Timber Supply — Issue No. 12 — Wednesday, June 20, 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

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 3:03 p.m. and made opening remarks.

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

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
Presentations	327
G. Thiessen
J. Thomas
D. Brooks
E. Doerig
P. Heit
D. Wood
J. Wood
W. Salewski
W. Ray

J. Rustad (Chair): Welcome, everybody, to the next of our Special Committee on Timber Supply. My name is John Rustad. I'm the MLA for Nechako Lakes and the Chair of the committee.

The committee was struck in May with the task of looking at the area that's been impacted by the mountain pine beetle epidemic and to try to come forward with some recommendations as to how we could mitigate some of the mid-term fibre supply issues.

The size of the issue is pretty significant, as most people in the mountain pine beetle area know, across the entire pine beetle area, stretching from Smithers-Houston down to 100 Mile House to the Kamloops-Merritt area.

It's anticipated that the amount of drop of our annual allowable cut will be about ten million cubic metres per year. That translates to roughly about eight mills in terms of what that would mean. It doesn't necessarily mean there would be those closures, but that's about the consumption of what eight mills would use.

Our Timber Supply Committee is doing a number of public meetings. We're going through a process throughout the pine beetle–impacted areas, meeting with mayors and councils, meeting with First Nations and also providing some time for public input.

The goal of that input process is to have a discussion around what your priorities are, what things we should be thinking about, what things are important for the community, to help us in our deliberations, to ultimately come forward with some recommendations which are required to be completed by August 15 and submitted to the Legislature.

At this time I'd like to introduce the members of the committee, starting on my right.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Norm Macdonald, MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke.

J. Rustad (Chair): Also, to our committee we've been assigned two special advisers, two former chief foresters of the province of British Columbia. One of them is here with us today, Larry Pedersen. He helps provide us with any technical information that we may need and advises the committee with regards to those types of issues.

Also with us today are Kate Ryan-Lloyd from the Clerk's office — she helps to make sure that we are where we're supposed to be and organizing everything — as well as Jacqueline Quesnel, who's at the back. And of course, for anybody that comes in, please register with Jacqueline in terms of making presentations to the committee so that we can get things through.

Everything that the committee does is recorded as part of Hansard. It is webcast onto our website, which is www.leg.bc.ca/timbercommittee. The Hansard crew that are here with us today are Michael Baer and Monique Goffinet.

Today we're going to start off with the community presentation component, so at this time I'd like to invite Mayor Gerry Thiessen to come up to make the presentation.

So over to you to introduce the people that you're with and for the presentation.

G. Thiessen: We have today Councillor Levy and Councillor Moutray. They're part of our council. We would like to first of all recognize that we are on Saik'uz First Nation territory. We are good neighbours with them. I understand that they will be making a presentation later on today. So anyway, we would like to recognize that.

Secondly, we'd like to welcome each of you to our community. It's an honour for us. You have heard us. We wrote a letter. I understand the letter was discussed, you know, on previous days. The letter was just one of asking for an opportunity to dialogue with you. You have heard us, and we thank you very much for that.

What we did was we took your discussion paper that you sent out, and we went through the last five bullets there that you presented, answered those questions and then had some of our own points that we have later on. We are going to speak to this paper today. We will later on present a brief, which we will register, and we will mail it down to you. We'll do that later on.

First of all, the question that you asked is: "What values and principles should guide the evaluation decision-making regarding potential actions to mitigate the timber supply impacts?" The forests of British Columbia belong to the people. The government is the steward of that resource, and as we go through that, we want to identify very clearly that the government is the steward of it. This principle must remain in the forefront of any decision-making process.

The forest resource must be managed for today as well as tomorrow. Future generations have as much right to
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expect a well-managed resource as the current generation does.

External stakeholders expect that British Columbia's forests will be both environmentally managed and sustainable. We heard that last week at the bioenergy conference where we heard a presentation from Europe that talked about our products that they're purchasing over there and how important it was that we're not taking away from future generations, that we make sure that anything we do is going to be sustainable into the future. Certainly you're going to hear that through our discussion.

The next one is: "How should decisions regarding potential actions to mitigate the timber supply impacts be made and by whom?" We believe it's imperative that the chief forester and the industry professionals, along with the community, play an active role in the decision-making process. They provide the knowledge base and have a vested interest in making good, sound decisions on timber supply.

While the decisions must not rely solely with industry, they must be an integral part of the decision-making. Government, as the protector of the public resource, retains the responsibility to make decisions, and it's imperative that governments seek and adhere to the advice of the forest industry professionals and other land-based stakeholders as part of their decision-making process.

Decisions must be made carefully and be considered and well thought out, with lots of community input. This process cannot be rushed. We believe the chief forester is the decision-making body when it comes to tenure and what happens. He is someone who has the public trust. He's accountable to the government for that, and we would like to strengthen that position rather than taking any responsibility away from that.

Three: "What specific information about your local area would you like the committee to know and consider?" The district of Vanderhoof has two sawmills within our boundaries as well as a remanufacturing plant that have invested heavily in their respective operations. Both L&M Lumber and Canfor, through significant investment, have kept pace with changes and opportunity in the fibre industry and continue to remain competitive. Their operations have been profitable only because they have sought solutions that permit them to remain competitive in an ever-changing market.

The province must be very careful that it does not make decisions that do not encourage innovation and investment. The boardrooms of tomorrow and their decisions on investing in the resource sector of British Columbia will depend on the confidence they receive from this committee's findings.

I want to really put out a word of caution there. Each time we meet with a major company that has investments in our community, we ask them: what kind of investments are you making in the future of your operation in our area? This is important. We know that when companies make decisions like a $30 million investment in new technology or another one that is over $100 million in new, innovative technology, those are big numbers. That means a lot to rural British Columbia and to the resource-based community.

If the game plan changes and the rules change on how tenure is given, that's going to shake up the boardrooms. When people make decisions, sit in their boardrooms and make decisions as to whether to invest in northern and rural British Columbia, they're going to consider that very carefully.

Four: "What cautions and advice do you have for this committee in considering whether and how to mitigate mid-term timber supply?" We believe it is extremely important that the committee recognize those companies that have taken the initiative through innovative practices and investment to remain competitive in today's challenging market.

Assisting individual companies that have been given one advantage over another turns the industry from one of innovation built on inspiration to one of entitlement built on handouts. Why invest if failure to innovate is rewarded? The decisions of this committee and government will have long-term implications for the investment that forest companies make in rural British Columbia.

Five: "How would you as an individual or community want to be engaged in these considerations going forward?" The district of Vanderhoof council appreciates the opportunity to have input into and to receive feedback from the committee.

We request that we continue to receive regular updates as the process moves forward. While mid-term timber supply is a mountain pine beetle issue, the recommendations of this committee will have a significant effect on us locally. It is important to us that we receive the recommendations of the committee as soon as possible to allow timely input.

We then developed a series of specific concerns. Inventory: we are concerned that the current inventory for mid-term timber supply is not correct. Without accurate numbers it will be extremely difficult to make sound decisions. This is too important to rely on modelling based on old data. Together with new technology and ground inventory, it is essential to understand the timber supply.

The decisions on timber supply and resource allocation in the interior of B.C. were made when there was an extensive supply of green forests. The landscape has changed, having been ravaged by the mountain pine beetle and forest fires. Government needs to perform a regular ground inventory that establishes the current reality. This responsibility lies with the government leadership, to ensure that we have a sustainable resource for our future needs.
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On fertilization. We do not believe that fertilization will provide any significant results. The cost of fertilization exceeds the value that will be gained through new growth. This solution does not make sound economic sense. We've checked out our numbers. We sense that a cubic metre of timber could be somewhere around $50 — just the fertilization costs — so we don't see that.

Another question that has come up is on bringing the wood forward. A decision to allow cutting of the future timber blocks must have a plan which includes intensive silviculture to pay back the volume, in time for future generations to benefit. External stakeholders will take a very dim view of our products if they sense that our forests have no plans of sustainability. At the bioenergy conference — and I spoke to this earlier — we heard that customers in Europe want to make sure that our harvest has a sustainable plan.

I understand you've also talked about landscape-level harvesting, and it's an issue that both the district of Vanderhoof and the regional district of Bulkley-Nechako have considerable interest in because of the Binta Lake fire. The continued accumulation of large quantities of forest biomass, which fuels wildfires, points to a need to develop a landscape-level strategy in harvesting, for managing the fuels to reduce the areas burned by severe fires.

Vanderhoof cannot withstand another Binta Lake fire. This plan is an area which will require real leadership in developing plans that will discourage fires like those of 2010 from being able to get going. They not only burned the grey trees, but they also burned a lot into our mid-term timber supply.

On visual-quality objectives. In theory, harvesting from areas currently constrained from timber development may provide additional timber, but a lot more of the timber in these areas will be on younger, poor-growing sites with significant dead pine. Many areas of Vanderhoof and Quesnel are already unsalvageable. Any decision to harvest in these areas must be done through a cost-benefit analysis.

Area-based tenure. We sense it's too late to switch to area-based tenures. In actual fact, we believe that Prince George TSA is an area-based tenure. The fibre in the Prince George TSA is, in large part, dead pine, and who can use it? It is concerning when we see woodlot licensees in the area-based tenures giving them back to the Crown. Area-based tenure allows for more investment into the forest, but this must be done when one has something to work with over a long period of time.

We then want to talk about the B.C. emergency response management system on the goals and values that are defined when fighting fires. As you see, there are eight levels of response, starting with providing safety and health for responders and saving lives, then to "reduce suffering, protect public health, protect government infrastructure, protect property, protect the environment, and reduce economic and social losses." Currently the mid-term timber supply has been put in category 8, which is reducing economic losses.

We sense that since government is putting the focus on the mid-term timber, we should have it reclassified as a government infrastructure value. Hence, it would go up into group 5. We are told currently that if there is to be a fire, responders would have to value a resort condo higher than the jobs and the environment of us here in rural British Columbia, and we don't think that's right.

The last thing is a local issue in our area: the management of the district office. The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations does much more than forest management at present. As we see more and varied varieties of land base and complex authorizations and stewardship issues occurring, which include the mid-term timber supply issue, we feel that each district office requires its own management team and the district manager to adequately represent and respond to the local client needs.

Right now, currently we have a district office, but we share a management team with the Fort St. James district office. We think, with the mid-term timber supply, along with the mining activity that's happening in our area, that we need our own management team.

Lastly, this is a very tough time to make radical changes to the forest industry. We have an economy that's very tentative and the infestation of the mountain pine beetle like we have not seen in our lifetimes. We urge you to be very careful in what you endorse and encourage you to make slow, thoughtful and well-informed decisions.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. Would either of the councillors like to add to this presentation?

J. Rustad (Chair): Good. Well, in that case, at this point I'll open it to questions.

D. Barnett: Thank you very much, Mayor and Council. I have a question on your sawmills. What is the direct employment from the mills, the ones that are here in Vanderhoof?

G. Thiessen: The sawmills themselves, I believe, would be right around 500. I think the number at Plateau mill is 321, with a payroll of probably close to $22 million. And L&M would be slightly less than that. But I would think we were around 500 and probably $35 million in total.

D. Barnett: That's just in the mill. What about the indirect — the logging, the rest of the whole package?
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G. Thiessen: I would have to check, but I would think that you could pretty close to double that.

D. Barnett: Are both these mills inside the district of Vanderhoof, or are they outside?

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Mayor Thiessen. It's good to see you again. First of all, under item 6 you mention inventory and that the mid-term supply, you claim, is not correct. What's the basis of that information?

G. Thiessen: We have talked to many of our licensees, as well as many of our operators that are working out in the forest. They tell us that when they go out there expecting certain timber volumes to be there, they're not there. I believe that the last time our inventories were extensively done in this area was the early '90s — I think we were told.

To us, there's a lot that has changed. Sure, there have been some pockets that have been redone, but we're hearing more and more from our licensees that they aren't correct. They go there expecting one thing and receive totally something else.

B. Routley: Thank you for your very thoughtful presentation. In the section "Bringing wood forward" you talk about intensive silviculture to benefit future generations. I wondered if you have any concerns at all. We've heard from silviculture groups that there are second-growth stands that are various age classes where there have been kills by the pine beetle.

I don't know if you're aware of that happening within your own region. Obviously, if it hasn't been looked at since the 1990s in terms of inventory, there are also concerns by members of this committee, including myself, that we could be not being given an accurate and up-to-date picture of what's actually there and what's not there. I know that there has been some modelling going on in developing numbers for the committee, but it's certainly not as accurate as feet on the ground.

Back to the intensive silviculture. I mean, your point is well taken, but are you at all concerned about the continued problem with the beetle or other diseases?

G. Thiessen: Well, on that issue we were told that 37 million hectares of land between Bear Lake and Vanderhoof, which was second growth, was nailed by the mountain pine beetle, which was our mid-term timber supply.

