Timber Supply — Issue No. 5 — Monday, June 4, 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

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

• Adrian Walton, Research Landscape Ecologist, Forest Analysis and Inventory Branch

• Gordon Borgstrom, Executive Director, Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic Response Branch (via conference call)

4. The Committee recessed from 10:34 a.m. to 10:49 a.m.; from 12:27 p.m. to 1:09 p.m.; and from 2:30 p.m. to 2:44 p.m.

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
Committee Meeting Schedule and Community Consultation Process	67
S. Laaksonen-Craig
Briefings: Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations	72
S. Laaksonen-Craig
A. Lidstone
J. Snetsinger
A. Nussbaum
L. Pedersen
A. Walton
G. Borgstrom

J. Rustad (Chair): Welcome, everybody, to our next meeting of the Special Committee on Timber Supply, the fourth. We have an agenda to carry on with the questions and answers, starting off on the constraints presentation that we had from last week. Then there are two other presentations on the beetle infestation and the impacts for the area. That's the bulk of what we'd like to try to get through today.

J. Rustad (Chair): We've got to talk about schedule a little bit, in July. We put that out at the last meeting, and because obviously people are going to book their holidays, for the various components on what else they have to do in the summer, I thought we maybe should have a little bit of further discussion to that.

Just before we go into question-and-answer, why don't we tackle the scheduling component. Now, I don't believe we have a document in front of us, but as you all know, we are planning the week of the 18th of June for the community consultation period.

We originally were looking at the seventh of June for a forestry tour, but we weren't able to do that because many members were not able to make that date. So we're looking at that date being on the fourth of July. I understand that Mr. Bains is not able to make that date.

If we do that date, if we stick to that schedule on the fourth of July for the tour, that puts us up into the Cariboo. So it makes sense for it to be up there to do the two days of community consultation on the fifth and sixth — which would be the 100 Mile, Williams Lake, Quesnel and then finishing at Prince George for a second day — then the week of the ninth of July have provincial consultation, and then do one more day of community consultation, which would be the Kamloops-Merritt area.

The number of days I'm originally anticipating for provincial consultation will be three days — the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. What I'd propose is that we'll send out the invitations, we'll see what comes back, and we'll start booking it backwards, from the Wednesday to the Tuesday to the Monday, to see how much it fills in. If the Monday is not required, then we wouldn't be meeting on the Monday — with the community consultation on the 12th, which would be that trip out to Kamloops and Merritt.

If we can do that schedule, that would get us complete for the consultation by the 13th. It would give a little bit of extra time for the Clerk's office to be able to compile that information and get it to us. Then we'd be looking at sometime the week of the 29th of July to start our in-camera portion of discussing options. So I'll throw that out there and see what everybody says in terms of that potential schedule for July.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I think part of the back-and-forth has to be done between the Clerk's office and different individuals. I think there has to be recognition that it's possible that we're not going to get everyone. I think we have to make every attempt to get as many people as possible, but there are realities for people. I know some individuals have indicated dates in July when they simply can't attend. With the schedule that we have put before us, I think that we just have to move on.

I do have questions about the schedule that was laid out for June. This was first put forward when we were in session, and it seemed a busy time. I don't know that I have my head around what those days look like. We're trying to do two communities a day. There are, I would presume, three or four hours that we would have in each community.

What is the thinking? Are we going to have a presentation that we would take to a community — present to First Nations, present to local government, present to the community as a whole — and then ask for feedback? What is the length of the presentation that we're talking about? How many people do we anticipate reacting to that presentation or reacting to information that has been provided ahead of time? It's unclear to me how that's going to work in a meaningful way.

I don't know whether, John, you've given thought to that, or somebody has, but what does a typical day look like?

J. Rustad (Chair): The Clerk's office is trying to work on the schedule for how that would look.. Basically, what it would be is that at the end of Wednesday's meeting this week the goal is to have the basis of a consultation paper that would lay out what the problem is and what the options are, and then the question, basically, to people is: give us your feedback on what you think about those options.

On the website the presentations that have been made to us would be available for background information, as well as anything else that we may deem required around what all those particular options could be. That would form the basis of the discussions that we'd have within the communities.

The general thought is that you would go into the community. You might have…. I think we've scheduled an hour to meet with the local leaders, another hour to meet with First Nations. That would be comprised of probably
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a five-minute presentation on what that options paper is and then open up for a round table with those two groups, and then we would go into a community consultation meeting.

So the first group would be for the local leadership and the community — mayor, council, regional district representatives, maybe a few others, depending on what the mayor and councils would like to do. The second group would be the First Nation leadership within that particular area — chief and council, their forestry representative. The idea is just to have a general discussion around the options paper — what it is that we are asking them to consider, some of their concerns and values that they're worried about or that they'd like to have on the table.

Then we would have a community open session where, similar to the Finance Committee, we'd probably have about three hours where people could register, and they would present to the committee their particular perspective on it. We'd start off with a very brief couple of comments about it, and then they'd have a presentation and some questions and answers. That process would carry on for each community.

The reason why we're trying to do two communities a day, obviously, is that's about five hours or more that would be in each community as we go. So they're going to be fairly long days during the week. We'd start in the morning. There'd be a little break when we travel from one community to the next, and we'd need a little bit of time.

We're still trying to work through a schedule as to whether we have one Hansard team or two in terms of how that takedown and setup would be so that the meetings can flow, but that's the general gist of what we're thinking about for those meetings.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just to further understand, then. So we come into Burns Lake. Burns Lake has had a local process going on. Now, what work has been done? I'm not sure if the community has been completely informed. I know that I'm not familiar with what work has been done. Like, how do these things mesh?

I guess the other point that I would make…. I know that others have been involved in land use planning in the past and even going to something like TFLs. These are long-term planning projects. If you're going to include the community, there's a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done.

Is this just the beginning of a multipart process, and we're just one initial part? Like, I still don't completely understand what we're taking into the community and what we hope to take away from it. Since this would be…. Each community is going to be in a different place. I would presume that Burns Lake has gone through processes and would be in a different place than others. But what do you take out of a community after this process?

J. Rustad (Chair): That's very true. The goal of what we're trying to do with the committee, if I know my terms of reference well enough, is that we're going to put those options on the table. We are seeking some input on what those options are, and then we'll sit down as a group and deliberate on what those options could be, what they could look like, how they should be shaped, and we'll make recommendations.

The process that's going on in Burns Lake is separate from what we're doing here. I mean, obviously they're talking about the same sorts of options. There'll be a lot of those reflected in Wednesday's meeting here, as to what you've heard or seen around Burns Lake. But what they're trying to do and what they need to do around securing the fibre for potential rebuild of a mill in Burns Lake is separate, in part, from what we're doing.

What we're doing is looking solely at the timber supply component, the mid-term supply in particular, and what options we can look at to expand that timber supply. The operational, the detail component beyond that, I think, would be left up to the ministry, based on our recommendations they may accept or not accept or partially accept. That's sort of how I see this going.

B. Routley: Is part of this a duplication of processes in Burns Lake? For example, could government — and I'm just asking the question — review what came out of the other process and make decisions based on that about timber supply?

J. Rustad (Chair): I can't answer that question for government. In terms of the committee, this is the task that we've been set out as a committee to do.

I would anticipate that government will wait to see what our recommendations are before they decide to make any decisions, but government may decide to do something different from that. I don't know.

Does that give you a little more comfort in terms of how that process goes? I know it's hard to say what this will look like until we get to Wednesday and we start looking at what the options are and talking about how that process will go. Obviously, those options are, as I've talked with the Ministry of Forests people…. There's a lot of complexity behind some of those options. So we'll have a healthy discussion around that.

We'll also have to talk a little bit about how that gets put out in terms of that options paper that goes out for consultation. So perhaps we should save a little bit of that discussion for Wednesday.

In terms of the consultation, the concept is to put out as best as possible and as simply as possible what the problem is that we're going to be facing and what the options are that we could consider to try to resolve it and ask for some feedback in terms of what people's priorities are. Keep in mind that we're probably not talking about
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significant details.

For example, if there is a VQO preservation area or a special old-growth management area or some component that somebody has a specific interest in, that's not something that we as a committee would be dealing with, because that's obviously far more detailed than what we're looking at. We're looking at trying to get the broader strategic directions, I would think. Then the details would have to be worked in. I suppose we could try to get some details in, but it's way too much work for us to try to get through to get to actual details on specifics.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): We're into this process, and I think we're on record in terms of the scope of the work as well as the time frame. I think the opposition's been clear that the huge number of question marks — those continue. But these are things that we'll move through.

I guess we can figure out the schedule. Like I say, I think that works best with the Clerk simply putting out messages and getting the feedback. Then I think we just have to accept that we do the best we can to get attendance as high as possible. From there, I guess, we can move on to questions whenever you're ready.

H. Bains: I'm looking at the schedule here. I think it doesn't show five. I think it talked about four hours for each community, which means one hour — if that's the schedule as Mr. Chair put — for the mayors and council and one hour for the First Nations. Then you leave two hours for the community, I guess.

Now, my question is…. So it's not five. It's four hours, it seems to me, the way it's scheduled. I guess, logistically, that's probably what you can do.

The two hours set aside for communities — is that where the workers come in? If the workers have a presentation from each community, where do they fit in?

J. Rustad (Chair): That would be where they would come in. This is just a preliminary draft around how that will work, and so we have some flexibility in terms of how that can be shaped and what it can look like. But yes, the intent would be for the workers to be able to come in as part of the community consultation component.

I think what we'll do is have a discussion with them in terms of what they would like to present, in terms of their presentation component. If they need a few more minutes than what would be normal, I think we'd probably make some room for that.

H. Bains: The other question that comes from Norm's is: how well is this whole process advertised to each of those groups of people who are affected by our decision or are being affected by what's going on in the forest industry today? Do they get direct notices, or is it advertised? What specifically are we doing to make sure that they know what times we will be there and what time is available for them, each one of those groups. How do they know?

J. Rustad (Chair): In the past what we've done with these sorts of things through Finance Committee is that we will have advertising in the newspaper. We will run some radio ads notifying communities of the dates and the times. There will be specific invites that will also go out to a variety of the organizations to make them aware of the schedule, and then people will respond accordingly in terms of their desire to present to the committee.

J. Rustad (Chair): Yeah. What we'll probably do is try to work through the provincial organization of the Steelworkers so that they are aware of it, get some contact information from them so that we can make sure the local groups are aware of it. That would be one component.

We're also going to be working with the other associations that have interests on the land base, such as the guide-outfitters and trappers and foresters, etc. They can make some decisions if they want to do presentations within communities or if they would like to do presentations of provincial nature.

Also, of course, the mills will be notified so that they can make presentations. Those that have that direct impact on the land base, we'll make direct contact with — or do our best to, anyway.

E. Foster: To Norm's comment, we both were a part of this LRMP process some years ago. I'm concerned that we may be a little optimistic with our timing. Once the ad goes out, we may need to look at saying to, oh gosh, the guide-outfitters, for example: "Pick one spot, and make your presentation on behalf of guide-outfitters at that spot." The Steelworkers….

In some of these communities — and we'll use Burns Lake, probably, as the best example — the minute the advertisement goes out for this, you're going to have 20 groups that want to present, easily. Again, back to our LRMP, we lots of times had 25 and 30 groups around the table. So I think, you know, we might need to have a good look at this and get the ads out as quick as we can on the timing and have a look to see.

I think in some of these areas we're going to have way too many people for the time frame that we've allotted, appreciating the fact that we don't have a whole lot of time to get this thing put together and get it done. So that might be one way of, you know….

When we contact the Steelworkers, as a good example, they'll have interests in every single one of these com-
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munities — or the guide-outfitters or whoever it might be. "Put your presentation together, pick a spot, and come and make the presentation at that area."

There's no way in the world we're going to be able to have all those groups in all these communities and even come close to the time frame. We could give a day to each community and not make it. We've got to be careful of that.

J. Rustad (Chair): I agree with that. The other component that is going to be available for everybody across the province is that, as soon as we can get the paper out — which I'm anticipating will be on or before the 11th of June; that's my hope — then we would open up for written submissions, e-mail or paper submissions to the committee, which would then be open until the 20th of July.

So there would be a period of time for those types of submissions so that if people can't get in to the public meeting — obviously, some are going to be during the day; some are going to be during the afternoon or into the evening; people may not be available — there still will be that opportunity available to give us that input.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I've had quite a bit of say. I'll come back, but I know Donna and Ben….

D. Barnett: I think the provincial organizations…. We have three days set aside — do we not? — in Vancouver for those. My concern is the provincial organizations. I respect them, but from where I come from, a lot of people who do not belong to provincial organizations have a huge stake in this issue.

I have been working with them all since 2006. So if it's going to take an extra hour here or there…. I'm sorry, but local communities and local users of the land base, I believe, are very important — to have their input.

B. Stewart: I understand the efficiency of what Eric's suggesting. However, I think it is important that we do hear from each community, like Donna's saying. If I'm a steelworker and I happen to be working, I will have that local perspective that is different than the bigger picture — which is fine. But I think we do want to hear from them. I can just tell from that first letter you've received that there are a lot of different, competing interests on the land base, and they're all going to want to talk.

The question I would have is…. Local government, although it's important, seems to be the kind of conduit we always go to. But I'm thinking about, you know…. I think we need to distribute the amount of time that we have available for each community.

Now, in the second schedule that Kate just circulated, with two Hansard teams, we have five hours in a community. It seems to me that we should try and see if we can accommodate that. That seems to be the….

We are going to be under that time constraint, and I think it's important that we give each community as much time and, perhaps, even a reconsideration at the end of all of this. If we really feel that we have shorted some communities and we need to go back, if that's…. I'm just saying: keep the option open.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. Yep, we'll work on the timing and the schedule.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I agree with what the other members are saying. It's one of the initial concerns we had when this was laid out, and it's one of the reasons we wrote a letter talking about the concerns we have. As we dig into this, I think we're going to find just how big and multilayered the issues we're dealing with are.

I certainly agree with what Donna said about "You've got to…." Each perspective…. Even though you have a forester that's part of the professional association, or a steelworker, they're going to have a local perspective that I think is, if not unique, certainly important.

The other question I have…. I know that when we first talked about this it was around First Nations consultation. Quite correctly — and not to paraphrase you incorrectly, John — I think you said that this does not in any way replace First Nations consultation. How does it work, then, if we come up with recommendations where there hasn't been a proper First Nations consultation?

My question is: how does that all work? The province has obligations that perhaps members here would be more familiar with than I am, but it seems to me that that's something we need to understand. So how do you see that working?

J. Rustad (Chair): Once again, the process of going out would be a discussion, not a consultation with First Nations, around this. On any recommendations that we would make, government would have to take whatever due-diligence steps that they would be required to, in order to enact any recommendation that they decide to enact.

Our job is not to go out, once again, to deal with things in the detail. Our job is to be at the 50,000-foot level, look at what the options are, put some things on the table, and then it would be up to the ministry, if so desired, to do whatever steps would be required. That would include engaging with First Nations in terms of consultation.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Part of what I don't understand is that we do have these different things going on. We have Burns Lake, and we have a local process. My understanding is that there have been dates where
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reporting out was promised for Burns Lake. John, you'd be more familiar with this than I am.

My understanding is the community has been told that that has to wait for reporting out, until the work of this committee is done, and then the work of this committee will be to make a presentation to government. The government has to act before the Burns Lake process can continue, and it seems the government can't act until it considers factors far beyond the scope of this committee, including First Nations.

I just don't see how all the pieces fit together. I'm sure I'm missing pieces, so maybe you could just explain: how does this all fit together? I take your point that we can make recommendations and we haven't, you know, stepped on the responsibility we have for consultation. For the government to do anything, they're going to have to go through a process that is going to take a bit of time, but we're rushing to get something done before that. So how does that all fit together?

J. Rustad (Chair): Well, that is outside of the scope of the committee, in terms of the work that we are trying to do around this. Having said that, in terms of the situation at Burns Lake, the work is still going on around what options and things may need to be considered in Burns Lake. The First Nations are fully engaged in that process, as well as most of the other, if not all, stakeholders within that area.

The challenge, of course, with all of this is if you're going to make a decision, it's all interconnected, which is why the committee is looking at the broader component and not just specific areas. It's all interconnected across the pine beetle area, so we need to go through and stay focused on what our committee is set up to do and asked to do, and we'll see how that fits in down the road.

B. Routley: In terms of the time allocation, I can understand an hour for mayors and council and an hour for First Nations — I mean, given the time constraints. I still think it's too short.

But the information that was part of the leaked cabinet document that talked about stepping down and losing somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 jobs, that essentially the decision of this committee will impact timber supply…. That will in turn, of course, impact jobs. Wouldn't the people potentially losing their jobs have even a larger stake in terms of loss and impact to their families, to them as an individual, than some of the other groups?

When you think about it…. I certainly wouldn't be in favour of limiting the amount of time available for workers that are potentially impacted, especially if…. I'm assuming at some point we're going to be looking at that kind of information as well — that kind of step-down in timber supply and the kind of impact that would have on communities.

The second issue that I haven't heard addressed — but maybe it's not a factor — is.... I know that we're into profession reliance in the province of British Columbia. Are any of these areas going to impact the certifying bodies? Has there been any consideration of getting the groups that certify the forest products that come from any of these regions, or have they been invited to…?

Again, the international nature of lumber sales. I know that the certifying bodies would have some interest in this as well. So I wondered about that.

J. Rustad (Chair): To those two points. You're right in terms of timing. The local people, of course, have elected local representatives, and so I think it's important that they understand, because obviously they are in frequent contact within their communities. That's why the proposal to spend a little bit more time with them initially.

We can adjust that. It can be half an hour. It could be 45 minutes. We can adjust that to be able to try to fit as much time. I agree with you that people who could be potentially impacted in areas should be able to have their voice and say through this process, and we should try to accommodate that as best as possible.

We have to remember that this is all hypothetical at this stage in terms of what the potential impacts are. As you asked the question as to when we're going to talk about that, that's Wednesday. Actually, sorry, it's later today, I should say, in terms of the pine beetle and what the potential impacts are. Wednesday is all around what the strategies could be to mitigate that.

Oh yes, in terms of the provincial certification bodies and those components, I would be looking to our experts in terms of when we're in the discussions around recommendations. I'd also look to our experts in terms of who we should be inviting when it comes down to inviting for the provincial list. Nobody at this stage has been invited. We have to complete our work this week, and then we'll start worrying about how we get those invitations out and to who after that.

D. Barnett: I'd like to go back to the communities. You know, for four or five years we've worked on long-term planning for mitigation for pine beetle. We have these pine beetle coalitions. They have every socioeconomic document there is. They've been there for years. They've been on the website. They've been available to everyone.

I'm sorry, guys, but the opposition across the way did not want to have a part of it. I wrote letter after letter when I was chair, asking to meet with the opposition. They would not meet with us. I've got every letter if you would like to get it. I'm not sitting here making up stories.

So there are long-term plans. They have great work done. They continuously create economic development with their planning process that they have. I would hope that everybody would take an opportunity to read some
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of this good work that is done and continues to be done. First Nations are working with them.

You've got communities all over this province totally engaged, totally aware of what the issue is out there with long-term timber supply, and they continuously work with local foresters, local managers, local companies. I think it's a great opportunity for work that has been done to now be put at a higher level.

We can all sit down with these coalitions when we travel the province — most of them have all local governments on them — and spend some time really understanding the work that has been done and the long-term effects and how they plan, with help from governments — federal, provincial — and local citizens to mitigate the issue, and they have been.

B. Routley: You brought the opposition into it, so I'd be fascinated to learn from you the, I'm sure, extensive list on what government has actually done in following up on all of their recommendations.

J. Rustad (Chair): Sorry, if I could just cut in to that. There will be some presentations later today which will be talking about the pine beetle and the steps and issues and process that has been done. So not to try to get into and engage that at this particular point, but we have those presentations today. We'll have an opportunity to ask some questions around that then.

J. Rustad (Chair): With our committee's indulgence, the schedule, as proposed, is what we will try to work towards. We'll obviously work on some details around the timing within communities, trying to maximize the amount of opportunity for the public input. Kate and I will work on that. I'll be in contact with Norm. Is that process okay with everybody?

I recognize that for some meetings we may not be able to have everybody there, in terms of the consultation, but I think that component should be okay because it is all recorded. We will be encouraging people to give written submissions, so there will be an opportunity to be able to catch up on anything that may be missed, with one exception. That is the field tour component.

H. Bains: Just for my own purpose, is somebody making these travel arrangements, or are we supposed to do it on our own?

J. Rustad (Chair): The Clerk's office will work with your legislative assistants and make sure that the trip and accommodations and everything are arranged.

I guess the only component of that that I'm wondering about, and I want to put this to our witnesses today…. This is once again off topic. We still haven't got to the schedule for the day, but just in terms of the tour, the field trip day, and going out there, the intent of that trip is to bring everybody up to speed on what the differences are between various components of the things that we're talking about here at these initial presentations. I know we're looking at trying to do that for the fourth.

