harry, I want to interject, as well, with a question. One of the things that I talk about….

You talked a little bit about using satellite technology in terms of the updates. I remember there was a quite a debate about 15, 20 years ago. At least, it was a debate at that time, because I happened to be involved in it, around remote sensing and how technology has changed over time in terms of the ability to be able to capture and utilize information and give you more accurate inventory.

In terms of the old process that has been used now for many decades — which is aerial photography, doing the timber typing, going out and doing the ground truthing, putting in the plots, those sorts of thing — I'm just wondering: has technology advanced along to actually consider doing inventory work in a different way, or are we still basically carrying on with the same methodology that we've had for the last several decades?

P. Martin: Well, technology certainly has advanced, and within B.C. we have integrated right into our standard operational procedures for inventory the utilization of remote-sensing imagery in a number of components of our business.

Albert mentioned the detection of new harvested areas. Satellites can do this very reliably, so we conduct that assessment annually to make sure that no cutblock is missed in our process of ensuring we deplete the inventory for cutblocks. So that is a remote-sensing application that is completely mainstreamed into our business.

Others are still somewhat in development and being evolved. We have developed the ability to conduct a rapid, somewhat less precise but inexpensive and quick inventory. I mentioned it on Monday. We refer to it as our LVI inventory, and for that inventory, we utilize satellite data, satellite imagery, as well.

A little further out on the horizon are other developments that are already being used in other countries and other jurisdictions. You may have heard of lidar. So there is very promising new technology that utilizes light, a laser that you fly and determine very accurately the canopy heights, the tree heights. With some other modelling tacked on, we can develop very accurate characterization of the inventory.

Remote sensing continues to evolve rapidly. We have incorporated some of it in our standard processes in B.C., and I anticipate we'll see more in the coming years.

H. Bains: I have a couple of areas of questions, but that was part of my questioning — different technologies being used in different jurisdictions.

I want to come back to lidar. As mentioned here, some of the jurisdictions have already utilized this technology. My question is: how far are we from getting there, if that's the way to go in the future to get the exact, or much closer to reality, inventory?

Also, I guess, if it's a cost limitation. We talked about cost in different areas. Has the ministry looked at different models, perhaps, of sharing incentives with the licensees and others to bring in this technology? What steps are being taken to get closer to bringing this technology in?

P. Martin: Great question. Lidar is a very exciting technology, and there is a lot of academic work going on to work out all the different aspects of how to apply lidar in an inventory setting. Within the ministry's inventory program we continue to follow the development of lidar.

We try to partner with people to make sure that our staff develop the skills and have the understanding of lidar, such that we can utilize it for forest inventory. We have participated in lidar projects in the past. This year we have another lidar project going jointly with BCTS and Western, I believe it is, at the northern end of Vancouver Island.

We're continuing to make sure that we follow the development of the technology, build the skills within our shop so that we're able to accept lidar-based inventories or conduct lidar-based inventories as it starts to become more and more feasible.

You mentioned the cost. Lidar is still…. It's more expensive to conduct that kind of inventory than our traditional inventories. It seems that the solution to the cost problem is to find consortiums that are willing to share the cost of the acquisition of the lidar.

The lidar is useful for forest inventory, but it is probably more useful for other forest operations, such as road location and cutblock boundary location. So we're partnering with others to try and share costs, and I think that's going to be the solution for lidar.

H. Bains: Just another one on that. If the ministry feels that there are benefits to lidar technology and opportunities available to do the job the way we want to do it and find the information that we need to do our job properly, are there any timeline targets?

Are there any decisions made that by a certain time
[ Page 34 ]
we will be replacing the older technology with this new technology? Is that work being done? What are the timelines? Is that already decided, or are we still at a discussion stage?

P. Martin: Yeah, we are still at a discussion stage. We're not really sure where this technology is going to go. At this point our approach is to make sure that we have folks competent in using and adopting it, should it come to emerge as a viable option going forward. So we're still at a little bit of a too early stage there.

A. Nussbaum: I'd like to add a little bit to that. I recently attended a gathering of everybody in Canada working on lidar, in Toronto several weeks ago.

You need to understand that lidar is not a replacement for forest inventory. Lidar is an augmentation of forest inventory. It certainly is a tool that can improve estimates, but you still have to go out, and you still have to do the photo interpretation and so forth. You still have to determine species from the visual spectrum. You can't do it from lidar. So I see lidar as an augmentation tool to the inventory.

The big push in research at the moment that I saw when I was in Toronto is people trying to create a system that replaces the current inventory system with a new system that doesn't just add lidar but truly integrates it with other satellite data to create a system that will be a replacement for what we have. We don't have a replacement yet.

You have to understand that the technology is very, very promising. It's developing quickly, but it does not replace the inventory systems that we have yet. The push is in that area, so I do see what's being proposed is an integrated system of remote-sensing technology tied with lidar. That will be when we'll pull the trigger and move to the new platform. We're not there yet.

H. Bains: Just to follow up on that, is it true that Alberta already has full lidar information available to the industry at this time?

A. Nussbaum: I don't think they have full lidar data. They have lidar data everywhere at one resolution, but they still do inventory with a traditional approach. Nobody in Canada yet has moved away from traditional inventory. The systems we use here are very consistent with what's used across the country.

H. Bains: They have information available, but you don't. That's the question I'm asking.

A. Nussbaum: They have data available. They have not implemented it everywhere. They have in select locations where they're doing studies.

A. Nussbaum: No. We have. In small locations we have. Lidar as a tool in inventory is unfolding. If Alberta is ahead of us, it's ahead of us in the sense that they have more lidar coverage than we currently have. But both provinces have lidar coverage in areas.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just to follow up on lidar. The area that I'm from, obviously, is Golden. It's on the Alberta border, so a lot of the people that used to work in the industry here are working in Alberta now. There's Kelly LaRoy. I was talking to him about two weeks ago, and he was talking about lidar.

Basically, it's extensive in Alberta. The information they have is in the areas specifically that they saw as being impacted by the pine beetle. They recognized that as the pine beetle came through, they needed good, up-to-date information. What he was telling me is that he was able to lay out cutblocks. They went in and checked and found that they were within an error range of about 3 percent, whereas traditionally, if they go in with crews, they're up at 10 and 12 percent.

In terms of our area, I know that lidar has been used for the Kicking Horse work, the highway work.

I guess the point I would make is that it seems that other jurisdictions have embraced the technology more. I know there is an expense to begin with. The point that Kelly LaRoy made was that the pine beetle money that the federal government had available to jurisdictions impacted by pine beetle…. Alberta chose to invest it in the land base.

Of course, in British Columbia, when there was $1 billion on offer, we only had a plan for $200 million. We didn't invest it in the land base. I know that both jurisdictions are using lidar, but it seems that Alberta is far ahead in terms of what they've done.

It seems to me there are pretty good indications, according to some of the people working with it, that it's an area that you would think, in the main province in Canada with forestry, we might have embraced more enthusiastically if we had a plan to deal with the pine beetle more effectively.

That's what I would put to you. Like I say, these are people that are working with the product and have experience in both provinces and seem to indicate that we might have embraced it more enthusiastically. It's too late to do that, but is your sense that that, then, is the future?

A. Nussbaum: I think it is part of our future. I don't think there's any doubt, and I wasn't trying to construe that it wasn't. I believe it will be part of what we do going forward, but I don't think it is, in itself, the solution to our problems in any sense. It is part of an equation that's emerging.
[ Page 35 ]

J. Rustad (Chair): These are still questions on the forest inventory. Then, hopefully, we'll be able to get to some questions on the timber supply process.

H. Bains: I was looking at the slides as they were presented yesterday. I think slide 5 talked about the status of inventory in different areas, and I looked at the years, when you look at the vintage section below.