To us, if you're going to bring wood forward and harvest trees that are already mature, we would say: "Look, in order to prove to our industry and to our children and to our customers that we're sustainable, that needs to be replanted and brought in." At least then in 2060 we will have trees that will be there for our children. There will be 50- or 60-year-old trees that certainly will be there and be part of our environment.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I just want to thank you for the work that you've done here and that you've done previous to this in identifying some of these issues. I mean, the inventory piece is…. These other pieces…. You're making the case for investments that we have to make at a provincial level to invest back into the land, so I really thank you for all this.

I'm interested in the bioenergy conference that you attended. Clearly, you're looking at opportunities beyond the milling capacity that you have here, which is impressive, I have to say.

We've seen a plateau, and these other mills are state-of-the-art. You're right. They are investments that are putting the community in really good stead.

What are some of the opportunities around value-added and, I guess, specifically bioenergy? Are you looking at other opportunities that a provincial government could be supportive of?

G. Thiessen: I certainly think that we need to make sure that the trees that are being harvested now…. They're becoming more and more checked as time goes on, and there's more and more that's left in debris, in wood piles. It saddens us when they're just being burnt up and that's it, and no future opportunity is being seen to use that fibre.

I think the concern is that government is concerned that if they license that fibre, then mills will expect that to be sustainable long after the mountain pine beetle has gone through and there isn't the deadwood that there currently is. Our feeling is that there are companies out there that would have a use for that dead fibre if it was readily available, and it would add employment in there.

Sure, to us it doesn't make sense when the stumpage has already been paid, the cost of harvesting it has been done — so many of the things have already been done — and then just to torch it out in the bush, and it's no economic value. We certainly would like to see a more innovative way of forestry working to make sure that that product, that fibre, is brought into the mills or into some type of manufacturing place that can make bioenergy or whatever.

I actually have a number of questions, but Harry, I'll let you go first.
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H. Bains: I do believe, also, that the presentation you brought forward is very, very useful and well thought out. Thank you very much for that work that you've done.

I think the question that I have, going through different communities, based on the information that we have, especially on the post–pine beetle wood that is available for the remaining sawmills or the wood product operations…. The information that we are provided by the ministry is that, based on the forecast AACs, post–pine beetle, it could have eight fewer sawmills in the entire region. Out of 24, that's one-third — right? That's a huge impact on the local communities.

I hear that the committee's recommendations should not favour one over the other, and I get that. That's not the role, and I don't believe that's what the committee should be doing, because every community is kind of on that red alert. It could be them.

As you as communities recommend to us…. How do we mitigate that loss? Is it that we need to bring something by way of providing incentives or disincentives so that there are more jobs per cubic metre available — that is, post–pine beetle — so that we could preserve those jobs in some of those communities?

Have you thought about that and how it could serve the community, especially yours?

G. Thiessen: At the two sawmills that are currently operating in Vanderhoof…. As a 16-year-old I piled lumber on the green chain at what is now Canfor, and I was a first cutoff saw man — which was basically a power saw chain — at what is now L&M. I can tell you the mills don't even look like what sawmills did 40 years ago.

You have a ministry called Jobs, Tourism and Innovation. To me, the key word in there is "innovation." Building 2-by-4s isn't innovative anymore — okay? We must find innovation. What's encouraged me with the three manufacturing plants that are right in our municipal boundaries, including Vanderhoof Specialty Wood Products is that they have been innovative. They have found new ways.

I believe that as government you need to find incentives that encourage people to be innovative. Find better uses for the fibre that's out there in employing the youth of our community, providing education into the community.

We work with Omineca Beetle Action, which has worked very extensively with our community to provide post-secondary education in the trades and technical work in our community. We're developing a plan which we will be coming to Victoria with — hopefully, this fall.

Those are things that are encouraging and exciting. No industry will ever last if it just does so through government legislation, which changes rules, changes boundaries. We have rules that we're operating with now. They must be dealt with very, very finely. This is a very tough economy, and we have a very serious situation with the mountain pine beetle.

I want to get back to the biomass and the bioenergy opportunities. One of the problems that existed with removing a lot of the waste from the bush was the liability issue. If you speak to your licensees, they'll tell you that that was their big concern — someone going in behind them and picking up that waste.

So government has dealt with that. I would encourage you, certainly, to talk to them and encourage…. They actually have a pellet plant here. Anybody else that's interested…. Those opportunities now exist. They can go and they can collect that roadside debris.

One of the things that has to happen is that the first pass with the loggers — rather than pile them up for burn piles, they've got to pile them up so they can be picked up, which is just as easy or easier, really, as piling them into a burn pile. So the opportunity is now there.

I would encourage you to get your pellet producers or anybody else that's interested in getting involved in the industry, because as we drive around here, there's a tremendous amount of fibre available for them. With the changes that we've made in regulations, the licensees will be off the hook for the….

They burn them because they have to get rid of them, and it's a fire hazard if they don't control-burn it. They were right in what they were doing as far as protecting the area by getting rid of that fire hazard, but now there's an opportunity for people to utilize it, and liability is off of the licensee.

I'd encourage them to look into it. You know, get your majors involved. I think that the opportunity is there to utilize a lot of that material.

G. Thiessen: We have two pellet plants in town, in our boundaries — Premium Pellet and Platinum Pellet. They both are, I think, going to be working on trying to find new strategies for fibre.

E. Foster: Excellent. Further on that, are they operating primarily off the residuals from the sawmills, or are they going out for outside fibre?

G. Thiessen: I would think that they're operating primarily off residuals of the sawmills, although I believe that Platinum Pellet also…. They're a remanufacturing plant, so they also use quite a bit of other fibre that comes into their sort yard, their mill yard, and chips that up for it.

J. Rustad (Chair): I've got a number of questions as well. First, I just want to correct on a number. You said about 37, and I know you were fumbling, around a million hectares,
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in terms of that. The total size of the province is about 95 million hectares. The impact of the pine beetle is about 18 million hectares, and the impact on the THLB is about ten million hectares in size.

G. Thiessen: No, it's 37 million cubic metres of dead second-growth trees. That's actually what I had down. I'm sorry. I should have had it clear here.

J. Rustad (Chair): That's okay. I just wanted to make sure that it got corrected in the record.

Second, on fertilization, you mentioned the cost as being around $50 a metre. The experts we have from the Ministry of Forests provided us with an estimate of about 700,000 cubic metres a year gain, for about an $11 million cost, or about $15 a metre — not $50.

J. Rustad (Chair): But like I say, in terms of the research and stuff, that was the number we were given around fertilization.

The three questions I've got. The first is on VQOs and constraints. You were part of a group that spearheaded the motion that went forward out of NCLGA — that was passed unanimously out of NCLGA and also at UBCM — to look at the opportunities that may be within the constraints, particularly the visual-quality objectives. Has your perspective on that changed?

G. Thiessen: No. We were the community that brought that forward to UBCM, through NCLGA and UBCM. It passed at both places unanimously. Our resolution there was very clear — that we wanted a cost-benefit analysis of these constraints. We believe that there are some of these visual constraints that would be of benefit if they were addressed and replanted back into new growth. So no, ours hasn't changed at all.

The second question is on the area-based tenure, the sense that it's too late to switch to an area-based tenure.

In all of the research that is being done, when you look in British Columbia, particularly when you look at…. I'll give you two examples: the Dunkley Lumber TFL as well as the West Fraser TFL down south in the Quesnel area and the work that's being done through those.

Over a period of time, through the investments that have been made and their various strategies, they have been able to significantly increase the amount of fibre that they can access. In particular, Dunkley went from 156,000 to 260,000. Of course, they had to deal with the pine beetle. It's come back down. I heard today that they were around 193,000 to 196,000. It's still a significant uplift through area-based management.

So are you suggesting that we shouldn't be considering those kinds of opportunities as a committee?

G. Thiessen: I understand that those area-based tenures were given when there was a live forest, prior to mountain pine beetle. To us, that's where it has changed. I believe that each one of our licensees in our community believes in area-based tenure. We don't believe, at this time, in the economic place that we are, that we are addressing the mountain pine beetle.

We're not talking about the Coast Mountains range. I think if you go down to Vancouver Island on the coast, you may find that area-based tenures are way better. But to us, if we're addressing the mountain pine beetle issue, then in those areas affected by the mountain pine beetle issue — no.

J. Rustad (Chair): Sorry. The two examples I gave, of course, were in the mountain pine beetle epidemic area and had impacts on their supply cuts by the mountain pine beetle. But even with those impacts, they were able to see significant increases through management strategies. I'm sure, if we were thinking about area-based management, it would not be considered to be in dead trees; it would be in the green trees that we still have left in our area.

In any case, the last question I have around this is your first point around the inventory and doing the work around the inventory. Inventories are typically done every ten to 20 years. They typically are not done when you have a major event like you do with pine beetle, because you wait for the event to be over. Clearly, in this area the event is over. There is still some kill, but it's very minimal compared to what it was throughout the '90s and into the early 2000s. So there is some work that needs to be done with the inventory.

The question that I have for you is…. The impact that we're going to see from the mountain pine beetle epidemic in terms of the drops in the AAC is going to be, in the case of Quesnel, perhaps in the next year or two, and in the case of Prince George maybe in the next five to ten years, depending on how long we can make the pine wood last.

To do detailed inventory work and to go through and do the ground work that needs to be done, especially when you take into consideration that it's just not one supply area — not the Vanderhoof TSA, but you would have to do it across the entire area — it would probably take somewhere between five and ten years.

Are you suggesting that we do not take any action now to minimize the impact of what that downfall would be, pending the outcome of being able to do those detailed inventory works?
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G. Thiessen: I understand that a detailed inventory is going to be done on the Vanderhoof–Fort St. James in 2013, I believe. That's our thing.

I think I know where you getting at on this, John. I guess to us, in our community, we want to see jobs in Burns Lake. They had a sawmill, and they have every right to have a sawmill. We do not think, with as much as what we've gone through with the economic situation we have in our province, that it's wise to make major decisions on tenure until the inventory is known and some of these other issues are addressed. That's where we're coming from.

J. Rustad (Chair): Sorry. Just to reframe that, the question wasn't in relation to Burns Lake or to any particular mill. Obviously, there are mills, as you mentioned, that have to invest capital and make decisions. Throughout the impacted area they're all uncertain in terms of what that future could be, in terms of their fibre supply. In order to do the type of detailed analysis that you're suggesting, in terms of the re-inventory work or even more than the re-inventory work, across the entire area impacted, it would take the better part of five to ten years to do all of that work.

G. Thiessen: Well, we were told in a recent conversation at the regional district that the inventory that we have now is like a 20-year-old pickup. It gets you to work, but that's about it. That was his analogy. To us, if you're going to make major decisions, a 20-year-old truck is not what you want to use. So I would say: be very careful in your decisions on this committee. You are stewards of what is being out there for future generations. No, I think you need to be very careful on any decisions that you make.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. I'll take that as you would prefer that we wait before giving some certainty across the entire…. Okay.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just a couple of points. The inventory question, obviously, we've canvassed provincially quite a bit, and I take your point that you want to make sure that you're as firm on the details as you can be with decisions that have such a big impact.

I was just going to respond a little bit to the area-based. I think, John, it was maybe a bit sweeping. I think you do have two examples in terms of where there could be improvements with area-based. But to say that all the studies prove that you get more out of that…. Well, I think whenever we're making decisions like that, we'd want to be able to point to studies, and I'm not sure that we have studies. I think we have anecdotal descriptions that might be accurate. But to say that all studies point to something….

I think we've been warned a number of times — and I think you're warning us too — about the search for a silver bullet, the search for the home-run hit. We have to base everything on the reality that's there, which is, I think, throughout your report, what you're saying. Let's base it on reality. Let's be careful. It's a surprising number of communities that we go to that start off with that warning. You know, you can do harm if you mis-swing here.

G. Thiessen: I appreciate that. That is basically how we feel as a community. We've worked very hard. We're known as a community that works hard, and our companies have responded by investing heavily into our area. So we want to be very cautious and very careful in how we go, moving forward.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. One last question, which I've asked in all communities as we come along, so I thought it would be appropriate to ask this here as well, although I must admit that I didn't get a chance to ask it this morning. If, for economic reasons or other reasons, a mill were to be down in your community, would that change your perspective in terms of the recommendations coming forward?

G. Thiessen: No. I think that our community and our council believe very strongly that to have a successful industry of whatever kind, it has to be innovative. We've gotten into manufacturing. We're manufacturing carloads of mining equipment and sawmill equipment that's going to Brazil, to Siberia, and it's leaving Vanderhoof. We have 60 young people working up there. We work on innovation and stuff like that. We have never seen one success over a long period of time when the province has changed the rules and given someone something.

To us, we want to be very clear on it. We feel that as a committee you should encourage innovation. We have fibre there that needs to be used somehow — to find innovative ways of getting that out and to the customers around the world.

J. Rustad (Chair): Great. Okay. Thank you very much for your time and for your presentation. It was very informative.

Committee members, we'll just take a quick five-minute recess while we set up for our next presenter.