Harry, you said you're not able to make the fourth. Are you comfortable with us proceeding with that and then getting filled in by your colleagues? I just want to nail that down, because obviously there's a lot of preparation that's required by ministry staff in terms of picking sites and locations and making arrangements for transportation and those sorts of things. Perhaps what we can do, Harry, is maybe just let me know later on in the meeting if you can.

H. Bains: It wasn't the fourth of July. It was the week of the eighth and ninth — the weekend. There were two days before and after. That's what I was commenting on, I think.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Staff is then continuing to make arrangements for July 4. Since they had done significant prep for June 7, what we are actually going to do is…. Staff is going to go out with video staff and turn those into videos, so that if there are members who can't attend…. Or we can then also put them on the website for the public to see, which then provides that kind of opportunity to visualize what is out there on the land base.

Having gone through the initial discussion, I think we should start off where we left last Thursday.

J. Rustad (Chair): Do you want to do a quick summary of the presentation, or should we go straight to questions?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Allan might want to make a short recap. Whatever works for you. If I could just speak for a few minutes to the additional documents that were distributed to you.

There was a set of one-pagers that highlight the values. When we talk about timber constraints, the other side of those is, of course, the non-timber values, those constraints provide. So there is a set of one-pagers that were prepared by staff to highlight what the values are.

Also, because of the time constraints, we haven't had time to do a briefing on our tenure system. I assume that many of the members are quite familiar with that,
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but since one of the options we will bring forward on Wednesday hinges on understanding volume- and area-based tenures, we felt it was prudent to provide the background information to the members. There will be staff available on Wednesday who can answer any further questions about tenure system, if you have any.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. At this time I'll turn the meeting over to Allan for an overview, I guess, of the presentation, and then we'll go into the question component.

A. Lidstone: A quick recap, I guess. We talked about land use planning — the recent history of land use planning and how it accelerated in the '90s to deal with a lot of the major conflicts at that time. We talked about some of the different approaches to it in terms of being a multi-stakeholder, consensus-based process. Some of the goals in terms of land use planning were to improve certainty and economic stability, to generate economic opportunities and investment, to direct or guide land and resource management decisions.

We also talked about some of the major outputs being the protected area system, of course — a significant expansion, now almost tripling the protected area system over the years. Also, coming out of many of those plans, there was certainly significant guidance and direction for statutory decision-makers as well, either in terms of policy objectives or legal objectives — land use orders, establishing direction for everything from old-growth management to recreation management through to timber management.

There's quite a bit of ongoing work in terms of those land use plans, in terms of both doing more detailed planning and in terms of establishing and maintaining those legal orders around the province.

We currently have about 140 land use plans. About 25 or so are at what we call the regional level — so big areas, LRMPs and regional land use plans; and 110 or so more landscape, watershed-level plans — what we call sustainable resource management plans. Both of those deal with biodiversity management, but they also deal with multiple other values and resources throughout the province.

We talked some of the weaknesses and strengths of the land use planning, in the sense that it did resolve many conflicts. It did certainly create a social licence in terms of the forest industry and other industries in the province.

It allowed people to work together, people who had probably touched bases and worked together for years. It brought many groups together and created a new network of folks and a new way of dealing with issues — investment certainty, cost savings for government both in reducing the conflict and managing the conflict, and then secondly, in terms of how the process was done through a lot of volunteer effort.

The earlier plans didn't engage First Nations very much. They tried but weren't that successful for a variety of reasons.

The latter plans I think were very significant in the strides they made with engaging First Nations, particularly on the coast, but in recent places like Atlin-Taku and other areas in the northwest where First Nations are partners in developing the land use plans and in terms of implementing some of the direction coming out of those plans. I think a very significant aspect of implementing the new relationship with First Nations is in some of the more recent land use plans.

We talked about objectives for non-timber values — where we start in terms of constraints. Constraints are one outcome of establishing objectives for non-timber values, but there are other outcomes as well. I gave an overview of those objectives and then resulting constraints.

Again, speaking to the fact that these objectives have been developed over the last several decades — provide social licence, provide reasonable opportunities for First Nations treaty rights and are often the product of land use plans.

In terms of putting them into effect, there are a lot of tests that these things have to pass by legislation. Everything from…. Some of the land use objectives have different tests and some of the more specific designations under the government actions regulation, but they certainly do have to have public scrutiny or scrutiny from the sector involved.

There are requirements for social balance or balance of social, economic and environmental considerations — and again, not having an undue adverse impact on licensees. So there are a number of tests, and I went through those in some detail.

Then, I think one of the primary points I want to make — I think many are already aware of that — is that the rules, in terms of implementing some of these objectives and some of these designations…. First, we put them in the non-contributing land base; secondly, in the partially contributing; and finally, if all else fails and we can't find suitable areas, put them in the timber-harvesting land base. So try and reduce the impact.

The other aspect about this is overlap, making sure that these designations and the related objectives overlap to the extent possible. So if there is suitable old growth in a visual-quality objective, an area that's established for visual-quality objectives, that's where you would put it first, rather than in an area that isn't constrained.

We've even allowed, as I mentioned last week, to have some of the old growth in parks contribute towards the objective. If it's suitable, and if it's in the right area or the right ecological zone, we've included that type of mitigating criterion for establishing and designating these areas.

Then I went through some examples from the Lakes area that showed you the different layers and the differ-
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ent types of constraints and then talked about some of the legal tools that we used — the Land Act, which is a more flexible tool, an overriding tool, and the establishment of the land use objectives, where we can actually even have conflicting objectives as the only specific tool for establishing objectives where objectives are allowed.

It's not desirable, but if you wanted to do something quick, you could use the land use objective process and have to state the extent of the conflict if there is one, whereas the designations and objectives established under the government actions reg are more bounded by the rules, don't allow for conflict and have a number of other tests that are a little more onerous for land use objectives.

Finally, I think I recapped, in terms of other considerations, that we've justified the use of constraints as meeting reasonable opportunity requirements for First Nations, basis for market certification, supports action or addressing issues under the Species at Risk Act and also meeting expectations for tourism and global sustainability commitments. And, of course, avoiding market campaigns is important.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that, Allan. Now, I have a speakers list from last Thursday. I just look to members. Would you like me to stick to that list, or would you like to create a new list for today?

Well, I'll start off with that list, then. It goes in this order, and if you don't need your name on the list, let me know. It was Norm, Ben, Bill and myself on the list.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Well, first, thank you very much for the presentation. There is some interesting stuff in there.

I guess the first question…. I was wondering if you could go to slide 15 first, which is entitled "Pine beetle–impacted TSAs, constraints to the…."

The first question, then, is, of course…. With the presentation from Mr. Martin, we dealt in part with the impact of pine beetle on the larger land base. Obviously, those same impacts would be on the reserves as well.

I guess the question that I have is: have you done analysis, and can you provide to the committee some idea of what the state of these various reserves is? Do you have that sort of information and to what degree of accuracy? For instance, within the Lakes TSA do you have a lot of information based on the work that's been done recently? Do you have across the land base that we're talking about, the pine beetle–affected area? Do you have some sense of what is actually there in the reserves?

A. Lidstone: And others here may have information. I think there are a number of different reports available. There has been some work done in each of the areas to understand sort of the condition and the options around some of those constraints in those areas.

Some areas have much more in-depth work done. For example, some areas, such as the Cariboo, have more recent planning completed, where they've done an awful lot of analysis and have been doing monitoring and assessment on an ongoing basis. So there is quite a bit of information available, yes.

J. Snetsinger: Well, maybe it's a comment and/or a question. My understanding would be that for each one of these constraints, we understand where it is inside the timber inventory. We know what the mountain pine beetle impact has been through our surveys and our mapping. We can overlay that on the forest inventory, know what species are there and give people a sense of what the impact has been to the species, particularly the pine in some of these areas, from a mountain pine beetle perspective.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just to understand for this group, then. We've been given a very useful paper on old growth. We have hectares that are covered by old-growth management areas. What you're saying is that you would be able to extrapolate fairly accurately the impact of the pine beetle, a wildfire and other impacts on those reserves? You have a pretty good sense, Mr. Lidstone, what would be there?

A. Nussbaum: Given it's the same inventory that we're talking about, I believe we can tell you how much has been impacted in each of those constrained areas.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. Thank you. So the second question, then, that I would have just touches on something that my colleague Bill Routley was talking about, which is the third-party certification. In your presentation you mentioned it twice. It's something that comes up a lot, especially meeting with industry since the leaked cabinet document. Clearly, in your presentation you think that it's an important issue.

So when we're looking at the constraints, any move to lift those constraints — what's your opinion on how that would impact third-party certification?

A. Lidstone: Again, in terms of managing multiple values, dealing with some of the criteria that folks use in terms of certification and so on, they touch on these values. It would have to be done with care, in terms of any changes or shifts.

We do change the management of these values on an ongoing basis. We adjust old-growth management areas, we delete areas from them, and we add areas to them for different purposes. So from that point of view, in terms
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of adjusting or changing these constraints, it is something that we do already.

The question is: how significant are the impacts in terms of the values that we're managing? If the values are impacted to such an extent that it's no longer sustainable in terms of managing those resources, then we have a serious issue — yes.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): So the whole basis is sustainability — is that correct? — in what you're saying. Now, you've described where you're tinkering quite a bit. When you do that, are you in discussion with the various certification groups? Or do you simply know the criteria well enough that you feel you can make these changes without having an impact?

Then, as we consider, as a committee, perhaps significant changes to reserves, what's the process that you would suggest that we go through? Bill Routley suggested that we would talk to certification bodies and then make sure they were part of the witness list. What are the things that, with your experience, you would suggest?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Allan will answer in terms of his experience, but staff are also working on the document that will look at the certification and lifting any of the constraints. We'll have that available, hopefully, by Wednesday for you.

A. Lidstone: So in terms of establishing direction and guidance, for example, for old-growth management areas, no, the first thing we pick up is not the certification requirements for industry. It's about the value itself, and water experts and scientists tell us about what's required to manage that resource.

Then, through a process over many years of negotiation in terms of the guidelines for old-growth management and some of the rules around how we adjust those things, it is about managing the value and what's required and what is appropriate and sustainable management, for example, for old growth. So that's what guides us.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Now, for the third question. As with inventory, there are concerns, as well, with the adequacy of the land use planning in the province. I'm sure that that would not be news to people within the ministry and the negative impact that this might have on relationships with forest-dependent communities, First Nations groups and with the forest industry, as I say, in respect to the third-party certification for most of the forest land that it operates.

It seems to me that…. If you can go to, I think it is, slide 5, if you don't mind. No, actually, maybe where it lists weaknesses. Sorry, I had the wrong number there.

So there are accomplishments, which are real, but you also have weaknesses here. One of them is the lack of consistent monitoring, review and amendment of plans. So the question I have is with Mr. Martin.

There was a table that was made that had different dates and different types of consultations. Do you have generated or can you easily generate a similar type of table that would give us a sense of where we are with the various land use plans, how often they have been revisited and when were they first done, so that we can get our head around the weaknesses identified here about a lack of consistent monitoring review and amendment of these land use plans?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): All right. So if you can just pass that along through the Clerk, that would be great.

J. Rustad (Chair): Norm, if we can just go back and forth on questions, if that's okay.

B. Stewart: Okay. I wanted to try to better understand these percentages and total in terms of the timber harvest land base versus the non–timber harvest land base. Slide 14 talks about the province — 95 million hectares. And 55 million is productive forest, and 22 million is the timber-harvesting land base.

The gap of 33 million hectares there — what is productive forest that is not part of the timber-harvesting land base? What exactly….? Is it all of these other uses that you're talking about?

A. Nussbaum: Yeah. So 55 have got some form of forest on it, but it doesn't mean that it's a very productive forest. So the 22 million hectares that are the timber-harvesting land base — that's what's available to us for timber harvesting sort of in two ways.

First of all, it's productive enough that we believe we can get an economic crop off that and reforest it economically. Second of all, it isn't reserved to provide for other values if that use is exclusionary, meaning it's completely removed — okay?
[ Page 76 ]

A protected area might be in the non-contributing, so it's not available to us. It wouldn't be even if it was economic. When they put constraints on the land base, we try to look there first to see if there is something suitable that's going to meet that requirement in that — what is it? — 23 million or whatever that's there. You'd look there first so that you're not unduly constraining the timber-harvesting land base.

If you find it, good. If you don't, it can sneak into the timber-harvesting land base to meet the need. If it does sneak into the timber-harvesting land base, then by definition it's removed. So it becomes part of that 23 million. Okay? A lot of it is removed because of economics, terrain instability and those kinds of things, which just preclude it from harvest.

B. Stewart: So that's about the size of the land base, then. The 22 million is the economic productive. That's what we've got to work with — roughly 25 percent of the province. Is that about right? Little bit less than that?

A. Nussbaum: Of course, in the Interior, as you can see on this very same slide, the timber-harvesting land base here can be quite a high proportion. On the coast it tends to be very, very low, where in the Interior and the Rocky Mountain Trench, with that kind of terrain, you tend to net out more.

But if you look, for example, in 100 Mile House, it's almost 80 percent THLB. That's a very high proportion. Although it's 22 percent provincially, every one unit is different. That 80 percent is probably approaching the high. I think on the coast there are areas where it's 12 percent. It really varies.

L. Pedersen: Yeah, I just want to point out the importance of understanding what the THLB is. As Albert has said, there are two reasons why forested areas may not contribute to the timber-harvesting land base. They might be unavailable, for example, an area in a park. Simply by virtue of the park boundary, it is not available to contribute to timber supply unless the park boundary changes. Or they are unsuitable for contributing to timber supply.

That latter observation can be about environmental values. It might be an old-growth management area, an ungulate winter range. Or it may simply not have a stand of economically viable timber on very steep terrain — on the coast for example, where the roadbuilding can't be justified, the cost against the returns on the timber.

What I would like to point out, and what is important, is that the 22 million is a point-in-time reference. It's the way it looks today. It's what historically we've used. It's an estimate of what we think is kind of economically and environmentally suitable and available. But that can change.

If market values change, you might look at a stand that you had not previously considered, and that may allow for a greater contribution. It is an area that is a residual. It's the sum of other decisions taken, but it can change. It's not fixed in law. It's not an area that has a line around it on a map. There may be a stand that partially contributes. If economics changed, it might even contribute to a greater degree.

I think that is part of what this committee will want to examine in some further detail. Where are the opportunities, perhaps, to expand that timber-harvesting land base? What would need to be done to consider more timber contributing or more land base contributing?

E. Foster: Further to that point, do you factor in distance to the price point, which would also change the thing on a daily basis? If the standing timber is too far from the manufacturing, for the mill, you can't harvest it. It costs more to get it there than it's worth. As those values go up, does that then change that as well?

L. Pedersen: In approximate terms, there is an attempt to account for that by making assumptions about the viability of certain types of timber on certain terrain. Where it's sometimes marginal or really not clear whether it should or shouldn't contribute — again, it's all a point-in-time reference — that's where sometimes partitions in the AAC have been applied, which is to say: "We're not really sure, but we will allow it to contribute, and you must actually show performance."

We're not saying: "It contributes there, but you can harvest over here in a different area." We're saying, "If we're going to allow this uncertain area to contribute, we're going to put a partition," to define it geographically or define it by stand characteristics and then, basically, insist that there be performance in that profile to prove its viability.

B. Stewart: Where I was trying to go with this is…. There's a comment in your presentation, Allan, talking about ending the war in the woods. I guess I'm taking it that this land use planning model that has been adopted and that everybody has bought into has brought the rhetoric down on that.

I'm just kind of wondering if…. Well, I don't know what the relationship is like today. I can remember being in London, and they were scaling Nelson's tower because they were unhappy with clearcuts and things like that. I guess, are people more understanding?

We don't, all of a sudden, want to start altering this
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model so much that people are feeling like they have to go back to that. Then we're, all of a sudden, back into that. I don't know what that looks like in terms of forest communities having these people. I remember the protest songs, the TV and the news and things like that.

My question really is: has it resolved that? There seems to be this general uneasy working relationship where all of these visual impacts, the recreational and all these types of uses, are being met through the land use planning. I guess, is there too much tension? Or is it elastic enough? Does it have enough ability to allow us to…?

Because of the economic impact we're talking about here…. I mean, that's really one of the things we're talking about. If there wasn't pine beetle, we wouldn't, probably, be sitting around this table. I'm assuming that there'd be enough land to harvest, and we wouldn't have the…. We'd still have that tension. Is there some flexibility around that? What's your kind of feeling on that, after spending the last decade or two on this?

Again, it's been a success story, as far as I am concerned, in terms of the social licence it's created. There is principal in the bank in terms of how it has reduced some of those really dramatic statements and activities, particularly through the '90s. So yes, in many, many areas of the province, major conflicts have been resolved. There still remains conflict here and there.

Moreover, like I say, in the more recent plans First Nations have engaged. That's been a really dramatic change, and probably an area where some continued work needs to be done in other parts of the province. Certainly, for example, on the coast, Haida Gwaii and those areas, and in Atlin-Taku now — you know, full collaboration with First Nations to come to agreement on land use and sorting out the different conflicts, or different values and how we should manage them, I should say.

Recently, yes, there haven't been the major clashes that we had seen. I think there is a fair bit of support for our land use plans. There's concern about the age of our plans and that they're not as current as they should be. There's concern about the processes to monitor plans and implement plans, and some of that is eroding — not in all areas, but in some areas. We still have resource boards and planning implementation committees here and there, but it's not as pervasive as we used to.

From that point of view, yeah, I think that there has been major, major progress, and it is an asset that we need to maintain and nurture as we go forward. And if we are looking at redefining the balance, if we're looking at addressing all of this wide, incredible range of values we have in this province, then I would suggest, from my experience, that we do that carefully. I think that's what this is all about. We need to talk to people who are connected to those values and hear them out.

Any rebalancing we do has to learn from what we went through in the late '80s and '90s. We certainly don't want to go back there, but it's all about communication. It's all about collaboration. It's all about giving people their voices. It's all about good information. So I think the groundwork is there to carry that on.

B. Routley: Well, first of all, I think that Ben asked a very important question — it was a critical question to ask — about the impact on the province as a whole, really, in terms of looking at all of the other values.

Having been part, in the 1990s, of a team that actually went to Europe to talk primarily with public sector but with other unions as well, to defend the changes to the forest practices because they were impacting the customers…. It was impacting the world's perception of what was going on in British Columbia and needed to be addressed.

You had groups running around with Stumpy, for example. Well, there were so many different campaigns going on that there's no point in going through the list of them. But I was keenly aware of those processes, having been part of the CORE process as well as part of the team that went to Europe.

We actually met with large public sector unions, with interpreters, and they made a point of bringing Greenpeace along because they thought they might be told an exaggeration about how good our forest practices were as a result of the changes with what was then the Forest Practices Code.

A dramatic change I remember, major companies announced that they were going to be the end of clearcutting. They would be — like MacMillan Bloedel — leaving some timber on cutblocks — dramatic changes that took place. So it did bring down the temperature rather dramatically over time. But it took a lot of time. There was a lot of money spent, both by industry, certainly….

As a forest workers representative, we had our concerns about the impact to jobs and the impact to forest worker families, because there were some real challenges there as well. So I do think we have to notionally be concerned about anything that we do.

Obviously, if part of this is about supplying timber to create jobs, you also have to think about jobs from the perspective of: if the perception in the world changes as a result of any actions that we might take, could it make matters worse, not just for those regions but for the province as a whole?

I think Ben was really thoughtful in that question. Larry talked about the areas that it might be possible to find timber supply in, and I'm most interested.

I think that's another important statement that we should be looking at. What would need to be done to include some of the land that is outside of the 22 million hectares that's now part of the timber-harvesting land base? Is there opportunity there? Are there areas that
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have been impacted by mountain pine beetle or other disease? And is that a viable option at all?

Obviously, that would be less of a concern, I would think, for the larger community than taking the guts and feathers of what's left of a long time in putting together a land use plan. I've seen all the layers of maps and have been through all of those processes.

In fact, I stood up in the community hall in Lake Cowichan and said, "Let's take to the streets of Victoria," because we were concerned that they were increasing the amount of old growth from 12 to 13 percent. I remember tying yellow ribbons on our cars and running down to Victoria.

Now, in hindsight, maybe that wasn't a good thing to do. Because at the end of the day, the industry took away 20 percent of every tree farm licensor in every land use, and it changed dramatically. We lost over a thousand forest worker jobs in communities. We've seen huge erosion in the number of mills.

I think people know my position and the NDP's position on exporting jobs. They've heard it enough that they don't need to have much of a reminder about that.

Obviously, there's been dramatic impact in resource communities all over British Columbia. So looking at jobs is something I'm definitely interested in doing, but doing it in a way that's sensitive to the market and not making matters worse is critical as well.

Again, I don't know if you have any ideas on other alternatives. Maybe you could tell me: why are we looking at these areas instead of outside, like doing what Larry suggested — looking at areas that make up part of the 55 million hectares of productive forest land, according to that slide? It's productive forest land, but there are obviously other constraints, whether it's private land or whatever. But are there opportunities?

J. Rustad (Chair): If I just may, I think the question you've asked really speaks to the options that we're going to be looking at on Wednesday. I would love to hear the answer to that, but I also think that if we get into that, we're going to be really getting into the meat of what Wednesday's meeting is about. So if you don't mind maybe deferring that question until Wednesday…?