Then I also heard that this inventory is conducted once every 20 years. There was a debate going on. You know, some people are arguing to do it every ten years, and I think Albert's assertion was that that is not practical and doesn't make sense and that 20 years is the right cycle.

I'm looking at the last time these inventories were done. I'm looking at the early '90s, '80s and '90s, '70s, '80s. Then there are the '90s, so we're looking at about 20 years in many of these areas. So 20 years is coming.

My question is: if we are 20 years out and if 20 years is the cycle when we should be conducting these inventories, then how accurate data does the chief forester have in order to determine the AACs if this data that he's working with today is almost 20 years old and we haven't gone back and conducted the inventory as it was suggested here — that every 20 years it should be conducted?

As I mentioned on Monday, though the photos were acquired, as you correctly point out, in the '90s…. The '80s you'll see in there, also some newer ones. The photos were acquired at that time, but since then, each year, we make sure that new cutblocks are integrated into the inventory; that we grow stands with our stand-growth models; that now that we have gone through the mountain pine beetle epidemic, we are accounting for the observed mortality on an annual basis.

Because of those processes that I mentioned, I feel that the information is sufficient for the kinds of strategic decisions that the committee is going to be wrestling with and that the decision-makers here will be wrestling with.

D. Peterson: Maybe I can add to that, because I think this comes back to a question that Norm asked earlier that we didn't particularly get around to, which was strategic versus operational decisions. Maybe I can help a little bit in understanding that. Certainly, as I am listening to all of this…. Absolutely, as you say, the committee is just trying to get a good, basic understanding of our information, our management processes, etc.

I am also thinking about: how does this and can this relate back to the fundamental questions that you're going to be wrestling with within the terms of reference?

One quick piece. Bill, you mentioned a couple of times the use of sketch mapping. Well, by far and away, as I hope you're hearing from staff, where we can utilize more technologically based information — GPS, satellite photo, air photo, etc. — absolutely, that's what we do.

The problem that we have when it comes to getting the most accurate information around pine beetle is that it's not a physical shape on the ground that changes, as in harvest or anything else. It's the colour of the tree.

There has been a lot of research over a lot of years on how to use remote sensing to determine that colour of the tree, and we still haven't come up with a better way than actual visual — flying in the air, visually seeing when the trees are red and then marking that down. That's why….

It's unfortunate that we use the term "sketch mapping" for that because it kind of disparages and makes it sound like it's not a particularly technologically advanced…. But the reality is that that is still the best method we have for getting timely, accurate information on when the trees have been attacked by beetle and they've changed their colour. We still haven't come up with a remote-sensing way that can replicate or better that.

That's the only place where we use this sketch mapping. Everything else we are using, as I say, whether it's fire outlines or anything else, is more technologically based.

But there's a more fundamental question, as Norm is raising. For example, one of the things that you will be asked to look at is: should we be trying to get more timber out of riparian areas? Is that one of the places we should look at for timber supply? And you know, I think you're asking the question: "Well, do we have accurate enough information from that so that you can really help that decision point?"

For our inventories that are based at that strategic level, management unit, timber supply area level, certainly our inventory of riparian areas is accurate at that level. On the ability to make a strategic decision around how much more potential timber there is in riparian areas, and then make a decision around whether we should or should not try and make some of it available, we're utterly confident that the inventory gives us that.

But if you went on the ground and you went to any one particular stream or river and you took the forest inventory out, could you use that forest inventory to very accurately say: "Okay, in this particular area, here's how much timber we think you could get and still preserve riparian values"? No, you couldn't.

Then you get operational. In that case, then, you would use whatever kinds of field studies, cruises or anything else, to determine that operational answer. But what you will notice when you go on the field tour is that the foresters will all have with them the inventory maps, which are those same maps, and they will start from there. They will definitely use that as their basis for their operational work, and then they'll supplement it with that on-the-ground field information.
[ Page 36 ]

Again, there's the kind of question you'll be dealing with. We are utterly convinced that our inventory gives us accurate enough information to look at that kind of question strategically. "Should we or should we not be going into some of those areas more so?" But does it give you the information to go out to each exact area on the ground and operationally plan how you would do that? No, it does not.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you. I'm just wondering if this is following up with the same line.

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay, because there were a couple of other hands that went up around the same line as well.

H. Bains: Thank you, Dave. I think all that information is good, based on the information that you have. But I'm going back to the basic question here. There's a reason that we do these inventories every 20 years, whether you use FIP technology or VRI or whatever else is available out there, and then you update them periodically. There's a need for that once every 20 years, to do the overall inventory using these technologies.

But if we have that information that is already almost 20 years old and the forests have gone through a catastrophic change during these last 20 years, how confidently can you say that we do have that baseline information that is needed today and that was extracted through these inventory exercises, which are almost 20 years old?

Can we confidently say: "Yes, we have sufficient data, accurate data, in order to make the decision that you will be asked to make as far as the AACs are concerned or" — as the mandate of this committee is — "to find additional timber supply so that we could get some of those industries back to work and the workers back to work"?

How are we going to do without…? Otherwise, we are simply using guesswork. Or it may not be guesswork, but it is based on the old information that needs to be updated today — as was said here, that once every 20 years we should be doing this.

D. Peterson: So the question was: how can we be confident? That is very much based on the fact that we annually update it. We are still confident that that process of annual updating still gives us up-to-date information, valid information, to base our decisions around. We're confident and comfortable that it can give you the level of information that you need to base your decisions around as well.

That was the short answer to your question. Yes, we will still be on a rotation to recreate that baseline inventory information on a longer-term schedule, but much more critically, we are doing the annual updates to it.

D. Barnett: Well, I just want to go back to what MLA Norm Macdonald brought up here about the billion dollars promised by the federal government — that the provincial government only got $200 million and that none was invested in the land base. I think that I would like to have a little more clarification to see what kind of dollars and cents were invested in the land base, of that $200 million.

I'd also like to state that…. MLA Macdonald brought up the fact that the Alberta government went and utilized some of their funding on the land base to mitigate the problem. Well, they learned from British Columbia in the '90s that you can't ignore it. I just want that on the record. They learned a lot from mistakes made here in the '90s in mitigating a problem so it didn't infest the land base as much as it has been a catastrophic disaster here in British Columbia.

I'd just like some clarification on the $200 million. What was invested in the land base, and what was invested in community stability?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: This is an example of an answer that if we go through all those presentations, in the last presentation we will talk about, also, the response and what has been done to give the background — what kind of policy changes have happened, what funding has been available for what purposes. I can jump into that now, or we can defer that question to the….

D. Barnett: I can wait. Thank you. I just have one more question about salvage, if I may. Or would you like me to wait?

D. Barnett: In the mid-term timber supply analysis we know that there is a lot of salvage inventory out there. Do we have accurate inventories, or is that an issue that has to be dealt with?

D. Peterson: Yeah, I think we're struggling a little bit to think what you mean when you mean salvage inventory. Certainly, when Pat has been talking about the inventory, that's the total condition of the trees. That's all the trees, and basically, that's the trees that are being
[ Page 37 ]
salvage-harvested, yes.

E. Foster: Back to the inventory. I guess, just as someone who spent all my working life up until three years ago with caulk boots and a hardhat on in the forest…. Let's be very clear. Every operational forester and tech in the province would like the provincial government to be doing a more intense inventory so their operations or companies wouldn't have to.

Believe me, Bill, if we went to the level that you're discussing right now, $15 million wouldn't cover the lunch money for the people who would have to get out on the ground and do the work.

I think we really need to get this in perspective. The operational part of this whole business is done by the operators. It always has been.