J. Rustad (Chair): Welcome, everybody. We're back to the meeting for the Special Committee on Timber Supply. Our next presenter is Chief Jackie Thomas from the Saik'uz First Nation.
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J. Thomas: Thank you. First of all, welcome to Saik'uz traditional territory, the land that you're on. I have only my handout here, but I'll go through it, and I don't know…. What's the process? Are you going to ask questions if it's not clear?

J. Rustad (Chair): No, the process is that we have some time set aside for you. You can make a presentation to us, and if you want to ask questions afterwards or if members want to ask questions, then there will be some time for that as well.

J. Thomas: Oh sure. Okay, I'll go through what I have already prepared for today.

The first question on the list was: "What values and principles should guide the evaluation and decision-making regarding potential actions to mitigate the timber supply impacts?" Saik'uz's response is: the honour of the Crown must be upheld. The current international standard of free, prior and informed consent should be the benchmark for the provincial Crown to seek.

For many decades the forest resources have been used by the public for their living, and the First Nations people in this province have had little to say about what the resource provides for them and about control over this valuable resource.

This resource has been a major contributor to the infrastructure that we all enjoy today. However, it has seen setbacks in its management as a result of the pine beetle epidemic. What continually is forgotten are those animals that need a healthy forest to survive, from the largest ungulates to the smallest mice. Our bird species need the trees to live in, and the insects that are their food also need homes.

It is only since there have been court decisions that uphold First Nations rights and title that changes have slowly come to the resource extraction sectors and that specific provincial policy has had to deal with those issues in good faith and with the honour of the Crown forefront in these agreements.

There is an international expectation that we manage our forests in a sustainable manner with various certification standards that need to be met. Should the international community see that we're not managing sustainably, there will be consequences to the world-marketing of any B.C. products.

From a First Nation perspective, the other values of a forest are of equal if not paramount weight to the value of timber for financial gain. The integration of ecosystems that coexist and provide healing and spiritual guidance for human beings, and that's all human beings, cannot be left by the side. For many, we cannot replicate the beauty of nature or the lessons we have to learn from not listening to our animals.

My people still hunt. We still fish. We gather berries. I make medicine from our forests and streams. They are of value, as First Nations are generally living below the poverty line in this province and, in many instances, in a lot of our communities.

How should decisions regarding potential actions to mitigate the timber supply impacts be made and by whom? Although the provincial government assumes they are the only jurisdiction deciding forestry issues, this hasn't been the case adhered to in the B.C. courts.

As seen with Delgamuukw, Haida and Tsilhqot'in, First Nations have major interests with resource extraction on their territories. Until the land question is settled throughout B.C., First Nations need not only to be consulted with but to have other jurisdictions seek our free, prior and informed consent, especially about the long-term impacts on our rights.

First Nations need to be at the table to make these decisions, and we shouldn't still have to be asking for the respect that we need to have given to our rights. We are not stakeholders; we are the rightful landowners. The province has yet to prove to me their title to these lands and these resources.

What specific information about your local area would you like the committee to know and consider? Saik'uz First Nation does have a 20-year agreement with L&M Lumber, a company. We still have eight years left on it, or thereabouts. This agreement came as a result of non-consultation by the province and really had to be fought for by my community of Saik'uz.

Our community has been involved with licensing from the province since our woodlot was signed in 1987, Dezti forest products licence in 1993, and our last forest and range agreement that expired in 2010. Decades prior to this, we've had band members who've held contracts for hack ties that employed about 20 percent of our community. Every agreement that we made had to be fought for, taking up a lot of time and energy. They have all provided employment to varying degrees and built capacity for the outdoor work that our people enjoy.

Today we're here because one mill had a catastrophe, and in order to commit to rebuild they require a 15- to 20-year supply of timber. To obtain the supply we're asked to give up the values our forests provide that don't have monetary values attached. We're asked to let go of the decades of work to ensure our forests provided more than just timber jobs for our communities. We're asked to give up the local control of resources we have fought for.

What will happen to us in the future? Should I continue to work on a bioenergy business that will make use of these dead pine stands? Should I expect the ministry to just let it burn when another fire starts, like we prepared to evacuate for in Saik'uz in 2010.

What cautions and advice do you have for this committee in considering whether and how to mitigate mid-term
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timber supply? Those in the forest industry knew about this issue a number of years ago. I believe that is why we're…. There are those that have invested in diversification and those that haven't invested in community at all.

I believe that I am being emotionally blackmailed by one situation which will be decided and have long-term impacts into the future of our forests. I believe that should a political decision be made that hinders the values of the Saik'uz people, I will have to defend our rights in a court of law. I would advise the committee to think long and hard before coming up with decisions that will entail borrowing from all our futures.

I would advise the committee to ensure that those willing to invest and diversify our forest products and industry be supported. I would advise the committee that we need to plant three trees for every one that is harvested and to start to plant a variety of species. I would advise that the time for industry to dictate only their needs to us should end now.

How would you as an individual or community want to be engaged in these considerations going forward? The Saik'uz First Nation insists on being at the table as a decision-maker, as these are our resources.

Specific concerns that our community has with inventory. There are assumptions that are being made. Exactly what is the inventory out there? This is much the same issue that we have with water. What is the real number? It will take more time to bring our forests back as the issues with water, soil degradation, etc., aren't understood — to make firm plans about sustainability that we seek and have a responsibility to provide to all our grandchildren.

Bringing wood forward. Saik'uz cannot agree with such a concept. It sounds like the housing mortgage debacle where the long term wasn't even looked at in the U.S.

Community fire safety. We need to manage and mitigate the risks of fire, such as we had in 2010. We are all surrounded by fuel loads close to our communities that pose serious hazards in the pine beetle zone.

Area-based tenures. Woodlots are being traded off right now and given back already. Those FCRSAs are activity- and area-based, and our area is mainly dead pine already.

VQO's. Really, how much volume is involved? Those are assisting us with the tourism industry. We need to remember that. And protecting riparian zones for freshwater fish. What code changes will be made next?

The reason I'm bringing up our FROA expiration in 2010 is because I did leave a bill. They made $15 million from my traditional territory in 2010, and because we have had an expired FROA, I expected that I would be able to negotiate the invoice of $7.2 million that I left with the province in the Minister of Finance's office, specifically. I have yet to have meetings to negotiate the settlement of that bill, and I'd like to leave that also with you.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you very much, Jackie. I'll look to the members for questions.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I apologized this morning as well. I had to ask, in terms of the treaty process, what the participation of the nation is or what process is in place so that some of the issues you're discussing are being dealt with — just for background.

J. Thomas: We originally were one of the first signers to the treaty process back in 1993. As a tribal council, we were one of the eight communities that was signed up to negotiate as a group. In 2007 at the annual general assembly of our tribal council, all the communities voted to leave the process. We spent 14 years in that process trying to come to terms without — for mandates brought forward by the province and Canada.

My community currently owes $1.7 million on loans through the treaty process. We have yet to finalize that.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): So what is the process going forward? Clearly, the treaty process is not working. Is it a matter of getting the treaty process so that it works for nations, or is it a different process, or is that unclear? Is that something that the provincial government needs to put energy into figuring out?

J. Thomas: I think that the Minister of Indian Affairs actually had an independent consultant come forward to review the treaty process. You'd have to ask him for that report.

There have been five committees, as far as I know, in B.C. in the 20 years. This September will be the 20-year anniversary of that process. The first signing was in September of 1992. Although we went with good intentions and, even after we'd left the treaty table, were supportive of the common table, there has been no progress made in terms of moving forward, even on common issues. I leave that with the federal and provincial government.

B. Routley: You mentioned that you had concerns about inventory and water. I wondered if you could be more specific on what your issues are in terms of water concerns.

The other one you talk about was fighting for every agreement. You mentioned the bioenergy, but I'm not clear on whether you're actively…. Are you actively pursuing an agreement about bioenergy at this point, or what's that about?

J. Thomas: Okay, I'll do the bioenergy, because I remember that more. We have sought from the province a bioenergy licence, a five-year licence. We are currently working with a partner on getting that done. I have to
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wonder, really, if that volume will still be there.

In terms of water and soil there, I don't believe that there's enough research to understand really what the pine beetle epidemic has done to the land. Until that research is done, I think we're just making a lot of assumptions. We need to do our research before we move forward and say: "Oh, this is best for…."

B. Routley: Just for greater clarity, too, on the issue of some of the current…. Well, some people call them constraints; other people call them areas that have been set aside for special zones or for other land use issues that were unique to the land use planning process.

I have heard some mention in various communities about, for example, VQOs. If there was dead pine in a visual-quality area that is in your area at all, do you agree that it should be harvested — obviously, taking into account your interests? I guess the question is: do you think it's a good idea to harvest it? As one mayor put it, he'd rather look at green than at red or grey or black pine.

J. Thomas: I don't think it's really a simple question and answer, because it depends on what they're going to plant after and how quick they're going to plant after. I think that we've been really behind in terms of planting. We need to speed that up in order to…. We're going to have a lot of carbon problems in the future, never mind the fire hazard.

It depends on where those areas are. I think there may be a possibility to have some site-specific. However, if there's tourism that's already there, we need to take that into account. We have a huge tourism industry in this province that we need not to forget.

H. Bains: I may have missed it in your presentation. The question I have is: do you have currently a timber licence in the area — your nation?

H. Bains: Have you tried to get one in the past, or are you looking for it in the future?

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): If we have a couple of minutes, I'll just ask on one other issue. In terms of opportunities with bioenergy, we also have — for many communities, including, I'm sure, within your nation — issues around interface work that needs to be done for wildfire protection and things like that.

Has the nation sort of explored possibilities to combine the business opportunity with bioenergy with some of the interface field management work that needs to be done? Is that something that's been considered or talked about?

J. Thomas: We've done some field management work directly on the reserve to protect some of the housing on the reserve in terms of getting rid of the underbrush and pruning. In terms of the area around our reserve, specifically it's farms, so I don't have that issue.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Chief Thomas. I just wanted to ask: in your community how many members are within the Saik'uz First Nation? Secondly, how many of those are working in forestry jobs such as at the L&M facility? I'm assuming that there must be some relationship there.

J. Thomas: We have a thousand band members on our membership list. I have 17 positions with L&M Lumber. Our logging company employs about a dozen, and then various contractors attached to that. So what is that? Probably about 40 people.

J. Rustad (Chair): Sorry about that. We'll make sure we have that corrected in the records.

Members, we have a little bit of time before our public input session starts. I would look to…. Should we try to see if the presenters are here? Are they? Do you know?

J. Rustad (Chair): If we could, maybe let's just recess for two minutes while we sort out the record on this.

J. Rustad (Chair): Good afternoon. We will break here from recess and go to our first presenter of the public session.

The public sessions are set up in each community to allow for people to be able to present to our committee. They have 15-minute time slots. The presenter can decide however they want to use that time slot — presenting information or being able to ask and answer questions through the process.

In addition, if a presenter would like to provide more information to the committee or if anybody else feels that they would like to be able to contribute, there is an opportunity to give us a written submission up until July 20. The written submission can be done, once again, on our website, which is www.leg.bc.ca/timbercommittee.

Welcome to Dan Brooks from the Upper Nechako Wilderness Council. Over to you, Dan.

D. Brooks: I represent a group of tourism operators in the Vanderhoof forest district south of Highway 16. There are about 15 or 16 of us. We're all wilderness tourism operators, and we're very concerned about timber supply. I want to make clear that what I'm speaking about here is strictly limited to tourism values. I'm not going to be talking about fertilization. That's not a tourism value.

I do want to identify the values that tourism has. First off, number 1 is scenic viewscapes, which are covered by visual-quality objectives and lakeshore management classifications. Number 2 is wildlife. We're interested in species at risk, winter range and habitat objectives. Three, plant life. We're interested in biodiversity and old-growth forests. And fourth, fisheries. We need riparian management and lakeshore management.

Then we're also interested in the range of user interaction, which means that there needs to be…. Some areas will have intense user interaction, and other areas which are more remote would have low user interaction. There needs to be a range of that. That's covered by the access management and road densities.

Anytime you start changing timber supply, you start increasing pressure on these values. It's important to realize that that changes your tourism composition in your area. We call them values. Other people call them constraints, which is almost offensive to a tourism operator.

Most of these values overlap, so I don't want you to ever assume that this is some sort of cumulative process — that you set aside 10,000 hectares for visual quality and then you add another 10,000 hectares for lakeshore management. Often these areas overlap. It is not cumulative.

The wilderness tourism footprint on the land base is actually very small. It usually accumulates to less than 10 percent of your total timber-harvesting land base. It's a very small footprint. So we're not talking about gigantic tracts of land.

Wilderness tourism values also coincide very strongly with rural quality-of-life values. Tourism and quality of life are very strongly connected. When someone moves to a rural community like Vanderhoof….

If we're going to attract a doctor, that doctor is looking for a place to live that has beautiful scenery, abundant wildlife, biodiversity. He wants those things. That's what attracts him to our community. And of course, doctors contribute to the quality of life in our community. So you can't separate tourism out and say that it's sacrificeable without sacrificing some of the quality of life. I'll talk more about that later.