J. Rustad (Chair): I had myself next on the list for questions, and I've got a couple of questions. I'll see how it goes. I may have to come back to myself at some point. I'm going to need to be fair — right? I don't want to say everybody else only gets one or two questions, but I'm going to ask a series — right?

So the question I have is around parks, because that's obviously a piece that is in the productive force that is being removed — where parks were in, that type of area. What was the total area in parks in the early '90s versus what it is today? Do you know — as a percentage, roughly, of the land base?

So there's been a significant increase in the amount of land that's contributed towards parks, and of course that's to meet many of the values that are other things we're looking at.

The next question that I had on this was a little bit of an inventory question. I can't remember. I don't believe I asked this. It got me thinking when we were talking about timber-harvesting land base and the falldown that we'll be talking about later in terms of the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

If I remember correctly, there was always a falldown that was going to be happening because we had an over-mature forest. We were trying to harvest at a rate to try to capture as much value out of that…. At some point in the future there was going to be a falldown to a lower level until we got through that mid-term component and back out.

This is going back to memory on it. How significant was that falldown compared to the falldown that we are going to be looking at with the pine beetle? Maybe I should hold off until later for that question. Do you want me to hold off till later, till we do the pine beetle stuff, to ask that question?

A. Nussbaum: We could do it there, but we can cover it off fairly fast, I think. Maybe I'll start, and then I'll turn to my colleagues here, if they want to pipe in.

Most of those falldowns were in coastal units, and that's because when you've got a 400-year-old stand, and you replace it with a 100-year-old stand, quite often the volumes don't equate. So the gift we received when we arrived here and used the forest for the first time had significant volumes. That's often why you saw that sort of adjustment to a long-term level that was below what we were harvesting in the near term, where we could because we had this sort of huge gift of volume.

With regard to the Interior units, for the majority of them I would say that they were reasonably flat, and there were a few little adjustments. But for the most part, I think if you added them up in cumulative they would be fairly flat for the horizon.

I think the hole you see will be largely punched by mountain pine beetle. This is a bit of a generalization.
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Particular units would look a little different. Robson Valley probably had a little bit of a falldown in the traditional sense, but most of the units we're looking at were reasonably flat until the beetle came along. So I think the short answer is that, for what we're looking at, most of the problem is created by the beetle.

J. Rustad (Chair): The next question, and then I'll move on to somebody else…. On the land resource management plans, the old-growth management areas, the wildlife habitat areas, the visual-quality areas, etc. — they were all put in for good reasons at the time when they were put in. I'm just wondering if we have tracked the success of those particular areas now that we've got about 20 years of them being in place, 15 to 20 years. Have they met objectives for why they were put in? Are we tracking any of that?

I know, for example, in the Morice TSA, in some of those land resource management units that were in there, the outcomes, of course, have radically changed because of the pine beetle going in and changing the landscape. In other areas, of course, that has happened to different extents.

I'm just wondering: with things like mule deer winter range, for example, can we equate the uptick in the mule deer population to that strategy, as well as all the other types of constraints and issues that we have around the land base?

A. Lidstone: There are a variety of monitoring programs. There's the FREP, the forest and range evaluation program — to get the acronym right — that monitors those values and assesses how they're doing. Other areas have done different types of assessments. The Cariboo, for example, has done a number of assessments and evaluations of their plan.

As we get into more detailed planning, like Lakes South and Lakes North SRMPs, which are much more recent than the LRMP, they also assess and evaluate and adjust the objectives as they go. So there are a variety of different approaches, some more localized, some provincial, such as FREP, which does evaluate these values and the management of those values.

There's also the Forest Practices Board, which does special reports on old growth and other values. So yes, there have been a number of different evaluations and assessments.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thanks. I'll have some more questions when we go into options around those lines.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Maybe I'll just follow up on one of the questions that John had. There was a Forest Practices Board report that you'll be familiar with from November 2009. It was Biodiversity Conservation During Salvage Logging. My read of it was that it called into question the retention of biodiversity conservation at the landscape level.

As I understand it, the land use plans were not being adhered to. Is that something that you see as an issue, or is that something that I've misinterpreted from the Forest Practices Board, or is that something that you disagree with in terms of the conclusion that they reached? Maybe just a comment on that.

A. Lidstone: Again, it varies across the province. Some areas, in terms of how we manage old growth, don't allow any harvesting other than maybe where necessary for…. There's no other option for a road, for example. So where we have old-growth management areas, usually the objectives are pretty tight and often pretty restrictive in terms of how to manage those old-growth management areas.

The issue and one of the main problems — or challenges, being more positive — is around what we call aspatial targets. So we have spatially defined zones for old growth here and there across the province, old-growth management areas.

Where we don't have those, we have something called the provincial order. It sets targets. Licensees have to achieve those targets through the results and strategies in their forest stewardship plans. They have to lay out how they're going to achieve those targets.

The challenge with that, of course, is monitoring and coordination between licensees. The other challenge and issue that we have is that other industries can impact that too and make it even more challenging, where they aren't required to comply with the objectives.

So yes, in managing old growth aspatially, there are a number of challenges that we continue to deal with and work with and try and improve. There are some really good examples of where folks have done that.

In Prince George TSA, as I understand, there's a really good collaborative effort between licensees and provincial officials to track and monitor how they're achieving that target. It's something that we should probably look at and build on in other areas where we're managing old growth aspatially.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I'll ask not one question but a series of them to touch on another point. You were going to provide us with a table that looked at the status of these various plans, and I think that's useful. But just to give the group a sense, I'll just ask you a series of questions around that, if you don't mind.

I think Ben caught your point, which is around when we look at these issues we better be very mindful of the social licence and the fact that our markets are…. I mean, I think you expressed it really well, Ben. We have to make sure that anything that we do or anything we put forward or even that we discuss, we're thoughtful about, because
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there are implications for the social licence we have within British Columbia but also for our markets.

Then the other point you made around certification is one that since we've started to talk about this, the licensees that are coming to see opposition…. It's raised again and again around that certification is important to them. Their reputation in the world market is important to them. I think we saw that throughout your presentation.

The question I have about these local land use plans: can you give us a sense of how many there are in the province, how many have been completed since 2000, how many have been updated since 2000 — and maybe a sense of the percentage of the total that number is — and how many within the ten TSAs that we're going to be looking at that have been impacted by pine beetle have been updated since 2000? Just so the group gets a sense of where we are with these processes.

A. Lidstone: Okay. I'll start with the province and then come back to the local area. So 140. I mean, there are hundreds of old plans from way back when, but I'd say from when we started — late '80s, early '90s — into doing sort of the LRMPs and the CORE regional plans, I think it's approximately 25 regional-level plans, maybe 115 of what we call more local sustainable resource management plans across the province.

Some of those plans, particularly in recent years, say the larger scale ones, the regional ones, kind of morphed because they were a consensus-based process prior to 2007 without a lot of First Nations engagement. Then after 2005, 2007 — in that area — we started working much more closely with First Nations, particularly on the coast, and in areas like Atlin-Taku, Dease, Liard in the north.

Some of the more recent regional plans that were completed in the early 2000s had much more First Nations involvement. So our more recent plans are probably better balanced, in terms of both stakeholders, interest groups and First Nations engagement in those plans, and brought in concepts such as ecosystem-based management on the coast, for example. Those plans were part of that. There are agreements with First Nations around implementing them and moving them into legal objectives.

That work carries on. For example, on the coast now we're looking at refreshing those legal objectives by 2014 as our target, maybe 2013. We're trying to move it up. It implemented things such as some of the governance agreements tied to some of the protocol arrangements we have with First Nations.

A lot of work is still ongoing — implementation committees in place, working with licensees, governance arrangements with First Nations. So Haida Gwaii, central coast, north coast, northern Vancouver Island — very active processes, very active review, updating, doing additional stuff, working in the marine environment to produce marine plans with First Nations. That's ongoing. That's happening right now. So that's very active.

In other areas of the province the plans are more dated. Aside from the northwest, particularly in the southern Interior, in most of the area affected by these plans, the 19, 20-some-odd LRMPS that were done are ten to 15 years old.

They in themselves, for the most part — there has been some review of a few here and there — have not been updated. So they have old language in them. We still use them, and we still direct our decision-makers to use them and be guided by them. But what we have done is we've done more detailed planning in those areas. We have a lot of more recent, detailed planning.

For example, I think the Lakes South sustainable resource management plan was done in 2009. In the Cariboo-Chilcotin, for example, they completed smaller area plans for seven of their units, and those are only a couple years old, two years old. That was done. They continue to monitor that and have implementation teams inside government looking at those different values, so it's variable.

For the Prince George region, there has been some more detailed biodiversity planning here and there, but for Prince George, Mackenzie, Fort St. James, Vanderhoof, most of their LRMPs are much older. There has been some more detailed access planning and so on happening here and there but, certainly, not to the extent as it has been in the Cariboo or on the coast.

D. Barnett: I'd just like to go back to what Ben said about the war of the woods, which actually started in the '80s. Unfortunately, I'm old enough that I've been around in local government since the start of the war of the woods, really, in….

D. Barnett: No, I didn't start it, but it was quite a process. The Cariboo-Chilcotin land use planning process was long. It was very contentious. It was a process that I sincerely don't ever want to go through again. People who really liked each other at the table hated each other halfway through the process and left the table. But it was a process that finally we got through, and we had a land use plan.

One of the things that I have found in my experience…. You experts can correct me if I'm wrong. One of the things that we forgot through these processes in the '90s when we did this land use planning….

One of the issues was parks, class A parks. You know,
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you can never take a piece of land — I'm not a professional — and lock it up and forget the health of the forest inside that park. To me, that was a mistake that was made, and we can't go backwards.

When you have a disease of any kind, whether you're 100 years old or you're 50 years old, we have to work on that disease. Through my local government in my involvement…. We have to manage diseases a lot better when we first see those diseases, quit pointing fingers at people, go back to the land base and deal with the issue at hand when it happens.

I can remember being so frustrated working with this pine beetle issue back in the '90s and the fact that, you know, we could not go in and start to mitigate the problem. I think as we move forward….

If we're going to reopen any land use plans…. Boy, a tough one to do. I know in the Cariboo-Chilcotin we had a huge meeting somewhere between 2006 and 2008 with over 100 people, sponsored by the beetle coalition and the conservation community working together. The question was put there: "Do you wish to open the land use plan?" The answer was: "No, thank you very much."

I think we have a lot to learn, but I think we really have to take into consideration at a greater level that when we make these commitments and when we're working on these planning processes, we cannot lock up land without thinking of good management and health.

E. Foster: I'm just carrying on in that same vein. I'm going to go back to Bill's comments. I spent some time in Europe, probably at the same time you were over there, fighting to keep our mills open and our industry viable. I was there more as a tourist, but certainly heard and saw the stuff and the people in London climbing up on the towers. The propaganda was unbelievable.

If I could put my science and forestry technician hat on, Donna is dead right. You have to manage the disease and keep the forest healthy, no matter where it is — if it's in a park or it's in somebody's backyard.

Having said that, the reality is…. I know it goes to Wednesday, to our staff people and experts. You know, part of the mandate was to look for other sources of timber, and we could find timber. If we had gone into the parks in the '90s, we might have possibly slowed that pine beetle epidemic down. But if we ever get back to where we were on the world stage, it won't matter because we won't be able to sell the boards anyway.

I think, when we look at this on Wednesday — you know, if there's some old growth, and certainly there are parks and there are all kinds of places we could gather more timber — I don't think you can win that. We'll have a new war in the woods, and I think we need to be extremely careful about that.

Please give us the information. That's what we're here for. There's no question about that. But the reality is that if we ever get back there again, we don't need to worry about it because we won't be able to sell a board anywhere. So to Bill's comments, I think they're very well taken. Obviously, we were both there at the same time trying to fight for it.

I don't think we could win again if we went the wrong way. Obviously, there's some timber, so we could probably tweak it a little and access some, but the protests about going into a park or, certainly, some of these old-growth stands would be all over the national and international news in a matter of hours. The reality of that is that we may not be able to find the timber we hope to find too. I don't know. But I caution us to be very, very careful of that.

J. Rustad (Chair): It should be an interesting discussion Wednesday and throughout the process.

H. Bains: Just a couple of quick questions. You said the land base set aside for parks is 14 percent in B.C. — right?

H. Bains: It's 14 plus — okay. I think the Brundtland report suggested — what was it? — 12 percent that each nation must….

The second part is: how much of that 14 percent is actually what you could consider as productive forest?

A. Lidstone: Oh, I don't have the numbers. It varies by different regions in the province.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I was just going to say, Harry, that that information is available. We have it in the inventory. We know, or the government knows, how much productive forest is inside protected areas. That could be provided if that's information you wanted.

One of the goals in terms of establishing protected areas was to have representative ecosystems. That was one of the primary goals as we expanded the system. So there's probably….

As I recall some of the diagrams that I've seen in terms of how it has progressed, we have done better in representing different lower ecosystems, but there are still regions of the province where there's a huge amount of rock and ice in our parks. Certainly, we did increase the representation of ecosystems and productive forests.

J. Rustad (Chair): Good. Any other questions on the constraints process? Norm, do you have a question?
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J. Rustad (Chair): Any other questions? Okay, thank you, Members, for that. Why don't we take a quick two-minute recess or a five-minute recess? Then we will come back with the first presentation on the pine beetle.

J. Rustad (Chair): We will move into a presentation on progression of infestation, with Albert.

A. Nussbaum: Thank you. The outline of this presentation. I'm going to spend some time speaking to the current status of the infestation, and I'm going to do a little bit of a retrospective of what we expected and what we actually observed between 2005 and 2011.

We're going to talk about some of the latest annual allowable cut determinations and what their characteristics are. I'm going to show you a quick provincial timber supply forecast, and then we're going to just hit a few conclusions and have an opportunity to have some questions.

I thought I'd start with this slide, which is a little bleached-out up there. This slide sort of starts me thinking about what's left in terms of merchantable timber in the stands that have been attacked. This is a map of stands that are over 60 years of age. What you see here is…. The percentage you see on the right-hand side is the absolute amount of volume that has actually been killed in a stand.

Stands often are made up of pine and non-pine. Sometimes the pine is not entirely killed. So what this map shows you is in 2011 — that's this year — what the residual volume that we see is, what's been killed, actually, in these stands. As you can see, most stands have sort of been hit at the 31 to 45 percent, and then there are some between 46 and 100.

Most every stand has a little bit of something left in every case. So that's sort of…. But you can see the progression too. It's by far the worst in the central Interior up around Burns Lake, Vanderhoof, Quesnel, Williams Lake. We'll come back to this in a couple more slides. Sort of that central Interior part is where the pain is highest.

Every year since 2005 the ministry has modelled — well, has actually gone out and done those aerial surveys we spoke about last week to track the infestation. That aerial overview actually started well before that. It started in 1990. In 1999, I guess, the infestation had officially begun. It was mapped every year, and then we started modelling it somewhere around…. Adrian, was that 2003 or '04? When did we start? What was the very first year?

A. Nussbaum: In 2003. Anyway, these things are updated annually. What the model does is it takes the latest overview information, and it recalibrates itself annually, then projects future-forward.

The trickiest part of modelling is always, you know, that you're more certain in the near term and less certain in the longer term. So the longer we projected, the less certain we were of where we were headed. The absolute chill that was going to be experienced in the pine population in this province was always the big question mark.

Originally — and there was plenty of debate amongst the scientific community — the big question was: where is this infestation going to end? We thought at one point that it was going to go as far as taking 80 percent of the pine. Within the timber-harvesting land base, it was going to kill 80 percent of it — and that's mature pine.

That would be 80 percent of 1.35 billion cubic metres of pine that is found within the timber-harvesting land base. We expected to lose about 1.1 billion or so of that 1.35 billion. That was in our 2005-2006 modelling.

Every year since then we have actually reduced our expectation of absolute kill. As of this year's modelling run, we believe that we're going to lose 58 percent, and we're currently sitting at 53 percent. We're not expecting anymore to lose 80 percent. We're expecting to lose quite a bit less, which is good news.

But it's good news and bad news. Fifty-eight percent is still horrible. We shouldn't lose sight of that. It's still a very big problem. That 58 percent depends on where you are in the province, and we'll talk more about that.

Again, the other thing you need to be cognizant of is that mountain pine beetle didn't do all of its damage at the same time. It was progressive. This shows you where…. This is the peak of kill in the 22 management units that we categorized as mountain pine beetle units originally. They were categorized because they have a certain amount of pine in them, and we expected to have a certain amount of death.

You can see that in 2005 we've already had the peak of kill for Lakes, Vanderhoof, Prince George district and Quesnel. That is really kind of the epicentre of the infestation, as far as I'm concerned, and then it radiates out from there.

In 2006 we had the peak kill that occurred in Williams Lake, 100 Mile, Kamloops, Golden, Arrow — you can see them there. Then it sort of radiates out. You can see that Fort St. James peaked in 2010; again, Mackenzie in 2009.

The important thing to also understand is that, I believe, the length of time that licensees can operate in these beetle-impacted stands will probably somewhat follow this trajectory. The killing that peaked in 2005 — that stuff is now…. The majority of the stands in Lakes are now seven years dead. That'll be more challenging, say, than somebody operating in Mackenzie, where the stands are four-years-younger dead — young four-years-
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younger dead. Anyway, you get the idea. The shelf life started ticking four years later, on average.

The peak year of kill was 2005 for the whole province, I believe. I think it was about 140 million cubic metres that were killed that year of volume, which is two years of provincial cut entirely. In a good year we cut 70 million. So that give you a sense of the magnitude of the infestation. It doubled what we harvested in that year.

I guess that's it. I guess what I wanted to convey from this slide…. I'm going to show you these a couple different ways just to give you a sense. I just wanted to show you that this infestation progressed. It didn't happen in a single year. Every management unit's going to feel a little bit different. When you go visit a community, they're going to reflect on that, because their experiences are going to be slightly different.

This is another way of looking at the situation. To me, this slide really does speak, so I'm going to spend a little bit of time on it. Maybe it's just the way I sort of view things. This is a slide that Adrian and I recently tried to put together. What this tries to do is paint a picture for where things are really quite severe.

The infestation, for the most part, is nearing an end. Whether it's 53 percent mortality or 58 percent mortality, we're approaching the end. In the central Interior the killing is pretty much done. I don't think it's going to get any more severe than it is, so now we can start to deal with what is, rather than what's projected.

We're sort of past that. When you look at Quesnel here, the kill it has experienced is the kill it's going to experience.

What this map tries to portray is the cumulative percentage of merchantable forest volume in the timber-harvesting land base. These are the harvestable stands in the timber-harvesting land base. What has been killed of the total volume in the timber-harvesting land base?

What we're doing here is we're figuring out how much volume has been killed, then dividing through the total for what's merchantable today. The total is not pine. It's everything; so it's whatever. This is everything that's in the timber-harvesting land base and what proportion of it is dead — okay?

Then we broke it up into some classes. If you take a look in the southern part of the province, most of the units are low. They're categorized by less than 16 percent absolute mortality within the timber-harvesting land base. It's still not insignificant in these units, but it's not of the magnitude we're about to talk about next.

Then the next level of mortality that we painted was what we called moderate. These are our own terms. I mean, somebody who's living in this community may take offence to the term "moderate," but I put it up there.

In these units, or districts in the case of Prince George district and Fort St. James district…. The Prince George TSA is made up three districts, and we paint them separately because the land base is so large. You can see that moderate is 16 to 30 percent absolute mortality of the mature volume in the timber-harvesting land base.

Then we get up to what we called high — 31 to 45 percent absolute mortality. This is where we're starting to get into the units that are going to experience some real crunch, I believe. That's Williams Lake and 100 Mile, you see.

Then the really hard hit units, in my mind, have lost more than 45 percent of their absolute volume in the timber-harvesting land base. Those are Lakes, Vanderhoof and Quesnel. I think that the five key units are really where things have taken a horrific turn, regardless of whether we've lost 53 or 58 percent of the pine or whatever.

When you're visiting Smithers or Houston, those areas are not in what I call the blast zone. Their fear might be flow of timber into adjacent communities to support adjacent mills, so they may come at you from a different angle than people who are in the Lakes TSA.

Same goes for the Robson Valley. They are not hard hit, but their fibre might flow into Prince George in order to support the infrastructure we have there.

This is an interesting map. If you look at Kamloops, it is also not in the…. Now, Kamloops in an interesting one. We didn't paint it by district. Kamloops has two districts in it. It has a southern district, and then it has the headwaters northern district. The southern one is pretty hard hit, but you don't see it here because it's just painted as a single management unit.

In and around Kamloops itself the impacts are higher. But you can see that Kamloops is quite a long management unit. The northern portion of it is far less impacted than the southern, so the averaging is what you see here. But there is a pretty hard hit amount of forest right in and around Kamloops.

Don't get hung up on the labels. This is my attempt to communicate with you where things are tough and tougher and where maybe they're not so tough, so that when you travel on the road, you get a sense of what you're arriving at. Okay?

I think those five units are where things are really, really changing. The peripheral units could easily be impacted by the fact that timber flows are going to change when pine is no longer usable.

