Timber Supply — Issue No. 15 — Friday, June 22, 2012 (HTML)

Eaglesview Room, Best Western Plus Valemount Inn & Suites
1950 Highway 5 South, Valemount, B.C.

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

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 9:39 a.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	398
A. McCracken
S. Bressette

J. Rustad (Chair): Good morning, and welcome to our Special Committee on Timber Supply meeting here in Valemount. My name is John Rustad. I'm the MLA for Nechako Lakes and Chair of the committee. The committee was struck in May to look at the issue of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and the mid-term fibre supply and what measures could potentially be taken to try to mitigate some of that impact.

The impact as it is being described is quite significant, obviously, throughout the area between Smithers-Houston down to 100 Mile House and into the Kamloops-Merritt area. Throughout that area the reduction will happen over somewhere between the next two to ten years, depending on the life of the pine beetle or the life of the dead trees and how long they can be utilized. The reduction is looking at about an equivalent of ten million cubic metres per year. That's the equivalent of about eight reasonably sized sawmills, so it's a pretty significant issue.

We've been asked to go out and do some consultation with communities, with various groups around the province and to look at various options that we could take to try to mitigate some of that impact.

The committee, after being struck, received a number of presentations from the Ministry of Forests going through and giving us a bunch of background information around this, what the sort of options are, what the state of the inventory is, how we do the annual allowable cut process, calculation process, etc. Ultimately, all of this will lead into a report which is required to be delivered to the Legislature by August 15.

We started community tours this week, starting on Monday in Smithers and Houston. Then we went to Burns Lake and Fraser Lake, Fort St. James, Vanderhoof, Prince George, Mackenzie and today, this morning, we're in Valemount. This afternoon we'll be in McBride.

On the week of July 2 we'll be down in 100 Mile House, Williams Lake, Quesnel and back to Prince George. The week of July 9 we will do three days of provincial consultation and then wrap up with a community visit to Merritt and Kamloops.

At this time I'd like to introduce the members of our committee, starting with Bill on my far left.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Good morning. My name is Norm Macdonald. I’m the MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke.

J. Rustad (Chair): Touring with us as well is Craig James, who is the Clerk of the House, and at the back we have Jacqueline Quesnel with the Clerk's office as well.

I'd just like to remind anyone who may want to do a presentation to our committee to check in with Jacqueline at the back and to register, and there will be an opportunity for input.

The process that we're doing in each community is one where we'll start off with a round-table discussion with the mayor and council, and then we will go into an opportunity with First Nations. In Valemount, of course, we won't need to utilize that opportunity. Then we go into the next phase, which would be a public input opportunity, where people can give us information through oral presentation.

The other thing I would like to remind everybody of is that we have written submissions that also can be submitted to us, whether it's through e-mail or other means, up until July 20. The website that we have set up is www.leg.bc.ca/timbercommittee.

That website has all of our background information that has been presented to the committee, as well as all of the presentations that were done throughout all of our community meetings. It's also webcast live for anybody that would like to follow it. Through there, people can make their submissions, whether it's written or through e-mail.

Part of the reason why we have all that information available, of course, is that all of this is recorded by Hansard. Today with us for Hansard staff we have Michael Baer and Jean Medland. Hansard, of course, does a great job in terms of being able to record all of this information and make it available for the public.

So with all of that, I'd just like to recognize that the MLA for the area, the Hon. Shirley Bond, is present here in the meeting. I want to thank Shirley for taking the time to come out and for participating in this process.

With that, I would like to invite Andru McCracken, the mayor of Valemount, to come forward as our first presenter. With Andru is Shane Bressette with the Valemount Community Forest.

Andru, just before you start, I'd also like to recognize that the committee has two special advisers that were appointed to it to help us with advice — former chief foresters. Larry Pedersen, one of our special advisers, is here touring with us today.
[ Page 398 ]

A. McCracken: Thank you so much. Welcome. I am Andru McCracken, the mayor of Valemount, British Columbia.

We are a logging town. We were built around the forest industry as well as the laying of the rail line through here. For a long time, we've had a lot of small mills in this valley. I just want to set that up for you — where you've come to, what the history is, how we identify.

There have been some radical changes to forestry in Valemount. Sometimes we get angry at the world, and we get angry at the rules imposed on us, but of course, we can understand, too, that there are some pretty big shifts happening in the world in our environment.