I was cruising timber in the early 1980s for Riverside, and that's exactly what we were doing. We'd take the forest cover maps and the information we had from the inventory people, and we went out and determined where the cutblocks were going to go, what the volumes would be out of those cutblocks, where we'd build the roads and so on. I don't think that we want to start looking at dumping that cost back on the taxpayers.

To Harry's question about the photographs coming out of the '90s, yeah, it's nice to have new photographs. I mean, we still worked on black-and-white ones not too many years ago. But the information was still there. As long as you update it, as long as you put in the fires, the beetle attacks, the cutblocks, the science to tell the foresters how much growth there's been in those last 20 years is very accurate.

I think the information that we will gather or we have from the inventory people will give us what we need to go out and make some socioeconomic determinations, because that's what we're here about. I have faith in the information, having worked in the industry my whole life. Do you miss sometimes? Absolutely. But in all the years that I went out looking for timber, I never didn't find it. I wasn't always happy with what I found, but it was always there.

I think the information that we have, that we can get from the inventory people, will be accurate enough and sufficient to do what we need to do. I think, to Dave's comment about particular riparian zones, if we choose to look at taking 50 percent or 40 percent or 20 percent of the wood out of certain areas, those are going to be local decisions that will have to be made by both the operational and the ministerial staff at that time. So I think we are fairly solid on this.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. I don't know if I really heard a question.

E. Foster: Well, there isn't really a question. I just think we could be here for the next two months discussing how inventory is developed. To Bill's comments the other day, we have to know or feel fairly confident that the information that we have moving forward is fairly accurate. I just believe it is. I'd like to get through some more of the presentations so we're getting to where we need to be on this.

J. Rustad (Chair): Harry, I'm going to come back to you with this. So I've got Bill and then Norm.

B. Routley: First of all, that was a fascinating tale, and I look forward to more dialogue over the lunch or something.

About the $15 million, I do want to correct that it's not me making up the…. We've got a government that's relying on professional reliance, and apparently, we don't really rely on professional reliance. The professionals are saying $15 million is kind of a minimum, and we're nowhere near that in terms of core inventory information.

Back to the inventory. Could the inventory branch just be certain on this little bit? That is, is it correct that the inventory branch does not count any disturbance into the inventory until it's actually surveyed? Now, that's what I understand. That's what I took away from your last…. Is that correct?

P. Martin: Well, okay. Until we detect it, we can't put it in there. That is true. I guess that is what I was trying to say. It's a vast province. There can be disturbances going on, and until we detect it, we can't put it in. That's what I was trying to say.

B. Routley: Okay. Well, again, I'm certain that you weren't trying to be misleading with the statement about an annual…. Dave was suggesting there was some kind of annual update. But it is correct. We've got an NSR problem in the province of British Columbia, and part of that is that we haven't done all of the survey work in some areas.

There was this huge debate about whether it's 200,000 cubic metres or two million. Or is it nine million? That in itself gives someone like me a real headache in trying to determine what's real and what's not in terms of how you make decisions, with all of these huge disparities in what we're being told.

How long does it take to get any real certainty in terms of an area survey? We're hearing it's 20-, 30-year information. Again, if we haven't actually surveyed it….

I guess somebody is comfortable in using information where it's outdated. We haven't done the survey yet, and yet I'm to believe that it's all going to work out for the best.

How can you notionally explain that if you had a catastrophic event like fire or…? Well, we've got beetle all over the place. I've seen, myself, stands that are 15, 20
[ Page 38 ]
years old that have been attacked that weren't supposed to be. And I believe that someone somewhere is still calculating the annual cut based on those as healthy, growing trees — and they're not.

Why shouldn't I be alarmed and concerned, as I am right now about…? It seems to me almost like a witch doctor dancing around the fire, trying to come up with a solution to what is going to be the annual allowable cut in the province of British Columbia. I apologize to those folks who have made those decisions in the past. I'm not trying to…. I'm really troubled with the lack of certainty in…. I know there is no certainty in life. It's just not that way.

About the surveys — how long does it take to get updated surveys? We've had this real problem with NSR.

P. Martin: Okay. I'll have a go at it, and there are probably some other folks who might want to try and speak to it as well.

Part of the problem here is that there are different kinds of disturbance events. Different things disturb stands, some of which are easily detectable, some of which, less so. This is happening within a system, an inventory management system, and depending on the age of the stand, we may not pick it up for a few years.

Let me try some examples. When something kills a bunch of trees in a plantation, for example, before the time that they're free-growing, then that change in the stocking in that stand is detected within a few years, because the company that harvested that area is responsible to reforest it, so there are regular surveys that take place in that area.

When an event like that kills a bunch of trees in a young stand, it's detected within a few years, and that information flows through into the inventory. When a disturbance happens in that stand age, we pick it up and translate it into the inventory fairly quickly.

When a disturbance happens in a stand that is…. Let's take the mountain pine beetle. It's something that we can observe. Dave mentioned the red trees. You can easily see them. Something like that we pick up annually. So each year as the infestation spreads, we're detecting that annually, and we're working that into the inventory.

There are other kinds of disturbances — root rot — that slowly slow the growth rate of a tree and ultimately kill it. Something like that is only detected when we come back and re-inventory an area. So we may find that in the 60-year-old fir types around Vernon — we had expected basal areas of 40 metres squared per hectare — in fact, we're finding basal areas of 30. Something like that would not be detectable with any other methods other than when the area is reinventoried or when our growth-monitoring plots are remeasured.

So it depends on the nature of the damage event and disturbance when that information makes into the inventory. I'm sorry the answer is pretty complicated, but the range of conditions that we're talking about here is pretty broad. And the system as a whole is quite complicated.

A. Nussbaum: Again, the timber supply review program attempts to address unsalvaged losses as well. Because we know they're not captured in the inventory, there is a separate process in that program that looks at average losses and attempts to account for what is not seen.

Again, you have to look at the package that goes to a decision-maker. You can't look at solely the inventory, because it's not the only information we use. We use a wide array of data sources. Even the inventory uses a wide array of data sources to keep itself current. On top of that, there are other backstops and other data sources that are pulled on to round out the package and limit the risk to the decision-maker.

I think that the people who are best capable of addressing how you can make a decision are our chief foresters, who make those decisions. I would like them to speak to how they feel about making decisions with the data we provide them in that program.

J. Snetsinger: I know Larry wants to say something, but I'll just jump in quickly, if I could. I think this goes to the heart of how statutory decision-makers make decisions in the face of uncertainty in some of the information. I'll just give you the way I have done it over the past seven, 7½ years in my tenure as chief forester.

I'll first say that there will always be uncertainty in the data, at least in the world that I have come to know and live in. As Albert has talked about, in the timber supply review process there are many factors that the statutory decision-maker turns their mind to, right from what's happened in the forest to the silviculture treatments to the forest health agents to fire.

I would have gotten into an AAC determination meeting and reviewed the information, saw what was modelled and how they modelled it. For instance, if there was a fire, I will ask the question: has this fire been mapped, and has the information been accounted for in the mature inventory? If it hadn't been — if it was recent and it hadn't been captured — I will make an accounting for that, a net-down in the mature timber supply.

Likewise, I would ask what's happened with forest health. Whether it's root rot or mountain pine beetle or things like windthrow or western spruce budworm, how is that affecting the stands, and how will we model that? Very often before a timber supply review, I'd either been out on the ground in the timber supply area or the TFL. I've done either a helicopter flight, or I've been out on the ground with staff.

I've calibrated my eye to what's going on out in the forest and talked to operational foresters, talked to district
[ Page 39 ]
staff and tried to understand what's going on there so that when I get into a timber supply review meeting and see how they've modelled it — whether the two jibe. If they don't jibe and I still think there's some uncertainty, I'll be conservative in what I'm doing with the AAC, and I'll adjust my determination accordingly.