To carry on with the current status, as I mentioned, 53 percent of the stands that were considered harvestable and really are greater than 60 years of age were killed. Pine — 53 percent of the pine was killed. The worst year of the infestation was 2004, observed in 2005. I was off by a year. Sorry about that. It's 140 million cubic metres killed that year.

The annual kill has declined rapidly since then. We believe it's down to 20 million cubic metres in 2011. It's projected to continue to decline to less than five million cubic metres by 2015.
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I find these figures interesting. I think that originally, I would have thought that…. Before mountain pine beetle five million cubic metres of kill within the timber-harvesting land base in a single year would have been horrific, but we've somehow been dulled by the wave. Now it seems like things are looking up, at five million. It's kind of an odd reversal of fortune in my career to see this, but it's a lot better than 140.

I do want to take just a moment, though, to point out that there's still a lot of fibre within B.C.'s forests, even after this infestation. This is where I like to dispel the notion that the mountain pine beetle has finished off the forestry fortunes of B.C. It has not.

B.C. has 9½ billion cubic metres of timber in it, according to our inventory, and 1.3 billion of that was pine. So there still are considerable forests out there.

Then, of course, when you look at the timber-harvesting land base component of that, roughly half of that 9.5 billion is in the timber-harvesting land base, and 1.3 billion of that was pine. Right now we think we've lost about 710 million. So the hit, in my mind, is around 700 million cubic metres of a 4.6 billion cubic metre total. It's a bad hit, but it's not…. We're bruised but not out.

Now, again, it depends on which community you live in. I showed you the graph previously, and I want to remind you that in the central Interior, it's more than a bruising. So it depends where you live.

Just to show you what transpired relative to expectations, this graph that I have up here is a graph that shows you the annual amount of volume killed in the timber-harvesting land base — mature volume over time — relative to what we expected in 2005.

The blue line is our expectation, and it's got that nice normal distribution to it, if you're of the sampling type. It's got that normal distribution.

In reality we experienced something that was much steeper. The infestation grew much faster than we expected, peaked, and then dropped faster than expected. So what we ended up with is a forest that has got…. You know, there was an awful lot of kill very, very quickly, and that wood, that fibre, is getting quite dated and getting quite difficult to use.

Had it progressed slower, we might have had more ability to actually harvest it. You can say the same for the markets in the U.S. having turned on us and not allowing us to harvest it as well.

If you look at the area underneath those two graphs — I know this is getting into the analytical part of me — the additional kill you see, in the red line above the blue line, is less than what we avoided by it dropping as fast. You can see that the red line then drops considerably below the blue. So in total, we are about 350 million cubic metres below what we expected to lose. So that's that.

If I show you the same graph, but cumulative — so now every year I take the kill from last year and add what we lose in the next year — you see the same trend. You can see that it took off faster. You can see the red line climbing faster than the blue line, but then trailing off considerably sooner. So that's the difference in trajectory between what we expected and what we have observed.

On this line, just for clarity, the solid line with the bigger squares on it is what we have seen. The dotted is the projected. You can see that the blue line was a projection for far longer than the reddish line, because the reddish line is what we experienced.

You can see it trailing off much faster, and you can see, because of the retraining of the model, that year over year it doesn't tend to kill much more. It has much more data to go on. It's a probability-driven model, and so it gets trained by what it's supplied in the way of behaviour.

I'm probably beating this a little bit, but I'm going to talk briefly about the outbreak behaviour in the 22 hardest-hit timber supply areas. We sort of split them into three categories to describe…. Now we're talking individual units again, rather than provincially.

We broke the 22 management units into three types. One is where the infestation increased much faster and higher than projected and then decreased much faster than projected; the second group, where it generally increased as we had projected but decreased slightly faster than we projected; and then the third group, where these units just didn't behave as modelled, up or down.

Now I'm going to show you a map that kind of categorizes that. You can see the whole central Interior where I show you the worst impacts. That's where the infestation increased much faster than we expected but decreased faster.

Then in the southeastern part of the province we really didn't have the beetle activity we expected. It didn't behave as modelled. That's where we have more terrain; we have more mixed species. We don't sort of have the Chilcotin Plateau. The model was just far more aggressive in there at the beginning than in reality what we experienced.

The yellow units are units where it kind of behaved more or less as expected. Morice and Robson Valley fall into those categories. Those are two units you're going to be visiting. Those units are not as hard hit as the central Interior, as we discussed earlier.

That sort of is your update on the current status of the infestation, and also, what we expected relative to what we experienced — sort of what we projected and what we experienced. Now I'm going to turn my mind to recent AAC determinations. The man responsible for these three determinations is in the room and will address any detailed questions that come up on this — eh, Jim?

Recently the chief forester decided it was time to start bringing the…. The AACs were increased in most of the central Interior units in response to the infestation in an attempt to get stands harvested and regenerated before
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they became unusable. The uptake for that uplift was somewhat hampered by the situation in the U.S. Then, more recently — and these are AAC determinations — as we discussed, we couldn't leave them the full ten years. We came back to them sooner.

Two things really happened with the revisitation. The uplifts were decreased somewhat to reflect the fact that, for one thing, we hadn't attained the harvest levels, and it wasn't time for them to increase any further given that we were coming to the…. The pine might be usable longer, as well, we were hoping. So the AACs came off a bit.

There were two things that happened. An AAC partition was also put in place. So you can see there is a partition on the non-pine. The reason there's a partition on the non-pine is that that's the stuff we're trying to protect. We're quite happy to have people harvest the pine and harvest it aggressively. What we want to not see is too much non-pine harvest, because if people don't focus on pine harvest in the near-term, they can hammer the mid-term.

So this is one thing I want to leave you with a sense…. I'm going to show you a graph in a minute. One of the things that became really evident from our early modelling was that the best way to protect mid-term was to stay out of mid-term wood. What I mean by that is that staying focused on dead pine stands and transitioning as late as possible is the number one way to improve mid-term.

If the province can do anything to facilitate the extension of the harvesting of dead pine and keep the focus…. First of all, you're getting the stands regenerated, but second of all, you're also reserving that remaining capital you need, or what we call reserving the mature growing stock, that is going to remain green. If you can stay out of it any longer, you're obviously going to have more to harvest in the mid-term.

The partitions ensure that an appropriate amount of non-pine is harvested. Most of the partition you see here, most of the contribution of non-pine is actually a by-product of harvesting pine stands. So every time you go into a pine stand, there is a component of non-pine, and it would fall into this non-pine partition. Actually, pine stands generate non-pine volumes.

Upcoming beetle unit determinations. We have Williams Lake on the horizon, 100 Mile and Mackenzie, and they have all been delayed just a touch to get the information together for this committee. They are all in play right now.

Let me come back to pine focus for a moment. Whenever you set an expectation for harvest, obviously you've got to monitor to see whether your expectation is being met. Four times now, we've published on pine-harvest performance in pine units.

The definition of pine units has evolved a bit over time. It's currently 28 units — 22 TSAs and six TFLs. What you see here is the trend in pine focus. You can see that it climbed reasonably well from 2001 to a high in, I think, 2009, and it's trailed off the last two years. This is an interesting trend. Obviously, some licensees and some management units are starting to have a hard time getting at pine for whatever reason.

The details are actually underneath this. There are 28 units that contribute to this. For example, some of the TSAs have just harvested all of their pine. They've got no pine to harvest any longer, so they're moving out of pine into non-pine. I think, also, that it's got to do with licensees struggling with pine and choosing to harvest a bit less.

The last point you see on this chart I only saw a week ago. I haven't got the details on which units are the ones that are changing in terms of performance. Our normal pattern would be to contact the districts, find out what's going on and figure out whether redetermination is required or whether a partition is warranted or meeting with licensees to discuss it or whatever. We do this on an annual basis.

Last year there was just that first hint. This year it looks like it's continuing, so we're going to have to be pretty diligent here. Again, the desire is to harvest as much pine as possible for as long as possible. Markets haven't been helping us out.

How we make out in the short term will ultimately define this mid-term. The chart I have up here is the provincial timber supply forecast. You'll be looking, generally, at management unit level forecasts. What this is, is a composite of 72 management units. The timber supply forecast — the base case, we call it, and you'll be getting familiar with that language on Wednesday — is the rollup of those 72 units.

This is not smooth. That's why it looks kind of jaggy, because we're not running the whole province. We're running each unit individually, and they all have their own characteristics. Then we put them all together to give you a sense of what the provincial picture is.

You can see the coast has a fairly…. This forecast looks like it's somewhere around the 17 million mark, declining to something close to 15 million, but it's very gradual. There is lots of uncertainty as to whether that could be flatter or it could be a little bit steeper over time. It depends on how we make out with the coastal industry and the economics on the coast.

Then you have the Interior forecast, which is in green. You can see that it has a bit of precipice to it. It starts high, and then it declines. Part of that is the removal of uplifts that were put in place to harvest pine. We get back to the pre-uplift level, and then we decline a little bit into the mid-term.

I'll talk about the provincial total now. If you look back in the state of the forest report, originally there was some falldown in some coastal management units and the like. By the time Larry got through TSR 2, the AAC for the province was somewhere around the 70 million mark,
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and it was reasonably stable.

It might have dipped down to 69 million or something like that, but it was pretty flat — 68 million, whatever — over time. It looked a lot flatter than what you see here. Now you take a look at the current AAC, and with the uplifts for beetle that are still in place it sits at 78.3 million.

The pre-uplift level, like I talked about, before we had the beetle was about 70.5 million. We just used that 1999 figure. The current harvest in 2011 was approximately 60 million. We're projecting that the mid-term….

I want to be clear, again, that there are a range of assumptions in there. One of them is how long licensees can stay in pine. As we talked about, the sooner they exit, the lower this mid-term will be. We're estimating it at around 58 million. It's below, actually, where we harvested in 2011, for clarity. That's where we're headed.

Of course, if you look at it in each management unit, that makes this summer much, much more dire. You'll be seeing some of those on Wednesday. We'll be looking at them individually. Some don't look so bad. You know, you look at Morice, and it looks pretty good. If you look at Lakes, which is the next unit over — not so good.

The devil's in the details of the different units. That's where you sort of get the sense of what it is you're walking into when you walk into a community. I'm just giving you that sort of big, big provincial picture.

Another thing to remember here is that the Interior harvest year on this…. It says the mid-term for the Interior is somewhere around 41 million or 42 million. I don't remember the exact number. The harvest last year for the Interior was close to 49 million, because of just the discrepancy between harvests on the coast and in the Interior.

We're harvesting quite a bit above what this mid-term will be for the Interior, if this comes to pass. Of course, this is without mitigation activities and the like. I guess the rest of the harvest, the $11 million, was off the coast.

Back to what I was saying earlier, B.C. is not out of the forestry game. It's still a big player in forestry. But there is pain in the Interior, and in some management units it's going to be considerable. I'm going to conclude, and then you can ask me some questions. Hopefully, we can get things clearer.

I concluded that it appears that the ultimate impact of the infestation will be less than initially forecast, but it's over when it's over. It's still progressing out there. It's important to realize that the infestation has progressed differently relative to initial projections in different parts of the province. I think it's really important to understand where the infestation really hit and where it didn't hit. The devil's in the details of where exactly you are in the province.

You know, the ministry has pursued opportunities to utilize dead pine stands and preserve mid-term supply. Our number one focus is, really, I believe — and the big push has been — to try and get the dead pine harvested and get stands reforested. A lot of activity has gone in there. We really haven't moved in…. Really, this committee is now starting to grapple with what to do with regard to the mid-term. The short-term focus was on harvesting pine and AAC uplifts and the like.

The last thing I was going to conclude with is that AACs have started to come down. They'll continue to do so over time as licensees cannot make use of pine any longer.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you very much. I've got a list, as people were going through — quite a few hands coming up.

Referring to the Okanagan supply area. You've got it as yellow, which is less than 16 percent of the total timber supply. In our area pine made up about 28 or 29 percent of the total volume. So it's relatively low impact. Although, of course, everybody's harvesting pine.

I go from that, and I go to the slide that talks of the AACs and so on — the decrease — and then the portion of that decrease that's in the non-pine use.

My concern would be — and, hopefully, this has all been taken into consideration — that to some degree, in order to stay viable, the operators have got to have some more high-value product to sell. As you've commented, as the shelf life decreases on this pine, it becomes less valuable, both as a sawlog and then even into bioenergy stuff.

Is that all factored into this? You know, you can only continue to run it for a while when your product costs more than it's worth. So are we factoring that in as well, or is it just simply a math exercise to sort of keep the thing good on paper, if you will?

J. Snetsinger: Eric, I was the chief forester during the determination period for these units and the Okanagan. When I put partitions in, I had extensive discussions with the licensees and staff about how much non-pine we needed to have in the mix. As you well point out, they have customers that require certain grades of timber and certain types of timber, whether it's for plywood and peeler plants or whether it's different grades for the home improvement market or the Japanese market, etc.

I tried to take all those things into consideration and talk to them about what they might need and still maintain a focus on pine, and to look at some of the historic non-pine performance in the face of the mountain pine beetle. It wasn't a precise science, but it was certainly taken into consideration. So the answer is yes.
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You know you need a viable industry coming out the back end of this infestation, and one of the ways to do that is to continue a diet, albeit somewhat decreased, of the non-pine. But you need to maintain that viability, not only to deal with the pine epidemic now but to have an industry at the back end of the infestation.

H. Bains: So that I understand these numbers here, you have provincial numbers. I see the 2011 harvest was 60 million cubic metres, but what is the…? Are there projected numbers, going forward?

A. Nussbaum: Well, we don't project AAC, and the reason we don't project allowable annual cut is that it's a determination, not a calculation. So what you have here is a forecast, a timber supply forecast. I guess it is your projection of what harvest is available. This is the "Harvest is available" graph. You can see it's declining. What that tells you is that when the chief, who has to struggle with these 72 units, comes back, my expectation is that the annual allowable cut will drop.

It doesn't follow these exactly because, again, some of what he has to determine is mathematical in nature and some of it is more of a consideration, socioeconomic. So it's a determination. We tried to make that distinction before.

You can see that this has got a fair decline to it, so my expectation is that allowable cuts will decline as well, and they have been. You can see they're already heading down. This is the 2010 graph, and we're well below 80 million now, so that tells you that these forecasts are actually being borne out.

H. Bains: Although we have 78.3 million cubic metres of current AAC, only 60 million is being harvested in 2011?

A. Nussbaum: Correct. But it's not necessarily in the right places. That's sort of, Harry, what I tried to allude to before. The current AAC in the Interior is probably, I'm thinking, about maybe 58 million, and we cut 49 million of that. I'm guessing a little bit.

J. Snetsinger: The point I was going to make is that yes, the AAC, the allowable annual cut, is at 78.3. That's available for harvest, but it's really economics, the market conditions of the day, that drive how much will actually get harvested. What you're seeing is the discrepancy between what's allowable and what the market is saying they want. That's reflected in the harvest level.

H. Bains: I understand that. So is it…? I mean, there may be a couple of areas why…. When we talk about economics, one could be that there's no market for the product that they're producing. Or is it economically unviable to harvest because it maybe is located in an area that's not economical to get to? Is that a combination of both?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Those two things are also interlinked in a manner that the product price, of course, the market price of the product, has a huge impact — how much the industry can spend on the costs of producing that product. When we have higher market prices, the industry has ability to go to stands that they currently, with these low prices, can't go to. They can't generate the margin there. So those two are also very much interlinked.

H. Bains: I'm just trying to understand this picture here, being out of the forest industry for about ten years now — seven years. Given the right economic picture, 18 million cubic metres is there available if the price is right, and because the price is right, they're able to economically go and harvest — right? It all depends on the market price of the product that they're producing.

A. Nussbaum: I would say that's correct, yeah. If you had a better market, you'd suck up the difference.

I want to tell you how quickly things change. In 2009, for example, Harry, we cut barely over 40 million. We're now at 60 million. It wouldn't take a lot to get back up to 78 million. But what we need to understand is that in the central Interior a lot of…. I think we've been getting closer to harvesting the full AAC than we have been, say,
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on the coast.

It depends where you are in the province. In fact, if you go to the Merritt TSA, one of the timber supply areas you are going to be visiting, they have been cutting the AAC every single year without fail right through the downturn. So every unit is different.

Whether they're cutting the AAC or not, you have to kind of know the numbers in the unit that you're in. It's very specific to the unit. And it depends on the amount of competition you have on the unit, the type of milling infrastructure, the diversity, if you have reman. All that kind of stuff defines how elastic or inelastic the demand is.

L. Pedersen: Could I just add one further comment as well. I think you're generally correct in your assertion that it's market forces and it's raw economics that determine the actual harvest response to the allowed harvest. Generally, that's correct. But I would also point out that with each passing year, where that gap exists and it's not harvested, the merchantability of that volume is in decline.

It's not like it's sitting there in the bank and, gee, if market forces improve all of a sudden, we'll have all of this surplus inventory. The merchantability of that inventory is declining because the trees are dead, and they're starting to lose value to decay and fire and wind and other factors that are affecting the economic availability of the stock in addition to market forces. It's just important to keep track of that.

H. Bains: Right. What comes out of that is a question. Do we know what is available? What is merchantable or not? Do we know what has been…? It's there, but we don't know how much is harvestable?

L. Pedersen: That's why you do go back and do the periodic — either annual or five-year — updates to look at just exactly what has changed with respect to the stand dynamic, what's happened with the infestation. The forecasting that Albert showed that updated on an annual basis the response to mountain pine beetle does try to take into account what's happening with merchantability and shelf life, as it's called.

A. Nussbaum: I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for, Harry. I'm sorry. I'll tell you what that number is. To me, what does the 78.3 million cubic metres represent? It represents the chief forester's view of what the available wood is over a full business cycle.

It's a maximum. It's not to be exceeded, but you can harvest less. If economics define that you want 60 million, you take 60 million of it. We're not forcing people to harvest. If they can't make money, they don't harvest. We don't force anyone to harvest. I think the 78.3 million is an assessment of what we think can be actioned over a normal business cycle. When you're in a low, like we have been for the last three or four years, you'll tend to track below it, and when times are good, you'll track above it.

H. Bains: I get that that was the answer previous to my question. But I'm trying to get to what happened to the 18 million cubic metres. I'm just hearing from Larry that it may not be that the entire 18 million cubic metres is available because of the disease and decay — and other reasons, maybe, why it's not 18 million. It probably is 16 million or maybe 15 million. I just want to know what those numbers might be that might be available, given this shelf life and all those conditions.

J. Snetsinger: It's my understanding — and Albert, you can correct me if I'm wrong — that we can provide information about how much of that beetle…. We know the year that it was killed by management unit. We know how much is harvested, and therefore, we know how much has been left. Therefore, we can make estimates on its biological shelf life and its economic shelf life.

H. Bains: Okay. That's good. Just so that we know. I think, at the end of the day, we are making some decisions based on what's available out there — right? That's what this committee will be doing.

Can you move down, then, to the Interior? If you could break down and give us those numbers — current AAC and pre-uplift and also what 2011 harvesting levels were?

A. Nussbaum: Okay. I can do that in my head in general terms. If you want precision, it's going to take a little bit of time. Pre-uplift was roughly 50 million — okay? I'm using an approximate there. I spoke to 70 million — 50 million of that Interior and 20 million coast, give or take. That's my approximation there. Then I said the harvest last year was 49.2, so it's roughly the historic average of what the AAC would have been.

A. Nussbaum: The current AAC on the…. It looks to me to be about….
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A. Nussbaum: It's a little more than that, I think, Jim, because the coast isn't 20 anymore. If we go 17, 17.5 coast, then it would leave about 63, 62 — do you think? Am I there, Jim? It's close.

H. Bains: And what does this line show, the lower end of the green line? Is that 41, you said?

A. Nussbaum: That represents where we think we're going. So if 50 was where we were.... Then, of course, we've got uplifts — right? So at the end of the day, we think we're headed to about 41, 42.

H. Bains: All right. Now, having all those numbers.... That's what the AAC is and what the current is and what the future forecast is — where we're going.

H. Bains: How does that compare to the sawmilling capacity in the Interior, for example?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: We have that information. We just don't have it with us, and we are actually putting it together on a management unit level. It's always tricky. It depends on whether they are running two shifts or three shifts at any given time, and so on, but I would have to actually check the number for how close it gets to it.

H. Bains: But their running two shifts or one shift depends on economics. I'm talking about the capacity. I think normally, they're looking at two shifts year-round, aren't they?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yeah, and we can extract that from our mill survey data. We just don't have it with us.

J. Rustad (Chair): Harry, I'm just going to interject, being quite familiar with it right now, that many of the mills are running three shifts, in terms of capacity. So the normal capacity, pre–pine beetle, was two shifts and you would only go to a third shift under great economic conditions when you were trying to really capitalize on market pricing.

Companies have since, for the most part, gone to three shifts in many of the mills, so that utilization capacity of a mill may have changed today from what it was in the past. It would be pretty hard to nail down an exact number in terms of what that capacity is.

H. Bains: No, I get that. I'm trying to get us some estimates here of what was the pre–pine beetle capacity, which is two shifts, and of what the forecasts are. Normally, probably there will be two shifts. This is an anomaly — you know, the three shifts.

