Timber Supply — Issue No. 4 — Thursday, May 31, 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

3. The Committee discussed its public hearing schedule and other preliminary considerations.

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	49
A. Nussbaum
L. Pedersen
J. Snetsinger
D. Peterson
A. Lidstone
S. Laaksonen-Craig
Committee Meeting Schedule	64

J. Rustad (Chair): Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our next meeting of the Special Committee on Timber Supply. We'll start with a brief round of introductions, starting with the member on my right.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thanks, and of course we have with us our two special advisers. I'll let them introduce themselves.

J. Rustad (Chair): This morning we're carrying on with presentations on the various inputs that we were looking for, for our committee. But before we start on the presentations, I'd like to suggest an amendment for our agenda — to move No. 2 to No. 3 and put into No. 2 a discussion of the schedule. Is everybody okay with doing that?

Okay. What I'm going to suggest is that we'll go through the meeting this morning. We'll see how far we can get through the various discussions and components this morning, and then at some point, if we aren't wrapping up where this component is going, we'll have to break off from that, suspend that and go into item 2, which would be discussion of the schedule, if everybody's okay with that.

J. Rustad (Chair): I guess at this point, then, we'll turn the presentation over to our witnesses now. Before we go into the presentations…. We've had the two presentations so far, one on the timber supply and one on the inventory component. Are there any other questions? I know we didn't get a chance to ask questions around the timber supply component, and there may have been some lingering questions around the inventory component.

Perhaps we'll start off this morning with any questions that anybody may have, and then we can go into the next presentation.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I wonder if we could read into the record the answers to the four questions, I believe there were, that came out of the end of yesterday's session.

J. Rustad (Chair): We've got a written response from Albert that we could hand out to members.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. Maybe while we're reading those, if Albert doesn't mind summarizing some of the ideas that he has presented in those answers. Or if we want to read them, we can do that.

J. Rustad (Chair): I think maybe if we have this as a committee for being read…. We'll make sure that this gets posted on the committee's website with regards to the response to the questions.

B. Routley: Some of the statements in the presentation — for example, the fact that the flow of timber…. Really, what you're talking about is the volume. Is that correct?

A. Nussbaum: When we do timber supply analysis, I would think that flow of timber is probably a little closer. What I mean by that is that we assume certain merchantability limits, and so on, when we determine what we call volume. So I would say that it is really the flow of sawlog timber for the most part that's represented in those forecasts. We can talk more about that when we talk about the forecast next week.

It's just not volume. It has to meet certain merchantability sizes, and so on, before it's incorporated into that forecast. I think timber is closer.

B. Routley: I thought we heard just yesterday that when there was the problem raised by the industry of…. They can't find logs. They don't know where the next cutblocks are going to come from. What I thought I heard the same voices say is that the timber is there, even though it may not be merchantable. In other words, it's not a product that some forest company is able to harvest because of the current market.
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In any case, the fact is that we model on growth and yield — right? It's based on growing trees and how much a hectare of land grows in terms of cubic metres. It's also true that some of the modelling is currently based on timber that may not be there because we haven't yet done the work to determine whether or not the timber has been damaged, and we're not every year….

I mean, the whole NSR problem comes from not having yet done the work on determining whether it is timber or whether it should be moved over to the NSR category. Is that correct?

A. Nussbaum: I don't think it is correct. We sort of covered the ground yesterday. It's complex to do it sort of without looking at all the assumption and an analysis. I think it's difficult to get one's mind around all the components that make it up.

As I was trying to describe yesterday, and I obviously didn't do a tremendously good job, we have mechanisms in place to ensure that the inventory is depleted for everything where there has been harvesting activity, and we have a mechanism in place that depletes the inventory for the mountain pine beetle disturbance.

I'm not saying that the approaches we take are perfect. There's always uncertainty in what we do, because everything is…. Inventories have an uncertainty associated with them. But I think we do a pretty fair job of trying to reflect what's happening in the forest. We have data that we bring to bear on that. I think they reflect our best knowledge of what the current state is. It can always be improved.

B. Routley: Could I get clarification just again? You talked about short, mid-term and long term. Did I hear right that mid-term is 30 to 60 years?

A. Nussbaum: No, I think mid-term will start when licensees really truly have no ability to use mountain pine beetle. So actually, it's variable.

When we forecast, we usually forecast all the pine that's available until, basically, biologically it falls over. But the mid-term will start. What they access, how much of the pine they harvest will be a function of what they can do, what markets do. What the global economy does will define when they finally exit that pine. It's pretty uncertain when they decide they're going to exit.

In my mind, mid-term starts when licensees can no longer harvest beetle-impacted pine. That's yet to be determined. It could be anywhere from…. You hear licensees saying three years, or it could be ten. It really is undefined, and there is uncertainty with that one. We'll be talking about that next week as well.

B. Routley: Is it the same for short term? Or is there a defined period, like a short term, limited by…? Say, is five years max short term? What's short term?

A. Nussbaum: In my mind, short term is probably ten years. I know it doesn't sound short to people, but when you're doing timber supply analysis, you're always thinking in multiple rotations, so short term is ten years. But we could be in the mid-term even sooner than that.

A. Nussbaum: From a timber supply perspective, it's when the harvest is dominated by second-growth stands. You're through the mature — you know, a gift from God — and you're now harvesting what you've grown. In my world that's somewhere between…. It depends on the unit and the management history and something, but it's probably 30, 40 to 60 years from now, depending on the scenario, but probably closer to 40, 50.

A. Nussbaum: It is, because it depends on when those stands…. The productivity of the second-growth stands and the amount of damage they have and everything define when they become available.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you. I'd actually like to ask a follow-up question along those lines as well. When you're talking about your long term and when you get into that second-growth area, if rotations were able to be shortened through other types of activities, that would actually change just when that long-term scenario would start. Is that correct?

A. Nussbaum: Yes, you're exactly correct. If, for example, you could apply fertilizer to mature stands and gain some extra volume and change the timing on when those stands become available for harvest…. If you can shorten it, what it means is you don't have to ration your existing green stands quite as long and you can probably get a better mid-term out of it. Anything that brings that long term a little closer helps in the mid-term.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): The fourth question, Albert, that you had written here. You had said that it would be taken care of by Mr. Lidstone in his presentation. Just to reference members, it was the Forest Practices Board. It's the November 2011 and then revised in December 2011. I understand there are copies here if members would like it.

What I was referencing — and I think, Albert, you'd
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recognize this — is the fifth paragraph in the board commentary. It says — this is the Forest Practices Board that's speaking: "We do not have confidence that the Forests Ministry can adequately describe the current condition of the managed forest or track changes in its condition into the future."

That's, of course, what was being referenced, and I presume that Mr. Lidstone, in his presentation, will speak to that comment from the Forest Practices Board from just a few months ago.

Then on the following page it reads, and I'll read it into the record: "The unexpected loss of one or two individuals could put the entire reporting system in jeopardy. There is little or no redundancy." That was the part that I was talking to.

What we received in the written answers was answer 4: "This question will be addressed by Allan Lidstone in his presentation today." Am I correct that it's something different?

A. Nussbaum: No, I think it's a little bit different. I think your concern is more addressed in question 1. If you turn the page over, on the front it says: "In 2011 the Forest Practices Board talked…." It starts with that. I think the answer below there is far more germane. What we were talking about in question 4, I believe, is the status of land use plans, and Allan will speak to that.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Right, okay. To understand, what you're saying here, Albert, is that the Forest Practices Board's report from November of 2011…. You're saying that that sweeping comment has been acted upon and fixed. Is that what you're saying here? I mean, I haven't had the chance to read….

A. Nussbaum: I think that's what I'm trying to say, exactly. We take all comments from the Forest Practices Board and any other professional association seriously. We read every line. They did point out some valid deficiencies, and we moved quickly to address them. Again, we're not immune to feedback.

So yes, we worked with Marvin, who is the author of that report, worked extensively to make sure that we understood what his concerns were, and worked on addressing them. I think if you were to speak with him now he would probably acknowledge that we've made some strides in addressing his concerns.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just to clarify, have you made strides? Or is this a statement that Mr. Eng would say is completely taken care of? I mean, where are we with it? That's nuanced language — we've made strides; we've made improvements.