This is where the risk and uncertainty come into the decision-making process and where I think there's better information that can be gathered. For things that I think will be more critical in the next determination, I'll ask that that work be done, whether it's surveying second-growth pine stands or getting a better health on a particular forest health issue or a particular inventory issue. Then that work will be done and ready for the next timber supply review. Having timber supply reviews done on a periodic basis is one of the strengths so that we can capture it in the next timber supply review.

I wanted to at least communicate and let you know how I, as a statutory decision-maker, dealt with risk and uncertainty. It wasn't so much a witch doctor as it was trying to figure out what I was dealing with and how I could deal with it.

I'd like to place a bit more emphasis on the difference between the inventory and timber supply modelling exercises. The inventory is an input into timber supply analysis. It comes with all of its strengths and weaknesses kind of simultaneously.

What Jim has just outlined is that any responsible decision-maker will work hard to try and understand precisely what those strengths and weaknesses are. If you do have an opportunity, you could look at an AAC rationale, and you would see that the decision-maker, whether it was me or Jim or the deputy chief forester, is always mindful of and aware of what the risks are, given the uncertainties in the data. Then because the modelling is about the dynamic of the forests, which is constantly in a state of flux — every year there are some trees that exit the forest; there's some new growth that comes in; there are disturbances — the inventory can be projected to account for that.

What Jim has outlined as the chief forester's job is try and look at whether or not that has been sufficiently undertaken. Is there a reasonable accounting for the depletions?

There are three ways of estimating trees and volumes in the forest in B.C. There's the forest inventory, which works at the forest estate level. It's hundreds of thousands to millions of hectares. There's timber cruising, which works at the operational level, and that has always been used to augment the field-level understanding.

Then, even all of that proves insufficient when it comes to putting a value on the timber to assure that the Crown's interest is properly achieved in the charging of stumpage, so we do a further sampling, another estimating procedure, called scaling.

In that case we're looking at individual logs. In the operational cruising we're looking at individual stands. In the forest inventory we're looking at the broader landscape. The three of them are almost always used to bring information forward in an AAC determination, to get that perspective of: how is it correlating? Have we accounted fully and sufficiently? In those different estimating procedures is the difference between operational- and strategic-level application.

I believe that the modelling exercise, which is more what Albert's presentation has looked at, the AAC determination process, is the key to understanding whether the inventory is being appropriately used or whether it's introducing weakness or bias into the decisions.

The decision records always reflect that and in many cases have flagged very legitimate concerns about the inventory. There've been audits done that show that the volumes, maybe, are overestimating or underestimating. In the past I have documented that that is sufficient cause to place that particular unit high on the list for re-inventory or for some kind of reassessment to ensure that that risk is properly, scientifically, empirically addressed with either a field measurement program or any other kind of estimating procedure.

Last, I just would like to make a comment about the value and importance of sketch mapping. The inventory itself is actually fundamentally founded on aerial sketch mapping. I did this work myself at the start of my career for many, many years, taking the air photos, helicopter or fixed-wing reconnaissance work up and down valleys, very large-scale, looking at the difference — I'm going to simplify it and say — between small, medium and big trees.

The inventory actually works pretty good on the small-, medium- and big-tree scale. It's not very often that small trees are called big. There is a question about whether big trees should be called small after a mountain pine beetle disturbance, but in general, that pattern is right — small, medium and big.

That's what the model is trying to project going forward — the growth of the small trees, the depletion of the big trees. Then, as was shown earlier, you get this sort of short-term, mid-term and long-term timber supply implication of that kind of distribution of ages and age class.

I have reasonable confidence that we get small, medium and big done quite well and that we project it quite well with the growth and depletion models that are at play. But it will never work or apply at the individual stand or individual tree level. It was never designed to do that.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just a couple of things, just for clarification. Of course, it's not simply us that are
[ Page 40 ]
asserting that we need to dig into these issues. Of course, the work the Auditor General did.... There was a report that leads us to be asking questions like this. There's work that was done by the Forest Practices Board. There are questions that were raised by the professional foresters.

I think it's the responsibility of all MLAs to be asking questions, because of course, what overlies everything here is political decisions that are made by politicians that impact the work that civil servants are trying to do on our behalf.

The questions around the net NSR — all of those questions are out there in the public's minds and certainly sit with us, because we go to presentations.

I think, Jim, you had left just before Marvin Eng did his presentation. We have on one hand a discussion at the Western Silviculture Association where we're dealing with a number between 230,000 hectares or 750,000 hectares of net NSR — possibly two million, possibly one million.

You're certainly left, as I said at the time, as a layman, thinking it doesn't feel like we have a good enough handle on this. The fundamentals of what we're going to decide here are going to be based on having good data.

I think we're just in a place, given the work of the Auditor General and the work of others, where we have to make sure we're confident going forward that all of the data…. I take Dave's point that on the ground, in some of these things, we're going to get a better comfort level.

Coming back to the inventory work, I think this is a specific question for Pat. It's about other users of the map. You talked about root rot and other things that are not as easy to pick up. We have inventory ages, after the survey, of vintage date. Some forest cover attributes in the map polygon labels may change.

For instance, some of the roads may wash out or be decommissioned. Rivers could change course. Parts of stands will die off. You had mentioned root rot. I would suspect that there's drought and that there might be specific species that die of stress. The example that was given to me is that it's sometimes yellow cedar or birch. There are pest disturbances that are undetectable from the air and that are going to cause tree mortality.

Some of these changes, I'm told, are happening at an increasing rate because of climate change. We didn't really hear from either of the presentations how climate change fits into some of the modelling that you're doing. There are significant areas that are going to be disturbed by mountain pine beetle, wildfire or logging and that are going to be discerned by satellite imagery. But there are also other places that, as you had said, are not going to be evident.

You had talked about inventory as a product. For some of the other users that may want to use that product, has the Forests Ministry surveyed its own staff, its industry clients, forest consultants and forest professionals within the forest sector as well as other stakeholders? Here I'm thinking of maybe hunters, trappers, ranchers, recreationalists. Have you done that? If so, do these clients find the ten-, 20- or 30-year-old forest cover maps sufficiently reliable to be of use to them?

P. Martin: Well, we continuously work with users from many different sectors and segments of the ministry and outside the ministry. The timber supply modelling aspect is only one of our clients.

Indeed, when you're in inventory…. Because we are paired with the analysts, we sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by their focus on analysis. Inventories are used by many groups and for many purposes — assessing tenuring options, business opportunities, assessing biodiversity, wildlife habitat assessment, and on and on. They truly support the management of many of our natural resources.

In terms of staying connected with clients, we certainly try to on an ongoing basis. Our people are involved, as I mentioned on Monday, in many projects which take us directly into the field and in contact with people. We try and put a real emphasis on understanding people's needs and on where the tools that we have can address their needs.

We haven't done a formal review in a few years. But we have done formal reviews in the past of user needs to make sure that we're on track. We benefit greatly from reviews like the Auditor General's in the ABCFP review, which really help us. We utilize those on an ongoing basis to try to improve our program. Through those kinds of independent reviews we get feedback from users.

In terms of whether people find the information adequate, as you can see, the information varies quite a bit in terms of how dated it is. Absolutely, many user groups really like the current photography, where we have it. Those projects we are starting right now and that have been initiated a couple of years ago — full photography in Kamloops; full photography being filmed this year in Lakes and Vanderhoof; Williams Lake and 100 Mile House, very current photography. A lot of users — recreational users and many other operational forestry users — really appreciate the new photography.

In the same way that you see there's a range of eras, people will, just as you're reporting, identify that. And boy, they would like to be next up for re-inventory.