I just want to see where we were at pre–pine beetle capacity level and where we're going with the forecast. What will that actually do to those mills with the lower AAC and where we're going?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yeah, we can provide that information. We do a periodic mill survey where we collect that type of information, and we can provide that.

J. Rustad (Chair): If I may, just around that line of questioning, part of what we'll need to look at, of course, is what the percentage drop is. I know we saw, for example, in the Morice it was going to be 16 to 30 or whatever it was. In the Lakes it's a larger number.

One of the things that I think we'll need as a committee is sort of a number breakdown by supply area. I don't know if that's going to be part of the presentation tomorrow when we look at options or whether we're going to get to that later today. It's just so that I know. For example, the projection in the Prince George supply area is going to go from its current cut of around ten million cubic metres, what the annual allowable cut is currently, down to something of just over six million.

It's going to be important for us to know what the magnitude of that is, because an average-sized mill — for example, the mill that was destroyed in Burns Lake — consumes about a million cubic metres a year. That will kind of partially answer the question, I think, that Harry's trying to get to in terms of what the capacity is and what we are looking at, in terms of that shortfall.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: The timber supply information we have for management units. The mill survey is by forest district, how we can separate it, but in most cases you can match them up quite well.

H. Bains: I just want to add that it's not just the sawmills. I'm talking about every use of that fibre — what it was near then and on a going-forward basis as well, the capacity versus the available AAC.
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S. Laaksonen-Craig: In most instances, of course, it is the sawmilling sector that does their harvesting, and many other users use the residuals from sawmills to a large extent. But the report will have, also, those users, and it also does the breakdown of where the fibre supply for different users comes from — whether it's logs or whether it's residuals and so on. We'll provide that.

A. Nussbaum: Of course, Harry, I can provide the table that created that graphic. I thought I had it appended to the back of this presentation, but I don't. I'm kind of irritated by that.

A. Nussbaum: I kept it. I knew the question would come up. You know: "Greater than 46 percent. Tell me about greater than 46 percent." It might be on my memory stick here somewhere, but I'll make sure that I endeavour to get that table, because it is important.

You will be getting that kind of information for sure when we go into the briefing on Wednesday. As an overview summary table, I think it has some value. It gives you that equating kind of a sense very quickly. I'll make sure that I get the absolute…. We did it in classes, and they're our own. We chose them for communications purposes, but I'll get you the actual numbers.

H. Bains: Of course. There's a reason why we want to look at timber supply — right?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, just to come back to these numbers. When we first started as a committee, one of the first questions I had was around the information that's been provided here.

If you could go to, I think it was, the fourth slide, which is the current status. I see Mr. Walton is here, so he can perhaps explain this.

I think the source for this information — and I don't see it here, but I think it's in another file — was version 9 of the B.C. mountain pine beetle model, as well as some ground testing. What I have, of course, is version 8, so it could be part of the explanation.

The document that I have, which was the basis for the statement at the beginning, was from June 22, 2011. I guess I first became aware of it…. There was a question in estimates, there have been public statements made about this information. Of course, the information frames everything that we do.

In the document that I referenced — this, of course, is version 8 — it's on page 12 and page 13. In terms of the more optimistic kill rates that we're looking at going forward, that was prepared, as I understand it, by computer modelling done by Mr. Walton, and it's referred to as the B.C. mountain pine beetle project. In any case, there were caveats that were put upon use of the information.

Maybe just some explanation. I'll read into the record from page 13. It talks about a projection that this B.C. mountain pine beetle project made for the Prince George forest district, and the projection, the computer model, said that a figure of 63 percent of mature merchantable pine, in the mountain pine beetle, would be killed off.

Then the caveat is that ministry staff in the Prince George district estimate the current loss to be between 85 percent and 90 percent. It goes on to say that the figures should be used carefully.

If you look at the listing of caveats on page 14, it says that the current mortality estimates are based entirely on an analysis, the provincial aerial overview of forest health, and that these estimates are essentially unverified.

I guess the question I have…. Again, as a layman, when you hear or see something like this, you're wondering: are the estimates accurate, or are we looking at a rosy picture of what's going on, or is there something that I don't understand?

Like I say, this is version 8. Version 9, there may be some ground proof in. The other part is…. Again, it's just people speaking to me, so I have no way of knowing whether it's accurate or not. But others who are from within the ministry that are working in different districts say that there are similar mortalities. So if you go to other districts that are highly impacted, they're saying: "Hey, we're up in 80 and 90 percent, we think, or something like that." That's completely anecdotal.

It might be irrelevant because of that, but certainly, when this was put together, there was concern that what is estimated here may be a rosy picture compared to what is there on the ground.

I guess the question is: have we a sort of ground truth that's a proper expression, these projections, or are they estimates that you feel are legitimate and worthwhile considering? Or do we have to, when we look at these numbers, bear in mind that it could stretch anywhere from, hopefully, in the neighbourhood of 58 percent, but it could be 80 or 90 percent too?

I guess that's a wide enough area for you to jump in and just give some explanation for what appears to be confusing.

A. Walton: I'll come to the point that you brought up about the comment from staff in Prince George. I put that comment in there just to highlight that it could be different than what we're projecting from the model. The model is a provincial-level estimate, and we've broken it
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down in places to the management unit. But there is still uncertainty around those estimates, and it can vary from what we're estimating.

I'd say on a provincial level, we're probably within five percent — guessing five percent — within what we're estimating. As you get to a smaller and smaller unit, the error is going to get wider and wider, so at a management unit level we might be 10 percent out.

But coming to the caveat that we haven't verified this, that caveat was put in there because we haven't gone through and intentionally put together a ground-truthing program to measure this. We've done some estimates or comparisons with other mountain pine beetle estimates of kill. They've done their own estimates of how much has been killed on the land base, using satellite imagery — a different approach completely.

When we try to compare those together, they're reasonably similar. So that sort of backs up. We go: "Okay, that's great. That different type of analysis is coming up with a similar estimate that we have." But we haven't actually gone through and done some ground-truthing on our own to verify these results.

Yeah, like John Pousette, who I reference here — he did have concerns that he was seeing higher levels of kill. We've pulled together some other data sets and ground-truth data from Prince George, and it looks like, based upon that, it's around 85 percent from those of data sets that are seeing kill rates.

But in the Vanderhoof and Fort St. James district, which is adjacent to it, in talking to the forest stewardship officer there, who is similar to John Pousette, he's saying that actually in that area we're seeing similar to what the mountain pine beetle spread model is showing. I didn't put that in there, but I was just trying to highlight the fact that there is going to be a difference from what we're projecting.

These are approximations. When we say 63 percent, you know, that's probably higher precision than what is realistic. It's not going to be 63 right on the nose. There are going to be variations around it, definitely.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): You had talked about variations of 5 to 10 percent. But what you've highlighted — and perhaps it's the worst example — is between 22 and 27 percent of variance. I guess where I'm coming from is that on the ground, whatever the projection is, it doesn't really make any difference. But when we're framing a discussion, it becomes complicated.

Since I'm a layman, I can speak for myself. When I see data, I will either trust it or I won't trust it. And what's difficult for me is always where I see something that…. And I think others have gotten over the period of what's gone on that I just have sometimes a basic lack of trust.

When it's presented in a certain way, why is there not a fuller explanation of the range that we're talking about, and then I can accept it? But when there's this variance, then it starts to feel like we're putting forward a rosy picture, when I don't think that for communities involved before the group there's any point to that.

I get it, from a political level — so it's there in the press release. I get that. But I don't understand why we would go…. I certainly hope we would never go to the public and put a rosy view…. Like, it has to be laid out…. And like I say, for me, there's not really a grey area. You either question or you don't, and it's just damaging when there's something that I can't get my head around. I take your point that it's an estimate, but we did choose the rosier picture. Or maybe not. Maybe that's….

But I know there are others that want to jump in. I know that Albert and Jim probably want to add….

J. Rustad (Chair): If I may, Adrian and Albert, I'm going to let Jim go in first here, and then we'll come back to you guys.

J. Snetsinger: Just a quick comment. The bullet on the slide that says the 2012 model projects 58 percent kill by 2021 — that's a provincial-level number. And within that provincial-level number, which is a rollup of all the management units combined, there will be a projection for the Prince George timber supply area, including the Prince George forest district.

So, Adrian, what would you have used in a 2012 model for the Prince George forest district or TSA? I know the TSA is so large, but what level of kill would you have used for the Prince George?

A. Walton: The projected for Prince George is 63. Basically, we're saying that it's done, that it's not going to progress any further.

A. Walton: Yeah, that's the pine component. When John Pousette is making that comment, he's referring to the Prince George district, not to the TSA.

J. Snetsinger: Right, so that's where the discrepancy lies — the projection right now between what you've used
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in the modelling and what the district staff are seeing on the ground. But likewise, there are some projections in Vanderhoof and Fort St. James where the model is pretty well correlated with what's going on, on the ground.

A. Walton: Yeah. Based upon their observations, they're seeing similar to what the model is showing.

J. Snetsinger: The other thing I was just going to point out very quickly is that I've heard anecdotally where some of the MPB mortality projections, or where operational staff are going into stands, where the level of mortality isn't quite as high as they saw — some of the areas in the western part of the Quesnel TSA.

However, the caveat to that is that there is still a lot of mortality; it just might not be as high as they once thought. So it's a bit of a mixed bag in some areas.

A. Walton: Yeah. Can I just follow up on Norm's comment? The model is run, and we produce results from it. That's what we report out. The model varies over…. It adjusts to new observations when new aerial overviews are flown. That new information is collected, and the model sort of learns from that new information, and we report out the results. There's no bias on our part to….

We're not given a range, and we choose the low end of the range or the high end of the range. This is what the model said. Sixty-three percent of the Prince George has been killed and will be killed — of the pine component.

You're saying about trying to paint a rosier picture. That's never an intention on our part.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Actually, I know that. As politicians, you — and even on some cases, I might be guilty — choose a number that suits your case. I guess the point I would make is that perhaps as we go into communities, all of us have to sort of guard against doing that. I'm not saying staff have done that at all.

I catch your point that that's the estimate that you have. The caveats…. We could be here all day if you're trying to read full reports of everything that you did. I do think that, as much as possible, we need to lay out the scenarios for communities that are as accurate as possible.

A. Nussbaum: Yeah, I think I want to just wrap with one idea, and it's really not about the…. I think the problem with…. When you're working at the landscape level like we do, where there is a lot sampling involved and a lot of projecting and so on, the idea of ever having certain data kind of needs to be erased from your mind. There isn't a right answer and a wrong answer; there is a range of possibilities.

If we weren't clear enough in the publication that that's the case, then that's our mistake. The data you have will be an estimate — in many cases, almost everything you're looking at — and it will have an error bound associated with it.

You should work with these two fellows extensively to get a sense for that error bound, because that's what they do. Because they can't get it to the fourth decimal place, they work every day in that realm of, "Okay, the estimate is this, and it has an error bound of around 10 percent, so what does that mean to what I'm going to do" — right? I think that's really a key feature of what it is you guys are going to be contending with.

I know that's probably not the norm for you. I know the numbers you get are usually probably very precise, but unfortunately because of the nature of the science we're in, it's going to be kind of like that. There's going to be an estimate, and there's going to be a degree of uncertainty. I think the key is to understand that uncertainty which we've highlighted with this number and to make sure that your decision-making kind of reflects the fact that it's plus-minus.

I'd just ask you to think about that the whole time you're working on this project, because it is that important.

E. Foster: On this very thing. When we go into the communities…. It will be a request. To Norm's comment, we're dealing with, like, a lot of provincial numbers and so on.

But when we go to, gosh, Burns Lake, 100 Mile — it doesn't matter where we go — and tell people that 53 percent of the pine component is going to be killed and they haven't seen a live tree in two days of driving, it kind of hits to the credibility.

If, when we go to the communities, we could certainly have all these numbers, because the whole provincial overview is extremely important…. But if we could really have, as much as we can, a little more local picture so that when we talk about a certain timber supply area or management area…. We've got the numbers for that as well. I know we have them, because that's how you built this.

If we could have that and have that part as part of our presentation along with the overview picture, I think it gives us a lot more credibility when we're sitting at the table with people.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Committee members will be provided TSA management unit level summaries, which have all this information by management unit. So those are kind of like the backgrounders we will provide for you.

E. Foster: If that's possible, that would be great, because it's going to make it a lot easier for us to have a look at it and discuss when we meet with the local people.
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J. Rustad (Chair): If I may, Susanna. So we'll have that information as part of our discussion tomorrow, or is that going to be information that we'll have available before we go on tours on the 18th?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: We can bring them for the Wednesday discussion. There might be some piece still missing, because we are busily working on those. But they are as final as we can provide at this point. If there a few numbers that…. We are then going to go ahead and add.

It actually might be useful. When you see them, you might have suggestions what other information those summaries should include, and we can then go ahead and do that.

J. Rustad (Chair): Good, because I agree with both Norm and Eric's point, that when we go to communities, they need to know sort of what the situation in their particular TSA is to put things in context as to why we're there and why we're looking for the input.

I have two more speakers right now on the list, which are Bill and Ben. We have lunch that is available. So your choice, committee — would you like to go through the two speakers? Or would you like to take a break and come back? What would you like to do?

B. Routley: On this model, what this could tell a person, and maybe I'm mistaken, is that in the 2006 model we were projecting 80 percent killed, so there were alarm bells ringing to go out and harvest aggressively. Then in the latest model, the 2012 one, it's only 58 percent, so it's a little more than half. It's certainly significant, but it's not as dramatic.

I've often wondered. When I was up north and saw some of the ranches in the Chilcotin that had vast areas that were harvested surrounding them, and the ranchers were complaining about being hit too hard, the original intention was only about a third under the land use plan of the land around their ranch was supposed to be harvested, and they were telling me that it was in the range of 80 percent to 90 percent that was harvested.

Were we, really, in hindsight, too aggressive in increasing the AAC to deal with a problem that today, with the fullness of time, shows that we have less of a problem than we thought we had — is, I guess, what I see in this information.

The other thing is: could you tell us…? Do you want me to ask kind of a series of questions, and then you can answer them?

B. Routley: The material shows the amount being killed dropping dramatically. What I didn't hear offered was an explanation as to how that kill ended and why. I assume it wasn't weather-related. It may have been the volume of fibre available. Then, on the other hand, with this new projection and the lower number, that tells me there's still good, munchy forest out there for them to chew on, so why did it fall so dramatically?

If there's still 42 percent of the volume available for the beetles to chew on, why did they stop chewing?

The other one is…. I've been out there and seen areas that are five-year-old — well, mostly ten- and 20-year-old — young stands that have been aggressively attacked by beetle. In some cases up to 50 percent of the stand of a 20-year-old stand is taken by pine beetle.

So when we're talking about these reductions, are we also including future forests, like those younger stands or of variable age, all the way up to…? Obviously, they're still part of the growing future forests, but they're not part of the harvest today.

Very clearly, in terms of what we're concerning ourselves with — and that's timber supply — we ought to be very diligent in looking at the growing forest land base and the potential impact that's there with the beetle kill. So I'd like to hear more about that — about the younger, second-growth stands. Again, at the various conferences I've heard people raising the issue of stand mortality in younger stands.

Lastly, the non-merchantability. It's one of the things I've come away with from just the last few days of discussing this. I know I heard out in the field, talking to mill owners…. They talk about the increasing costs once you get beyond 100 kilometres from a mill — you know, the merchantable viability of accessing the timber.

That could explain the difference between the AAC that we have available as a province and what's actually harvested. It is obviously market-related but also would be related to the merchantability of going and harvesting those trees.

In the communities that are the focus of this group, do we have some kind of information available in terms of the 100-mile snapshot of merchantability around all of the local manufacturing plants? What has been our experience as a province in the 100-plus miles? Once you get beyond the non-merchantability issue, once you start getting too far out to pay for the cost of transportation or to send equipment out to actually harvest the logs, do we have some idea of what's out there?

I know that changes based on economics, if some of the wonderful things that Russ Taylor is telling us come true…. He is projecting great things. We can hardly wait. We're told that things are going to get better, but right now we were focused on these regions.

A. Nussbaum: I'm going to hit the ones that I think are a little quicker, and then we'll see where we get to.

Let's start with ten- to 20-year-old stands. I'm going to start with those first. What we're talking about is young second-growth stands — stands that are currently not merchantable. Do the timber supply forecasts that we're about to present to you accommodate the fact that they've been impacted?

The answer is that we've done surveys in those stands and they are on a growth curve that, to the best of our ability, reflects the impact and damage that those stands have experienced. So we have attempted to accommodate the fact that these stands have seen some beetle kill. That would be the way I would answer that question.

Whether we've got it nailed or not — that's a little trickier. It is important to mid-term because, as I told you before, the stands that are going to define mid-term are ones that are already in the ground. They're already growing.

The stuff we plant today isn't going to be around for a while, so this is a very important aspect. That's that for that question.

The next question is with regard to distance. We have some information in the presentation we're going show you on Wednesday that talks about distance. We do consider…. Prince George in particular had quite a bit of cost work done on it in the determination, but it varies a bit by the management unit you're in.

When you're in a unit…. Some units are fairly small, so the cycle times are not quite as extensive, and they don't have lakes all over them and other water bodies or hills or mountains or whatever that preclude access. So 100 Mile, for example, is quite an accessible unit.

Then you take something like Prince George with Fort St. James, and you've got to consider cycle time because it is enormous and it also has a lake and all sorts of other…. We have some of that information, and hopefully, you can get a sense for it.

To be honest with you, it's a possibility that some of our forecasts might be a bit off — optimistic in the sense that when you're going out to harvest an impacted stand, one that has death in it and some aging trees, we want them to stay in pine as long as possible. But their ability to do that, the economics of that…. It's difficult to define how far they can drive to pick up a dead pine stand, and it will always be.

It'll be a trick for this committee on how they consider that. It's going to be a real challenge for all of us. You know, it's kind of like you have a declining asset and the cost of getting to it, plus the market price all sort of works together to define whether it's operable on any given day. So that's tricky, but we'll talk more about it on Wednesday.

With regard to the first question you had, which was really: would we do it again? Would we put an uplift? Most of our uplifts are targeted in areas where we experienced pretty high levels of mortality. We didn't put them in or we didn't put in as extensive an uplift in units that didn't experience an awful lot of kill.

I've debated that very question personally many, many times. The problem is you get a community used to a higher level of fibre, and then it has to come off because the wood is no longer usable. We could probably debate that at length.

J. Snetsinger: It's an important question and, you know, from my perspective as the chief forester, I did put in uplifts where I thought it was necessary to action and salvage as much dead pine as possible as quickly as possible. There were a number of reasons for that.

One is to get the areas harvested and growing again with a healthy green forest and get them on a managed-stand yield table, which is much different. If we didn't harvest at the rate we did, many of them would regenerate naturally, but they would have been on a much longer regeneration curve. It would have taken a lot longer.

By harvesting them, we have a one- to two-year regeneration delay, and we're now replanting with genetically improved stock and our growth rates will be much better than if they had regenerated naturally.

So from a long-term fibre potential and perspective I think it was the right thing to do. Then, there were some areas of the province, like the Cranbrook-Invermere and some other areas, the Boundary, where we had significant infestations, but as the chief forester of the day I never made a determination that it was required for an uplift in those areas for a whole host of reasons — topography; the rate of the infestation; licensees were doing a good job controlling it.

We put them in where we thought it was needed and didn't put uplifts in where we didn't think it was required.

B. Routley: He didn't answer the question about why the beetle died off so dramatically.

A. Walton: That's a good question. It's a question we've been asked quite a bit.

My answer that I've been giving is that there are two main reasons it hasn't gone to the 80 percent that we originally projected. One of the reasons is that the infestation in the area at the heart of the outbreak…. It had a lot of pine and it was very subdued terrain, easy pine needle dispersal.

In that area the pine beetle infestation increased a lot faster than the model originally projected. I can't remem-
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ber if Albert had a graph about it. I just showed…. Those areas increased a lot faster than we projected, and they decreased a lot faster than the model had projected. He was talking about the area under the curves.

In the end, more pine was left on the land base. It seems like what we've observed is that more pine has been left on the land base than the model had projected would be left on the land base. The original model wanted to chew away at a lot more pine.

The second reason there's more pine left on the land base is that the model projected that the mountain pine beetle would spread out from the heart of the outbreak — the Quesnel, Vanderhoof areas — and it would spread like a wave. When Marvin originally developed this model, he had these waves of mountain pine beetle, and it spread out like a ring of water from the….

A. Walton: Yes, like a tidal wave spreading out from the Interior, it spread across the whole province. But what we've observed is that it hasn't gone into the southeast portion of the province like it had been projected. Each year the model would say: "Okay, well, we think the mountain pine beetle has come into this area, and it's going to start increasing." But it just wouldn't materialize.

The mountain pine beetle hasn't come in. It's increased locally, due to good weather conditions locally, but there hasn't been this dispersal of mountain pine beetle from the Interior, which the model originally projected — that there would be this long-distance dispersal, that there'd be a lot of pressure built up in the Interior, and mountain pine beetle would start dispersing long distances down into this southeast portion. That just hasn't happened.