A. Nussbaum: Okay, I can elaborate. Maintaining the inventory has been a challenge in this province since we started doing inventories in earnest, probably 80 years ago. We have largely addressed his concerns. I'm not sure that if you asked him, it would be perfect, so I'm going to be careful in how I address that. I think we've largely addressed the concerns that were raised in that 2011 report.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, and presumably for ten years you would have been in a place where you would have thought that things were okay, or was the ministry aware that there were shortcomings? It's a pretty sweeping statement. This is the Forest Practices Board. It's not something that we appoint; it's something government appoints. It's made up of experts, presumably, and they end up with the sweeping comment: "We do not have confidence that the Forests Ministry can adequately describe the current condition."

Here again, and I've said this before, other than some members, I'm a layman. When I get these reports…. Essentially, we're talking about something that is complex. We're asked to take the government's word on it, and we see something like this. I mean, we have been told repeatedly by government that everything is okay. That's what we're told. For seven years we are constantly told: "Everything's okay. Everything's okay."

Then we get a report like this, and now you're telling me that it's okay. It's a bit awkward because, of course, I know you're an expert, and why wouldn't I take your word for it? It's just that I've had seven years where…. I'm in a place where it's sort of "prove it."

So you're telling me that if Mr. Marvin Eng came in here, he would say: "All the concerns that I had were taken care of, and we have something that's fundamentally different than this." I would invite members to look at it, look at what's been said.

E. Foster: You spin words into Albert's mouth. Albert said that he had…. That's not what he said. You keep trying to get this in the record. I'm sorry, but….

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, well maybe you can paraphrase for Albert, or Albert can speak, or what would you like?

J. Rustad (Chair): Sorry, Eric, if I could…. Perhaps I'll ask Albert if you could answer that. Then, Eric, if you wanted to have a response with regards to that, I would be happy to entertain that.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Have you seen it? Do you want to have a look at it, Eric? There are copies there. Have a look.
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N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Well, if you don't want to read it, and if you just want to comment, having not read it…. But there are copies there. You're welcome to read it.

If we can ask Albert…. If you could please answer the question, I guess, or respond as best you can. Thank you.

A. Nussbaum: I've worked extensively with Marvin over the years. You're going to find, as you move forward with the challenge you have at hand, that if you pull a number of professionals together they may have a different perspective on the same topic. So I'm not going to speak for Marvin. I'll let Marvin speak for Marvin. But I have worked extensively with Marvin. He has provided feedback countless times. I value his input. We consider it with care, and we move appropriately.

I'm not going to say that I necessarily agree with the sweeping statement that Marvin had. It didn't mean that I didn't examine it with a great degree of care and ask myself what we needed to address in order to take that feedback and act on it accordingly to the best of our ability, and we did.

You know, I'm not going to speak for Marvin, and I'm not going to second-guess. I work with him daily. He calls me regularly. He calls my staff regularly. We have dialogue, and we resolve the concerns he has. I think we have a great relationship with him, given that he is a board member and his objective is to find situations that need addressing. He takes his job seriously, and we take ours seriously to address his concerns.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I'll just make two points. First, I know it's a small group of professionals and that you know each other. But just to clarify, yesterday you talked about an individual, and I know that individual had done the report, but the report was actually from the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals.

So that's different than two professionals having a disagreement. It's something that is put forward by the association that you're a member of. It's broader than simply a disagreement between two professionals. It speaks to the profession.

This is not just Marvin Eng. It's not identified here that he's done the work, although you know that he has, certainly. It's the Forest Practices Board. It is a bigger corporate body. So it's different, and it's the ministry we're talking about. It's not necessarily your work at all. We're talking about the work of the ministry. Those are different things.

So that statement is there. You've assured us on behalf of the ministry that — and not to put words in your mouth — in your view, those issues are taken care of. Nevertheless, it sits there as a concern.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thanks for that, Norm. I didn't really hear a question with that, so I'll move on to Ben.

B. Stewart: I was intrigued by the question about…. Well, first off, I want to go back to the terms of reference and why we're here — to examine and inquire and make recommendations in respect to the mid-term timber supply. I think that it's important and incumbent on every member of the committee to understand that this is meant to be a solution-driven process where we look at what we have been doing and try to find the ways to do it.

Of course, the opposition has spent a lot of time focusing in on inventory. Coming from my experience of growing up in, and growing things — with issues, epidemics, things like that, disease and stuff like that…. This is a very difficult and moving target.

I think the members opposite would have to accept some culpability in understanding or misunderstanding the…. I guess when the pine beetle epidemic first started out, how serious was it? What did they do? We could go back and try to find fault with that. That's not going to find the solution for the mid-term fibre supply that we're all looking for.

Frankly, this is about trying to make certain that we maintain employment, maintain communities. I'm more interested in trying to find the solutions than sitting here and scrutinizing about statements that the Forest Practices Board may or may not have said. I say that meaning that they are a body of people…. As in my background in terms of agriculture, a bottom line is that I could find hundreds of people that would disagree with the way I produce things. The bottom line is that, at the end of the day, I had the product that people could essentially associate with and the quality that was associated with it.

When I go back to the mid-term timber supply, Albert was talking about the long term and the fact that we could enhance that maybe through fertilization. I'd be interested to know what we can do to find some of those areas that are either….

We talked a little bit yesterday about some of the riparian areas in terms of what the…. I don't know whether or how much is out there, and I don't really know how much the setbacks are, etc. I guess my question to Albert is: you mentioned that the long-term timber supply could be influenced by fertilization. I don't know if that's feasible. If it is feasible, what type of advances do you get on a year-by-year basis by investing in something like that, and where will that bring the long-term timber supply into the mid-term? I mean, what type of timeline are we talking about to bring on some significant quantities?
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J. Rustad (Chair): Ben, sorry, if I may…. That's a great question, and there will be a presentation that's scheduled for June 6 that I believe will put all options that are possible on the table, which will talk about those sorts of things. So we might be jumping the gun a little bit trying to get into that question.

B. Stewart: I'm happy to withdraw it in the effort to kind of get the presentations in front of us.

H. Bains: Just quickly, I appreciate MLA Stewart's comments that we need to continue to look at what our terms of references are and what we are trying to achieve here. But I think, at least to me, the term of reference, by the way I read it, is to increase the timber supply. That's part of it.

As I said the other day, at least the way I understand this, you need to understand and know what is available. Then you make a decision how you increase that, and that's where the inventory comes in.

It is key, in my view. I could be wrong. I could be way off. I'm not a professional. I am one of the laymen here, although I spent all my life in the forest industry.

I asked some of the questions, and I tried to understand those answers twice. When I looked at all those TSAs…. I want to be on record. This is the only reason I'm saying this here today: I tried to get those answers twice and got explanations twice.

The ministry's own explanation was that they do the 20-year cycle of the vintage inventory to collect the data. Then there's a yearly update. But at least in one of them I looked at — and it's before us, 100 Mile House — the vintage survey wasn't done. It was done over 40 years ago. And the yearly update hasn't been done for five years.

There are others in there we're looking at. They've almost completed their 20-year cycle. So it's as if the best-before date is almost over, and the yearly update for some of them is three or four years old.

To me, I didn't get a satisfactory answer. They tried to explain it to me. Albert, thank you very much for your answers that while we have the other information, and we don't simply depend on these…. But all that information was available in all other areas as well, where you have done…. You've got a cycle of ten years or less than 20 years, plus yearly updates are done there as well.

If all the other additional information that you depend on was still there, what was the purpose of going into those but not in some of the others? I think that the answer did not satisfy me.

That's where the chief forester comes in. That information needs to be available to the chief forester in order to make decisions on AAC. I ask this question: how confident are you with a lack of information, a lack of updates, that are required to be there as part of the government policies?

Given all that, I just want to be on record that I cannot share that confidence that the chief forester has and the ministry people have on that, although they tried to explain. But my difficulty here is as a committee member, not knowing what's available, not knowing what's damaged, not knowing where we can go to get the additional timber supply.

Without that information it is going to be almost impossible to make the right decision. This committee is charged with some of the decisions we're going to make. We could make a decision that could hurt our industry and communities today. Or we make a decision that we make a short-term gain some places, but communities may hurt for years to come as a result of that decision. That's why I'm trying to get the information, get to the bottom of what we need to have.