D. Peterson: If I could, Norm, I would add that I think most of those user groups you talked about find the inventory inadequate because it's not at the operational scale they're interested in, more than because it's out of date.

I mean, for most of them, that's what they're looking for. That's why they love photographs instead, because it's just more usable for them to actually plan their oper-
[ Page 41 ]
ations. Again, that's not the intention of the inventory.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. I'm going to cut this off just for a second here, if I may.

We have two more presentations that we would like to try to get through. Obviously, we're not going to have enough time today to complete those. That's on the constraints as well as on the current impact of the pine beetle information.

What I'd like to suggest is that…. We had a tentative meeting for tomorrow, between eight and ten. I think we should confirm that, as we're going to need that time. I'm also going to suggest that if we are unable to complete the review of those reports tomorrow, we are going to have to add a meeting on Monday, as well, in Vancouver, because we need to be able to find enough time to go through this information to get a viable paper out to start public consultation.

We're going to have to put in whatever extra hours are going to be required. I apologize, of course, to staff in terms of what those requirements are.

Keep in mind that as we're asking these questions, some of this information we're going to be able to ask of our experts that we have as advisers through the process. We may not be able to get all of our questions answered through this, but we really do need to be able to get the working base in place if we are going to meet our time schedule.

The second thing I wanted to ask is that with regard to reports and references that you've made or that any member of the committee makes, it would be important if you could make reference to that report so that the Clerk's office could also look up those reports and make them available to any member that would like to have those reports, as well, for background information. When you're referencing those reports, if you could do that, we'll get it on record. Then we'll make sure that the Clerk's office has the ability to be able to distribute those reports to all members.

First, if we don't finish on Thursday, I would suggest, obviously, that we would take it over to the following week. We are meeting on Wednesday. I think many of us share the same complication around travel. For me, it's eight hours to get to Vancouver or Victoria. Rather than the Monday….

J. Rustad (Chair): Yes, the date of June 6 is set. That's next Wednesday. If we cannot get to a position paper — at least a discussion of the basis that has got to go to a position paper, for the basis of community consultation — it will jam the ability of the community consultation to be able to actually respond to us, because they'll need to have some time to review and look at that information. I'm cognizant of this.

I'm also thinking that the time we have scheduled on Wednesday is going to be needed for the components and the discussion that we're going to go through. We might have a little bit of leeway there, but we are going to need to try to find time to put in. I understand the travel schedule, but time is what it is. There are other commitments that come into play as well.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): A couple of points here. First off, this exercise is not building towards anything that's going to be presented on Wednesday. On Wednesday we are going to be presented. Basically, it's here to put on public record and also to inform the group. The purpose of what we're doing here is for us to be informed.

Now, whether we're informed before the work that has been done is presented to us on Wednesday or not…. I'm just saying: let's move backwards from Wednesday into Tuesday before we go to Monday, and then leave us with nothing to do on Tuesday. If you foresee that it's going to take two days, then let's come back Monday.

The other point that I would make is that fundamental to the decisions we're going to be making is the degree to which we have to be informed on these matters. In terms of the timeline, the opposition did express concerns around the timeline. We did that in written form before this was put to the Legislature. So the constraints that we're under are predictable.

The second thing is that in terms of this process, I think this is something that is useful for MLAs to go through. We've all talked about this over a long period of time. I mean, this first was put forward by Bob Simpson five years ago as something that needed to be done. I think we just have to take the time that's needed.

We'll meet Thursday. If we need to meet Monday or Tuesday, then that's fine. But if we only need one day, I'm just saying let's have it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rather than gaps.

J. Rustad (Chair): I agree with that. Like I say, I just wanted to put on the table that if we don't get this thing through, we have a certain amount of work that we are going to need to get completed before Wednesday, if we want to be able to get through and try to meet a schedule that I think can get us to August 15.

I do recognize the critical value of what we're trying to do here, and I don't want to cut this off in any way by suggesting that…. We also have the realties of time constraints, and if we can't get through all the information in today's and tomorrow's meetings, then we're going to have to assess.

I wanted to make people aware that Tuesday, unfortu-
[ Page 42 ]
nately, is not a day that's available for the government members because of other commitments we have on Tuesday. That means we're going to have to work backwards from that, which means Monday. If we don't think we can get it all done Monday, we may have to work over the weekend as well.

With that, just keep that in mind. Like I say, there are two other presentations that I'd like to try to get to. I recognize that we likely will not get to the pine beetle component today, but I would like to at least be able to hear the presentation on constraints as well, because that helps to set the overall discussion.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I have a couple of questions for Albert, if that's okay — about three questions.

First, I just wanted to thank Albert for the presentation. I thought you did, as with all the presentations, a great job.

The question I have for you goes back to just some setting for it. In 1976 you had Dr. Peter Pearse, who chaired the Royal Commission on Forest Resources. He tabled his report with government, and he was the first on public record to acknowledge falldown in harvest rates.

Then you had Mr. Mike Apsey. After a short stint on Premier Bill Bennett's forest policy advisory committee, he was asked to review Commissioner Pearse's recommendations. He was appointed Deputy Minister of Forests, as you know, in July 1978 and charged with implementing the new forest policy recommended by Pearse, which he did in 1979 in three acts — the Forest Act, the Ministry of Forests and Range Act and the Range Act.

This is a quote from Chief Forester Larry Pedersen. As I was mentioning to him, I was given the Jubilee Lecture, which I can share with other members to read. I'll quote here: "The new Forest Act outlined a new process for assessing timber supply and determining AACs…. Accompanying policy intended that AACs would be reviewed every five years, not ten years as in the past." That was from 1979.

In the early 1990s Darrell Errico and Larry Pedersen were charged with conducting an internal review of harvest regulation in the province. In the result of the review they found…. Again, I'll quote Mr. Pedersen from his UBC Jubilee Lecture, a couple of points.

First: "Timber supply analyses were not being done fast enough to keep pace with the changing integrated forest management objectives and practices." The second point that was made: "Non-timber values were not fully accounted for in AACs." Third: "Data application needed revision." Those are quotes.

As a result, the Forest Act was amended to require AAC determinations every five years for each TFL and TSA. The policy was also changed to require the detailed timber supply review, or TSR, on which you have briefed the committee. That was, I think, in 1992.

If you could just repost slide No. 7, titled "Legislation." Thanks. On this slide, the first bullet. You informed the committee that section 8 of the Forest Act requires AAC determinations for each TSA and TFL at least once every ten years.

What you admit is that this new requirement represents a major departure in harvest policy from 1978 and in law from 1992 until section 8 of the Forest Act was amended yet again to reflect this change to a ten-year AAC cycle by the passage of Bill 20, the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), in November 2009.

Now, I've heard various administrative explanations as we went through this — I mean, I was part of the debate — as to why the government amended section 8 from a five-year to a ten-year AAC cycle, ranging from freeing up the backlog of timber supply reviews and AAC determinations to a means of reducing costs under a decade of declining budgets which members have alluded to — that cost pressures push many of these decisions.

I'd be interested to hear from you the technical reasons for the change in the law. If it's not purely driven by budget, what technical review or analysis did the former chief forester, Jim Snetsinger — who is our technical adviser to the committee, of course — undertake in support of the change to section 8 from a five-year to a ten-year AAC cycle? Would you also please provide the committee with that review or analysis or any other technical documentation to support the amendment?

As you said, Norm, the change in the law was done by the Legislature. It was the government of the day that changed the law, ultimately. Inside the government, when I was the chief forester, we did do a timber supply review. As you mentioned, in the early '90s there was a review of the timber supply review process, and it was found that it was lacking in a number of ways. We put a more comprehensive, rigorous timber supply review process in place.