The local population grew a little bit, and it has since declined. That's another big impact. It hasn't grown as the model had projected. It hasn't had that in-migration of new mountain pine beetles. So a lot has been left in that area. Granted, that area doesn't have a lot of pine, to start with, compared to the Interior, but it was another influencing factor for why it hasn't grown like it had projected.

A. Nussbaum: Adrian, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think when I thought about it, too, the model grows the infestation based on all of what it accumulates in the way of knowledge, which is through these observations of what's happening.

Most of the observations initially were on the pine flats. They weren't on the periphery. So when it got into the periphery, where the stands were different — more mixed, more undulating, more varied terrain types — it took a while for it to get enough knowledge in that type to project it differently. So it treated those sort of peripheral stands, which were different, as if they were kind of like a pine flat stand.

That's my description of it. It's a bit awkward, but it's because it's based on what it knows and the probabilities that it projects for it. It doesn't have a landscape model under it that says: "You know, at this elevation, it's going to do exactly this." It's really just that the more observations it gets, the more it extrapolates from those observations and the smarter it gets. So that's the way I'd describe it.

A. Walton: There was evidence that it wasn't growing in this area, the southeast of the province. It wasn't behaving in the southeast part of the province as it was in the Interior. So a couple of years ago we did try to correct for this factor. We brought in some new ecological information so that it could start to separate. This area of the province is ecologically different than the Interior. That would influence the probabilities or the projected spread. That's helped to correct it, to some degree.

I think there's still some overestimation that's going on in the southeast of the province from the model's point of view or what it's projecting out. I wouldn't be surprised if that number projected comes down a little bit in the next couple of years still.

J. Snetsinger: Just going to Bill's real fundamental question, why did it peak, and why did it drop off so quickly? I'm not an expert in this, but the way I understand it and the way entomologists and people that know the population dynamics of insects a lot better than I do describe it is that this is an epidemic population.

This pattern has been seen, whether it's in western spruce budworm or many other insect infestations around North America or around the world, where the population builds exponentially, and then there are factors within that population related to intraspecific competition.

It basically gets to a point where that population can't sustain itself any longer, and it starts to fall off. It drops right off. Again, the government could bring you a more eloquent description of the population dynamics around the beetle and why that population peaked and why it fell off, but it's really around the way an epidemic population patterns itself, and that's what has really repeated itself again with the mountain pine beetle.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. I can remember very distinctly back in that period of time the number of beetles that were actually flying, in the 2003-2004 area. There were so many flying at one time, they actually showed up on Doppler radar. We're talking about beetles that are the size of a grain of rice, so you can imagine how many were flying at that time, in terms of that peak intensity that we saw.

We're going to go through one more question here before we go for a break.
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B. Stewart: The questions that I had — really, Bill asked a lot of them. But the one that I…. The understanding about pine beetle was that it didn't attack trees under 20 years of age. It didn't attack other species. You've just discounted one; they do attack in certain situations. Are the other species, like spruce and other things, under threat? Or do these things…? When they run out of food, they just kind of can't go anywhere? Is that species under threat?

The other question I'm going to ask…. I think about this epidemic and about the spread of it. I guess if we're looking at…. The numbers are still significant in terms of mid-term timber supply, even at the rate that we're forecasting down. Are there any intervention models that are reasonable or fiscally within a realm of possibility that might intervene to either extinguish or slow down the attack?

Mountain pine beetle is very specific to lodgepole pine, but there is a beetle for every tree. So the tricky part is that no beetle has the legend yet of mountain pine beetle, but there are other beetles active, and other mortality agents seem to be having a pretty good time, given the weather, too.

A. Walton: Yeah, the mountain pine beetle has attacked other species of pine. It's not just lodgepole, but that's the primary host — lodgepole pine. It's been attacking young yellow pine, and ponderosa pine have been attacked. I don't have the information in front of me about the breakdown of what's been lodgepole and what's been the other species of pine. It has killed young pines, as Bill mentioned.

I don't know if this is answering your question. But bringing it back to the modelling point of view, when we were trying to project out that information or project out the mountain pine beetle spread, the model did not allow young pine to be killed. It would attack young pine, but that would not then be a source for new pine beetles because they would die.

They might kill the young pine, which is an impact for timber supply, but as far as projecting out what will happen to the mountain pine beetle in the future, it's actually a sink for the mountain pine beetle. It goes into that young stuff — it attacks and kills the pine — but then the mountain pine beetle dies because it can't survive in such a thin bark. It usually dies through the winter.

The reason why we kept it out…. Originally, the mountain pine beetle model was not about seeing what the impact on timber was. It was seeing where the mountain pine beetle is going to go, how big the population is going to grow and where it's going to go, kind of thing. That's why the young pine was excluded from it.

J. Snetsinger: Just one other point I would point out, Ben, around your question: is spruce at risk from mountain pine beetle? You know, the researchers at UNBC have found that the mountain pine beetle has gone into spruce trees and successfully raised broods. Adults have flown from infested spruce trees, but it's the exception rather than the rule, and they only do that when they can't find a lodgepole pine tree to attack.

At the height of the infestation we have seen some spruce trees attacked, but very minimal compared to the amount of attack on our lodgepole pine. So it has happened. It's a known occurrence, and it's scientifically possible.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. We have one other question. Did you want to follow up, Ben?

B. Stewart: The whole issue about control…. The only reason being is that coming from dealing with insects and looking at numbers and parasitic insects that participate in that whole life cycle, we're quite used to kind of counting and identifying and looking at thresholds.

So from that point of view, like in the Prince George situation you mentioned, when all the pine is consumed, does the actual insect just die right there? Or is it trying to still fly? I know it's trying to move. But does it just kind of…? It stabilizes, and it's extinguished there?

J. Snetsinger: Well, usually when it runs out of the host, the population crashes. That's a basic population dynamic at play. I think your question was: is there a cost-effective methodology for controlling the pest?

That answer is kind of multifaceted. At endemic levels of the mountain pine beetle we've historically used a number of techniques to control mountain pine beetle — good early detection, using harvesting to harvest areas of infestation within stands before they grow, and then in areas that are inaccessible using falling-and-burn techniques, those kinds of things.

There has never been a cost-effective mechanism to either spray or do something like that over the size of the forest. This particular insect is quite different from the defoliators. This is a bark beetle, and it's quite a different animal than other insects in the forest.

J. Rustad (Chair): Good. With that, then, I suggest we take a recess of half an hour or perhaps less, depending on what people's preferences are. If that's okay with everybody, we'll take a recess till, let's say, one o'clock.

J. Rustad (Chair): Good afternoon, Members. This
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afternoon we're starting off with a presentation on government's response to the infestation.

Sorry, just before we get that.... I'd forgotten. My apologies, Donna. You had a question on the previous one, so you're up for a question.

D. Barnett: Just a couple of things. Back to the Chilcotin, which happens to be where I come from, and I've done a lot of work out there.

In essence, out in the ranchland in the Chilcotin a lot of the issues that are out there — I do have the evidence, because I deal with facts — were created not just by the pine beetle but by many, many things.

There's a mitigation plan being done out in the Chilcotin to assist some of the ranchers with some of the issues that have come because of climate change and some things that happened back in 1989 and that got worse during the '90s. I have studies here and studies where there was never any remediation done.

I just want clarification in the record that the issues out in the Chilcotin are much greater than just pine beetle. There are some really good mitigation plans being put in place. I've spent a lot of time out there. I spent a whole day last week out there with the ranchers throughout the particular area, the Twinflower Creek area, and the experts. It was a very good, positive tour, and the things that are being proposed are very positive — working with the communities, industry, Ducks Unlimited, hydrologists.

I just want people to know that the Cariboo-Chilcotin is alive and well, and we are continuously working together to improve and rectify the things that Mother Nature has caused some natural catastrophes in, and that humans have.

Were there any other questions, for a second round of questions, and reflection on the earlier presentation on the impact of the pine beetle, or shall we go into the next presentation?

Not seeing any other questions come forward, I will turn it over to Susanna for the presentation of the government's response to infestation.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Government's response to mountain pine beetle has not been only in the mandate of the Ministry of Forests. As a matter of fact, for the past few years the majority of these actions that we are going to see in this presentation have been part of the mountain pine beetle response branch's responsibility.

Gordon Borgstrom is the executive director of that branch and has spent many, many years working on this issue, so he's really the expert on the government response. From this side, the forestry side, we can then speak to the policy actions that pertain — for example, changes to the Forest Act, and so on and so forth.

D. Barnett: Excuse me just one minute, Mr. Chair. I'd just like to say that Mr. Borgstrom also is located in Kamloops.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Since one of the members over lunch asked who I am, actually, just as a short introduction, I am Susanna Laaksonen-Craig. As you can guess from my name, I'm originally from Finland, and I'm a professional forester in Finland. I also have a PhD in wildland resource science.

I have been with government since 2008, and I had the pleasure of working with Jim before he retired as executive director of the division. I've done a full tour of various divisions in the ministry. Before I came to government, I was an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

The presentation we have here for you today is about the response to the mountain pine beetle. The presentation is focused on government's response because we felt that that was appropriate, given the mandate of the committee. But clearly, there has been commensurate response from communities and industry and so on.

You will then have the opportunity to hear from all these groups when you go to the communities and when you have the provincial consultations. So we are not going to spend a whole lot of time on those.

Clearly, from the community perspective, it has been a wild ride, if you will, because while the epidemic has progressed, there was initially a kind of positive impact. People understood that there was probably an impending economic catastrophe at the end of this, but by responding and trying to harvest as much pine as possible through these uplifts, there was an increased level of activity in terms of harvesting.

This, of course, was tempered a few years ago, when the U.S. market essentially collapsed. This global recession has caused, then, of course, a lot of curtailments, closures of sawmills, and so on.

You saw earlier that Albert's presentation showed that in 2011 the harvest level was actually about 60 million cubic metres, roughly the same level as the prediction was that the provincial AAC would be going forward.

From an industry perspective, the forest industry, as we discussed earlier, has done a significant shift to harvesting pine. This has required changes to the forest stewardship planning. There have been efforts to develop new markets in China and elsewhere, and clearly, the harvesting has been concentrating in certain areas which have been pine-heavy.

In terms of technology, there has been significant progress in developing the technology to adapt, both
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on the harvesting and the manufacturing side, to smaller trees, dead trees and, in general, a poorer-quality resource than industry was used to.

Of course, the forest sector is not the only industry sector that has been impacted by this. Tourism, ranch and so on…. They all have had to adjust to the changing landscape, whether it's through the impact of the beetle itself or the harvesting activity that's happened on the land base.

In terms of the government presentation, this is not going to be a complete documentation of all the activities that have taken place. For example, I already mentioned the new market development. The presentation is not discussing, for example, the significant effort to develop these new markets, even though, clearly, having other markets to replace the American demand has helped this industry to continue to harvest the pine and therefore bring these dead stands back to production.

As I said, the reason why Gordon Borgstrom is on the line…. A significant amount of this activity in terms of response has been led from the pine beetle epidemic response branch, which is currently is with the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation.

You saw that in general, we have tracked the infestation since 1998-1999, as was shown, for example, in the previous presentation. The local forest industry was alive to this issue early on. For example, Cariboo Lumber Manufacturers Association, Northern Forest Products Association already set up, in 1999, a pine beetle emergency task force.

By 2001 the unprecedented nature of this epidemic was becoming very clear. The government caucus task force on the mountain pine beetle was announced by the Premier in June 2001. They held public meetings and solicited input from forest workers, interest groups, stakeholders and the general public.

The task force presented its recommendations to the Ministry of Forests in October 2001. Then in November 2001 the action plan was published. The plan stated: "This infestation is clearly a forest health emergency, one that is unprecedented and demands extraordinary measures."

The Ministry of Forests had already worked with industry to begin streamlining that ministration, addressing timber-pricing issues, making more volume available to harvest infested trees, and allocating resources and funds to facilitate effective control. However, due to the size of the epidemic and the expert opinion, the action plan acknowledged that the total control of the epidemic would require a combination of both human intervention and nature. Essentially, we were looking for and waiting and hoping for very cold winters.

The 2001 action plan was designed to control the epidemic, and it did recommend changes on how the epidemic was to be managed. This included better coordination through the appointment of a provincial bark beetle coordinator, harvesting dead pine to capture economic value, adapting wildfire management practices, assessing impacts on land use plans, and increased government funding. As you can see, the funding increased from $16.5 million in 2000-2001 to $36 million in 2001-2002.

The period of 2001 to 2004 was largely responding to the growing epidemic. This is the period when the province and the forest sector implemented the mountain pine beetle action plan 2001. As I mentioned, in terms of strategies, a part of the strategy was to aggressively curtail the spread of the beetle rather than simply wait for a cold winter.

The provincial pine beetle coordinator managed the action plan, and a director of economic diversification was assigned to support communities in their efforts to diversify their local economies.

As the epidemic was rapidly progressing, the Premier convened a special beetle symposium in Quesnel in November 2003. The symposium included representatives from communities, First Nations, academia, industry and government. They looked at opportunities to develop new forest products and markets, investing in rural economic development and tourism, and existing land use plans. They discussed all those matters.

In response to the issues identified in this symposium in Quesnel, in April 2004 the province issued a mountain pine beetle update action plan. The updated action plan recognized the changing nature and broadening implications of the epidemic.

While limiting further damage to forests and the environment was still an objective, more focus was placed on fostering new and emerging forest-based activities, recovering further value from damaged timber, and on support for economic development and diversity in those affected communities.

Furthermore, this updated action plan empowered the Minister of State for Forestry Operations to lead the action plan on behalf of the government, and this coordinated approached across the government was therefore assured.

The Minister's Community Advisory Group, which had a term of April 2004 to April 2006, was established to represent key stakeholder groups and to provide advice on the action plan. Members of this advisory group included representatives from communities, First Nations, the forest industry, the scientific community, logging contractors, the environmental sector and the federal government.

In terms, then, of the policy response, as was mentioned, there was increased harvesting activity in terms of trying to limit the spread of the beetle. This led to a situation where the capacity of local mills to process beetle-attacked timber was, at times, exceeded. Therefore, policy provisions were made to enable the trees to be hauled to other mills in other TSAs so that they could be processed.
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Further, to facilitate recovery of the economic value of the timber, the chief forester raised the allowable annual cut in nine timber supply areas and tree farm licences. These AAC uplifts created new economic opportunities, and several First Nations received timber-harvesting tenures.

The Forest Act was amended to enable government to designate mountain pine beetle salvage areas and to enable forest licensees within the salvage area to be restricted to priority areas of beetle-killed timber. Based on the 2004 action plan update, a number of large timber-harvesting licences were offered, designed to encourage the manufacture of new forest products.

In terms of funding, as mentioned, the 2001 action plan was designed to control the epidemic, and $107 million was invested in limiting the spread of the epidemic by destroying infested trees on the leading edges of the epidemic, using small-scale harvest to remove small patches of infested trees. Full-scale commercial timber harvesting was used to remove large infested stands before the beetles could fly to new trees.

In 2004 the province established the Northern Development Initiative Trust with $135 million. The act included provisions for the trust to invest in pine beetle response. Furthermore, in 2004 the province made a formal request to the government of Canada for a financial contribution to the pine beetle response.

The epidemic continued to grow, and in 2005 the Premier designated the issue a cross-government priority, directing each ministry with response capacity to make provisions in its service plan. The Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council appointed an assistant deputy minister to work across government and lead a new mountain pine beetle emergency response team, which included three community development directors who went to work with communities impacted by the epidemic.

Recognizing the growing complexity of the epidemic, the action plan was brought in to include seven objectives: (1) encourage immediate and long-term economic sustainability for communities, (2) maintain and protect work and public health and safety, (3) recover the greatest value from the timber before it burned or decayed while respecting other forest values, (4) conserve the long-term forest values identified in land use plans, (5) prevent or reduce damage to forests in areas that are susceptible but not yet experiencing epidemic infestation, (6) restore the forest resource in areas affected by the epidemic and (7) maintain a management structure that ensures effective and coordinated planning and implementation of mitigation.

The further update to the action plan in 2006 to 2011 furthered these same objectives. Furthermore, a new partnership was created when B.C. and Alberta announced the partnership to fight the epidemic, agreeing to jointly plan and execute control measures on their shared border.

As a response to the extreme wildfires experienced in 2003 and the subsequent Filmon review of those events, the province ramped up its partnership with the Union of B.C. Municipalities, First Nations Emergency Services Society, Parks Canada, and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to accelerate the planning, permitting, funding and treatment of wildfire fuel management risks near communities.

In April 2005, as we have discussed earlier — these beetle coalitions — the province announced the start of funding for the Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition to invest in the development and implementation of economic, environmental and social strategies to address epidemic impacts. In September 2005 the province and the government of Canada announced the start of funding for the Omineca Beetle Coalition and in April 2007 for the Southern Interior Beetle Action Coalition.

In terms of funding, in March 2005 the government of Canada transferred $100 million to B.C. to aid the efforts to fight the pine beetle. Funding was deployed in accordance with priorities agreed to with the government of Canada, including community diversification, reducing fire hazards near communities, wood products and biological research and development, and limiting the spread of the epidemic. There were earlier questions about the details of this, and now we can provide further details if desired.

In early 2007 the federal government announced it would invest through its own agencies an additional $2 million in pine beetle mitigation in B.C. The federal priorities included limiting the spread of the epidemic east into Alberta and the boreal forest, community economic diversification, recovering economic value from that timber, and road and airport transportation infrastructure.

Starting in 2005, the province and the government of Canada worked to establish, also, a partnership with the First Nations Forestry Council to collaborate on addressing impacts to First Nations communities. The province entered into a series of financial contribution agreements, eventually totalling $12.5 million, enabling the First Nations Forestry Council to work with approximately 100 First Nations communities in the epidemic zone. Wildfire protection, cultural sustainability and environmental sustainability issues were addressed.

In 2005 the Premier announced that an additional $50 million would be entrusted to the Northern Development Initiative Trust. This included $30 million to help communities mitigate the economic impacts of the pine beetle epidemic. Further, in 2005 the province established the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust Act and enabled $50 million to be used to mitigate beetle epidemic impacts.
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In terms of research efforts, the province provided $1.4 million to partnering with UBC and the forest industry for a wood research chair. The purpose was to bring together architectural, engineering, wood science and technology students to further the design, development and uses of structural wood products, particularly using pine beetle wood.

Also, $1.5 million was provided to UBC, Thompson Rivers University and FBInnovations to conduct further beetle-related research projects, and $2.5 million was provided to UNBC to establish a world-leading research laboratory named EvaluTree to find further uses for mountain pine beetle wood and fibre.

In 2006 the province began a $30-million-per-year investment program to restore highways impacted by increased local hauling, and $10 million was provided to local governments to repair similar damage to municipal roads.

In 2005 the Forests for Tomorrow program, with funding of $161 million, was created to mitigate the loss of timber supply by planting new trees, increasing forest fertilization and spacing, and removal of unwanted vegetation from plantations.

Then moving to the period of 2008 to 2012. Many of the previous actions have been sustained, but a lot of the focus has been in preparing for the future. In 2008 and '09, the community beetle action coalitions each completed their strategies to mitigate existing and future impacts of the epidemic.

In total, the coalitions completed 24 sector strategies or, in the case of the southern Interior, made a series of 24 recommendations. These documents, as has been noted before, will provide the committee another valuable source of information. The province has provided funding to the coalitions to begin implementing their recommendations, most recently with $9 million announced in April 2011.

In terms of diversifying the use of the beetle fibre, in 2008 and 2010 B.C. Hydro offered contracts to purchase power from biomass through it's phase 2 bioenergy call for power. This included projects that were using wood fibre from dead pine timber.

In terms of policy actions, the emphasis has been on pine focus and, as Albert said several times, maintaining and trying to keep the licensees harvesting pine. One example of this is partition legislation that allowed for embedding the partitions we have discussed previously directly to the tenures to protect the non-pine volume for mid-term.

The chief forester has always had this ability to do partitions, but the new legislation gave the ability to ensure the harvest performance. As you know from Albert's presentation, we do monitor the harvest performance.

The secondary stand structure regulation allowed preservation of those stands that had sufficient understorey growing, so for long term. Also, a variety of bioenergy tenure tools — for example, ability to direct-award to energy purchase agreement holders — were brought forward. During this time, as we have also discussed earlier today, we started to see the mountain pine beetle uplifts in some units start to come down.

In terms of the funding that was provided, as I mentioned, the $9 million was provided for the beetle action coalitions for strategy implementation. A further $75 million was invested in Forests for Tomorrow, $25 million was spent in establishing a provincial bioenergy network, as part of B.C.'s bioenergy strategy, and $25 million went to Geoscience B.C. to explore central Interior mineral potential for economic diversification.

That would conclude the presentation, and we'd be ready for questions. I will at several times have to refer to the experts in the room who have been around this whole period, and especially Gord, who has been leading a lot of these activities.

B. Routley: Do you have a total amount of…? Like, some of this was allocated funding from the federal government. Do you have a total number for the amount of money that was contributed to beetle action from the federal government?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yes. The government of Canada has committed $340 million since 2002. As you know, there was a commitment for an additional $800 million.