I've brought along Shane Bressette, our community forest manager, an excellent guy. I just want to say that as a community, we are blessed to have this level of talent in our community. It's by merit of our community forest that we have someone we can turn to and say: "Hey, what's going on in the forest? These MLAs want to talk to us. There's a possibility of influencing forest policy in the province."

Luckily, Shane is with us. Shane has a great head not only as a local forest manager, which is a job unto itself, but also as a guy who, through his experience, has a natural tendency to understanding provincial-level issues too. So I'm pleased to turn this over to Shane to present our community's perspective on some of the questions that are being asked.

S. Bressette: Thanks, Andru. That's quite the introduction. I don't know. Hopefully, I can live up to it.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the special committee here. I've tried to focus my thoughts into two main topics or categories here. The first one deals with appurtenancy removal. This has come up quite a bit, I think, through the forestry round-table discussions that occurred over the last few years. Looking through all the community notes, it's a pretty common theme.

Appurtenancy removal — relieving the requirement to manufacture timber within a certain geographic area. Right or wrong, I know the decisions were made to make B.C. more globally competitive — things like that. I'm not here to judge whether that was the right thing or the wrong thing to do. But the reality is that the impact of that has hit the rural communities in particular, like Valemount. Mill closures. The closest major mill to us is about two to three hours down the road type of thing. All the manufacturing jobs gone from that.

I guess in a way the area in question, Houston down through to 100 Mile House.... Those areas are starting to experience the reality of pending mill closures due to timber supply dwindling away because of the mountain pine beetle. Here we've got the mountain beetle impacts, but we're already in the midst of the impacts due to the appurtenancy removal there. We already have had our mills closed now for five to seven years, I guess, now.

The community forest came in as a tool to kind of offset that appurtenancy removal, the way I view it, and I think it has proven to be a good tool. It does secure a certain amount of timber for the community, managed by the community, more or less, and the benefits of that timber go to the geographic area. I just think that we're in a position now where we've got the tool that is working, and we need to expand that to offset the impacts of that appurtenancy removal. I think Andru might give a few more detailed examples of why we need that.

Expansion of the community forest program. I'll talk a little bit more about that. It has been expressed, I think, quite a bit that we need to make more fibre available to a wider range of users. That's come out of some of the more recent discussions that I've read about. Expanding the community forest program will expand the diversity of the timber profile and just make the community forests more viable in the long term by securing that fibre for the community.

A. McCracken: I think you guys have probably discovered along your journeys that sometimes having a lot of tenure…. I guess belonging or being tenured to a single licensee can be problematic. Imagine how so if their mill isn't even here.

I want to tell you a true story. I've been mayor for six months. I'm going to tell you a story about economic development in Valemount.

I had this scruffy logger guy pull up to me in his crappy pickup truck. Sorry. This is all being recorded. That's terrible. But he pulls me over on the street and says: "Hey, Andru. You know, I'm running my little mill, and I'm all out of cedar."

I do jest, but the guy comes to me and says: "I'm missing fibre to be able to maintain and grow my mill." So I respond. I say: "Hey, no worries, Jack. We've got the community forest. Let's go to the community forest and see if we can make something work for you." Lo and behold, the community forest is of a finite size. It does not have the timber type required.

Being new at the political game, I call up the licensee in my area and say: "Hey, we've got some resources to bring to bear. We've got the community forest in Valemount. We've got a guy interested in doing the mill. We have really good partners in the community forest to bring some heft and some depth — as a really good partner to bring to bear. So we can work with you, the licensee, who is controlling" — I'll tell you — "90 percent of the forests in the area."

A. McCracken: We're in a position, kind of like…. The reality is that we don't have the ability to get those small value-added producers timber. I want to tell you that it's been my goal.

See, I'm in a very lucky position. Other mayors would be conflicted. They'd say: "If one struggling mill comes to you, you could say, 'Ah well, I don't want to favour you.'" It'd be terrible. You don't want to favour one particular mill.

We have one mill. We've got one little, tiny mill within 20 kilometres of Valemount, so I can pretty much say: "Okay, whatever it takes. We're a struggling community. Forestry's on the way out. Let's make this happen." So this has basically been a full-time kind of lobby thing, of effort to try to find this guy security in wood supply.