When Larry was chief forester, he did well over a hundred AAC determinations, and as I was chief forester, I did probably somewhere around 40 to 50, or in that neck of the woods. We did find that we were reviewing AAC determinations very quickly. Every five years in some units seemed to be too quick because things weren't changing. In some units a five-year period was certainly okay.
[ Page 43 ]

In our review we thought we needed more flexibility in the legislation, and that's what we proposed. As Albert described in his presentation, it takes a lot of work and effort to get to a timber supply review determination by the chief forester. He outlined the timeline, the amount of work that goes into the data package — the preparation, the analysis, the public review and consultation. In some units, as I said, that weren't changing as rapidly it was a lot of work when it didn't appear to be necessary.

What we wanted to do was use our efforts and use our manpower in a way that prioritized those units and to be able to revisit those units that were changing on a more timely scale, on a more timely basis.

For instance, in the last number of years when I'd been reviewing units affected by mountain pine beetle, while the law had changed to say that the chief forester didn't have to do it until every ten years, I made a commitment in a number of AAC rationales, or at least alluded to it, that the chief forester would likely need to be back well before the ten-year period and reviewing the next timber supply, making an AAC determination, prior to ten years because of things like how fast the infestation was progressing, shelf life, history of harvesting, what was going on in second-growth stands.

While the legislation says that it can't be any more than ten years, it can certainly be sooner than ten years. Certainly, in my time as chief forester it would have been my intent to go into mountain pine beetle units and reassess them much sooner than ten years.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. I remember a little bit about the debate, and I remember that that was the explanation given by the minister at the time — that it didn't preclude going in earlier. But I mean, one was left with the sense that it was driven by budget constraints. You're saying that there's a combination of factors. Like I say, if there's any analysis that would be useful to the group as to that decision, that would be useful to have.

I'll just quote again from chief forester Larry Pedersen's UBC Jubilee Lecture. I think it was 2003 The quotation says:

"The combined implications of the changes outlined above will require a continuation of the delicate balance between short-, mid- and long-term timber supply. While there are plenty of assertions about our future timber supply, I have yet to be presented with any comprehensive analysis indicating that radical changes from the current approach are justified."

The things that were referenced elsewhere were, of course, the mountain pine beetle outbreak, resolution of First Nations treaties, land use planning, managing for non-timber values for species at risk, accounting for carbon, third-party certification and the forest industry invitation.

The second question, then: have any of these changes, to which I would add climate change, and the rate at which they are happening materially altered since 2003, and if so, how do they justify change from a five-year to a ten-year AAC cycle?

L. Pedersen: I'd like to at least bring an initial perspective, given that those are my comments. I was actually contemplating whether it was necessary to do all units every five years within my term at the time.

My reference to the ongoing complexity and the need to stay with the process had to do with the nature of the analysis, the comprehensive review — one that sought to, as I expressed earlier, find weaknesses and strengths in the data. That whole approach is that which I was suggesting needed to be perpetuated. I'll give you one example, and it's the most clear example. It was for me at the time.

In the northwest part of the province there's the Cassiar timber supply area — very, very low level of activity. It's never been featured as a big area for the forest industry. It's quite remote. It has highly variable timber values.

The notion of spending tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to go back there every five years and undertake this comprehensive analysis to come back to the very same understanding as was gained in the previous five-year period…. There's not a lot going on, at least based on what we know of the timber supply projection. It looks stable. It's quite likely to continue to look stable, until there's some major change.

If, for example, a treaty was settled or if, for example, some new licences were awarded, then that kind of change would bring some additional and new either operational or land use perspective that would then cause me to think, "All right. Then you would go back sooner, within the five-year period," and that effort would be justifiable. It was that kind of example, for me, that caused me to think, after we went through the first round, that not all units are equal in terms of their urgency in the requirement for a periodic review.

I certainly supported the five years. I agree with Jim. There are many units that while they could go ten years, should not go ten years. They should go five years or possibly even less than that, as information comes available.

J. Snetsinger: Just one other quick point I'll add in. I think I tried to allude to it. The timber supply review process that we currently have in place is a mature process. When Larry, Darrell and Darrell did their report, we had at that time…. After that report and the implementation of the recommendations, we started to get a lot more staff involved in the timber supply review process at the region, district and headquarters level. People started to
[ Page 44 ]
understand what made the timber supply tick in their particular management unit. It became less mysterious to them, and they understood it. They started to keep an eye on things that affected timber supply.

Now, as a result of that maturation of the timber supply review process, we have a lot more eyes and ears attuned to what drives timber supply in a particular unit. If there are things that are going on with respect to timber supply in a management unit, very often Albert or the chief forester of the day will get a call from a district manager or a regional exec director, saying: "I think we need to have a look at something that's going on here sooner than the ten years, and here's why."

There's just a lot more attention paid to it. Even though the ten years is there, it's a much more in-depth process — and a lot more people involved in it today — than it was even 15 or 20 years ago.

A. Nussbaum: I was going to add, just to highlight what both of the previous chief foresters said, that none of the mountain pine beetle units have gone ten years. They've all been done in shorter periods. That's because this flexibility actually allows us to make sure that the focus is on those units, such as Prince George and Quesnel, where changes are significant.

The evaluation here can't wait ten years, and it doesn't. It allows us to say that a unit where harvesting activity's been quite minimal and the pressure on the land base is very minimal and the changes are minimal…. We'll set it to the side, and we'll let it run its ten-year course.

Those are the choices we're making. I think it's the right deployment of resources.

I would also like to point out that the resourcing of the timber supply analysis program, while it hasn't been static, has been quite stable. The staff there — the majority of them — have been there for a considerable period of time, have tremendous knowledge, haven't experienced layoffs, and so on. I would say that the commitment to the program has remained quite strong as a core program.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, thanks. Just one final question here on this particular thing.

One of the guiding principles of the TSR, the timber supply review process, established in 1992, is the need for the chief forester to assess potential current and future social, economic and environmental risks in the determination of harvest levels.

This is a quote from a March 2011 report by the B.C. First Nations Forestry Council on the implications of recent amendments to the forest legislation. This is a direct quotation. It says:

"Section 8.8(d) requires that the chief forester, when determining the AAC, consider the 'economic and social objectives of the government, as expressed by the minister, for the area, for the general region and for B.C.' Now that the future of B.C.'s forest, and the forest industry, is becoming increasingly uncertain, the government seems to be walking away from their responsibility to First Nations and the public to manage and conserve forest lands and resources."

The last question is: how does the increase in duration time between timber supply reviews help the government to face this uncertainty in the public interest?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): The uncertainty. Here it's expressed as a First Nations uncertainty, but I think you often would be looking at the uncertainty as something that's based on something that's measurable in terms of the mountain pine beetle impacts or other disturbances.

The other factor we often don't consider is, of course, that the social conditions change — right? So here we're talking particularly about the treaty process, but I think, when Mr. Pedersen was chief forester, there was a period of time in the '80s where this ministry would have been doing everything right. The process of one or two years, in the public mind….

We'll remember the early '90s. Everything that the ministry was doing, everything government was doing was wrong. So the social views changed.

Here we have First Nations expressed as an interest that's constantly evolving, so even though the forest…. Albert, you expressed areas that seemed pretty stable, but in terms of the social views of what's happening, there can be really radical, very quick changes. I would put it to you that we're at that period now, where we could see some of the comfort that was given from the work done in the '90s, where people thought problems were addressed….

I think in the last three years, and you're seeing it in some of the questioning we're doing here, that people on the ground are starting to come to a place where they just don't trust anymore. When that happens, whether it's First Nations or whether it's the public as a whole, then you get this dramatic shift in pressure, and the reality changes under your feet.

Like I say, I think, Mr. Pedersen, as chief forester you experienced that, where there was this dramatic shift that changed the ministry's reality.