Establishing land use plans to balance the needs of timber supply with the needs of wilderness tourism has taken decades of work and negotiations through land use planning. It has taken a very long time. Some of us have been sitting at that table…. I started sitting at that table in 1997. I'm 16 years into this process, and it's still not solved. So it's not like this is ever ended.

From a tourism perspective, we've negotiated that in good faith. We sat at those land use tables in good faith, and when suddenly a special committee gets formed with the ability to veto all those decisions, that is like a…. It's very upsetting. To be quite frank with you, it makes me very alarmed. It makes me feel like all those years of negotiation have been betrayed.

I want to point out to you that tourism expenditures…. I'm going to give you a little economics — tourism economics 101. It's so hard to track. How do you determine…? I heard Gerry Thiessen talk about doing a cost-benefit analysis with VQOs. How do you determine how much a VQO is worth to tourism?

I can give you broad generalities, but I can't give you numbers. In a broad generality, when you start looking at tourism values, the greater the quality of the tourism value, the greater the cost to tourism, the greater the input to tourism.

I gave you a little graph. You can look at this. If you start looking at tourism values…. You can take all those ones that I've listed. They're visual quality, wildlife, plant life, fisheries and low user interaction.

If you've got low quality, you can attract tourists that are going to spend 500 or 600 bucks on a trip. But if you have an extreme set of quality, you can attract tourists that are going to spend $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 or $30,000 on a tourism trip. That requires high-quality tourism.

I have given you a copy of my brochure. Is this a sales pitch? No, because you're all residents of British Columbia, and you don't need me. But I did give it out to you so that you could understand how this works for me and how you're going to affect someone like me.

First off, I want to point out that…. If you look on the first page, you're going to see that I'm in the high-end range. I charge $8,700 for one hunter to come with me. That puts me in the high range of things.
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For me to be able to charge that kind of money to a client, what do I have to provide? I'm going to read you the first paragraph on my first page.

"Crystal Lake Resort is located in a remote wilderness in the interior of British Columbia. We have a lodge and several remote cabins scattered strategically throughout our hunting territory.

"The remoteness of our hunting territory means limited access, very few hunters and a strong moose population. The vastness of this wilderness, the lack of road development and the variety of lakes and meadows available to hunt make Crystal Lake Resort one of the premium locations to hunt in British Columbia."

That's what I need, and as soon as you start increasing timber supply, which means increased pressures on the values I just listed, you're taking that away from me. I'm here to tell you today that you will collapse my business.

How to put a tourism out of business? I'll tell you how to do it. The first time they punch a road in to the heart of my hunting territory and they log right down to the lakeshore, Crystal Lake, I'm gone the next day. I'm done. I can't sell that product. So land use planning is critical to the long-term security of tourism values. Please understand that.

Increasing timber supply at the expense of tourism is totally unacceptable from our point of view, and we feel like we've already made big concessions to the increase in the annual allowable cut without any return.

When the chief forester made his decision to increase the AAC way back in 2003 or 2004 or whenever that was, he said in there that he recognized that tourism values were going to have increased pressure on them, and he recommended that there be 10 percent of the timber-harvesting land base set aside for conservation. That never happened.

So here we are, sitting here ten years later. We never got what we needed in order to preserve tourism, and you're talking about increasing more. To us as tourism operators, that is just not acceptable. We're not interested in giving up more VQOs so you can log more. That's just not part of our MO right now.

Go to this one. I want you to understand how much pressure we're under. I asked the Ministry of Forests a couple of years ago to compile how many hectares of logging had occurred in access management polygons. I specifically asked for access management polygons because those are generally tightly associated with high-quality tourism areas. That's why those access management polygons exist.

If you start looking at this, you realize that 59 percent of the harvesting that has occurred inside access management polygons has happened in the last decade — 60 percent of it. We are under extreme pressure because of this mountain pine beetle.

There are roads and logging clearcuts in places that were once beautiful wilderness areas, and we've lost them. You're taking that away from us. I've had to abandon areas where I used to take clients because it's now covered in logging clearcuts and roads, and I can't sell that product.

You're putting us under pressure. You're shrinking the land base that we have accessible. We've gone from being an industry that was in expansion mode to an industry that is now in survival mode. That's the result of the increased annual allowable cut.

Most of the wilderness tourism operations that exist in the Vanderhoof forest district were created between 1950 and 1980. Since 1980 only one or two have been created. It's not doable anymore because you're shrinking us down and you're limiting us, and now you're going to start reducing us by increasing timber supply again.

We believe that tourism values are greater than salvage values. We think that VQOs are more important than what you're going to get — whatever, a couple of bucks a cubic metre for the timber that's there. We believe that sacrificing the tourism industry to falsely prop up the forest industry is not an acceptable trade-off.

The impacts on tourism last generations. They logged down to the lakeshore of Johnson Lake 25 years ago. We — Crystal Lake — abandoned that lake for 20 years, and we're just now going back there because we couldn't sell that product. Twenty years later, we finally got green-up. These are long-term impacts on tourism, so when you make a decision to increase timber supply, you've got to keep in mind that that is going to affect a generation of tourism operators.

If we really want to talk about helping our economy here, we need to be talking about how to increase tourism. Why aren't we having a special committee on how we can increase VQOs? How can we increase old-growth management areas so that we can increase tourism? That should be the question here. If we're going to expand our economy, we don't do it at the expense of tourism. We do it for tourism.

So I want to be clear that we do support changes to increase timber supply, but not at the expense of tourism values. What do we support? There are three things that I can name that we support.

First off, we support strongly area-based tenures, those land-based tenures. We really do, for a couple of reasons. I spend hundreds of hours a year, thousands of hours a year, sitting down with forest licensees, multiple forest licensees, trying to negotiate mitigating impacts to my operations. And if you could limit that to a single operator, and we could start making some long-term plans, that is beneficial to tourism.

I understand that there are benefits to timber supply, but there are even bigger benefits for tourism operators in land-based security, land tenure security. If I knew that every week I could go in and talk to one forester and cover off everything I had to deal with, that would be a huge deal to a tourism operation.

We support the renewal of land use plans. If you think there's a problem with VQOs, let's go back and revisit them through the proper process, not through this com-
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mittee. Those land use plans need to be visited through consensus-based, land use planning. That's where those things belong. They don't belong in a special committee. They belong, for each community….

Vanderhoof as a community reached consensus 20 years ago. We have a land use plan here. If we're going to change that land use plan, let us make the decision to change it. If we decide we're going to remove a VQO or increase a VQO, let us make that decision. Let's not start making broad-based reductions in tourism values from this special committee.

We also support…. If you are going to proceed and disregard land use planning that exists…. If you decide to disregard land use planning, then what are you going to give tourism in exchange for that? The only way I can see that being possible is if you establish some sort of means of dispute resolution between tourism stakeholders and forestry stakeholders. I think we need it anyway.

But if you're going to take away everything that we hold dear, and you're going to put it on the chopping block, we need some means of saying: "Enough is enough in this area. We cannot sustain our businesses in this area. We need a dispute resolution mechanism."

I feel very strongly that this is too little. Nobody woke up this morning and said: "Holy crap. We're going to have a reduction in timber supply." That never happened. We've known for ten years that this was coming. We should have been having this conversation ten years ago. This is not an emergency, because we failed to prepare.

The fate of the forest industry was sealed ten years ago. So we're not sitting at this table with an August deadline to come up with all of these solutions because of timber supply. It's because of Burns Lake.

I sympathize greatly with what's happened over there, but let's not make some sort of radical, knee-jerk reaction and throw tourism under the bus so that we can make small political gains in Burns Lake. I don't think that's worth it — not from a tourism point of view.

I had a hard time believing that you are going to save the forest industry with the gains you're going to get from harvesting in VQOs or OGMAs or any of those things. I think you are going to get marginal gains in forestry over a very short period of time, and you are going to collapse a gigantic quantity of the tourism industry. I understand that tourism maybe only makes up 5 to 10 percent of the economy here locally, but it makes up 100 percent of my income. So I can't survive without those values.

Be clear on this. We depend on those values, and if you take them away from us, you will collapse our businesses. There is a direct relationship between the amount you decide to issue in timber supply and annual allowable cut and how many tourism operators can survive on that land base.

So I ask you, as member of the special committee, to seriously consider that. Tourism is a means of diversifying our economy. Let's not sacrifice tourism to save marginal gains in forestry.

Do you have any questions for me? I've already used up my 15 minutes. I'm obviously very passionate about this.

J. Rustad (Chair): No, it's good. We've got about one or two minutes left. I saw four hands up, so what I will do is I will give one to either side.

B. Routley: Thank you for your passion. I think we need to be passionate about these issues. Clearly, you have a strong point of view, and you've powerfully demonstrated commitment to your tourism issues and made a point about these land use plans.

If we could camp there for a minute about land use — commitment to kind of renew the land use process within your region. I think that that might be something you have in common with Burns Lake. They might like to renew their land use plan based on sitting down with the community and having discussions, seeing if they could come up with a commitment on some changes.

Basically, I would like to know if you would support that kind of approach, even if it meant that it was different in the community down the road, if there was a recommendation that obviously would impact timber supply in some way. But really, notionally, the concept of what you're talking about is really letting communities that have been involved in land use plans have more of a say on kind of an individual basis.

D. Brooks: Absolutely. Let them be self-determinant in that manner. But let me say something else. There are some values that are provincial, and VQOs are one of them. Highway 16. The tourists that pass through on Highway 16 stop in Vanderhoof. If they associate low visual quality with the Burns Lake area, that will have a detrimental impact on tourism in Vanderoof. There are some resources that are provincial in scope that communities should not have veto on.

B. Routley: What would you say to the mayor who told me just last night that…? He actually lives right across from a pine beetle area that went from red to black. He's really delighted that it got logged, and now it's green. Is that a bad idea?

D. Brooks: I would say that what happens in VQOs…. First off, from a tourist point of view, tourists look at a VQO. They see logging as offensive, and they see pine beetle as a natural process. So while it's more acceptable to those of us who live here in the north, because we're familiar with logging, someone who comes from Germany finds that offensive. I'm not trying to cater to the residents' side of things; I'm trying to cater to the tourists' side of things.
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From a tourism point of view, that clearcut went from green to red to grey to an understory of green again. My own viewscape, what I look across, is actually returning back to green. It's never been logged.

So we are moving through that cycle, and eventually we'll get that much greener forest. Eventually, that'll come.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Dan. I appreciate your enthusiasm. Being in tourism, I have a pretty good understanding of what you're up against here.

My question is.... Looking at the landscape over the last ten years and the pine beetle and the damage…. Of course, I guess it's a provincial asset, which the wood and the fibre are. Of course, it wasn't just about the jobs. It was about whether there was going to be any salvageability out of that merchantable timber — right? There's lots that's going to be left out there.

What do we do to the land use plans? I'm sure that there have been places that the land use plans were in place and that have been compromised, I'm assuming, by the pine beetle epidemic. What do we do to identify and find the operators like yourself that are on the land and somehow, maybe, make certain that the setbacks or that protection that you're looking for…?

I don't know what the distances have to be. I'm assuming that if there's a road there and it's close enough to a mill, they'd probably like to log it. But how do we identify the operators and where they are on the ground? Is it easy to do?

D. Brooks: Yeah. Every licensee in this room has a list of tourism operators that they contact regularly to inform them of their harvesting schedules. That's an easy thing. Finding the people out there is an easy thing. Finding how to meet their needs is not so easy. That's more difficult. But finding the people is easy.

J. Rustad (Chair): Well, Dan, thank you very much. We've gone a little bit over in time — 20 minutes rather than 15. My apology to committee members and to other presenters. But thank you very much for your presentation.

E. Doerig: Good afternoon, committee. My name is Elisabeth Doerig. I'm a resident and business owner in the Vanderhoof forest district. I have lived here with my family for over 25 years. Together with my husband, Joe, I own and operate Nechako Lodge and Aviation, a wilderness tourism business in the upper Nechako near Kenney dam.

Right from the beginning we have been involved in just about every public process on land use issues in this area — from the LRUPs in the early '90s, through the Vanderhoof LRMP, to the public advisory group for SFM certification, from the Vanderhoof access management plan to commenting on SFP drafts and amendments and any kind of operating plan.

To gain a stronger voice in these issues, we have joined with other wilderness tourism operators and formed the Upper Nechako Wilderness Council. Needless to say that after investing so much time and effort in debating, fighting, compromising to gain some protection for non-timber resource values, we are shocked that a political decision could void what has so painstakingly been achieved by public processes.

Since the Burns Lake sawmill fire has thrown the spotlight on the harsh facts of the dwindling timber supply, relaxing or even eliminating certain land use objectives has been presented as an option to increase the timber supply. This choice was strongly promoted by comparing the economic value of tourism versus logging and by weighing the apparently insignificant tourism values of our "industrial" area against high-profile tourism regions such as Vancouver, Whistler or the Okanagan.

We would like to point out to you that the members of the Upper Nechako Wilderness Council are all able to make a comfortable living for themselves and their families, as well as employing some seasonal staff. We have been promoting and selling these same tourism values to visitors from all over the world for many years. And interestingly, residents of the Prince George TSA make up one of the largest groups of our guests, which confirms the government's own statistics that B.C. residents recreate in their backyard.