I haven't had the information that I need. If somebody else can say that they're confident with the lack of data available, then I think that's how they will make their decision, but I don't feel comfortable in that. That's what I want to say.

J. Rustad (Chair): I've got a number of speakers on the list, and I'm going to interject here just a second. Harry, I want to thank you for the comments. I'm going to look to our two special advisers for a comment on this.

My understanding of this process is there will always be risk. When you're going through doing any type of this…. I've been in and around, working in forestry pretty much all my life, other than my life in politics, and even then, obviously there are still components of forestry that you get involved in and are around.

But there are components of risk, and there are ways to manage those risks through this process. I don't know quite what the level of certainty is that you're looking for with this. I know there are some questions around this.

The point that you made, Harry. I'm just wondering if once we get through the process and we start to see the options, if there would be a discussion around those options that shows: what are the options? What could they be? What are the potential gains from it? Where are the potential risks? What are the potential impacts? I think that component of our discussion would be around those options.

The intent of the first three meetings was to try to give members a working knowledge of what inventory is, what the timber supply review process is, how we calculate AAC, what our constraints are. This is kind of just a general knowledge and update for this information. Then we're going to be looking at what all the potential options are, and I'm sure we'll have a rather robust discussion around what the risks are and those components.

Having said that, what I'd like to do is put it over to our two experts to perhaps talk a little bit about the risks in terms of that data that comes forward through this pro-
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cess and how that is mitigated.

H. Bains: I appreciate that. I think the time is going to come, after gathering all this information, and decision time will be there. What I just want to say is it's not just me. I'm looking at some of the reports here. The Forest Practices Board, the Auditor General, the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals — all of them have huge question marks. We don't know what's out there. The information that is being presented to us — they all question that.

These are professional people, and I'm a layman. They're all saying the same thing that I read from the presentations here. I'm really concerned that we don't have the information, and we're not getting the information in order to make the right decision. That's my serious concern. Hopefully, going through the process, more presentations will come that I will be satisfied with, with some of the questions that I have.

J. Rustad (Chair): One of the options we could do is no recommendations. Obviously, when we go through this process and come through, our goal is to try to see if there is a way to be able to expand timber. If the committee decides that that isn't an option, then that's something that could be brought forward and proposed as a potential option as well.

All doors are open at this stage. This is about trying to get some background information so that we're in a position where we can go out and try to get some comment about things. Then over the course of this process, we will have plenty of opportunity to have input come in from a variety of sources, including our experts from the ministry, our two independent experts that are part of the panel and others, to try to help quantify what some of those options mean and the process.

Now if I may, I really want to get to our special advisers, if they could perhaps give us some comment around this component.

Yesterday I referenced that it's important to recognize the difference between the inventory and the timber supply forecasts that support an AAC determination. The forest inventory is a point-in-time snapshot that is an input into the timber supply forecast. It's the data that is being assessed and analyzed in a dynamic way. Trees are grown inside the modelling, land use constraints are applied, etc., and then this timber supply forecast is produced on the basis of assessing that information.

As part of the process, it is always assessed whether the information has deficiencies at the outset. This is part of making the assumptions for the timber supply modelling. In the case of, for example, NSR, where there is an NSR deficiency, where it is known that the information hasn't been updated, there are many, many ways of reasonably estimating what that deficiency is — how many hectares of underestimation. As a starting point in the analysis, the inventory file and the timber supply analysis are updated to reflect that deficiency.

The inventory itself may be deficient with respect to NSR in some areas for some historical reasons, but the timber supply forecast accounts for that by a process of review and discovery and auditing and a whole pile of different approaches. So that, first of all, is important to understand.

Now, with respect to the 100 Mile, I heard the ministry staff say yesterday that because there was a broader, complete re-inventory being done, they have suspended the updates. The broader re-inventory will address that question at the end of its completion, so to do the updates now is redundant with the broader process, which is also looking at those same deficiencies and will capture them.

Again, I want to point out the difference between the inventory and a timber supply forecast. If it were so that the 100 Mile were to be analyzed in the next year and the inventory is not updated, then the timber supply forecast would take the older inventory — not the new one, because it's not ready. It would update it for that known NSR deficiency or whatever the information scarcity is. It would update it and then account for that in a forecast.

I'm trying to indicate that the process that uses the information accounts for weaknesses and tries to provide updates through a process of assessment and tries to ensure that any of the weaknesses are properly reflected.

Lastly, there's always a bigger question of: does it really matter? How sensitive is a timber supply forecast to, say, two or three or even five years of harvesting that hasn't been updated in the file? In order to get to a question like that, the analysis process itself does what's called sensitivity analysis.

It asks that very question: well, if we're not really sure, how sensitive is the forecast? Does it really matter? Does it affect the flow of timber if there was a whole pile of area that had been harvested but wasn't reflected, or does it affect the forecast if we update for that deficiency?

The analysis process seeks to understand whether or not the deficiencies actually affect the forecast. I would offer that, very often, given the very large land bases in play… The timber supply forecast is dealing with millions of hectares, often, of trees that are again — I just simplify it — small, medium and large. It's forecasting their growth and depletion, including being impacted by mountain pine beetle. It's accounting for the salvage logging program and the major harvesting program.

Those forecasts over those very long periods often are not at all sensitive to small changes in the inventory. I'm trying to bring a perspective that says, as a decision-maker, I was always highly mindful of weaknesses in the information and worked with the staff to develop strategies to address those weaknesses. Doing sensitivity an-
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alysis is one of them. Frequently redetermining AACs is another strategy, because information does become available and current over time.

If the 100 Mile was done a few years ago, then it could be redone in a couple of more years when the inventory is updated. That would show the value and benefit and difference and the sensitivity of the forecast to changes in information.

I realize that will probably raise more questions than it answers, but I'd like to start by at least putting that out for further discussion.

J. Rustad (Chair): Well, just if you had something in mind with regards to that. I wanted to look to both of you for comment with regards to this, and then, Harry, I'll let you do a follow-up before we move onto the next speaker.

J. Snetsinger: Just a couple of quick ones, because I think Larry explained it very, very well. I'll just give you a couple of examples.

For instance, in timber supply review determinations and meetings that I've conducted and AAC determinations that I've made, if, for instance, the inventory hadn't been updated for a couple of years going into the process, I would take that into account, knowing that the way the timber supply modelling is completed, it goes into ten-year periods.

If it hadn't been updated for the first two years, I would know that I'm already two years into the first period. I would take that into account in my determination.

Likewise, if there are issues or concerns around potential NSR or uncertainty around NSR, that will come into my decision-making process. I would take that into account in weighing the risks and uncertainty. It would have an impact on the AAC determination that I would make, even if I didn't know exactly what the number was on NSR in that particular unit.

H. Bains: I don't think what I'm saying reflects on anybody's ability to make decisions in those tough situations. I mean, you're saying that if we don't have that information, we will make decisions based on this, this and that. We'll consider this and consider something else. I understand that. I mean, you have to make those decisions.

But it does recognize the weakness in the inventory. The weakness in the inventory is there. I actually admire you folks making decisions under those situations. With the information, or lack of information, that you have, you still have to make decisions. The resources that you're given…. You're working with it.

The fact still remains that with these more explanations…. Like I said, the question becomes: why do you do yearly updates out there in other areas? Why do you go through a 20-year cycle? If you are going to make those decisions, you have ways to make those decisions without that information. Why are we wasting money on yearly updates and going through a 20-year cycle?

There's a need. You say we need a 20-year cycle. There's a need that we need to have a yearly update. Then you combine the two to give you the information you need in order to make the right decision. But if you don't have that?

I get it that you have to still make some decisions, and you have something else to go on. But the fact still remains that there are weaknesses in the inventory out there. If you had all those resources and you are to make a decision based on all the information, you want to have all that information before you make that decision. The fact is that you don't.

If you say, "I still can make decisions," then why are we going through the exercise of the 20 years and the yearly updates? That just comes to me, then, that there's a reason for those 20 years and the yearly updates.