I guess that's what I'm alluding to — that sort of a change, specifically with First Nations. Albert, if you have a broader comment, that might be useful too.

J. Snetsinger: I'm just going to jump in here for Albert,
[ Page 45 ]
if I could, Norm, just for a minute.

The whole issue around dealing with First Nations interests, whether they're legal or social or economic. I know that in my tenure as chief forester the government takes very seriously and took very seriously….

I know there were a number of occasions during timber supply reviews where I met face to face with First Nations representatives, either on a government-to-government basis or with their technical advisers. I've been out in the field and done field trips with First Nations.

Quite apart from that, there's the whole process of treaty negotiations and economic development opportunities with First Nations, and there are lots of examples around the province where lands have been identified for potential future treaty opportunities for First Nations.

There are pieces of the legislation under the Forest Act that allow the minister to suspend harvesting rights. Then the chief forester of the day can examine the application of part 13 of the Forest Act to see if that has any implications for temporary adjustments to the allowable annual cut. I know during my time I've made adjustments to the AAC as a result of the application of part 13 of the Forest Act.

My last point would be: when treaties do get made and land use decisions get made around that and the removals of areas from the timber-harvesting land base that could affect the AAC, that would almost automatically trigger a relook at the AAC. So temporary AAC adjustments can be made through the Forest Act to account for First Nations deliberations and treaty negotiations. Then once treaties are ratified, those decisions can be reflected in subsequent AAC determination, and are reflected.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just one last thing, very quickly, is that, of course, going from a period where you could go as long as ten years…. I think what you're saying is that you would often choose to go to a shorter period. Now, some of the reasons you would do that are self-evident, with the mountain pine beetle, and the other thing you sourced is that you would be getting constant feedback from ministry staff.

I guess the last point I would make — and it's anecdotal to my area — is that there was a time in the community I lived in when we had 40 ministry staff. We have two. We used to have full operations in Revelstoke. We don't. I mean, you'll know the people that are gone. We used to have an Invermere Forests office. We don't. So in terms of how you would get that feedback back…. It seems to me that's one of the factors that raise questions about how that's all going to work.

J. Snetsinger: I certainly wouldn't argue that there have been reductions in staff. That's a fact. But there are still people who are now responsible for looking after those land bases, whether they're out of the Cranbrook office or out of the Revelstoke office. There are stewardship foresters. There are tenure foresters. These are the contacts for the people in the branches and the regions to be understanding what's going on in the land base.

So while there may not be as many, certainly there is no lack of interest or concern or diligence around what it is they're looking at. There's certainly that two-way communication — or sometimes three-way between the branch, the region and the district offices — around these issues. I won't argue there's less staff, but I would argue that the level of communication is still very high on these issues.

J. Rustad (Chair): Good. Thank you for that. I'm just wondering. We had a presentation, as well, on the timber supply and the annual allowable cut, so we've been continuing to ask questions around the forest inventory. Now….

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay. I've got some questions on the timber supply, but I guess we'll try to get through the remaining questions on forest inventory, if we can, for now.

H. Bains: I was at that slide No. 6 again. I'm just trying to understand. We have two ways of determining the inventory. One is every 20 years of cycle, and then there's the yearly. It seems to me that both go hand in hand in order to have the updated information. I'm looking at….

Some of them, we haven't done the inventory for 40 years and other areas for 20 years or more. Then if you look at the updates, there's the 100 Mile House area. Since 2007, for five years, they haven't done any yearly update. There are a couple of other areas that for three years they haven't done any update.

So I'm looking at it, trying to understand. On one hand, we're being told that we're confident that we have sufficient information, based on the information you receive through these inventory processes. But we haven't done that either, and then we're still saying that we're confident.

I'm just trying to understand. How are we making these statements while we haven't done the work that you
[ Page 46 ]
rely your information on?

P. Martin: So the 100 Mile House. I'm going to turn to Albert. It relates to a situation he described earlier where right now we suspend the updates because we are re-inventorying the entire 100 Mile House area. So that's why the updates are only current to 2007.

I guess maybe the question is, then, Albert: how do we make sure that we have all the harvested areas identified we when do a mid-term timber supply analysis or some other forest forecast?

A. Nussbaum: Yeah, that's the way I see it. So the question then becomes…. Okay, so we know the state of the inventory. We know it's current to 2007. So the key in the TSR process is to ensure that depletions subsequent to 2007 are reflected in that inventory before it's used in a timber supply review process.

Again, I describe that there is the inventory in its current state, and there's an update and check system that we create, which is a composite of all the data sources we have about what's changing in the forest — whether that be licensee submissions from results, satellite detection that there's been a change, fire information; all of it — that is assembled external to the inventory.

So we have that as well, and we cut in that GIS layer — that's a graphic information system layer that overlays on our land base — and then take the inventory that Pat provides. We cut in anything that we detect that's different and not accounted for in the inventory.

At the end of the day, I feel fairly confident that we have no stands going into the system — or very, very few — that don't reflect the current state at the time we initiate the analysis. So what I'm saying is that there are systems, and then there are kind of backup systems to make sure that we bring it current, in terms of depletion, to the start year of the analysis.

H. Bains: Just to follow up. I'm just trying to understand this. On one hand, we were told that once every 20 years we need to go in there and do this proper — using whatever technology you use to get that — survey done, and then yearly updates go in. So that gives you the data that you need, and the chief forester is depending on that kind of information.

Here on one hand, you're saying that we need that yearly update plus this, but on the other hand, the argument is being made that we don't really need it. We already have all that information from different areas, from different sources — like 100 Mile House 2007 information. Others have 2011 information, and you also have the survey for within the last ten years done.

So just explain it to me. How is it that on the one hand, you need all of this information, the current information, and on the other, you are relying on other sources and other information still saying that we're okay?

A. Nussbaum: Because it isn't as simple as just going to one data source. In order to do a proper timber supply review program, we need to use everything at our disposal. So that's the way we come up with the more…. That's what the term "best available information" means.

No one data source is going to take care of it for you, and it's going to take more than that. Not only is it going to take all of the available data but a very good understanding of where that data is not what you'd want and where the risks lie. That's what the process does. It addresses it as a package.

You bring everything to bear that you have that's relevant to the decision. You integrate it for the decision-maker. Then the decision-maker has to understand where that falls short, and he has to weigh the risks of that. We provide him with sensitivity analysis as part of our process to show the impacts of the information not being exactly as portrayed.

You know, the answer is that no one source of data is going to meet the bill. It really is: bring what you have to the table, integrate it and provide it to the decision-maker. It just isn't as simple as one stop meets all.

Like I said, the information comes from a variety of sources. We've been talking about the forest cover extensively, but, you know, Allan and land use planning, wildlife habitat…. We have to pull from data sources that span the spectrum. So by definition, we're creating extensive data sets for this determination in every case.

H. Bains: So what are we saying? Maybe I could zero in here, do a couple of comparisons then. For example, the Quesnel area — the vintage inventory was done in the late 2000s. All that information that you talked about, now, all the different sources of information — you must have that available for Quesnel, as well, in order to come up with the decision in the Quesnel area.

There you felt that you needed to go back in the late 2000s to do the vintage survey and also yearly updates along with all the other information that you said you rely on. Yet you go to 100 Mile House. You are sitting there at 1970s and the yearly update of 2007 along with all the other information available to you, as was available in Quesnel area. So why are the two different?

P. Martin: In 100 Mile House we're currently re-inventorying the entire land base. When we do that, we suspend the updates to the inventory because the files are all in flux. We're reworking them all. That's what is happening there.