While non-timber resource values such as visual quality, old-growth management, riparian management and wildlife management are crucial for a viable wilderness tourism industry, they are no less essential to the residents. They are a vital element of our quality of life. We can enjoy a great variety of excellent forest recreation opportunities close to our homes because dedicated stakeholders and members of the public worked long and hard to develop and establish land use objectives protecting these resource values.

Although we live in an area where resource extraction is important, we still deserve the same protection for our non-timber resource values and our quality of life as in other regions of the province.

The government's own surveys show that residents value visual quality as highly as tourists do, and we strongly believe that most of us care what kind of landscape we see when we look out of our windows on our way to work or when we take the family for a drive along the highway or into the back country to our favourite fishing hole.

The majority of us are connected to the forest in some way or other. We live in it, we work in it, and we play in
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it. For the sake of our quality of life, we need to balance what we take out and what we leave intact.

Unfortunately, we cannot measure the value of our quality of life here. But why else would people who grew up in this area and moved away eventually come back and stay? Why else would people from other countries or continents choose to live and raise a family here, as is the case for my husband and myself? Why else would children go away for education or, in the case of our own two sons, to learn a trade in Europe and come back to live here when they could earn much more overseas?

Why else would professionals such as teachers, doctors, lawyers choose to work here and never leave anymore? Why else would workers from other parts of the country, here only for a temporary project like the Endako mine expansion, choose to bring their family and stay for good? Or why else would hunters and fishermen from the Lower Mainland, who initially came only for recreation, buy property here and start a business?

We cannot calculate a dollar price for quality of life and compare it to the value of a load of logs or the number of person-years of employment. But if we sacrifice it for a small delay of the inevitable falldown, we will see and feel the costs of losing these values for generations.

Would it not be fairer to the people if our government honestly stated the hard facts of the unavoidable job losses and helped us prepare for it? What is happening now is like telling a blindfolded patient, "Everything will be all right," and putting band-aid after band-aid on a limb that has to be amputated anyways.

As a resident and a wilderness tourism business owner, I urge you: please, do not use the non-timber value reserves as a stopgap measure to temporarily increase the timber supply. We northerners are resilient, and we'll get through this crisis, but we need a diverse, healthy forest to sustain our physical and psychological well-being.

I'm puzzled. I hear what you're saying. I have no issue with that, but I'm puzzled. In your third paragraph — it starts out…. This is Burns Lake sawmill. I'm just going to read it here. "This choice was strongly promoted by comparing the economic value of tourism versus logging and by weighing apparently insignificant tourism values of our industrial area."

Where did that come from? You certainly didn't hear it from this group, nor was it in our….

E. Doerig: I'm sorry to say it is a quote from MLA John Rustad that was in the papers.

I guess I fully understand the value, whether we call these values or give them different names, but these are the values that we used when we went through the land use decisions and left the VQO areas and old-growth management areas aside.

Now, I'd just like to understand your point of view, because for the last three days, we've been hearing about these values. One presentation would tell us that when we made those decisions we had green trees, and now we don't. We have dead trees, in many cases, in most cases. They are saying that we should manage these areas, not to the extent that we managed the rest of the pine beetle area but to an extent that we should remove those dead trees and replant them.

Then the other would come and say, "Look, leave them. Dead trees are better than no trees," and that's how they value those. I think there are two different positions being taken. They both value these two areas that are set aside, but one is suggesting that we manage them differently so that we could have green trees later on by taking those dead trees out. The others are saying no, leave them alone. It's a natural phenomenon, and that's the way it should be.

I take it that you are taking the position of "leave those dead trees and let nature work," and the trees will come out from the bottom eventually. But wouldn't you see that that will take time rather than if we manage it, take those dead trees and plant them, and in a few years you have green trees again for visual-quality observations?

E. Doerig: Where I live we are surrounded by dead forests. We were hit almost at the beginning of the pine beetle epidemic in the Vanderhoof forest district. That's now a good ten years. What I see is dead trees still standing. There are trees that have fallen down and, in between, a lot of new growth — a lot.

There were already young trees before the beetle hit which didn't have enough light. As soon as needles came down, they have burst into growth, and I'm sure they have grown a metre or two. This argument to cut down these trees and plant new ones I think would be a setback of growth of anywhere from zero to 15 or 20 years, which would be destroyed by going in with the machines.

There are probably certain areas in the landscape where there hasn't been much growth, where it might be a possibility, and it might be quicker than letting it grow. But that would very much have to be dealt with on a site-by-site basis, particularly if it is in a VQO. Whatever happens in VQOs, I think the status quo would be what is now. If there is absolute need or if it really was justifiable with input of all the stakeholders, it could be discussed.

To open it across the board by just nullifying the legal protection that these VQOs have — absolutely not. It's not justified, and I think science would affirm that.

H. Bains: Just to add on to that. I guess I get it from where you come from — the employment it created, the
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tourism — because it's a vital part of our economy.

But I think there's another value, that the people of this province also feel that our natural resources, especially forestry, are to be used for economic growth as well, which means having jobs in the forest industry, whether it's logging or manufacturing or secondary manufacturing.

Right now we're looking at the AAC going down past pine beetle, which will be much lower than the pre–pine beetle times. We will be cutting much, much less trees than we did before that, so it's going down anyway.

E. Doerig: Why would it then have to be in the VQOs if you say you are cutting much less? I think there are some reasons why these areas are so attractive. They are often relatively easy to access. It might be on a lakeshore. It might be good ground.

J. Rustad (Chair): I have Norm next, and if we can just keep the questions and answers short, because we're a little over time.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): I take your point about 16 years of negotiation and to be very mindful of not throwing that out. I think that's a good point.

I think also, talking about that local process in small communities…. I know in some of the negotiations that take place within communities, we've had people that are within the mill and working within the mill and that have an interest there but are also participating, talking about values that relate to hunting and things like that. I think within communities you're often able to find the balance that's needed.

What I'm taking from what you're saying is that there has been a lot of work done on finding that balance and that as we go forward, we need to be mindful of setting up a situation where local input and local knowledge would continue to find that balance. Essentially, what you're saying is don't just come in here and throw away all the work that's been done — right?

We heard from some of the people that are in the cattle and ranching industry what the pine beetle impact has been on cattle and trying to move through the forest. Being that your business, I would assume, is associated with wildlife and people going through the forest, tell me what's happened to the wildlife population — your observation in these ten years since you were in the area — that's been most impacted with the deadfalls?

Not only with just the wildlife getting through, but what's happened about the tourists that you bring here and some of the dangers that come with those trees that are not as well rooted as they were when they were alive and green?

E. Doerig: That is certainly a factor, and trails have to be cleared much more often. You have to watch what potential danger trees are in these areas. I think it's a matter of being aware, not just blindly accept facts. Be aware, adjust, and do your business very conscious of that new situation.

If you're asking if that has taken away or had a negative impact on my business…. Is that what you're asking?

B. Stewart: Well, I'm assuming it's had some impact. It must have. I'm talking about the wildlife population not being able to move around as freely. Obviously, you've changed your practices from where on the trails you wouldn't cut trees down. You now have to look at trees that are at risk and take them down — right?

E. Doerig: Yes. As far as wildlife, I don't really have the expertise to be able to say that that had an impact. We know this has happened before in the past, in the far back past, and obviously wildlife has survived. They have been able to get through windfalls or walk around or use different trails or different areas. I think wildlife will be able to adjust.

B. Stewart: In the rancher's characterization it was more difficult for the animals to get through or get access to some of the grazing land. I guess his rationalization was that some of the harvesting practices actually helped. Even though they wish that it never happened, the situation is that it created access for some of the range animals that he was raising.

E. Doerig: That's quite possible, but I have no experience in range and ranching practices, sorry.

J. Rustad (Chair): Our next presenter is Vanderhoof Specialty Wood Products — Paul Heit.

P. Heit: Thank you for the opportunity to be heard here today. My name is Paul Heit. I represent Vanderhoof Specialty Products, which is a secondary manufacturer here in Vanderhoof. We have operated continuously since 1991, and we've operated as a local, family-owned business since our inception.
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Our core business is remanufacturing trim blocks into finger joint studs, primarily for the Canadian market. We also produce tapered fence posts utilizing beetle-killed pine logs, which are typically too small in diameter to produce lumber. In addition, we produce wood pellets from our own residual fibre. Therefore, 100 percent of our input fibre produces a marketable product, while over 95 percent of our total production is sold into markets other than the United States.

Our operation provides over 80 direct jobs to the community and has throughout its history served, in part, as a training ground for many young workers to gain experience before moving on to higher-paying jobs in the primary manufacturing forest sector or the mining industry.

Vanderhoof Specialty Wood Products came into existence through 16(1) of the Forest Act, which encouraged investments in small to medium-sized businesses in British Columbia. By way of section 16(1), government provided non-replaceable timber sale licences to us to use to trade with the major licensees in exchange for fibre from them, fibre that was historically produced into chips.

Hence, we were provided with timber, which we sold mostly to the Plateau mill in return for the ability to purchase their planer trim blocks. Therefore, these licences provided to us guaranteed our security of supply of trim blocks while in addition providing many local contract logging and road construction jobs.

With government elimination of section 16(1) and section 21 through amendments to the Forest Act, which had provided trading material for small businesses like ours, the security of small business and associated jobs is now jeopardized.

Several communities in the region, including Vanderhoof, have benefitted from the relationship between primary and secondary manufacturers, thus improving their overall economic security. Pressures on the timber-harvesting land base for alternate uses of the land plus the impacts of the mountain pine beetle infestation on long-term sustainable harvest levels clearly present a great challenge for the economic health of small businesses in the Prince George region.

The challenges unique to small business need to be included in the work of this committee. Some form of security of tenure for small and medium-sized companies is essential to the survival of this component of the forest sector into the future. It is equally important for government to support small forest companies in forest-dependent communities like Vanderhoof to help diversify the local economy and to support product development outside of the United States marketplace.

We ask for government to strengthen forest policy, which will better provide the opportunity for the creation and maintenance of small to medium-sized business. We intend to file a detailed written submission to the committee prior to July 20. Thank you for your time.

B. Routley: Thank you for your presentation. In addition to the jobs that you've got, which obviously is a good-news thing, do you have any specific suggestions to improve small business and medium-sized business other than a return to the small business enterprise program? Or are you actually suggesting that we return to the small business enterprise program?

P. Heit: I'm not suggesting what form of security is given to small business. I think that is something that should be evaluated by the Ministry of Forests.

We have spoken and have spent some time, particularly with Dave Peterson, who's here today, as well as speaking to John, who's our MLA, about what we believe we need. I think the means by which that's created is a point of discussion at this stage.

Clearly, every deal has two sides. If you're trying to buy something, you have to have something to sell, particularly if you're dealing with companies that are much bigger than you are. We need to create a more level playing field so that we have some ability to negotiate and secure our investment that we've made in the past, plus the investments that we would like to intend to make into the future.

You've heard it many times today, particularly from the council presentation, that companies need to know that they have some security before they're going to feel comfortable in making an investment. Whether that's a public company where decisions are made around a board table or it's a family-owned business where decisions are made around a cup of coffee in the morning, it's no different. You don't make investments without security, and that's what we've been lacking since we lost section 16(1) and section 21.

D. Barnett: Thank you for your presentation. Since you lost section 16(1), you still have a very viable business that's been very successful, I understand.

P. Heit: Yes, when I say that…. I mean, if you're familiar with section 21, which was the latest legislation, it….

Our licence expired approximately two years ago, and we started working with government in trying to figure out a way to replace that security, whatever form that might look like, probably two years prior to that. We have not concluded a solution at this point. Going forward, it's important that we do, again, not only from a point of survival for our company but from a point of further investment.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. I enjoyed the discussion we had at the back, too, with
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some of these issues. I think one of the things that we would be looking for is obviously to get more from the resource. Value-added is something that's talked about all the time.

You've identified the fibre and what that allows you to do in terms of trading, but can you quickly identify some of the other barriers to trying to set up a business like this? I mean, council talked about the need for innovation, the need for more value-added, but what are some of the other barriers besides just the fibre issue?

P. Heit: Yeah, it's the key. I think, for the most part, the ability to be able to solve that issue would allow you to probably survive and solve most of the other impediments that may arise.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just to understand, it's not as if the wood is not available for the primary user. All you're doing is trading and requiring them to give you elements of their by-product that they wouldn't otherwise use — right? — or that they would use for something of less value.

That doesn't mean that those things could not change. That's the fear, because if those things went away — because we have no security to be able to continue to access them…. In the past what we've had is timber to be able to trade with them, essentially, to be able to protect what we wanted.

That volume of by-product essentially has created 80 jobs in this community. I don't think that's anything to sneeze at. I don't think the community believes it is. The community supports us in our quest.