J. Snetsinger: Yes, there is a reason for the annual inventory cycle and the inventory updates. Like any processes, there are always strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, the perfect information would be that you could count every tree in the forest and you knew where it was at any given point. That's the far right-hand side of the spectrum of inventory, and I don't think that's practical in any jurisdiction in the world. I don't think anybody's ever gone out and counted every tree in the forest throughout its life cycle.

We're trying to do the best we can and capture the information on a regular cycle and use that information in decision-making. Then when decisions have to be made, we use the best available information. Where it's lacking, we make adjustments for it and take that into consideration in decision-making.

E. Foster: I think what we have to get our heads around here is whether we're going to move forward to this.

I refer back to Bill's early comments in, I guess, the first meeting, and his concern about the reliability of the inventory figures. That's very valid, because if we do not have faith in both the timber supply and inventory numbers — more importantly, the timber supply process — we really can't move forward with this thing. We just can't. At the end of the day, we've got to make some decisions or make some recommendations based on that.

Then the other part of that, too, of course, is if we come
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to the conclusion that we have no faith in those numbers and those projections, it's not something you can fix in a week or a month or even a year.

We have to come to some sort of a realization or a compromise that we need to ask all these questions. I'm not saying we should be shutting this off or anything like that. But at the end of the day, we're going to have to come to the point where we go: "Okay, this is what we have to work with it. We accept what we have to work with."

Moving forward, one of the recommendations might be that we need to ramp up what we're doing as far as timber supply and inventory goes. But at the end of the day, we're going to have to get to the point where, "Okay, this is what we have; this is the information we have to work with," and then move forward with that information — ask the questions we need to ask to get that information.

I think that you have to remember two things. It is not an exact science. For example, if you're talking about lands that have been harvested, there is a period between the time the plan is done and the time that the trees are planted. It can go four and five years. When licensees are planning their five- and ten-year projections, they lay this all out well in advance. So it is in that timber forecast.

The ministry knows, because they will have approved the management plan for the next five years. They know where the licensees plan on going in the next five years. So in year 2 they'll know that the licensee has been here, so they can put that into their equation at that time.

Then after it's cut, they have four years to have it restocked, so there's a chunk of time in there. Now, most licensees like to do it in one pass because they don't have to deactivate the roads, and so on. Or they have to deactivate the roads, so they do it all, hopefully, the first year after they've harvested.

That all has to be put into perspective, as you ask those questions, Harry. There's a long time frame from when someone has a look at a cover map, decides, "We're going to go there, and we're going to take out 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 metres of wood in this area," lays out their cutblocks and the time that it gets replanted and goes into the long-term timber supply.

My point is that we need to get to a point here where okay, this is the information we have. This is how we're going to move forward with it. If not, we'll never move forward, and we won't get to the point where we're trying to make recommendations.

The other thing, when we're looking at the socioeconomic part of this…. When we look at Burns Lake, of course, which is sort of the impetus that put us where we are, but other forest-dependent communities, we're going to be looking at some pretty small operating areas relative to the whole picture. We can go to those areas, and we can get specific information on those areas.

We talked about riparian areas as a possibility for increased timber supply. If you're in a dry belt, that's not going to make a whole lot of difference. If you're in the north where there are a lot of wet areas, that could be a substantial amount, and it's usually quality timber.

I think we need to try to get to a point where we have some level of comfort with the information that we have and then try to get to the next step on this.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. Once again, I didn't hear a bit of a question in that for our experts, but I appreciate that, Eric.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I do apologize because I think this is sort of a key part. For us, our experience has been different than, I think, government members in terms of dealing with this issue. I really take your point. The crux of what we're dealing with depends on good information.

We're actually not talking about AAC determinations in terms of what this committee's work is. What we're talking about are things that are pretty specific.

I would invite members to have a look at the copies of the leaked document which the Premier said has the essence of the things the government is looking at. Likely the proposals that are in that leaked document will be the proposals that will be put in front of this committee.

It's specific. It deals with commitments going out 17 years. I mean, all of those things…. That's the crux of what we're dealing with, and if we don't have accurate information then we do a disservice to the communities that we're going to go and see. We have an obligation to put in front of these communities information that we know is accurate, that we know allows decisions that are real.

I would invite members…. If you don't have a copy, I'm sure the government can provide a copy of that leaked submission. Have a look at it. It frames, I think, better what we're actually dealing with, and the crux of it is that the things that are suggested there are really huge. Before this committee works and makes decisions, you need to be sure that every decision you're making is based upon information that is as reliable as it can be.

That's the crux of it, so I would invite all members to have a look at that, just to get their head around what's at stake here.

I do think at this time that it would be fair to go to Mr. Lidstone's presentation. I have no difficulty with that, and then we can move from there. I think that's where most people seem to want to go. So let's move on to that, if you like.

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay. We've moved on now from the inventory discussion. We had a discussion…. The last presentation we had wrapped up the TSR component. I just want to make sure that we didn't have any other questions around the timber supply component.

B. Routley: Well, just to be able to move on, for me, I have to deal with a number of things that I've heard here. One of the things that I want to frame is that we're living in an unprecedented time. There may be a whole bunch of inconvenient truths that the government members on this committee don't want to look at or want to put on rose-coloured glasses for and believe that everything is okay.

I don't know if you've read the report of the Auditor General, the Forest Practices Board, the professional foresters association, on and on. There's a long list of professionals that have raised real concerns.

Now, we've heard Albert say that at the Forest Practices Board everything is good there. We'll have to follow up and phone and find out whether that's correct — that their association is entirely, 100 percent, satisfied.

Can the same be said for the Auditor General? I'm going to ask my question up front, and then I want to finish up what I have to say. The Auditor General had a whole bunch of major statements about the fact that this government and this…. There's no plan.

Another inconvenient truth for you is that there have been more than a thousand workers laid off. Those are boots on the ground. Those are real people doing real work. They weren't just sitting in offices twiddling their fingers. They've shut down branch offices all over British Columbia — a thousand people laid off that used to be out in the field, Eric, doing the kind of work that you know about.

My point is that at the end of the day we have got an avalanche of professionals, and we're living at a time where this government is coasting on what the NDP put in place in the '90s with a very incredible…. In fact, I went to Europe to defend our forest practices back in the '90s, based on what the NDP had done, the changes.

You ask the major forest companies today, and they'll tell you they're selling lumber in the world markets because people believe British Columbia changed their ways and have a dramatic effort in terms of managing their forest wealth.

This government has axed all these people, cut budgets and is drifting along on the coattails of what the NDP did after…. And then just cut, cut, cut. That's all that has happened.

B. Routley: I already asked the question. I asked the question up front. The question is: are all of these professionals to be ignored? Is that what you're telling me — all of these, including the Auditor General of the province of British Columbia? When I meet with the professional foresters, and they tell me their number one issue is inventory, I don't think that should be discounted.

Yes, I understand your job is to do your best to defend government, and you're doing a yeoman's job at it. But at the end of the day, I want you to understand where my issues come from in terms of trust too.

I have been told by Ministers of Forests…. When I represented forest workers back in the '80s, guess what. We had a group of fallers. I was a brand-new business agent, just read my first tree farm licence, 46. I read all the stuff about how it was going to be sustainable. It was going to be wonderful. We could trust it.

We had fallers walk off the job because they had to drive for 2½ hours to find a tree to cut down, and they moved fallers from the north side of the tree farm licence right down into the south, into the Port Renfrew area. The TFL used to include a portion all the way up in the Ucluelet-Tofino area. They took contractors from up there, moved them down. The crew walked off the job.

I brought Claude Richmond and representatives of government into the union hall in Duncan. They came and told us — I didn't know; I was green as grass; I believed what they said was: "We're going to have forests forever. It's going to wonderful. We'll take you up in a helicopter, and we'll show you. The forests are there. It is there, it is there, it is there, and you can count on it. Your jobs are secure."

Then do you know what I went through? Ten years later we went from BCFP to Fletcher Challenge, and I had Fletcher Challenge announce: "We're going to lay off 450 people." Those were real workers with real jobs. I was absolutely fed a pile of horse manure. And it wasn't the truth at the end of the day.

So I have every right, and I intend to sit here. I care about workers and communities very deeply. If you don't think I want to find more timber so as to find the ability for workers to have jobs, you're absolutely wrong. I would love nothing better. But I'm not going to buy a bunch of pigs in a poke, and I'm not going to be sold a bunch of b.s. And if the committee on the other side wants to accuse us of not accepting what we're hearing, that's ridiculous.