We'll be completing that inventory, optimistically, at the end of this current fiscal. More likely, there'll be a little mop-up next year, and then that will all be brought up to date. The new vintage will read early in the '10s, and VRI is the standard. The update will be brought right up to 2012.
[ Page 47 ]

A. Nussbaum: Realistically, the reason that we don't continue to maintain the existing inventory — at some point we kind of suspend our efforts on it — is because it's about to be replaced. It takes energy to check all the submissions from licensees and cut them in, and the vast majority of those will be captured by the re-inventory. For all of the choices, everything is about resource allocation. We make a choice to suspend the update of that inventory when we're close to replacing it. So that's what that is about, and it is a choice by our program.

J. Rustad (Chair): Before going to Bill, with regards to Harry's comment, I just wanted to get a clarification.

If part of that inventory process where you're suspending for a couple of years while you're doing the update…. Basically, if I remember back to that map where we had 95 million hectares in the province — and 55 million is the timber-harvesting land base, and 20 million is what we're operating on, and 200,000 is what we're cutting per year — what we're talking about in the Lakes TSA is a few thousand hectares per year that would not have been updated, potentially, as opposed to what that overall land base is.

I guess the question I'm asking around that is: how relevant would that be to the annual allowable cut or that process for missing that, associated with the larger picture?

A. Nussbaum: Like I said, we do have the information available to address that in the timber supply review process. I think that we could probably make a decision without the few thousand hectares, but we don't need to. So rather than leave it to Jim or Larry to pain over what that means, we deplete it. We deplete it with the information that we have to get that off the table.

There's enough uncertainty in these decisions. We try to deal with everything that we physically can and leave what we can't to the decision-makers to grapple with. If we can control it and we can account for it, it's just easier to get it off the table. We'll take care of it. We do — through that separate data layer that we maintain, which we use to check the inventory and ensure that it's depleted for everything.

In terms of the strategic decision, if we missed a year or two of update in terms of harvesting, I think we can work around that as well. It's probably not the pivotal rider in the decision. There are lots of other things that probably define what the next five years look like more than the last two or three years of harvest.

J. Rustad (Chair): We've got ten more minutes left in this meeting before we have to wrap up. Bill apparently has four questions that he'd like to pose. What I'd like to propose is that you can either try to get all of the questions on record or give it to us written, and we'll make sure it gets into the Hansard record. We'll be able to get a response to you if we don't have time.

I'd like to try to wrap up the inventory piece here today so that when we are starting tomorrow morning…. I'm going to make the assumption that it is okay with committee members to be meeting between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. tomorrow morning to try to move forward. I know our special advisers and others may have other plans, so we'll have to see what we can do around working around this. Like I say, I'd like to try to get through the rest of this work this week if we can.

Maybe I'll just ask the question. Is everybody okay, then, with tomorrow morning at eight o'clock — eight to ten?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): We are. We will be here tomorrow morning, and I will send an e-mail to everyone just to confirm that that's our plan for tomorrow morning.

J. Rustad (Chair): Hopefully, the ministry staff have got that available in terms of doing the presentation for tomorrow. Okay. So we're good with that.

With that, if you want to get the last four question on or give it to us in written form, we'll make sure it is part of the public record — whichever you'd prefer. Over to you, Bill.

B. Routley: Yeah, I'll just go through all of my four questions, and then we can either have some response today or a written response.

The remaining questions, at least the main part, are to do with the inventory data set that comes from the licensees. That is a substantial part of what is received by the inventory branch.

In 2011 the Forest Practices Board talked about recent accounts of foresters finding harvested areas on the ground that were several years old, which were still shown on the data as mature forest. This was also true on most recent forest cover map updates. Obviously, the Forest Practices Board commented about that.

Do the reporting gaps in any way jeopardize the currency of the inventory data set? That's the first question in that group. The second one is: what are the risks to timber supply planning if the harvested areas are not current in some areas?

Thirdly, in terms of the condition of old-growth reserves, that's one of the areas that the committee is being asked to look at. Have they been in any way impacted by fire or disease or incidental salvage logging? Has Inventory had a look at them? If so, how recently? Are there gaps in the information that may be needed
[ Page 48 ]
by this committee — particularly in the pine beetle region, obviously, in terms of having the current update information?

So if you could give me some kind of overview on what the dates might be on the condition of reserves and the possibility of disease or incidental salvage logging, which we know has occurred.

Finally, I would like to know: can we be told with any certainty the status of the Cariboo-Chilcotin land use plan? We're hearing anecdotally from local staff that they don't know the status — at either the landscape or stand level — of what's going on. The same is true with all LRMPs.

That's basically it for my questions. Either we can get some response today, or if you just….

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Could I make a suggestion? I understand that maybe Pat has to go somewhere else and won't need to be here for the meeting. But in terms of how we are answered back — I don’t know what the plans are — maybe Chief Forester Peterson…. If we don't get to these today — and I don't think we will be able to — could we just organize so that it's read into the record?

Often in estimates there's a promise to provide in writing, and then we get interested groups that say: "Hey, I can't find it. Could you send it to us?" It's convoluted for us, whereas if they can just go to Hansard and see it in Hansard, then it takes care of the question.

I'll just add one more to that, if you don't mind, really quickly. There was a Forest Practices Board report, I believe, on the results database. My understanding of it was that the Forest Practices Board's conclusion was that the results database wasn't up to date, that the data wasn't accurate. It seemed to point out that both databases and staffing vulnerabilities were there.

Now, often we read these…. I reach a conclusion. I think Albert has pointed out that when you read it in a more holistic way or with a professional view on it, sometimes you would reach a different conclusion.

If that's there and if that conclusion is an accurate one, it would be good if we had some of our professionals comment on that.

J. Rustad (Chair): Just to that point, if we're unable to answer them and it comes in written form, what we can do…. We have a website associated with this committee. We'll be providing all the background information and a variety of other things on there. That's something that could actually be posted on the website so that people could go in and find it and have it available as well.

With that, we do have a few minutes left. I don't mind going a couple minutes over if you think we can get to a conclusion.

D. Barnett: The document that my colleague across the table, from Columbia River–Revelstoke, just mentioned on the Forest Practices Board — I would like to know what the date is and what document that is so we can reference it.

J. Rustad (Chair): I've asked the Clerks to follow up with any of the documents that members have made references to so that we can have that information available for committee members as well as post them on the site.

With that, do you want to take a shot at trying to answer those questions in the next few minutes, or would you like to try to put that together as a presentation for our next meeting?

A. Lidstone: The Cariboo-Chilcotin land use planning. In my presentation I'll talk about the status of land use planning and where the various plans are at, so if you can wait for the presentation, it'll be covered there.

With that, I want to thank the presenters today for going through this process. Again, I apologize for imposing on you with regards to having a committee meeting tomorrow now being called, but obviously, this is very critical in terms of setting the stage for what we need to do next week, which is to lay out what all the potential options are so that we can actually start the consultation process.

To members: thank you for your participation. I'll look for a motion to adjourn the meeting.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

Chair:	* John Rustad (Nechako Lakes BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Norm Macdonald (Columbia River–Revelstoke NDP)
Members:	* Harry Bains (Surrey-Newton NDP)
	* Donna Barnett (Cariboo-Chilcotin BC Liberal)
	* Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	* Bill Routley (Cowichan Valley NDP)
	* Ben Stewart (Westside-Kelowna BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Other MLAs:	Bob Simpson (Cariboo North Ind.)
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Committee Staff:	Larry Pedersen (Technical Advisor)
	Josie Schofield (Manager, Committee Research Services)
	Jim Snetsinger (Technical Advisor)

Witnesses:	Susanna Laaksonen-Craig (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)
	Allan Lidstone (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)
	Pat Martin (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)
	Albert Nussbaum (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)
	Dave Peterson (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON TIMBER SUPPLY

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
TIMBER SUPPLY