You know, it essentially comes down to us figuring, with government's help…. We look at that as a partnership, by the way. We don't look at it as one side against another. It's a partnership in trying to solve a problem. We have given them some ideas around how they could look at doing that, and I think that they're reviewing that.

P. Heit: The latest one we had provided us with 100,000 cubic metres a year for a ten-year period.

E. Foster: Okay, and has anyone indicated to you what happened to that 100,000 metres once you didn't utilize it?

P. Heit: I'm not qualified to answer that question. That is, I think, the best way I can answer that.

Any other questions? I've got one quick question for you. Maybe it's not so quick, but it's something I would certainly appreciate your opinion on.

In the supply area the projections are that we're going to go from a current cut of just over ten million cubic metres — the pre–pine beetle cut was around 9.5 million — down to just over six million cubic metres.

So in a world where the fibre basket and the fibre that's available is going to become smaller, how should we look at trying to figure out opportunities to both support your type of an operation but to also keep the feedstock that goes to your operation viable?

P. Heit: Well, that's the challenge, isn't it? Our view as a company…. Again, primarily because we live here and we've raised our families here, we're very conscious of where the values lie in terms of economics in this community.

There's no question in our minds what the value is of the primary manufacturers that we have been fortunate enough to have in this community — what they've done for our community as well as our relationships with them in terms of business. But business is business, and essentially, as I've said before, you have to have something to sell if you're trying to buy something in return.

So I think, to answer your question, we hope that we see continued success for the primary sector in this community both in terms of maintaining and growing their businesses. We think that's important for the communities, and we think that — as we've always been able to do — we've been able to find a niche in that where we were able to come up with a mutually beneficial relationship in terms of business with them.

From our standpoint, as far as…. I think this is what you're asking me, John: where would the wood come from? My answer to that one is that…. One of the suggestions that we have made in the past, and it's only one, is that….

We are, in terms of B.C. Timber Sales, a category 2 registrant. So we are a category 2 operator. Our view is — and we've expressed it on numerous occasions — that category 2 does not work. It doesn't work as well as it should, at the very least. There are a number of reasons for that, which would take way too much time for me to get into right now.

What we've suggested is that the portion of volume
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that we are looking for come from category 2 in terms of a bid proposal–type of sale. That means that that volume would not need to come from the existing timber that's allocated towards the primaries, because that wood is really not accessible to them anyway.

It's not meant for them, category 2. It is meant for us. It is meant for companies like us, so that's been our suggestion. In other words, it would not impact, or should not impact, the primaries.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you very much. We're a little bit over time again with the presentation. I know there are other questions, but perhaps we could figure out how to get that. Since you're going to be giving us a written submission, perhaps you could ask him and you could be able to provide it as part of a written submission down the road. Thanks very much, Paul.

D. Wood: Thank you and welcome to Vanderhoof, new people. I've met Mr. Rustad before, but I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you. I should tell you right off the bat that you're not dealing with an expert, so just relax.

I saw your ad in the paper, and I thought that as a resident of the valley who plans on making this my home — have done for the last 12 years — and has been connected to the countryside since 1965, I might drop in and kind of make your visit worthwhile. It would be a shame if nobody showed up.

D. Wood: I came to Vanderhoof, actually, in 1965. I was an employee of the Royal Bank at the time. There was a young lady working for the Bank of Commerce down the street, and I robbed the bank. June and I were married a year later and travelled throughout the province and ended up, after several stops, in Smithers.

It was the north, and it's where we wanted to live. I managed to get a job at a Ford dealership there and worked 13 more years in Smithers and then had an opportunity to reopen an automobile Ford dealership in Quesnel. So we moved to Quesnel and ran that dealership for ten years.

I took up an opportunity to go to work for Community Futures for five years, and then Wayne Gretzky and I retired in the same month. A little different pension plan, I'm sure, but nevertheless.

So we moved. In the meantime, we had bought some property in the upper Nechako River. We had plans to move and build a home, and that's what we did. Along with that home, we had plans of developing a small nature-based tourism operation. June is an expert in wildlife and plants and all those things. So I pounded nails, and she took care of the rest. That's why I'm here. I just wanted to share some views that I have observed over the years.

I have to mention — and I just made notes; I think maybe you have copies of that — the notice in the paper which we saw last week, which was the first notice, actually, that we had seen. Maybe there was a previous notice to that. But I was somewhat intrigued by the words: "How can timber supply be increased?"

I thought it was a strange choice of words, because maybe the question should be: "Can timber sales be increased?" If the word "how" is the real question, it seems to me that maybe there is a predetermined outcome here — that the committee's mind is made up that, in fact, the timber supply will be increased, regardless of, perhaps, the input from the local people.

Just a thought. I'm not really an editor by trade or anything, but I did notice it. The notice came through on the 13th, and so I thought: "Holy cats, I'd better get busy and find some time to write some thoughts down." So I did make up some notes.

We in Vanderhoof have been a logging, milling community forever, and I'm sure that we're going to continue to do that — certainly, at a different scale, I'm sure, than has been done in the past. I don't think there's anybody that has any particular quarrel about the logging. They've been logging in this country for I don't know how long — long before I came upon the scene. I think if it's done right, it can be a benefit.

In order for the economics of logging to make sense, it seems to me that the pace of logging, the efficiencies of logging and so on have changed. The volumes have increased, and probably, the employment per volume has decreased. While that probably makes short-term profits for licensees and good wages for the workers, it has had, in my observation — because we live 60 kilometres southwest of town — a noticeable impact on the fish and wildlife.

Just on the general quality of life in the area, there has definitely been an effect caused by this rapid logging. And of course, since the pine beetle attacked, that logging has even increased.

There was, many years ago, a land use plan developed in the Vanderhoof region. I know that my wife — we lived in Quesnel at the time and were planning to move — felt that….

With her experience in the Cariboo CORE process and the opportunity that we saw here, to move here, June wanted to participate in that land use plan in order to provide her input as to how best to develop the resources in the area. So she spent many, many hours over a long period of time travelling back and forth from Quesnel to Vanderhoof to attend these meetings and to participate in the outcome — which, compared to the Cariboo CORE process, was apparently a huge improvement.

There was a consensus arrived at in the Vanderhoof
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LRMP. It was presented to government, and the LRMP that we have today is a result. Granted, of course, the LRMP was determined prior to the pine beetle arrival, but the reasons for the decisions in the land use plan, I think, were valid then and are valid today.

Someone I met once described the area of the northern Interior in general, and perhaps the Vanderhoof area in particular, as being a collection of natural assets. Natural assets, of course, are what we have to work with. If you're dealing with what the surroundings have provided us with, they were provided to us for free. You know, they came with the place. We didn't have to build anything.

I noticed years ago that the provincial government spent, I think, almost a billion dollars developing a convention centre in Vancouver to attract tourists to the Vancouver area. If you stand at the convention centre and look at the north shore mountains, it's a beautiful place to come for a meeting.

Well, here we have natural assets that attract visitors from all over the world, and it didn't cost us anything. All we have to do is look after it. The values that attract people to an area like ours include this natural environment. There's an awful lot of traffic on the highway in the summertime. You probably noticed it as you were driving through — the motorhomes and the campers and the people who are obviously travelling through the area. There are more and more of them as the season progresses.

We think that a lot of people will come and visit and stay in this area and spend some money because they like what they see. Viewscapes and the natural surroundings — the wildlife, the fish, the flowers, the waters, the rivers, the lakes, all of those things — make for a pleasant experience.

But when people experience those things, they experience the whole picture, and we want to try and make sure that the picture that they're seeing is the most attractive picture that we can possibly provide to them in order that they'll come back — and perhaps tell their friends about our part of the province, who will come and visit us as well.

I was listening to a speaker once who said that sometimes people don't appreciate what they get for nothing. The example given was the fact that most of us were born with good health, and then we spend the rest of our lives eating the wrong stuff and drinking the wrong stuff and doing the wrong stuff. And it seems like when it starts costing us money to get ourselves healthy, then we start appreciating good health, whereas all we had to do was protect it, protect what we have, look after we have, take advantage of what we have and end up not having to pay the price in the long run.

In the Nechako Valley, where we live, we really value our viewscapes. We have all kinds of logging going on. I can show you lots of logging roads and lots of cutblocks.

But there are places where you can go, and through a fair amount of good luck and maybe a little bit of good management you can still enjoy the natural assets that surround us with the feeling that: "You know what? I could be the first person to have experienced this. I could be the first person to have travelled down this river. I could have been the first person who walked down this trail. For all of what I see right now, it's just like it would have been if Alexander Mackenzie walked by this spot."

This is, I think, what we have to concentrate on. We have to be able to share the resources so that the residents and the visitors can enjoy that quality of life and be able to think to themselves: "This is what it was probably like way back when."

There's a section of the river just above our place. We have a cabin about 30 kilometres up the river, and we quite often will take visitors to that cabin. We'll launch a canoe, and we'll travel probably five hours or so, have a lunch and arrive home for supper, and it has been an excellent day. People just really, really enjoy it. You know, they really feel that they have had a touch with nature.

One of the things that I think we have to consider…. Recently the provincial government released a report indicating that the moose population in this area has declined by at least 50 percent, and they're looking for the reasons why this may be. A lot of us in the area have criticized the management of the fish and wildlife branch about the fact that with the amount of access roads that have been developed through the logging, particularly of the mountain pine beetle, the moose in particular are finding fewer and fewer places to hide.

With the advent of more and more motorized transportation — quads and motorcycles and 4-by-4s and all that — it's becoming difficult for those animals to escape. One of the factors, I think, that plays a part in that is the predominance of access roads — which are required, of course, for access to the timber that's being removed.

I wonder if we couldn't do a better job of putting those roads back in the shape they were in before the logging started so that the wildlife do have a place to escape. That's not to say that anybody that wanted to couldn't walk or ride a horse or access that area, just as they could have 25 or 30 years ago. It's all Crown land, and it's all available to all of us.

I'm going to shorten it up a little bit. I hesitated getting into the climate change thing, but I really sincerely believe that it is something we ought to be concerned about. I think it's a fact. There's some argument as to whether or not climate change is man-made. That's really immaterial. The fact is, we are experiencing the result of climate change in this region. There is no question about it. The mountain pine beetle is basically climate change in action.

We really do need to address it, to recognize it and to deal with it now. It may be that at a personal or a municipal or even a provincial level, there's not a whole lot we
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can do about it. Certainly, we could be doing more at a national level, in my opinion.

One thing that we could perhaps look at…. I've talked before to professional foresters. They will come out to our place, you know, and they'll talk. They'll have coffee, and June will make some muffins, and we'll have some good discussions. Usually the reason for their visit is what they are planning to do in the region in terms of logging. Every one of these people are really good people. They are young men and young women, all of them involved in community affairs. I remember one that was a volunteer fireman, you know, whose kid is involved in sports. I mean, they're good people.

I asked them once: if climate change is happening, why not look at what's growing 500 kilometres south of us and mimic that when we replant our forests? Let's prepare for what is quite likely going to happen. What have we got to lose? If there is some ponderosa pine, for instance, growing 500 or 300 kilometres south of us and it's doing well in its particular climate, why not try it here in anticipation of what may happen? Sometimes they say, "Well, that's a good idea. I never thought of that," or they had thought of it, but it has really never gone anywhere.

It just led me to think that provincial governments could be talking with the presidents of the various large licensees and saying: "You know, why not try something? Just going ahead and replanting everything in the areas that you plant predominantly with pine is really just setting us up for this thing to happen all over again."

I'm thinking that it's a difficult job. I don't think I'd want to be a registered professional forester, because your code of ethics, I think, indicate that you're supposed to be looking after the forests. In looking after the forests, in looking after the total forests, you really ought to be making some suggestions that your employer probably isn't going to like.

That puts them in a real conflict of interest. While these people are young and they've got mortgages and families and all of the things that steady employment is required to be able to service…. Yet they might know that they really ought to be directing the company in a different way.

I'm thinking that perhaps a solution to that would be that if foresters were either employed by or controlled…. That's probably not the right word. Something like the College of Physicians and Surgeons, where you have a third party. When a forester arrives at a decision, that decision is presented to the company not by the forester but by that board, saying: "This is the considered opinion of this expert that this is what you should be doing." Then maybe, if there are any issues between the employer and the forester that could, in the long run, have an effect on his long-term employment, that would be avoided.

Just as a suggestion. People who come and just complain about things and not suggest anything — I think they're missing the point.

I'm going to wrap it up at that. I just wanted to present a few thoughts to you guys, not from the perspective of an expert, just from somebody who lives here.

I think you provided us with very concise and heartfelt observations and comments, so thank you very much for your comments.

J. Wood: You mentioned that Denis's was concise. If you think his is concise, wait until you hear mine.

My name is June Wood. I live on the upper Nechako River, where Denis and I operate a small nature-based tourism business. I appreciate this opportunity for input, even though it was on fairly short notice, because this issue of timber supply and how our forests and the natural values there could be impacted by the decisions that will be made over the next few months is very important.