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay, and I'd like to have our experts that are here to answer that question. Just in terms of decorum for our committee going forward, we have a lot of work in front of us. It's going to be a process. We're going to be working in close quarters for a long period of time. Let's try to keep this as civil as we can. I understand the sensitivities on both sides with regard to this issue, but we do need to find a way to try to work this thing forward.

I appreciate everybody's perspective with regard to how this process will go, but my job as Chair is to try to find a way through this process, to keep everybody on the same page and to try to get us to the discussions
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that we'll eventually have in late July, early August and through this process.

I want to make sure that we have the best information available. I understand that there may be some deficiencies in some of that, but we've got to go with the best information we have available, and then that'll, obviously, fall out. We'll have a process as we go through to be able to fill in some of those holes, hopefully, as we go.

With that, I would like to, then, turn it over to Albert or to Dave with regard to a response to the question that was posed.

D. Peterson: Well, I'd like to start, first, with an answer, and then it easily may be that Albert or somebody has to follow up on it. I guess — and I'm trying to figure out a way that we can help the committee members advance on this question — what I am hearing you saying is you're struggling to reconcile the messages that you're getting through these independent reports with the messages that you're hearing from the government staff.

You're trying to understand the implications not just to the decisions in front of this committee, but implications to broader forest management. Where I see that there actually is a common message between the two is…. I think you've got a lot of staff here that….

We're not saying that we are apologizing for government decisions or reconciling government decisions. We are explaining that yes, we recognize that the inventory is not optimum, but then we have figured out how to still do our jobs, given that information that's in front of us, and you're still having trouble reconciling that with what you hear from the independent sources.

One of the reasons why it's hard to do that is because it has all just been a theoretical conversation as yet. I run into this a lot in our business — that when you just have a theoretical conversation around it, it's hard to see whether there's really a common answer or not.

I actually would suggest that…. I think our intention, Norm, was that we would be talking about exactly those kinds of options that were laid out in that cabinet submission and that we would be talking about the information we have available that can inform decisions around every one of those options. I think that could give you a better feel for the kinds of questions you're asking.

Coming out of that, you may still have the same conclusion. You may say: "I can't reconcile these two messages." Or coming out of that discussion, you may say: "Okay. Now I see how the managers are saying they are able to use less-than-precise data in the decision-making." I guess I would suggest that having had a good, informed discussion around those options — which was exactly what we had anticipated as coming — then it might be a better place to come back and revisit some of these questions.

Then, maybe, you could say: "Okay." Maybe you would come to the conclusion, once we've really gone through them: "No, we still don't have the basis of information to make decisions around the options." Or maybe you'd come to the conclusion and say: "Yes, we've got the basis of information for that, but we can still see that there are some deficiencies that need to be addressed."

I mean, it almost comes back to your point earlier, John, about looking and having a conversation around the schedule. Maybe it would be more useful to really sink your teeth into — not just theoretically, but on a real basis — these options, the information we've got available or don't have available, and then come back and address the kind of questions you're raising.

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay, Members. I just want to do one last call around the timber supply review, that presentation that's out there. I know I asked a couple of questions the other day. Does anybody have any other questions around that component before we move on to the next presentation? This, I believe, would be around constraints and the various other restrictions on the land base. Is everybody comfortable with that?

I want to thank members for that and for the process we've gone through. With that, Allan, I believe…. Are you doing the next presentation?

A. Lidstone: My name is Allan Lidstone. I am director of resource management objectives branch. In a nutshell, my group looks after or provides support for land use planning. We support and deliver marine planning and work on related activities such as cumulative effects assessments, old-growth management area policy and establishing legal land use objectives. That, generally, is my background, back 20 or 30 years.

Today I want to briefly talk about land use planning, then move on to constraints on timber harvesting and talk then about legal objectives and other considerations. Of course, constraints on timber harvesting are one way to look at it. Objectives for non-timber values are another way to look at it. That issue, in itself, evokes a lot of response in terms of how you look at these things.

In looking at it, as we go through this presentation, again, it builds on things like the inventory and a lot of other things, so it's quite a complex process. It involves a lot of different expertise. Some of that I know some about, but there are others in the room with me who probably know more, so as we get to questions, I'll look to my colleagues to help on some of those issues.

First, moving to land use planning, I want to talk about why we have plans, what the goals are, where the land use plans are in the province and to talk about their major accomplishments and weaknesses before I move into a
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more specific discussion about constraints.

Well, why do we have land use plans? I think it has come up here a few times. We certainly had the war in the woods from the '90s. There was major conflict back through the late '80s and '90s in terms of some of the increasing demands on the resources and the values out there and, actually, more folks looking for more resources.

In response, starting in the late '80s and moving into the '90s, government ramped up land use planning in a multi-stakeholder, multi-sector approach and — through a consensus process, initially, starting out — developed many land use plans. They addressed multiple resource values and were about trade-offs, major trade-offs.

There was a major expansion of protected areas that went on through the '90s, primarily through land use plans, and carried on into the 2000s. There have been a number of additional protected areas delivered through land use plans over the past ten years as well. As was mentioned here previously, land use planning and the results of those plans have built and continue to build social licence and a very, very valuable asset.

In terms of the goals of land use planning, this reflects and comes from our current policy. The new direction from strategic land use planning improves land use certainty and economic stability, generating economic opportunities and investment in jobs. Our land use plans not only resolve issues; they also point to opportunities. Some of our more specific land use plans get right down into setting priorities for areas for development, for example; achieving healthy communities and ensuring long-term viability of the environment; and directing or guiding land and resource management decisions.

That last point gets us into the issue of constraints. Our plans provide both legal direction, which must be followed, and non-legal direction, or policy direction, which guides decision-makers and others who are developing the resources.

Where do we have these plans? Well, they cover most of the province. I would think pretty much all of the province, except maybe the Lower Mainland and the Sunshine Coast and the Merritt area, have been covered by major strategic land use plans over the past 22 years.

There are LRMPs, land and resource management plans, for most of the plans in the northern area and the Kamloops area. The Cariboo-Chilcotin land use plan covers the Cariboo area — Williams Lake, Quesnel, Horsefly and 100 Mile House.

Now, maybe before I go there, in addition to the LRMP, there are about 24 of what we call regional-level plans, and those would be the regional plans, which is the Kootenays, Vancouver Island and the Cariboo. As well as all of the land and resource management plans, there are another 100-some-odd what we call sustainable resource management plans that cover these areas.

These plans have gotten into a bit more detail, more specific issues. Those plans have been developed mainly over the past 12, 13 years. A lot of them are implementing those LRMPS. So while we've finished up the land and resource management plans, we've continued work on sustainable resource management plans. We'll talk about the Lakes in a few minutes.

I have some examples from the Lakes. For examples, following up on the completion of the LRMP in the Lakes in 2000, there were two sustainable resource management plans completed there — Lakes North and Lakes South. I think Lakes South was finished in 2009, and those were work carried on by the ministry in various forms. They dealt with more specific aspects and delivered on things like biodiversity and then led to the establishment of legal objectives for those values.

In terms of accomplishments and weaknesses of land use planning, resolution of land and resource conflicts, a lot of that around protected areas but other issues as well, agreement on suitable land and resource use, investment certainty, cost savings for government — a lot of voluntary effort went into these plans.

Aside from the cost saving from resolving some of the conflicts and getting on with development and work, there was a huge effort from stakeholders, and so on, to provide information and to resolve issues. Particularly in the later plans, current plans that we are working on and delivering enable First Nations engagement.

Through land use planning, we were really able to help in the delivery of the relationship with First Nations and establish some pretty unique governance arrangements and continue to work with First Nations on land use planning.

Weaknesses. Well, as with everything, there is both good and bad. The earlier LRMPs that were completed — minimal First Nations engagement. That remains an issue, and that is a problem. But over the years, like I say, we have addressed that to the state now where our land use planning and our strategic land use efforts with First Nations are, I think, a highlight in terms of some of the major accomplishments.

This is a big one: lack of consistent monitoring, review and amendment of plans. There's no getting around it. Most of our LRMPs are dated. They are becoming more dated. We are addressing that through the delivery of sustainable resource management plans, working on our legal orders, and so on. But we have not delivered on some of the commitments around monitoring, review and amendment that were made in those plans.