B. Routley: Did that $800 million ever materialize? Or really, it was just $340 million? Is that correct?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: It is my understanding that the $340 million is the amount that has actually come.

D. Barnett: That is, in my opinion, correct, because through the coalitions we have kept good track of the funding.

B. Routley: Actually, coming to B.C. was $340 million, and there was $800 million promised. So what happened to…? Did federal governments change, or what happened to the $800 million?

J. Rustad (Chair): Just to clarify. I think the original promise was $1 billion, of which $200 million was delivered. And then the other $140 million, I think, was over and above that? Or was that part of that billion?

J. Rustad (Chair): That's what I'm just wondering —
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whether or not…. Because I know the $800 million is still kind of what people toss out there, that's why I'm wondering whether the $340 million was all part of that $1 billion commitment or whether it was just $200 million of that that was part of the $1 billion commitment.

The information I have indicates that out of that $340 million, $200 million was for the mountain pine beetle program that was announced in 2007. There was $100 million transferred from the federal government to the province in 2005 and '06. This was for investment in a number of priority areas. And there was $40 million in 2002 for research, remediation of federal and private forest lands. But as I said, I will have to refer to Gordon for further detail.

G. Borgstrom: Sorry, Chair. You're quite right. The $140 million predated the $1 billion promise and commitment from the current federal government. And of that $1 billion promise, $200 million has arrived so far.

B. Routley: Yes. So what was the total that the province contributed since 2001?

B. Routley: And out of the $884 million, how much would have been spent on actually, you know, growing trees — well, basically, forest-based in some form or another?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: If we just capture, for example, what has been spent through the Forests for Tomorrow program, that is $236 million since 2005. But it depends how you then determine, for example, the money spent on research, which clearly then contributes to our knowledge to be able to operate on the land base. But that is the Forests for Tomorrow number.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yes. The Forests for Tomorrow program has many different components. But for example, the reforestation component is a significant part of that fund, as are some other activities, such as fertilization, spacing and so on.

B. Routley: So that $236 million you would take out of $884 million, and what became of the rest? I know there was some spent for airports, for example, and roads. Do you have a breakdown?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yes, I do, and I can provide it. Of the $884 million, $185 million was for the Northern Development Initiative Trust, and $30 million out of that $185 million was specifically for beetle mitigation.

Then $50 million was for Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust. As I mentioned, there was $236 million for Forests for Tomorrow; $121 million for mitigating the impacts of increased logging on roads; $25 million for Geoscience B.C. to explore central Interior mineral potential; $58 million for research, fire mitigation and administrative funding; $129 million for spread control and fertilization since 2001; $71 million for energy development and infrastructure in beetle communities; and $9 million for three beetle action coalitions for mountain pine beetle mitigation.

B. Routley: Do you have some idea of…? Was there a reporting requirement for what was done with the money that went to the Northern Development Trust or the Southern Development Trust? Do we know, does the province know, what became of that money or how it was spent?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yes, we do, but I have to ask Gordon to pick that question up.

G. Borgstrom: Yes, there are very detailed reports available from all three trusts, including the coastal trust, on their expenditures.

J. Rustad (Chair): So maybe if I can just add to that. I think the last report I saw was about a billion dollars in total investment that NDI participated in, and I think it was $100 million of that that they put towards those projects. I think that was the number I read last, somewhere in those facilities.

The way the trust operates, of course, is that those are on low-interest-rate loans or that type of operation, so the money for the most part is still available for reinvestment in additional opportunities. But I think that's the total to date that they had invested. Donna, do you have a more…?

D. Barnett: No, I don't have an accurate figure, but their audited financial statements are on the web, and they're all available for all the trusts. The actual numbers — I don't have them. Most of the trusts….

I've been very fortunate to have the privilege to work
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with such a great response team, and they've done an absolute excellent job of working with communities.

I don't have the figures here. But I think it would be great if we could get them for the committee, Gord, on, for example, what each coalition has done with the funding that they have been given and, for example, the southern beetle coalition, how they've taken $100 and turned it into $3,000, and all those types of community ventures. I think it would be good if we could get some kind of a short-term report for this committee. I think they'd appreciate it.

G. Borgstrom: Sure thing. By all means, we can provide…. We have a summary sheet, as you're aware, Donna, that would have a list of all the projects approved each year by the beetle action coalition. We can certainly provide that.

B. Routley: My final question would be about the sum total of all of these expenditures. Of course, part of the medication for the future would be planting trees, fertilization. etc. All of those kinds of activities would obviously help increase the fibre supply in the future and for future community sustainability.

Do we have a measure, or do we know how the investments have actually improved or mitigated? Do we have a volume, for example, that has been attributed to the investments from fertilization, planting, etc. Do you know what the increase is? Obviously, that's a good-news story, so we should be telling it.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yeah. Our Forests for Tomorrow program is currently part of our larger land-based investment strategy. So all that expenditure and those activities are carefully tracked. So, yes, we do know, for example, what the annual volume gain of those activities is. That can be provided. It's also always reported in our land-based investment strategy.

J. Rustad (Chair): If I can, just to that point, I think Wednesday, when we look at options, of course one of the options that I believe is going to come forward is going to talk about silviculture and fertilization, which will have some numbers behind it. We should be able to get a little more detail for what you're looking for on that component when we deal with it on Wednesday.

D. Barnett: A question to staff: when we're talking about Forests for Tomorrow and fertilization, etc., which type of lands are we talking about? Are we talking about lands that are responsibility of industry? Is that going to be included in these numbers, or are we just talking about NSR lands?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Essentially, the Forests for Tomorrow numbers are those activities that we do as government on the land base. It does not include, of course, the investments, what industry and the licensees do, as part of the silviculture responsibilities after they have harvested.

J. Snetsinger: Sorry. Donna, are you looking for numbers that industry invests in things like fertilization?

D. Barnett: Industry invests also. I think that's very important so that we know what our second and third growths are. Are we going to be the same on all of the land base, or is there more work being done on one or the other?

J. Snetsinger: My quick answer to that would be that most of the investments post free-to-grow, or past the licensees' responsibilities, are made by the Crown, not by the licensees.

J. Rustad (Chair): In some cases. We can get into that a little bit and talk about tenure on Wednesday, when we get into that component. As Eric has said, it'll be a busy day.

B. Routley: In terms of stand density. In '89, I think it was, I had the opportunity to go to Sweden with a group that was loosely called the B.C. future forest study group. Little did I know that it would become more helpful to me in my future.

I actually took a series of slides, and I was running around showing all of the logging camp managers. In fact, I went down to the University of Victoria and showed my presentation on Swedish forest practices. Next thing you know, the manager of one of the logging camps went to Sweden and started using feller-bunchers in the Pacific Forest Products operation there, at Cowichan division.

In any case, the thing that I know about Swedish forest practices from that trip was that they manage stand density way different than we do here in British Columbia. Again, being from Finland, I'm interested in your observations on that. They seem to have a focus on the right number of stems per hectare in order to ensure
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that you are maximizing the growth and yield from a particular stand based on what is optimum for that particular land base.

That is not something we have focused on in British Columbia. I know they have a different history. You're talking about 400 or more years of forest practices that have dramatically different…. Even their ability to get revenue from the land base — I was shocked at how much they got paid for sticks and stumps.

Anyway, I guess the question I have is: is there any opportunity that you see from stand density and better silviculture practices, as in other countries like Sweden? Are there are opportunities there for British Columbia? Is that something that anybody has studied with all of this money that has been floating about?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yes, we have looked into that, and we will bring, in our presentation on Wednesday, options around forest management, which looks at opportunities — spacing, juvenile spacing, brushing — that type of stuff — short rotation plantations. But you're absolutely correct. The forest management regime is slightly different in Scandinavia than here. They plant higher density initially and use commercial thinning often midway, to generate that midpoint revenue.

The economics are partly different because they are in the second, third or fourth rotation there — for example, much less roadbuilding activity and so on. Also, distances are vastly different than in British Columbia or in Canada — right? So the economics are different. But yes, we will bring some of those considerations forward on Wednesday.

J. Rustad (Chair): That's a very good question. Having been, in a previous life before this, Parliamentary Secretary for Silviculture, we looked in quite detail around Sweden and a number of other jurisdictions around the silviculture side of it.

I look forward to that discussion Wednesday, but I would say probably one of the biggest differences between there and here is area-based management. It's different in terms of ownership of the land base and how the whole structure works, which gives you a lot more flexibility in terms of some of the management decisions and things.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): The slide 2001-2004, the response? Just to make sure beyond that, to the policy and funding. Just so that I understand this, could you give examples again? I think you covered this. The $107 million for spread control — what exactly are the programs that we're talking about there?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Well, the programs there…. It was mostly about different harvesting activities. Essentially, it was about limiting the spread of the infestation. The specific areas used destroying infested trees on the leading edges of the epidemic and using small-scale harvest to remove small patches of infected trees. But there was also full-scale commercial timber harvesting that was used then to control and remove these larger infested stands.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): So this was provincial government money. How does that work? Are we getting companies to come in and do this work, and they're being subsidized in some way to do it? Or is this the ministry that's doing it? Like, how does that actually work, and how does it end up costing the provincial government $107 million?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Well, I wasn't around, I have to say. I have to, once again, refer to my colleagues. But if it worked the same way, how land-based investment strategy works currently is the government itself does not do the work. It's either licensees or contractors, BCTS. We partner with them, and so on. Jim or Larry, perhaps, remember those days.

J. Snetsinger: Sure. Between Larry and I, we can give it a shot. This refers to $107 million over that period between 2001-2004 for spread control. At that time we were still hoping for a cold weather event to knock back this epidemic that we were seeing on the land base.

Where we were spending money was where we thought we could get the best bang for our buck and doing it in a way that took out small patches of infestation before they grew and doing that on the periphery of the infestation — expensive work, a lot of fall and burn and those kinds of control activities.

It would come to, as I recall, the Ministry of Forests at the time. We'd set priorities based on the management units, whether it was suppression, holding or salvage. Money would be allocated to various districts to complete the work, and they would look at various ways of getting that work completed. Some of it was completed through licensees, some of it with private contractors and some of it through ministry staff.

L. Pedersen: Yeah. I was just going to add that I recall a quite large program at the time, prior to really losing control entirely of this population, of pheromone baiting and trying to bring local populations in to a very specific area using pheromones as bait and then dispose of them through trap tree disposal — so fall and burn in remote areas where there weren't roads. It wasn't the licensee
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responsibility. It was on Crown land. It was mature forest in largely inaccessible areas, kind of trying to manage the perimeters.

For a period of time that was effective, and then at some certain limit of the population growth, it became almost impossible to steer the population geographically anywhere. But there was a quite large program of that in many different areas of the province.

Would you say…? Best guestimate, I guess. There was a lot of that type of work done, certainly in the Okanagan area. Could you attribute some of the lack of spread to the success of some of that? On the ground I saw it in areas where we did some fairly substantial small-patch and single-tree stuff. Today you go back, and the spread was certainly not what it was up on the flats and the highlands. I know it had a short-term effect, but do you think it was successful in the long term?

L. Pedersen: I think in some areas where the total population of beetles didn't expand as rapidly as in some other areas — for example, the Aberdeen Plateau in your area — the combination of the trap tree program and a highly aggressive salvage program, harvesting program as well as trap tree disposal, I think, did actually affect the population spread and dynamic on the Aberdeen Plateau.

If, on the other hand, by comparison, you look at the success ultimately in the central Cariboo region, because there was a very large program for quite a while that was trying to keep the population in check, at one point the scale of the program simply got overrun by the scale of the epidemic — so in areas like that, much less effective.

There are examples, I think, where the population was kept in check, and there are examples of areas where, just because of the sheer force of the epidemic and the amount of available host habitat, it wasn't a feasible technique to manage an epidemic.

L. Pedersen: Yes, absolutely. I think that's largely, as was referenced earlier this morning, what started to really affect the population dynamic as it spilled off the central Interior plateau into the southeastern part of the province, a completely different type of forest and stand structure and a completely different type of topography.

Adrian made the point earlier that in early days we were making some pretty simplistic assumptions about how the population would spread there. In fact, as we gained more experience we saw a completely different dynamic. Then the model was recalibrated, and now we see lesser levels of overall mortality in that region as compared to the northern region.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): The next figure, the $135 million to establish the Northern Development Initiative Trust. Now, you gave a portion of that that related to pine beetle. My memory was that that was set up around the B.C. Rail giveaway. What was the figure that was there for the pine beetle specifically? You gave a figure within that $135 million.

D. Barnett: Above that. That was above the $135 million. There was $30 million above that.

J. Rustad (Chair): If I remember correctly, it was $135 million that was originally set up for the trust, and an additional $50 million was added in 2005, '07, somewhere in there. Out of that $50 million that was added in, $30 million was set up as a regional fund for mitigation around the pine beetle.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. So the $135 million — what you're saying is all of that is for B.C. Rail and that none of that is for the pine beetle. Is that what you're saying?

J. Rustad (Chair): The original $130 million was before my time in politics, but to my understanding, the original $135 million was set up…. The whole concept of the Northern Development Initiative Trust came after the lease of the B.C. Rail properties.

G. Borgstrom: Yeah, I think also what we would say
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is that the creation of all the trusts, the primary reason for the creation of the trusts was to stimulate economic development and diversification, which is one of the key things we want to do, of course, for mountain pine beetle mitigation from an economic perspective.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. They are programs that were in the vicinity…. But the original Northern Development Initiative Trust — I don't think it's a stretch — wasn't specifically for the pine beetle, while it may be doing good work and helping. I think we agreed that the last point there, the formal request — I presume, since the $1 billion figure was used — was for $1 billion. That would have been the request from government.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): It was for $1 billion from the federal government that was the request, on the final point?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): The final point was a formal request to the government of Canada for a financial contribution to the beetle response, and I'm presuming that we asked for $1 billion.

D. Barnett: A billion. Originally, yes. If I remember correctly — and I'm getting old, so I could be wrong.... If you look back into some of the old news releases from the federal government, there was a commitment of a billion.

Now, what I think has happened is that through the stimulus program, in speaking to an MP in my riding, a lot of the money they felt was to go strictly the pine beetle was utilized during the stimulus program when the economy went in the opposite direction that we wanted. I believe the federal government felt that some of this money that was going to go into pine beetle community stability was spent very well during that stimulus package. That's what I've been told.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, for 2005-2007, the next slide there. I think it's 2005-2007.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Okay. So down near the bottom, "Accelerated wildfire fuel management near communities," coming out of the Filmon report. That would be referring to the funding through the UBCM. Is that what we're talking about with that bullet point?

D. Barnett: If I may answer that. Yes, that is the money that the province gave to UBCM, and it was implemented through UBCM. That is the program.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): All right. So that was, again, for the province as a whole. Okay. We could debate the success of that program, but the Forest Practices Board had talked about, I think, 2 percent of the work that was identified as having been done. So those were the limitations there.

I think we were going to have a presentation specifically on the work that the beetle action coalitions had done. I think the figure was $90 million that was invested through those groups. Is that the figure that was used — $90 million?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): So $9 million. Okay, all right. I think, Donna, you were saying that if we went on the Internet, we would find a listing of the projects and some of the funding that that generated, because it would have been shared with other programs.

D. Barnett: Yeah, but I have asked Gordon Borgstrom to do a short scenario of the projects and the amount of money that has been invested by these pine beetle coalitions. A lot of them have taken money, and they've basically gone out and found partnerships to fund projects. They have done just a wonderful job of economic development with a very little bit of money. They have worked very hard and become very innovative.

Now, there was more than $9 million given to the coalitions. They had first received funding to do their socioeconomic plans, which took two to three years. I'm only talking about the $9 million that was given here in 2010, I believe it was, for them to carry on with projects. Prior to that money I'm not sure what it was, but it could have been probably around $6 million or $7 million.

D. Barnett: That was $7.9 million for them to do their original work and their planning process. So if you take $9 million and $7.9 million, $16.9 million is what they've received since they started the coalitions.

There is one more component that has to be taken into consideration and that did do a lot of pine beetle work, and that was the community development trust job opportunities program. That was through the Ministry of Community and Rural Development funding.

That was targeted at a lot of pine beetle mitigation projects, so I don't have the actual figures for that. I do have some, from 2002 to 2009, but I don't think that that
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would be all the figures of funding that was given to communities with pine beetle to do this community development trust initiative.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): To be absolutely clear, that money was all federal money. It was all federal money that flowed in through the province, and, Member, we asked many times in question period what the provincial contribution would be. But it was entirely federal, as I understand it.

D. Barnett: …provincial government, so I'm not sure. But I do know there was a huge…. I thought there was some provincial funding partnering with federal funding, but that's something staff will have to bring back.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. So 2005-2007, where it continues on the next slide…. The $100 million federal-to-provincial transfer for several priorities — can we just have some examples? I apologize if you've already gone through some examples. What sort of funding are we talking about? Is it the money that Donna was referencing — those sorts of funds? Or what examples can you have for that $100 million in federal-to-provincial transfers?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Examples of that are $25.3 million to pine beetle spread control along the B.C.-Alberta border; $14.1 million to UBCM to protect communities from wildfires, which included, for example, the $12.5 million to First Nations for community diversification and stability and the funding for the First Nations Forestry Council. It includes a significant number of research components — $5.5 million to researching and developing new product uses for beetle wood, and so on.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, another question. Donna, you had mentioned the $200 million federal mountain pine beetle program. I think you had asked for a sense of a breakdown of how that money was spent.

Anecdotally, what we were told — and, probably, an opposition is more willing to listen to this anecdotal report than government would be — is that there wasn't a tremendous amount of the $200 million that went into the land and that the reason we didn't get the remaining $800 million was that there wasn't a plan, that it wasn't planned to put that money to work in a way that the federal government felt comfortable with.

Like I say, that's something that an opposition is more willing to listen to than perhaps government members, but that was the assertion. So it would be interesting….

For the $200 million, that's pretty clear. The $800 million is one we could debate back and forth, and we wouldn't really necessarily know. But of the $200 million, how much of that actually went into work on the land, and how much went into other projects? Could I have a sense?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yes. Of the $200 million that was announced in 2007, $100 million was for spread control, wildfire protection and value recovery. That included $70.5 million for spread control and $11 million for recovery of economic value and $17 million for protecting forest resources and communities. Then another of the $100 million was for supporting economic growth and job creation and for transportation infrastructure improvements.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. So about $100 million went into the land, it sounds like. It was always talk about the runway and different things. All important, but some contended that it didn't necessarily help the land base. Nevertheless, $100 million is a significant investment there.

I'm going through the list here, so if anybody wants to jump in on a particular point, feel free. I'm just trying to get my head around some of these.

Now, the figures are separate — right? Like, we've done some of the spread control, on that. We have a figure of the $100 million, and then we have a figure again for spread control in the $200 million. They're not the same figure, are they? They're completely different figures — right?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Yeah, and the only one that clearly now creates duplication…. I'm pretty sure that the $12.5 million that is now there should be part of that $200 million.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay. Now, the other point with the…. I remember the debates on the $50 million. There were three development trusts that were set up. I don't remember in the debate it coming up too often about being pine beetle–specific, certainly for the southern Interior. I think, John, you've said that it was clear that $30 million of the $50 million of additional moneys that were going to the Northern Development Trust were clearly earmarked for pine beetle. Is that what you remember?

J. Rustad (Chair): Sorry, just to clarify that, it was earmarked as a regional approach on the pine beetle within it. Not that the rest of the money wouldn't be utilized for that, but how it was handled in terms of the community
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pots and the various processes, there was a new sort of pot that was created that was a cross-regional approach on pine beetle type of investments.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, and to be clear with these $50 million trusts, they were set up and each is different, including Vancouver Island. So they weren't set up specifically for pine beetle but were set up for economic diversification. I think each of them operates very differently.

Then we had the $121 million for provincial and municipal road improvements, and there was a rationalization that that was because it increased road traffic. Are we saying that all $121 million was specifically for roads that were identified as being damaged by increased use? Or is it just in the area that we spent $121 million, and the rationale for spending $121 million was just that roads obviously might have been damaged? Just a question.

Was it really specific, or was it just that we spent $121 million because we know that's an area that might have more logs on the road?

G. Borgstrom: It was specific. Those funds were administered directly by the Ministry of Forests and the Ministry of Transportation and Highways at the time.

E. Foster: I want to comment on that, because when I was the mayor of Lumby, we took advantage of that. It was a secondary road that came, and we had to be able to show that the majority of the damage had come from heavy truck traffic. In our particular case, I know that we had to show that that was the cause of the problem.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): The last point, the Forests for Tomorrow. Well, $161 million is by no means an inconsequential amount — in no way. I think we just need to be on record that in 2002-2003 the government responsibility to replant in areas that are provincial rather than it being a licensee responsibility was removed through legislation.

At that time the budget for replanting was cut by 90 percent. While there is a program and it's not an inconsequential amount of money, nevertheless historically it would be debatable whether it's an adequate amount.

We've used Marvin Eng's name a lot. I know he's coming out with…. Actually, a lot of the reports I didn't realize he had a hand in, but of course, he's doing work now for the Forest Practices Board that will speak to the contention of how much NSR there is out there, how much work needs to be done with replanting. It's worth having that there.