It's my understanding that in order to address the shortfall in the mid-term timber supply, or the timber supply period, some areas that have been set aside for non-timber values through years of land use planning are now being considered for logging to lessen the falldown. These areas were set aside after careful consideration, and for good reason. Now, in the space of a few months, this planning could be thrown aside for minimal short-term gain but with long-term negative implications for biodiversity, wildlife and tourism.

It's well known. There are side effects from the beetle epidemic, we know, and one of them is that the water table has become higher because the dead pine is no longer taking up moisture. In addition, the accelerated salvage logging has been removing the approximately 20 to 25 percent live spruce component of the spruce-leading forests in the Vanderhoof forest district. I understand that is approximately the percentage of spruce that is in our pine-leading forest. So when the dead pine is being taken, there is also a fairly large amount of live spruce.

The loss of these live trees is no doubt exacerbating the situation of the water table, but it's also negatively affecting the birds and animals that depend on mature conifers. The spruce trees found in our viewscapes, wildlife corridors, old-growth management areas and riparian zones, especially since mature pine is dead, are providing an important service for the reasons that I mentioned above and possibly to mitigate climate change. Every live tree is doing a job and counts.

The deciduous trees are also found in the viewscapes, wildlife corridors, old-growth management areas, riparian zones, etc. Often called a weed species by industry, in some cases herbicides are being used to take them out. They also provide critical wildlife habitat. So if areas such
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as viewscapes are opened up to keep the cut higher, then these trees are going also.

In May the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations released a fact sheet regarding the sharp decline in the moose population. Two of the possible reasons that were listed for this decline were increased access and habitat changes due to the mountain pine beetle and salvage logging. The suggestion to log the few remaining natural areas to maintain the timber supply for a short period of time is counter to what government says is creating a serious problem for moose.

If the areas that have been set aside for other values are logged, more roads will be built and more habitat will be lost. Moose may be the canary in the coal mine.

On page 2 of the discussion paper that the panel put out, a potential action — and this is separate from the moose — is to accelerate timber availability. I understand that this could mean either removing the green-up adjacency provision or lowering the age at which a tree is considered mature and available for cutting. In other words, shortening the rotation period.

Measures such as the attainment of green-up on a cutblock before logging can proceed in adjacent areas were part of the Forest Practices Code that was introduced to set new levels of forest practice "that will establish British Columbia as a world leader in the attainment of environmental and resource sustainability."

Granted, we have had the beetle epidemic since the code was developed, but ignoring the standards set out in the Forest Practices Code and cutting the last of our trees in an effort to prevent a falldown is at the other end of the spectrum from resource sustainability, and certainly it does a disservice to the environment.

B. Routley: Just on your last point, would you agree that we're talking about actually reducing the level or the extent of the cut — the reduction in cut? There's still going to be a reduction. I think the point is — the Chair of our committee has made the point at every community — that there will be a dramatic reduction in AAC because of the increase in the cut from the pine beetle. There's no question that these communities are facing severe impacts — right?

The issue of mitigation. I guess I'm trying to understand. You're basically saying…. And I'm not disagreeing with you. I just want to be clear with it, with you.

Is it that you're saying: "No matter what, stick with the existing land use plan"? Or are you saying, "If you're going to mess with this at all, give it back to the community," like we've heard other speakers suggest — that maybe, if there is going to be any looking at any of these other values, you would want it done in your community and not by this committee or by some other process? Do I have that correct? Or are you just suggesting no change at all?

J. Wood: No, I fully understand that there will be a lowering of the annual allowable cut. I just think that we do have to be very, very careful about where even that lowered cut is coming from. Possibly, it could be at the community level, as you suggest. You know, Vanderhoof, Burns Lake, the Lakes District and Quesnel are some of the hardest-hit areas, and certainly this problem can't be looked at on a provincial level or even by including us with the southern Interior.

I know that this panel is looking at this problem on a provincial scale, but I think we are within the area that has been the most hard hit. I do accept that logging will go on, and I think it will. I hope it can continue without going into some of these special areas. As Denis mentioned, the moose have nowhere left to hide in a lot of places. So do we cut these areas and then have no moose left? It's quite a trade-off. Possibly, each community could be the best to come up with the answers, to work it out. That is possible, but the trade-offs are very real.

Our next presenter is Wayne Salewski, with the B.C. Wildlife Federation, region 7A.

W. Salewski: Good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity, and welcome to Vanderhoof. This is an important community. I'm sure if you got a chance to hang around with it, you'd see exactly how important it is and how much we love it.

To give you a bit of a background, I'm a retired civil servant. I worked for the Ministry of Forests. I started in 1967 at $1.25 an hour sitting on a ranger station lawn fighting fires when my name got called. I worked myself through the organization. I was even a clerk at one time on a ranger station when all clerks were male, because females couldn't possibly have done the job that a male could in that era. I also worked my way through cruising crews, assistant ranger, senior assistant ranger.

I also had a chance to quit the agency three different times in my career to do other things, like be a consultant, be a logger, be a whatever it was at the moment.

I appreciate your being here. The B.C. Wildlife Federation is a 40,000-member, membership-driven organization, all volunteers. I'm the president of Region 7A, which is basically the Omineca. Everything west of the Rocks and halfway to Burns Lake would be my turf and as far north as we go.

I want to talk about, quickly…. When you're near the
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end of this process, I don't want to reiterate what everybody else has said, so I'm not going to read verbatim my points but hit the salient ones that are there and perhaps get to the questions and answers.

What values and principles should guide the evaluation and decision-making regarding potential actions to mitigate the timber supply impacts? Well, the forests of British Columbia belong to us, the people, and obviously governments are the stewards of this resource. This and future governments need to ensure that we work towards growing a healthy forest, and that healthy forest doesn't necessarily mean producing 2-by-4s.

There are so many other values that are there. I see us struggling with the word "constraints" and the word "values," and they are values that are important to us. We don't necessarily see a monoculture as being that issue. When we herbicide and continually plant the same species over and over again, we're not acknowledging what's happening down there.

How should decisions regarding potential actions to mitigate the timber supply impact be made and by whom? Well, you have so much guidance already that I'm kind of amazed that we're here, and I'm really even more amazed that we're allowed ten minutes as stakeholders on something as important as this.

But you've got guidance from the recently released mid-term supply. It tells you what's out there. We already know that. And as previous speakers have talked about, this isn't an emergency. This is a planned event that's been going on for a decade. We could have been well prepared for it if we'd had the leadership to do that.

Further guidance from the LRMP. You've heard passionately those people who sat for year after year after year working on that document. It would be an insult to not consider that as guidance.

What specific information about your local area would you like the committee to know and consider? Well, this is a tremendously important economic region. We have supplied untold millions of millions of dollars to this province. We need to be recognized for that, and we need to understand that. Our families are here because we love being here. I hope, God forbid, when I die that I be buried here. It's that kind of a nice place.

It's very decisive, and it does us a disservice to call this an industrial zone. This is our home. This is an important aspect to be considered. We live here for all of those other reasons that are there.

I started so early in my career that I actually was cruising timber at a time when we knocked lodgepole pine down. We actually knocked it down to get to stands of spruce — 17.5 DBH, I believe — 45 years ago. So the premise of that observation is important. Pine has come into its own in the last half-century, and it isn't the only fibre that's there. What we need to start to look at is how we grow jobs. If we grow a healthy forest, we'll grow jobs from it. There's no question about it.

We don't need to log the last stick. There's no sense to that issue. We need to start getting away from these monocultures. We need to look at the biodiversity that's there. A change of species is more than possible. I was involved with the Ministry of Forests in the protection program, planting hybrid aspen on Cluculz Lake to help protect the residents of Cluculz Lake, John being one of those people that are there.

Leading-edge conversations, leading-edge debates between universities. The chief forester at the time gave us permission to do it. The district manager supported us. We were thinking outside the box. That's a fibre product that's used in other places, and it provides jobs.

We don't need to only think about this in one single sense. I suspect that if we wanted, in the mid-term, falldown to be negated, there are opportunities in growing a hybrid that will be harvestable in 23 to 25 years.

Truly, one of the most important reasons why our wood is valued around the world isn't because we fertilize it. It's because it has a wonderfully tight increment and it makes wonderfully strong 2-by-4s.

If you're going to fertilize it and increase the increment there, you're going to decrease the strength. If that's what it's all about, why don't we change species and do something in the interim that's going to do it?

We'll grow three crops, three rotations, of a hardwood in the same time you're going to grow one rotation of pine. There is lots of science to the process.

Four: "What cautions and advice do you have for this committee in considering whether and how to mitigate mid-term timber supply?" Well, if we start to move into those last bastions of values that we have out there, the world's conservationists and environmentalists will push back to a degree that nobody will sell wood.

I know that Canfor and L&M Lumber don't want to get into that sort of an issue. We've worked strongly with them over the years. They're going to protect that. I think that's a non-starter.

How do we continue to become engaged? Obviously, the B.C. Wildlife Federation would like to keep up with regular updates. We'd like to be part of the solution.

The specific concerns, and this is where we really strive from a federation standpoint…. You've heard snippets from previous speakers on the moose issue. Well, the facts of the matter are that we have lost over 60 percent of our moose herd in seven years. Since our last inventory…. That's 60 percent in the Omineca. In the Cariboo the loss can be as high as 70 percent. There are zones in there that are completely wiped out.

We know it isn't about hunting or hunters having done that, because the hunter reporting relationship we have tells us that the harvest level has stayed the same. We know it has something to do with vulnerability. We know that as we've opened up these areas, there are no hidey-holes, as you've heard from….
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This is a crisis to First Nations. This is going to be a crisis to the resident hunters. I'm not cognizant of the value of a moose to society. I've read articles by Ken Child, who is a renowned biologist, long retired, who was suggesting $12,000 to $18,000 an animal.

We've lost 60 percent, and we don't understand why. We do know that government hasn't funded it. It wasn't an important value at that time.

So we have a crisis here, and it is something that we need to talk about. We can't log these riparian zones. We have no corridor planning anymore. It's just a free-for-all for everything that's out there. I hope that this committee gets to fly over this mountain pine beetle area and just see what's happened out there, to give you a better sense.

I'd like to quickly talk about forest stewardship planning, or FSPs, that industries must produce and submit to the ministry. Currently these are submitted by registered professional foresters, and they are apparently read and adjudicated by registered professional foresters, not registered biologists. We have to question whether that makes sense, if in fact a professional forester actually understands what habitat is about and its values that are there. We'd like to see a change in that FSP planning.

Fertilizing I touched on already. I don't think it makes economic sense, and I suggest to the committee that if it did, the industry would have been doing it a long time ago. These are guys that are spending millions and millions of dollars to be professional. They didn't miss it. It wasn't something that was an accident. They figured it out.

J. Rustad (Chair): Wayne, thank you very much. I'll look to members for questions.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): We've heard the same point again and again about being careful about what we're doing and to be thoughtful of the processes that have gone on, which the Wildlife Federation has obviously been part of at a local as well as a regional area.

I guess with the forest stewardship planning that's going on, you're saying that that's something that you have concerns about in terms of…?

W. Salewski: Absolutely. In this era of professional reliance — and bless them for being professional; many of them are social friends and business friends — I trust that issue. But their profession is trees. It isn't about habitat. It isn't about those issues. Right now in society, by some science, we know we need one in 10,000 hardwood trees to produce one cavity-nesting opportunity. It's not in their bailiwick. It's not something that's built into the considerations for those sorts of issues.

Our thermal cover for our moose, our deer, is absolutely critical for their success in these winters when we were getting seven and eight and ten feet of snow. When I first moved here in '73 — 12 feet of snow, 11.8 feet of snow. Without thermal cover, they die. It's just as simple as that. So we've got a lot of those issues that need to be considered. The FSP is where we're supposed to have that there. It makes sense that it was done by a biologist. It makes sense it was considered by a biologist in my world.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Likely, it was something that you would have been aware of here, but I remember in the Legislature starting to hear about some of the inventory numbers on moose in the region — dramatic and surprising. To us, to hear of a fall, it sort of spoke to a couple of issues.

Were we not keeping track the way that we needed to? Was that one of the issues? We've focused on moose, but is your same sense that the knowledge on other animals is just not there? Would we see similar falloff in other animals?

W. Salewski: I think that societally, we have some popular animals that are well funded. If you're a grizzly bear, there's money out the yingyang to chase about grizzly bears and do that. It's a society-driven issue that's there — absolutely.

This and previous governments have not given the wildlife the due that's there. I have management units in my region that have never been surveyed, that have never once been counted. So they take the premise that if they have ten in this unit and this unit kind of looks the same as that unit, there must be ten there too. But can you imagine? We're running our inventories, our harvest levels, with zero information on some of our management units.

The Omineca has never had a moose management strategy. It has a moose management harvest, but it has never had a management strategy. Since I came to the federation, I have negotiated with the ministry, and we are now on the crux. We just started last month for the first time an Omineca moose management strategy.

We just started two years ago a mule deer management strategy. We've never had one. We have a harvest strategy — you could kill three of the damn things — but we didn't have a management strategy. We have volunteers running around this community on their own time, three and four times, morning and night, counting deer, looking at populations — doing the work that government should have done.