There is an issue around lack of legal enforcement, where plans are policy only. Again, that's good and bad.

In some cases, where we can work out collaborative efforts, and licensees and others can be innovative on the ground, it's good sometimes not to have legal orders, and it's good not to be too prescriptive, because it does allow
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for innovation. Where that happens — there are some instances, and we can talk about that a little later — there's that balance to be achieved.

What you make legal and how prescriptive you are going to be when you make it legal — those are decisions to be made as we get into the specifics of every geographic situation and every resource value that we're dealing with. That was high-flyover land use planning.

Next we'll talk about constraints to timber harvesting. Again I'll say I'll draw on Albert and Larry and others to help because there's a lot of stuff here. There's a lot of complexities talking about constraints. We'll go through it, but I want to let you know that when we do these things, the idea is to be holistic and to look at existing constraints, try to overlap constraints, try to reduce impacts. All of those kinds of principles drive what we do when we're putting constraints on the land base.

As we go through it all…. I'll come to this again. Talking about going into riparian is not talking about talking into riparian; it's talking about going into old growth. It's talking about going into wildlife habitat. These constraints, as many of you know, overlap. That is not by accident; that's by design. Those are considerations that you are aware of and I'd emphasize here.

As we talk about this topic, we'll give you an overview of the land use designations, some of them anyway and the types and purposes of the legal tools — some of that might be a little process-y but a kind of necessary painful exercise — and assessment of the impacts of those constraints. Certainly, the framework of constraints or these objectives for non-timber values has been built over the last several decades, back in the '80s, '70s. I mean, this stuff was around in terms of managing visuals, managing other values, built into the code and moved into the Forest and Range Practices Act.

It provides social licence, as we've mentioned. For example, about 70 percent of AAC is currently under forest certification. And it provides reasonable opportunities for First Nations treaty rights. That's another important aspect of these areas where they can hunt, gather, and so on.

These values are not only captured in the Forest Act but in other legislation. We're dealing with values under the Wildlife Act and other legislation — water, recreation, and so on — and often but not always the product of negotiated land use plans. Sometimes it's a more technical exercise that we do. But there is always an element of consultation or public review in these things, or review of impacted folks.

It varies between different types of constraints that we're talking about. Some of them require full-on public review and comment. Some of them require notification. Some of them require consultation with affected licensees or impacted licensees. So there are different types of engagement that are required. We'll talk about that a little further, I think. Or we can come back to it.

Types of legal tools. Of course, protected areas legislation, Park Act, Environment and Land Use Act, wildlife management areas under the Wildlife Act. These manage for large areas normally — large intact areas.

Provincial old-growth order. There are a number of ways we manage old growth, for example. Some are spatial area designations or zones called old-growth management areas. We have many areas in the province where we've done that. But we also do it by just setting targets that licensees must meet. We do that through these old-growth orders.

We have both provincial and regional old-growth orders. In some areas that's all we have. In a number of the TSAs affected by mountain pine beetle it is an aspatial order, meaning that there are targets that the licensees must meet but no legally described or bounded areas where old growth is protected. We'll come back to that a little later.

That can be good and not so good. There are pros and cons. You've got to figure out…. Where you're dealing with stands that live longer, probably going legal makes more sense. But where you're dealing with landscapes and environments that go through rapid changes, it may be not such a good idea. So again, it depends on the circumstances and the values that you're dealing with.

Then there's this land use objectives under the Land Act. So the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations has the ability to establish land use objectives. These objectives trump all other objectives, so they're a very flexible tool and one that we have to use very carefully in that you can get very precise or very prescriptive. You can be very general. There are issues with both in terms of how you use these types of objectives.

They require much more public input than some of the more specific objectives, GAR orders that I'll talk about in a second. But again, like I say, they are probably our most flexible tool for delivering objectives to manage forests.

Then there are the FRPA government actions regulation orders where we designate for specific values and set objectives for those values. This involves things like wildlife habitat areas, ungulate winter ranges and those types of visual-quality objectives — scenic areas. There are certain more site-specific features that are also established under GAR orders.

Those are much more specific. They are much more bounded in terms of how we can use them with tests, and so on, and less flexible than the land use objectives. I will just point out that old-growth management areas are established as a land use objective, whereas the ungulate winter ranges, as I said, wildlife habitat areas and scenic areas are a GAR objective.

Some of the process stuff here. Just to point out that under government actions regulation, there are tests or criteria set out in legislation. The same with land use objectives. I'll come to those next.
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The first one is: is special management required? Is this already taken care of by some other piece of legislation? So the idea is not to duplicate.

Second, is the proposed action consistent with established objectives? The idea is not to establish conflicting objectives. I'll come back to this point when you talk about the test for the land use objectives in a second. But the idea is to make sure you understand the landscape that you're managing out there, that it isn't already covered by some other type of designation and that, secondly, there is no conflict between objectives.

Thirdly, would the proposed action unduly restrict the supply of timber from B.C.'s forests? This is a very broad test because it's at a provincial level, not a local level, for the most part.

Finally, do the public benefits from the action outweigh any material adverse impact on delivered wood costs and any undue constraint on the ability of a forest or range agreement holder to exercise their rights under the agreement? This is the local test. In terms of when we consult with licensees, and so on, this is the stuff we probe. This is where we try and get feedback from licensees in order to understand this issue and be fully cognizant of that before a decision is made on any designation under the government actions regulation.

For land use objectives — a different set of tests, some of them similar, but there are some important differences. First of all, considering there is a broad ability for the minister to consider land use plans relevant information. There's this test again: to add value in a manner that has not otherwise been provided for. So do we have other designations or zones or legal objectives out there that already provide for this management?

Then this is the one that is a little different from the GAR test. Avoid conflict with other objectives. Or if we're going to establish an objective under the land use objectives regulation and it does conflict, we have to just specify the nature of the conflict.

This is not an ideal thing to do. Now and again we've done this, but it does point to the fact that you could have other designations in place, and you could establish a land use objective that does conflict with those designations and those objectives. It could be a short-term thing that you want to deal with. We try to avoid this, and there have only been a few instances where this has happened. But it does give additional flexibility to this tool.

Provide balance of social, economic and environmental benefits. That's a test that the minister just has to put his or her mind to when making a decision on a land use objectives order. Again, the minister "must be satisfied that the importance of the objective outweighs any adverse impact on opportunities for timber harvesting." This is one, again, where we meet with licensees to talk about these adverse impacts, document that and bring that to the minister or his delegate to consider before making a decision.

Coming back to some of the points I was making in my opening remarks, all constraints must minimize impacts on the timber-harvesting land base. So when we are applying old-growth objectives, for example, or most of these other constraints or objectives for non-timber values, we go first to the non-contributing land base — that is, land that isn't even factored into harvesting or into the AAC; second, to the partially contributing land base; and third, into the timber-harvesting land base itself. You'll see this as we get into some of the maps that I'm going to show you in a minute.

That pretty consistently happens. It's not only practice; it's requirement in our policies. For example, the Landscape Unit Planning Guide, which is still our policy for establishing old growth, has these rules in that guide.

Again, the other thing, too, is — while it's not stated here — overlapping existing constraints. So if we have ungulate winter ranges established or if there is a riparian area, a lakeshore management zone, and there's suitable old growth, go there for old-growth management areas.

Again, all of this is almost ancient history, but it's still relevant. In terms of the policy that was developed for establishing old growth, for example, there were bounds on it. So how we put in place the rules, for example — I'll go back to old growth, because I'm most familiar with it — for establishing old growth…. We were given a target, and we spent three years under Larry's leadership designing policy to try and fit within that cap of how we could deliver old-growth management. It was done with that in mind.

Subsequent to that there were some additional allowances for ungulate winter range in terms of developing the policy for establishing ungulate winter ranges.

This goes back to Albert's presentation, some of the same figures. Thank goodness they're the same. In B.C. roughly 95 million hectares — 55 million hectares is productive forest, in that it's not scrub and rock and ice, and 22 million hectares is timber-harvesting land base. That again, as Albert has mentioned, is the area that's economic to harvest at this point in time.