Then, if we go to the next slide…. If people want to jump in or you want to go somewhere else, that’s fine too.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Okay, so why don't I come back later on, and others can have a chance.

Back to your question about the $1 billion and that only $200 million had been given from the federal government. It was your understanding that the reason the other $800 million had not been given to the province was that the feds didn't approve of the way the funding had been spent. Is that what you said?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): No, and this anecdotal. It was just that people said: "Well, there's no plan, so where are we going deliver the money to? The province doesn't have a plan." It's something that was asserted in the House repeatedly.

D. Barnett: That was just somebody's own opinion. That was not a letter from the federal government or any Member of Parliament.

D. Barnett: It was just another one of those political hotbeds that somebody wanted to create.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Well, the $800 million didn't come, so I suppose….

D. Barnett: No, exactly. But there was never a letter that said why it didn't come.

One of the slides talked about a new bioenergy-related tenure tool that had been worked on. I'm wondering if you can elaborate more on that. Having sat on the bioenergy committee, one of the biggest things that we talked about was tenure and access to tenure for bioeconomy opportunities. Do you have anything you can add to that?
[ Page 108 ]

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Many of these relate…. As you remember, B.C. Hydro's goal for bioenergy was a two-phased one. In phase 1 their proponents were those who didn't need tenure, so it ended up actually being a lot of pulp mills who got the EPAs through that process.

Phase 2 was the one that allowed for proponents in need of tenure. To facilitate that, we looked at many different things.

As I'm sure the members know, the economics of bioenergy are such that it's very difficult to do any bioenergy projects out of standing timber, so we needed to make sure that we had tools that would allow access to residuals as a part of the process. We looked at forest licences to cut that would allow access to, for example, roadside residuals, where a market exists, so that a bioenergy proponent could get access to roadside materials.

We always, of course, encourage business-to-business partnerships. Those tend to be the most effective ways to facilitate the bioenergy development. However, this was created as almost like a backstop. If the partners could not come to an agreement, there would be an ability, then, to also grant these types of licences.

As I said, the other tool that was created at the time was the ability to direct-award a tenure. It was felt that if a proponent went through the B.C. Hydro competitive process, they had already gone through one competitive process, and therefore, the Ministry of Forests was not going to have another competitive process for the tenure. There were those types of tools that we have been working on.

We were going to make a quick note of some of those when we talked about the options, mainly the volume-to-area base. There is this set of tools that, while they don't essentially increase the volume that is available, certainly facilitate higher utilization of the existing resource and therefore actually create more opportunities and perhaps relieve some of the pressure in terms of the fibre.

B. Routley: I wanted to follow up on Donna's comments and add that it's all a matter of perspective. I'm sure that when you are government, you hear something and it may be viewed as a political hot potato. From the opposition side, it's a thoughtful, innovative question. [Laughter.]

Actually, that segues nicely into what I want to say now. The $884 million — that's quite a sum invested somewhere in British Columbia. I know a lot of it was very useful — $236 million in reforestation, spacing, etc.

I guess my question, looking at the mitigation and looking at the problem…. I've heard some people say that the groups that will be impacted include ranchers, tourism and operators, certainly. We would agree, I'm sure, that milling and harvesting and the support workers — so, for example, people that supply parts or fuel or whatever to those harvesting and milling facilities — could be impacted by the reduction in fibre supply, and that's what we're trying to deal with.

How much money from that $884 million has been specifically targeted to help the forest workers or the ranchers or tourism groups and support workers, and how much money has been set aside to help workers who will most certainly be impacted by any reduction?

Some of the figures that I've seen are as dramatic as going from two million cubic metres down to 500,000 cubic metres, for example, in the Burns Lake area. If that were to happen, that would be dramatic. Obviously, we're going to try to do some work to see what we can do to increase that, but there's still going to be a dramatic impact to workers and families, etc.

Do we have…? Maybe that's where the other federal money is. Is anybody aware of some potful of money set aside to help deal with forest workers and their families that are going to be impacted — like, by the thousands — when this starts to happen, and the other groups — tourism, ranching, support workers?

J. Rustad (Chair): I'm not going to look to staff on that one, because it's more of a political question.

D. Barnett: Well, if I could, as you know — and I'm not sure of the figure — funding has been given to the United Steelworkers in Prince George. They've had an ongoing job-retraining program since…. Is it 2009? I'm not too sure. There was just another new program funding put in place for the United Steelworkers for another job-training program, which goes from Prince George right down through the Cariboo for quite a few workers.

Secondly, one of the biggest things there is, is the fear that the forest industry is not going to be there. For those of you that don't live in forest-related communities, we are having a great problem retaining people within the industry — millwrights, etc. — because there's so much talk out there that there isn't going to be a forest industry. It's a huge issue, becoming greater and greater.

The third part about it is that we do have such a thing as old age happening to some of us, and retirement. Therefore, the workforce is getting quite difficult to get because of the fact of the retirement age of people, and the fear. So much fearmongering is being said in the press instead of working together as we have through the pine beetle coalitions, bringing everyone together.

It is a huge issue, but retention of forest workers in the younger sector is becoming harder and harder to get, believe it or not. I live in these communities, and we can't even get logging truck operators. They're all heading north. There has been quite a bit of money through
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jobs training to retrain, to get some training for log truck drivers, for heavy-duty equipment.

Those things are happening throughout the province. It may not be because of the pine beetle, but I can tell you that it is because of the fear out there in communities.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thanks for that, Donna. Not that I can provide an answer to your question around this, but the work that the committee will be doing over this period of time and the recommendations, I'm sure, will be part of the foundations in terms of what the ministry will try to do to mitigate some of this downfall.

Obviously, if there is going to be an impact…. That depends very much on our recommendations, as well as some other things. I'm sure at that point that they would have to look at other types of issues as well.

Most of the pine beetle areas…. The Lakes, of course, is something that's happening right away because of what's happened with the mill there. I mean, in Quesnel — correct me if I'm wrong; I'll look to staff here — we're looking at two to five years for an adjustment on their annual allowable cuts. Prince George, I think, is five to eight years, roughly, give or take a few years. South of Quesnel, the Williams Lake and 100 Mile area, I think are probably around five years as well — aren't they? — or maybe a little less.

The impacts in various areas are still a little ways away, but that's one of the reasons why this committee is being tasked to look at this particular issue and, in particular, why we've been asked to look at it in a very timely manner — so that we can bring forward some potential options, if there are options out there at all, to minimize that impact. Then that allows opportunity for governments and others to respond accordingly.

B. Routley: A final point on the issue of mitigation is that I unfortunately have had too much experience dealing with mill closures and bankruptcies on the coast of B.C. Many of the operations that have gone down on the coast….

For example, I remember that when Fletcher Challenge — Harry would remember this as well — laid off 450 workers in our area, one of the things that they did to mitigate was to offer early retirement bridging to some workers in some logging operations, for example, so that they could retire with dignity.

In other cases they retrained workers or actually did a straight-across switch. They would allow a worker at another division of the company that was still going to continue to log to bridge out, say, a mechanic or a truck driver, if a mechanic or truck driver from another division could be placed.

So there are all kinds of innovative work, particularly in the case where you've got large companies that can put in place hiring freezes. I remember the mitigation committee that I was very much part of did a lot of work and basically placed a lot of people and found opportunities to help deal with the employees that were impacted.

I guess my comment would be that if we do know that there are going to be impacts that are in any way possible to mitigate, the sooner you look at a variety of options and tools to do that in a way that's thoughtful and caring about the workers in the community and their families, the better it is.

D. Barnett: I forgot a couple of things. First of all, there was some pension bridging back.... What year was it?

D. Barnett: There was a group of people that actually retired early, and there was a pension….

J. Rustad (Chair): Yeah, that was part of the economic downturn and the work that was done in 2009.

D. Barnett: Right. And also something that we always seem to forget that is very important to many of us is that through the social development groups that we had at tables who are pine beetle coalitions putting a long-term plan together…. I can't specifically tell you how much money or what programs, but there have been a lot of programs put in place because of the coalitions dealing with the social issues in communities that are created through loss of jobs and fear and all those types of things.

There's been a massive amount of work done at that level, just so you know. I can't put a dollar figure on it.

J. Rustad (Chair): Harry, did you have something that you wanted to add on this?

H. Bains: Just on that, when we were talking about mitigation process and pension bridging as part of that. I much prefer to start talking about how to preserve those jobs rather than start talking about mitigation.

There may be the realities at the end of the day that we may have to deal with it, but also bear in mind — I think Bill knows — that when we talk about pension bridging, it's a huge cost to those private pensions.

You may get a huge response from those people. You know, if you want to talk about a pension bridge, you'd better come up with some funding, because they don't want to leave the rest of the members left with the liabilities. That actually has happened. Especially in the Steelworkers pension plan, with all those mill closures and the mitigation plans that went in by way of pension bridging, the people left behind end up picking up the bag. That left a huge unfunded liability in those pensions.

I think you could expect, basically, from those mem-
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bers and the unions and the trustees, that certainly that is one way of mitigating, by providing early retirement — pension bridging — to some members, but there's a cost attached to it. I don't think they will be in a position to bear the cost of all of it, you know, just left up to those members to pick up.

J. Rustad (Chair): I think those are appropriate responses — a little bit outside of the mandate of our committee, but peripheral none the less, and still important.

At this time, Norm, I've got you as our next speaker. I'm going to ask, with your indulgence, that we take just a five-minute recess, and then we will come straight back.

Gord, do you mind taking a five-minute recess? You can either call back in or just stay on the call, whichever you prefer.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thanks, everybody, for the break. I know we went a little bit longer than I said, but I hope everybody has had a chance to stretch a little bit.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just very quick, since we have expertise on the bioenergy goal. I remember that when it was first announced, there was, I think, a lot of optimism from the minister responsible that things would ramp up very, very quickly. But it's proven to be more complex than that.

Just a question, Susanna, since you've been working on this. We've seen legislation that deals with certain aspects, but do you have a sense of when we will get to a place where bioenergy will be a bigger part of what we're doing, especially in these areas, and across the province? What sort of timelines are we working on to get really up and going?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: Of course, it depends slightly on what area of bioenergy we are talking about. Are we talking about electricity? Are we talking about pellets? Are we talking about liquid biofuels? The time scale is different for all of those. We already have electricity. We have successful pellet production and so on. Liquid biofuels, for example, are much further in the future and would require significant investments from companies.

Overall, I think it really is not the tools that are available there or anything like that. I do think it is the economics of that that is the major limiting factor, especially when you go to these very high-valued bioenergy products or any kind of biomaterials and so on. Ministries work, for example, closely with industry and FPInnovations to try to look at those.

There was a whole biopathways initiative with industry and FPInnovations that looked at the second phase of that. The first phase looked at the available technologies — what's available and what could work in B.C., for example. The second phase of that has been looking at the market potential for these.

We're doing work, but beyond electricity and pellets, it's probably going to be still some years away and will require investments to get there.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Are there any other jurisdictions that are sort of doing parallel work? I know the electricity and the pellets are fairly straightforward, but are there other jurisdictions that are also looking at biomass and the opportunities there?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: In Canada, yes, absolutely. That is the great thing about FPInnovations. They are a national organization, so they work with all jurisdictions. In terms of high-value bioproducts, there is, for example, in Quebec, a pilot — NCC, nanocrystalline cellulose, which is definitely a next-generation forest product. So there are opportunities. All provinces, I believe, and some companies are looking into this and trying to see how to chart the course forward.

That is the whole thrust, for example, of what Forest Products Association of Canada is pushing. They have Vision 2020 that speaks to these opportunities.

E. Foster: I had the good fortune to tour with the committee that was looking at the bioeconomy. Several presentations…. This has to do with our topic here on the pine beetle and utilization and so on. Has there been any movement towards putting facilities in the more remote communities — especially the communities where the fibre is out past the price point that could come to a traditional sawmill — to generate electricity and hot water for heating and so on, and utilizing this fibre?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: The B.C. Bioenergy Network has actually done a significant amount of work on remote community power generation. B.C. Hydro had a specific program at one point for these communities. I would have to check if it's a standing-offer type of program or if it was a limited opportunity.

I know that a lot of these companies, through Bioenergy Network and so on, have toured quite a bit in Scandinavia. As some of you might know, combined heat and power is quite common in Scandinavia, these small one-megawatt — not even that — plants that pro-
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vide both heat and hot water and so on for the local community.

There is interest in that, but one thing that makes it somewhat more challenging in Canada than, for example, in Scandinavia is, once again, the distances. It's much easier to build infrastructure for a community that is quite condensed — and then to use that heat and power available — than in some of the B.C. communities. But there's certainly interest in that, and ongoing work.

Anybody else have any other questions on this presentation? I guess maybe I'll jump in with a question around this.

We've heard about the inventory. We've heard about our timber supply process, the constraints on the land base, the pine beetle epidemic and the government's response in terms of the pine beetle epidemic. On Wednesday we'll go into what some of those strategies are or what some strategies could be that we could be thinking about.

In particular, when I think about the pine beetle epidemic, one of the thoughts that I had — and we talked a little bit during lunch — was that pine beetle, of course, is not the only beetle that's out there. As was mentioned by Jim, there seems to be a beetle for every tree.

The pattern that we saw around the pine beetle epidemic…. The question is: do we see similar types of potential issues for other beetles? What I mean by that is the same type of situation we had on the pine beetle, where we didn't harvest. We ended up getting overmature stand. We set up the perfect conditions for the growth of a potential pine beetle epidemic.

Is there the potential for other types of beetle outbreaks through similar types of activities? And is that something we should be thinking about when we start looking at recommendations down the road?

S. Laaksonen-Craig: I can't answer that question offhand, but we can have our forest health specialist…. Tim Ebata, for example, can provide more information about that, if that's desired.

J. Rustad (Chair): Maybe, if I can, I'll look to Jim and Larry in terms of your backgrounds, because I know that you've had to take some of those sorts of things into consideration in what you've done. Jim, perhaps.

J. Snetsinger: Sure. I think the short answer…. My sense of it, John, is that the issue with other forest health agents, whether they're bark beetles, defoliators, rusts or root rots…. You know, the forest health folks inside the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations have a good handle on what's going on around the province.

In some places we're seeing increases in things like spruce bark beetle and balsam bark beetle. In some areas we're seeing them decrease. In some areas we're seeing things like the defoliators, such as western spruce budworm, going up, and in some areas we're seeing it going down. Likewise, Douglas fir tussock moth.

We've got programs in place to deal with some of these things. We're seeing some rusts go up — sort of the hard rusts — around second-growth pines.

The ministry has got a pretty good handle on what's going on, and I think it would be useful to get just a summary presentation of some of the other forest health aspects that are going on out there in the field. I know the forest health experts could provide that.

My short answer is that I don't think there's the same risk involved. It's more localized in particular management units. You don't have the same kind of contiguous host that you do with lodgepole pine in the central Interior of British Columbia. That's what really drove this epidemic, in my mind.

L. Pedersen: Well, I would certainly agree with what Jim has said. If you wanted to look at a hard data source, the annual forest health surveys on a year-over-year basis will show you what those trends are. They are reported on a sort of year-over-year comparator.

The only other thing I would add is that when we do the timber supply forecasting work, it is informed by both salvaged and unsalvaged losses. So it does attempt to always take into account what those current trends are and whether those trends are predicted to carry into the far future or they're….

As Jim has said, they're cyclical, and to the extent that they're cyclical, our inventory program and our growth and yield program actually capture the impact of those cyclical interventions in the measurements of temporary and permanent sample plots, because they're a constant influence on stand developments or yield projections.

Now, this is a very technical point, but our yield projections are already reflecting what I would call the historical baseline level of influence of these other subpopulations coming and going. Then when we get these big, catastrophic events, like a mountain pine beetle epidemic, we take extraordinary measures to reflect it. I think Albert and maybe the technical staff would more or less agree with that statement.

I've got one other question. Having had an opportunity to fly over a very large fire, the Binta complex fire
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south of Burns Lake that burned a couple of years ago now — was it two years ago? I think it was — it was very educational to see the fire behaviour in relationship to harvesting practices.

One of the thoughts that I've had — and because we're talking about harvesting and the potential risks to harvesting…. Obviously, if we have a lot of wildfires or other things, that can create some challenges in terms of that fibre supply and mid-term fibre supply.

I'm just wondering what has been looked at in terms of the fire behaviour — if there are harvest practices or other types of management practices that we should be thinking about in terms of mid-term fibre supply to mitigate the risks of the type of fire activity that could potentially happen on the land base.

S. Laaksonen-Craig: I'm sure, yes. As a matter of fact, we asked our wildfire management branch to provide us, also, a little briefing note. It has now ended up in my in-box, but I haven't had time to even look at it yet. So I'm pretty sure we can provide more information than that.

J. Rustad (Chair): I realize this is obviously a lot of information for all of us as committee members, which is asking a lot. There'll be a fair bit of homework to be done, I guess, over the course of this particular committee's work, in a short period of time.

B. Routley: Following up on what Harry said, I just wanted to add that I certainly agree with Harry that the first objective of any future mitigation ought to be trying to find ways to keep people working rather than pension folks out.

But as I understand the statistics and the magnitude of the problem that we're dealing with, no matter what we do or don't do, the impact will be fairly severe in the coming years. We've seen the impact provincially. You know, what goes up must come down, they say. So we've got to….

I know in some cases…. And I think you alluded to the fact, John, that people ramped up third shifts in operations. So some mills may be able to survive on a two-shift basis, and they'll be more or less okay. But there will be other operations in some of those catastrophic zones that Albert referred to that will be impacted more dramatically, and so there needs to be some work on that.

I know it's not specifically…. The work of this committee is to look at the fibre supply, but I just wanted to make the point, along with Harry, that we need to look at plans to help deal with the workers in the future, sooner rather than later. Maybe that's a recommendation, as part of this, to form some kind of supercommittee to deal with workers in the future.

D. Barnett: That's a very good point that MLA Routley has brought forward. If you get involved with the coalitions, that's part of their mandate. Also, part of their mandate and the mandate of all of us is to look at new types of industries, such as mines, etc., and retrain some of these people to get into new industries. Then 30 to 60 years down the road, hopefully, we'll have new forests, and rotation will come around again.

In the interim we do have a lot of mines happening in British Columbia and a lot of them looking to open and a lot of them waiting for environmental reviews to be done. There are new opportunities out there. So, you know, we care about jobs and communities. We have to keep our focus moving forward as to: how can we mitigate these with new industries? That's something we've been looking at for years.

J. Rustad (Chair): Well, let's make sure we don't get into too many debates about specific projects.

J. Rustad (Chair): No, you're absolutely right. One of the things that has been learned in the Burns Lake area, with the tragedy that happened there.... We are now a little over four months in after the tragedy, and out of the 250 workers directly involved in the mill operation, I think we're at about 200 or so that have a placement of some kind or are on disability.

Many of those were into the forest industry and to the mining industry. Some obviously went out to other areas as well. So from that side there are clearly employment opportunities.

Having said that, our committee is tasked with looking at our mid-term fibre supply, on seeing what we can do, if there are any options that we can consider to expanding the timber supply. Once we have done that work, then the chips will fall where they may, and there are obviously many other things going on in the province that need attention as well. But this is our focus, and we'll wrap that up if we can by August 15.

Having said that, if there are no other questions of our witnesses with regards to the presentations that have been made today — and I'm not seeing any offhand — I want to thank the witnesses for the amount of work that they have put in.

Obviously, this has been a very fluid committee to date in terms of adding extra meetings and the information that's been required. It has been an enormous effort to be able to put that together for us as a committee, and I just want to say thank you to the witnesses and to all of the background staff, as well, that aren't here, that have put in a tremendous amount of hours to give us the best preparation we can.

I very much look forward to Wednesday. That obviously will be where a little bit of the rubber hits the road in terms of what we'll be dealing with as the meat of this
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committee. Hopefully, this has given all of our members at least good background information to be able to be prepared for that.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just on behalf of the opposition, although we're all one group here, thank you for the work that you've done as well. We really appreciate it and really appreciate the frank discussion that we had. I thought it was very useful for us, and I hope it wasn't too much of a burden for those that serve the public in this way. So thank you very much.

J. Rustad (Chair): Just before the motion, I was mistaken here. I should have also thanked the Clerk's staff. Obviously, there has been a tremendous amount of haste that's been put together trying to get this thing rolling. I think they've done a great job to date, and I look forward to continuing to work with them through this process.

D. Barnett: If I may say one thing. I'd like to thank staff, but I'd really like to thank the emergency response team for the energy and the work that they've done over the last many years. I've been very fortunate to work with them, and they have been very dedicated. They work very hard, and their first compassion has been communities and workers. So I'd really like to thank them for all the hard work they've done, along with the rest of the staff.

You guys have been fabulous through this catastrophic nightmare, I call it. So thank you all very much.

J. Rustad (Chair): This committee stands adjourned until 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

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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
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Committee Staff:	Larry Pedersen (Technical Advisor)
	Jim Snetsinger (Technical Advisor)

Witnesses:	Gordon Borgstrom (Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation)
	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)
	Adrian Walton (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON TIMBER SUPPLY

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
TIMBER SUPPLY