Under the guise of a tremendous ADM by the name of Kevin Kriese, who has done wonders in a working relationship…. He has actually moved the Ministry of Natural Resources — MLAWP, whatever we like to call them today — into helping tabulate that information. Now we're going to have an Omineca mule deer strategy and a moose strategy, and I'm promised an elk strategy. Elk are a species where we have a lot of opportunities for rancher-farmer conflicts.
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We're heading towards that, but with awful hard work and not enough money to do it. If this government could fund electronic licensing for hunting, we would have self-reporting opportunities. Instead, we're doing the same traditional thing as we did 50 years ago. There are much better ways. We need to start to think out of the box, but we need some seed money to do it — and not a lot of seed money. I think the ministry needs $150,000 to get it launched.

The inventory for animals. This go-around for the province, I believe, was $1.3 million, and now that they've found out it's in such a disaster, we're going to have another $500,000 or $600,000 to verify that next time around. We just need to start to use our heads here.

E. Foster: A couple of things. Wayne, you mentioned the cover and the winter range and corridors and so on. We heard the other day from another group that they were necessary, and I'm not saying they aren't. Just to give you an idea of the difficulty that we're up against here.

I'm a long-time member of the B.C. Wildlife Federation, so I appreciate the work that's done and support you — or support the organization. But that's just to kind of give you an idea what sort of difference of opinion comes in.

The other thing is, in regard to the moose population, has there been any work done on predators around here or discussion about predators, and is that a part of the problem in this area? I know it is in other areas.

W. Salewski: We believe so, sir. I put forward 17 points that I would like us to consider when we look at the moose issue, and they fall across the landscape right from habitat, to access, to vulnerability in the middle of these plantations, to predators — with both wolves and bears. Bears are really hard.

We lose, if the studies in Alaska parallel us in British Columbia, 50 percent of our moose calf population in their first two weeks. We then turn around and have a season that's 15 days long for calves — every hunting season. So we're going to kill off a percentage of the ones that did make it past those first two weeks. It's kind of a bizarre mandate of providing opportunity.

We don't understand the carrying capacity of our land base. We're in trouble here.

E. Foster: So have you made a recommendation to the ministry to eliminate that fall calf season?

W. Salewski: Yes. We have a great working relationship — and I want to be really clear on that — with our cohorts in what was the Ministry of Environment and those that do that.

He has what is called a range of authority that he can do as a decision-maker, as that individual, and that decision-maker caused us to reduce the hunting for cows by 40 percent. So we've eliminated 40 percent of the tags under that authorization.

I asked for a removal of the calf season at least by two-thirds of it. I'd like to see opportunities for pensioners and kids, so we thought we could leave a five-day calf season on there. He turned me down for the reason that it's a legislative change that he would have had to bring forward to the House, and he didn't want to do that. We fought it out. He won. I'm fine with it. We're not going to lose the relationship over the one issue.

I believe that in the Cariboo you're going to see legislative changes needed in order to do that. I think that when First Nations get some understanding of what's happened, we're going to have a war out there, and the resident hunter is the one that's going to pay for it. They're going to be shut out of these areas.

We understand, by the constitution, that the first thing we're doing is conservation of our game, and the second is First Nations and food and ceremony, and the third is the resident. You can tell who the hell's going to pay the price for this one. It's a way of life. It's an important issue for our membership.

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you for that. We're out of time, but, Bill, if you've got a quick question.

B. Routley: You talked about healthy forest — which I certainly support the notion — but could you give us a little bit more about what your group feels are the important steps in order to gain a healthy forest? Obviously, part of that is the problem of the pine beetle. You talk about monoculture.

I guess the other part of that question is: are you at all concerned about the existing stands that are anywhere from five, ten, 15, 20 years, whatever age class, that have been affected by the pine that have not yet been counted because of the lack of inventory information? It's all part of the forest health issue that you're talking about. So yeah, do you have any other specifics that you would like to add about that?

W. Salewski: Well, biodiversity is a must on the land base. Without it, we're being…. We're pretty naïve on this issue. One of the things that I'd love to see disappear is free-to-grow regulations that cause industry to have to herbicide the land base in order to meet that free-to-grow standard.

I think it's an antiquated standard. I'm sure that we can be inquisitive enough to figure out another way to ensure that industry is sufficiently restocking that. I don't understand why we herbicide in order to get there. The biodiversity that comes from the other observation is just a natural. Why hold their feet to the plate on that one? I mean, it's a non-starter with me. So the first thing that I'd do is get rid of free-to-grow as the standard and start to look at another way of ensuring that industry has met
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those obligations.

I think we've got to start to consider all of the rest of the issues that are there. This is way more than 2-by-4s. This is a healthy community that'll thrive on a healthy forest. If you have ever read Jared Diamond's Collapse, he talks about that. We'll see Canfor Russia before we see Canfor disappear off the faceplate. They'll adapt to that. So please, let's talk about us as a healthy province, and we'll get there together.

Members, I understand that dinner is ready, but we have one more presenter on our list, and I thought we should hear the presenter first — Wayne Ray.

W. Ray: Thank you for giving me this opportunity to say a few words. It will probably be a lot shorter than everybody else. I did take part in the land and resource management planning process beginning in 1994, along with several other presenters here. I agree with most of what Mayor Thiessen and the other presenters have said.

I'm of a strong belief that the timber supply numbers are way out, and there's too much waste of fibre in the forest still. There was waste of fibre way back when I was a logger. I logged for 20 years. They wasted a lot of wood then, and they seem to be wasting just as much wood now. I think the wasted fibre just from a couple of mills, or even one mill in this area, could probably keep several of Vanderhoof's specialty wood products mills in operation.

I think silviculture has to be intensified. Maybe some people think $50 a cubic metre for fertilization or silviculture cost is high, but things change all the time. Within a few years wood might be worth $150 a cubic metre again, so $50 invested in fertilization may be a good thing. But I don't think all the eggs should be put in one basket, and I agree that there needs to be more diversity in what silviculture systems are used and what type of trees are being grown.

The forests have to be managed properly for today and for the future, and the mills and government both have to adapt. I'm sure the mills can adapt. They've adapted over the years. Years ago there used to be over 500 small sawmills in this area. Now there are virtually no small sawmills, and there are only two or three large ones.

The industries are doing fairly well in this area at the current time, especially mining. And I think, in the short term, mining can absorb most of the lost forestry jobs. It's a fairly easy transition for a forestry worker to move into the mining industry.

I think liquidating the timber from protected and riparian areas shouldn't be an option. I think biodiversity shouldn't be compromised for a few short-term jobs.

I agree with Wayne Salewski. I think you guys should go out there and fly over this country and see what's actually out there on the ground. Looking at Google maps that are ten years out of date really doesn't give you a true picture of what's there. When you look at air photos or Google maps, there are lots of areas on the ground that look green, but they're only green because the photos were taken prior to the beetle infestation or they were cutblocks that were in an age class that didn't die from the pine beetle.

I've got close to 200 acres of trees that are 50 years old, and anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of those trees have died. I thought that was going to really decrease my timber volume there in the long term, but after accidentally cutting a few green trees when I was trying to salvage some dry fence rails last fall, I found that some of those little trees that are four inches in diameter have actually doubled or tripled their growth rings in the last couple of years since the pine beetle have killed their surrounding trees and given them more light and more moisture to grow.

Aspen is another species that is really overlooked in this area. A lot of other species out there can be used to create fibre of one sort or another for pellets or biofuels or whatever other things they can be used for.

I don't think you guys should be making decisions on what will get you re-elected or things that'll get you elected. I think you need to make your decisions based on what is good for the future. The forest industry will adapt. There may be quite a few jobs that disappear, but jobs will come up in other industries. I don't think you should be sacrificing the biodiversity. I don't think you should be sacrificing the tourism jobs or other industries.

I don't think things should be done for what I consider as stupid political reasons. I think that no decision should be made as a knee-jerk reaction to Babine Forest Products burning to the ground. I think most of those people have probably already been absorbed into mining industries or other mills, or they will find jobs. There are some jobs that are bound to disappear, but there are other opportunities that will come up.

I plan on making some sort of written submission, in the end. I only found out about this last night — that this was happening here. Any questions?

J. Rustad (Chair): Thank you very much, Wayne. Our apologies that we weren't able to give more notice. Unfortunately, we have a very tight timetable that was given to the committee, and we're trying to do the best we can in terms of being able to get out and allow people to give us some input.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Just quickly, Wayne. I didn't hear. Maybe you said. Are you still logging?
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W. Ray: I used to log. I logged for 20 years. We have a farm that has a little over 2,000 acres, and we have a fair bit of timber growing on there of various age classes. The mountain pine beetle killed the really young trees and trees over a certain size. There are some in-between trees that are still really healthy. But in the areas where there was a diverse stand of aspen, birch, spruce and pine, actually some pine trees did survive there.

The monoculture stands, where the trees were over 50 years old — basically every tree is dead. As these smaller trees rot, they seem to be rotting faster than the older trees. I think they're going to provide fertilization to the trees that did survive. The understorey of small spruce, aspen and other species that are mixed in those stands, I think, will probably thrive. I think there has been too much emphasis in the past on planting pine monocultures everywhere.

B. Routley: Given your position on not compromising biodiversity — it's one of your statements — I just want to be clear. Are you suggesting, also, that there's no use in revisiting local land use planning or that it should be updated, in your view, one way or the other and that the community would be the best ones to do that updating, obviously?

W. Ray: Well, I'm not prepared to sit for another ten years at land use planning tables.

W. Ray: But things have changed. Even though the mountain pine beetle came along and changed things, I think the reasons those decisions came about are still valid today. Most of the areas that were protected were riparian areas or areas that didn't have high timber values in the first place, because during the process the forest industry and the Forests Ministry had a strong enough presence there that they could steer the process so that it had as little effect as possible on the timber supply.

I think a lot of those areas are really important, and what Wayne Salewski said about the cover for the moose and the wildlife habitat, I think, is true. We did a biodiversity plan for our farm area last year. We have approximately 800 different species on there that have been identified — more than I ever thought.

I think one of the reasons we have that amount of diversity there is because we have the biodiversity in the different timber types — from ten-year-old trees to 160-year-old trees that are alive, 160-year-old trees that are dead and trees that are dead in between. We've got a mix of aspen, spruce, birch, willows, swamp, fields. You name it; we've got it.

Some of those patches of blown-down dead pine are useful for wildlife habitat. As far as wildlife travelling through those quarters, it might look like a mess, but if you've ever seen a deer or a moose or even a bear travel through a patch of blowdown and windfall, it doesn't seem to bother them a bit. A deer can stand beside a six-foot-high fence, hop over it and never touch a wire. A moose can do the same thing.

The only ones that have problems with fences are elk, and they're a different thing. But they've only been here recently. Bears go through the bottom wire if they're spooked, but even a bear will go under a fence or through a fence and just leave a little bit of hair on the wires. As far as the windfall and stuff, it's not an issue for wildlife travelling around.

Wayne, thank you very much for taking some time. I look forward to your written submissions.

That ends our list of presenters. However, we have time, so we have an opportunity for an open mike. Would anybody like to come up and present to our committee?

Not seeing anybody that would like to come up, I want to thank everybody for coming out, for presenting the information and, in particular, for presenting the perspectives and the concerns associated with the community and surrounding area. It's very much appreciated.

Our next meeting of our committee is tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. in Prince George. That'll be followed by a meeting later in the afternoon in Mackenzie.

At this time I just want to thank Hansard once again for the work that they do. I also want to thank the members and the Clerk's office and also the Ministry of Forests staff that have come and attended and, of course, our special adviser, Larry Pedersen, who has come with us and is invaluable in terms of the experience he provides for our committee.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
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Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

1) District of Vanderhoof	Mayor Gerry Thiessen
	Councillor Louise Levy
	Councillor Kevin Moutray
2) Saik'uz First Nation	Chief Jackie Thomas

3) Upper Nechako Wilderness Council	Dan Brooks
4) Nechako Lodge and Aviation	Elisabeth Doerig
5) Vanderhoof Specialty Wood Products	Paul Heit
6) Nechako Retreat	Denis Wood
7) June Wood
8) B.C. Wildlife Federation, Region 7A	Wayne Salewski
9) Wayne Ray

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)
	Jacqueline Quesnel (Administrative Coordinator)
Attending Government Staff:	Susanna Laaksonen-Craig (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations)

Witnesses:	Dan Brooks (Chair, Upper Nechako Wilderness Council)
	Elisabeth Doerig (Nechako Lodge and Aviation)
	Paul Heit (Vanderhoof Specialty Wood Products Ltd.)
	Louise Levy (District of Vanderhoof)
	Kevin Moutray (District of Vanderhoof)
	Wayne Ray
	Wayne Salewski (B.C. Wildlife Federation)
	Gerry Thiessen (Mayor, District of Vanderhoof)
	Chief Jackie Thomas (Saik'uz First Nation)
	Denis Wood (Nechako Retreat)
	June Wood

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON TIMBER SUPPLY

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
TIMBER SUPPLY