Again, that is important because, as I say, those areas were used in terms of how we placed our constraints, and those set the rules for doing that. As you can see, there are the TSAs that I think you folks are dealing with. You can see from the numbers there that they range from a low of, I think, 32 or 31 percent up to 79 percent in 100 Mile, in terms of how operable the land base, how productive.

Now, what we've done here in terms of constraints is just to give you an idea of the scale of it. This deals with constraints to the timber-harvesting land base for all of them — pine beetle–impacted TSAs.

The large area, of course, is the area of no constraints. Then as you look at these other areas, you'll see that they range from ungulate winter range of a 6.64 percent im-
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pact, visual quality being a 6.01 percent constraint to the timber-harvesting land base in terms of hectares.

The thing to note about each of these constraints is that a lot of them aren't just total exclusions. A lot of them, if you look at the objectives underlying them, do permit harvesting in certain conditions. So it's not just the constraint that you have to look at. It's the order and the established objectives for each of those constraints, which currently allows harvesting in many of these areas.

For example, with visual-quality objectives, and I think Albert talked about this earlier, it's more a rate-of-cut issue than it is an absolute exclusion. It just takes a longer time to harvest the wood from those areas. Depending on…. As you look at how that pie chart is exploded in terms of visual quality, the vast majority are in partial retention, so that allows a higher rate of alteration than, for example, retention visual-quality objectives. At any given time I think up to 7 percent of the areas under partial retention visual-quality objective can be altered, for example.

This is one example. We could do this for other TSAs, but in the time we had, we just did this for the Lakes. This gets into that issue of where the constraints are placed and how we place them. That black line down through the middle and swinging over to the left is the dividing line between the non-timber-harvesting land base and the timber-harvesting land base. As you can see, in terms of the constraints on the bottom, most of them are in the non-timber-harvesting land base. That is, again, by design.

If you look at old growth management, which is the one in the middle, it is 7.32 percent in the non-timber-harvesting land base. If you move over to the timber-harvesting land base — it's the third one down — old-growth management is 0.83 percent.

Now we'll look at this in a slightly different way. We'll go through a series of maps, and we'll apply a number of these constraints to the land base, as well as some other information about where the timber-harvesting land base is and some other items. We'll just go through it.

We're talking to the Lakes TSA. Here in the first map, first layer, we're looking at the timber-harvesting land base. It does exclude some of the TFLs and community forests. That'll come on next. That roughly gives you the bottom part. You'll see in a minute that the white area is mainly park — Tweedsmuir.

Moving to the next layer, now you'll see the protected areas in green — various parks, the TFLs, community forests and woodlots in the area, and private land.

We put back in the timber-harvesting land base in this layer, just to add that in. The next layer shows you the old-growth management areas and what we're calling multiple constraints. There are just a number of constraints in those areas, no one predominating.

Next, I believe, is recreation — some rec sites. There are just a couple there.

Ungulate winter range. In this area ungulate winter ranges have not been legally established. They are in the LRMP. They are a voluntary designation that licensees work with, but they are also captured in a number of the other constraints on the map. In establishing these other constraints such as old-growth management areas, for example, we looked at those areas that were identified as important for wildlife, and they were factored into how we did, for example, old-growth management areas.

Then finally, the harvest since 2004. It's a little messy, but if you got up close, you would see that some of that harvest is occurring within those visual-quality objective areas, visual areas. Under certain conditions, even in these spatially identified OGMAs — Lakes is a little unique up in this neck of the woods with spatial OGMAs — some harvesting occurs under certain limited circumstances.

This is a high flyover of the Lakes area in terms of the types of constraints or objectives for non-timber values.

Then I guess a couple of final points, legal considerations. Parks, of course, are established. There were a couple of different methods, one established through the Protected Areas of B.C. Act, through legislation, or under the Environment and Land Use Act, which gives a little more flexibility in terms of the types of activities and uses in those parks.

I'll add, too, that with parks and our policy in terms of establishing old growth, we allowed for the achievement of some of the target for old growth by looking at adjacent parks. Again, in terms of trying to reduce the constraints, we took into account all factors and the fact that there were adjacent parks that had old growth that contributed to our goals for old-growth retention and factored that into any decisions for establishing old-growth management areas.

Under the Land Act those orders are established by the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. These are those more flexible land use objectives, those overriding land use objectives that can be established for the purposes of FRPA. They can be delegated to the regional executive director. Many of the decisions, for example, around old growth are made by the regional executive director, unless that director feels that there are substantial social, environmental or economic implications, and then the minister would take over.

Under the GAR orders, government actions regulation orders for dealing with things like ungulate winter range, wildlife habitat area, visual quality, there are various types of…. It depends on the designation. Different levels in the organization have been delegated responsibility for establishing those objectives.

Wildlife habitat areas and ungulate winter range, for example, are established by the Deputy Minister of FLNRO, and we have delegated some of the other deci-
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sions down to, again, the regional executive or district managers. Then exemptions from wildlife habit areas, ungulate winter ranges are also delegated to regional resource directors.

In summary, in terms of other considerations — some of this is a bit repetitive, but this is the final slide — we have not just justified the use of constraints. There's been an absolute demand for us to manage these values as part of our integrated resource management mandate. It's how we do resource management.

As we've done this work, we've looked at things like reasonable opportunity requirements for First Nations. It also helps us address that issue. It is a basis for allowing market certification. They help us address some of the requirements under the federal Species at Risk Act. Again, around trumpeting B.C. as a destination place for tourism and also meeting our international sustainability commitments is another…. It serves all these purposes.

A. Lidstone: …stumping, yeah. These are all important and valuable things and things that are aspects of why we establish these types of objectives and these types of designations.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you very much for the presentation. I have a list of people, but just before I go into the list, I would like to make a request from the ministry.

A fair number of acronyms have been used in all the presentations. This information is going to be presented on the website, as other people may decide to view it. They may not know what the acronyms are, so I'm just wondering if you can provide us a list of what all the acronyms are so that we can post this — for all the presentations — on the website to go with the presentations, just in case somebody reading doesn't know what GAR means.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: : We are working on a glossary so that can be accompanying these and the other documents.

E. Foster: Thanks, Allan — this is a very in-depth presentation. I want to go back to, I think, page 4. It doesn't have a slide number, and you don't even have to throw it up, but it has to do with the LRMP process.

I was involved in this process in my capacity in local government, and I imagine Norm, probably, over the years, was as well. It was a very long and drawn-out process. We would have as many as 20 people at the table with varying interests from, "Don't ever touch a tree" to "Clear it, and pave it," and trying to develop a plan.

E. Foster: My question on that is, and I've got a couple of questions through the thing…. There was a tremendous amount of work put into the LRMP process, certainly by the provincial government and all the local government and special interest people or interest people. Under your "weaknesses" there, how confident are you that we are getting the use out of the LRMPs and that whole process that we should, given that I know local governments, as local governments change, try to kind of manoeuvre the document?

It is a living document, but it is also a legal document. Are you finding that it is having the effect, then, that it was intended to have when the whole idea was brought forward?

A. Lidstone: Okay, yes, but…. There's always a "but." It's been an amazing process. I mean, I don't know who was mentioning it, about the work that has been done over the past 20 years, but it's been amazing. It's led the world in terms of the work we've done on land use planning — under different governments.

I've been very excited to be a part of that, as I know a number of other folks here are. People — not just bureaucrats like me, but I should mention members of the public, stakeholders, industry, everybody — invested their hearts and souls into that process and continue to do that and believe in it strongly.

It is amazing how we continue to build on that. As I mentioned, for example, in the Lakes there are a couple of follow-up SRMPs for the north and the south. In the Cariboo-Chilcotin there have been seven more localized plans developed and approved, I think, in 2010, with subsequent legal orders.

Work continues to build on that and, yes, there's been reduced effort. And yes, there are issues around the social licence aspect of it, working with local groups and keeping them involved. That's been a problem. We had some challenges there. Priorities have been shifting, and resources have been shifting, and we've been trying to make do.

I'm really — even in investigating for this, in talking to my colleagues in more depth than I normally do in preparation for this — really impressed with how much they're able to make do with what we have. That's a continuing story. As budgets have shrunk and priorities have shifted, people innovate, and that has been carrying on.

I know some local groups and others are frustrated with the lack of public engagement around maintaining those plans. That is an issue. That is just one of the things
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that we had to do less of. But we have done more work on the biodiversity side — for example, in our sustainable resource management plans, the follow-up plans. We've done more work there technically and delivered those things. We've monitored the legal objectives that are a part of the implementation of these plans and invested resources there.

That's how we've shifted and adapted to changing budgets and changing priorities. Again, yes, some of those initial LRMPs are out of date. We still use them. Different acronyms than we have today. Different decision-makers than we have today are referenced in it, and the environment changes. That remains an issue, yes.

D. Peterson: I would quickly add that you will see very much, when we start talking about the options, that there's a reference to what kind of direction there is already around any one of those options in the existing plans.

E. Foster: If I could do one more, as it pertains to, basically, I guess, what we're doing here — discussing timber opportunities, and so on. I know that at the cut-permit level, when you're making applications for cut permits and so on, like the ungulate winter range, and so on, those are all boxes on the forms that you have to fill out.

Do you get a lot of feedback from industry that the constraints we put on the land base are too severe? Given that they always whine because they want to do it all — I get that — have you found that that's been an issue, beyond sort of the: "Yeah, well, we don't like that, but we can live with it"?

A. Lidstone: I'm not that personally involved with licensees or dealing with ungulate winter range issues.

E. Foster: Not just the winter range, but a lot of the constraints that we've put on the land base.

A. Lidstone: Well, it's interesting. In my recent discussions — and Jim has probably been more involved in that, in talking to industry — they want this stuff, at least at the association level, in terms of the social licence.

While there may be quite appropriate concerns about over-constraining certain smaller licensees or operators or whatever, I think industry as a whole recognizes the value in the social licence that's provided here. Some of them have been quite strong proponents of land use planning and some of the work that we're doing. We get both, I guess, depending.

I think that operationally, you probably get some of that feedback on: "Hey, this is overly constraining here" or "We can do better." I mean, the forest industry helped design this framework as well.

J. Rustad (Chair): I'm going to interject for a moment, because I recognize that we're getting just about ten to ten. The speaker's list I have is Norm, Ben, Bill, myself and Donna on the list.

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay, that's fine. What I'd like to do for the moment is to talk about schedule and propose some potential changes, so if you can just keep your questions in mind for a moment here, we'll see if we can talk a little bit about some scheduling for next week. Then we can come back and carry on with some questions until our time is up.

We have one more presentation that we still have to get through, which is the presentation on the pine beetle and the pine beetle status. Then we'll be going to the options side of it, if I'm correct. Am I missing any other information that we need to review?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: The mountain pine beetle one has two components, but essentially, it is one presentation. That's correct.

J. Rustad (Chair): Given that we still need some more time, I'd like to suggest a meeting schedule for Monday — the potential for some hours on Monday, which would be at a location in Vancouver — potentially, Tuesday morning, and potentially, extending the meeting times on Wednesday. If for some reason we are able to wrap up the work on Monday or Tuesday, of course, then we would cancel the requirement for the meeting on Wednesday.

How are members with that in terms of time frame? It's in terms of our ability to be able to add some hours and try to get through to the point where we can have a paper in place to be able to go out to communities to give them an opportunity to be able to consider what type of presentations they may want.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I think Monday makes a lot of sense, and then just to continue. If we get the work done on the Tuesday, which we had planned for Wednesday, then that can work.

I like Mr. Peterson's idea of getting to the more concrete suggestions. I don't know who is generating these ideas or where they're coming from. I have worked from the presumption that the Chair knows that it will mirror what the cabinet submission is, but I don't know that.

But the sooner we get them and the sooner we can get our head around what’s being proposed, I think, the bet-
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ter. So Monday, at a location that staff chooses, certainly works for me.

H. Bains: Monday will work for me, and Wednesday also was scheduled already, so I'm okay with that as well, but Tuesday doesn't work for me.

J. Rustad (Chair): If we're going to be doing Tuesday, I was thinking about just putting some hours in, in the morning, say, between eight and 11.

Given the composition of our committee, I think it's important we try to have all members present for these.

J. Rustad (Chair): That's a good question. Given the amount of work, I was thinking about trying to put in a full day on Monday. I was thinking about somewhere between eight and six, or eight and five or nine to five — whatever the hours the members would like to put in.

E. Foster: If we're going there, we might as well. If you're going to use a day, you might as well use it.

J. Rustad (Chair): I was thinking, if we've got a full day, we might as well use the full day. We'll go through the presentations. Hopefully, we'll be able to put the options on the table on Monday, as well, for discussion. Then we'll go from there.

One thing to keep in mind — I was going to mention this earlier — with regard to options and inventory information. For groups like the Forest Practices Board and the professional foresters and others, they will have a good opportunity to be able to present to us and present their thoughts or concerns around what those options are and some of that detail. I think that'll be an important component when we go through the provincial discussions that we will have later on in this process.

H. Bains: Those of us who live in the Lower Mainland know the restraints that we have on our travelling at that hour of the morning. My suggestion is if you start at nine rather than eight, it will work.

J. Rustad (Chair): I'm open. If staff is open, we can go ten till six. For that matter, we could even sit into the evening on Monday if required, if we wanted to put in some extra hours, and we can take an hour's break during the day.

E. Foster: I'd suggest Monday. I'll have to go Sunday night, so Monday I'm open to whatever works for the people that have to get there on Monday morning.

B. Stewart: Well, I have a constraint on Monday night. That's the problem. So I can be there starting any time on Monday morning.

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay, we'll try to fit your concerns, and I'll talk to you later about the schedule.

B. Routley: I just want a picture of what's going to happen over the next two weeks, though. How many meetings have we got in the next two weeks? Actually, I had these next two weeks booked off, as family has come from New Zealand, but I have explained that due to this committee, there'll be a few days that I'm going to have to make available to the committee.

Is it just next week? I know it starts on — what is it? — the 17th or something.

J. Rustad (Chair): Yeah, what we're proposing to do, or what I'm proposing to do and we talked about at the previous meeting, was to try to have all the presentations and information available to us so that on the sixth or by the end of the sixth we would be able to give direction in terms of formulating a paper that would go out as part of our community discussions.

At that point we might have to put a conference call in if there were some details — or maybe a suggestion that the Deputy Chair and I as a subcommittee work out some details — in terms of that presentation. There would be no meetings the week of the 11th, and then we would start the community tour the week of the 18th.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: From staff's perspective, we absolutely can come on Monday and continue on these technical briefings. From the workload perspective, it will be extremely difficult for us to be prepared fully with the options on Monday.

The timelines are such that staff is working very long hours. It has been scheduled so that we will just squeak in to be able to have a good product on Wednesday. From our perspective, it would be preferable if we can continue planning on discussing the options on Wednesday, if that works for the members.

D. Peterson: I would suggest, John, that you'd be bet-
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ter off to start the day and have a full day around the options rather than doing a little bit on Monday and then coming back to it again anyway.

J. Rustad (Chair): That makes sense. Maybe we will be able to do some framework for that.

D. Barnett: Just to throw this option on the table, why don't we do Wednesday, Thursday and Friday? Then it gives staff a better opportunity…. No?

J. Rustad (Chair): The challenge around Thursday and Friday is that we also need time to be able to get it out for advertising in the newspapers and those sorts of things, which creates some challenge, because all these places we're visiting have weekly newspapers.

B. Stewart: Can I suggest, Mr. Chair, that I think because of the fact that everybody's got these schedules and they've been planned for some time, maybe the Chair and vice-Chair could get together and try to get it so that we know what's happening for the entire month of June — and make certain that they come to some conclusion. Then let's work with the ministry staff so that we kind of find out what the schedules are and put it forward so we know, because we really need to plan our entire month.

J. Rustad (Chair): Okay. Sorry, I'm just noticing the time, and the bells have rung.

Members, I want to conclude by saying that we're going to plan for a meeting on Monday. We will work on the scheduled time. The location will be the Wosk Centre, downtown Vancouver.

Thank you to our members from the ministry, for your presentation and for your patience going through this.

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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:	Morgan Lay (Committee Researcher)
	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)
	Albert Nussbaum (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)
	Dave Peterson (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

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REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
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