Those of you that have been in the industry probably know that this is a problematic thing to do. Many people have done it, and I think many political careers have been lost over the thing. Yet that's the expedient thing to do for my community — keep these five jobs. Five jobs, decent-paying, out of a town of a thousand.

Right now it can't be done. I'm going to tell you that right now it can't be done without really breaking the rules, and we're interested in doing that and working with forestry to sort of do things.

But here's my problem. It's that we don't have the resources right now to make these small operations work. What Shane's proposal is saying is that expanding the boundaries of the community forest helps us do things like that, where we can begin to….

This is an act of trying to take responsibility for the forest industry in our area. The reality is that nobody's asking for it. The hilarious thing here is that this operator's not asking for a discounted price. He's not asking for free logging. Other communities have got into trouble with this. Here I've got a guy who's willing to pay $75 a cubic metre, cash on the barrel, but we don't have access to the wood you see here.

S. Bressette: Just to add to that, it's a fair point to make that part of the obstacle to something like that is the form of tenure. The major licensee doesn't hold the same kind of tenure as the community forest, and because of that — the type of tenure they hold — it's not a really easy thing to make these small bits of volume come out for the local producers. It's just the way the tenure is.

That's why I'm sort of pushing the community forest or the area-based tenure. That is a tool that does work for the smaller manufacturers or to be able to diversify the timber component to where it's best used. But that program needs to be expanded in order to meet the need and to attract more manufacturing jobs to the valley.

A. McCracken: It would be easy to be very parochial and say: "We don't want wood travelling down the highway 300 kilometres to Prince George to be milled in mills there." So I'm going to do it.

No, but let's reflect on where we're going as a province. It is a provincial resource. What's happened is that products that used to be made here…. I mean, just talk about the carbon footprint. Talk about what's happening. You're taking raw logs. Stack them on the trucks and head them 300 kilometres down the road. I mean, who is paying for the…? Where do all the costs for this come from — right?

Then, as a community, to see that fibre leave the valley and for our people to be cut out of that equation — that really stings right now. The community forest is, in part, an answer to it. Even though we're blessed with the community forest right now — thank goodness that's there…. I think it needed to happen in order to remove the rules on appurtenancy.

I want to thank the province for having the foresight to allow us to go this far. It needs to go further. I'm in an interesting position. I don't want to thank you for a gift. I want to recognize good policy, and I want to say that policy needs to go forward. We need to expand our community forest, because we need to have the ability to generate a little bit of industry here, a little bit of that secondary manufacturing.

S. Bressette: I think the timing is good. The community forest here has been operating in the same kind of position as a lot of the province where we've had a large amount of volume dying due to mountain pine beetle, so you're forced into kind of short-term thinking. You know, you have to liquidate that volume. The only way to really deal with that much volume is to just keep doing the way everything has been doing — into the commodity mill and large volumes.

Even the community forest here has been trucking large volumes outside of the valley and going to the major mills. But provincewide we're in this position now where we're starting to get past that mountain pine beetle short-term issue, and now we're having to start thinking long-term sustainability. I presume that's why the special committee is going around and trying to flesh that out. "Where shall we head?"

The timing is good. I guess our point is that we think the area-based tenure, the community forests, especially for the rural communities, is the way to head.

The second topic I had…. Just, specifically, kind of the question: should existing timber constraints be lifted as a way to increase timber supply to offset some of these mill closures and things like that? That's kind of the gist of it. So old-growth areas, visual constraints, riparian type of management — things that constrain the timber supply.

From our community forest perspective, I see value in revisiting any of those kind of management direc-
[ Page 400 ]
tives that were set really quite a long time ago. There's always value in reassessing that. What decisions come out of that…. I'm not going to say whether they should or shouldn't be lifted, but I do see value in reassessing those targets and how we manage those types of constraints.

The key that I feel is that the decisions made around that should rest with the community or the area that is impacted by those decisions.

Again, community forest area-based tenure is a good way to manage that. It's already in place. The community that is most impacted by whether you log that visual landscape or you take a piece of that old-growth chunk — those decisions seem best managed right with the community that it's affected by.

I see a scenario where we wouldn't want to see maybe old-growth targets reduced, for example, as a way to free up timber supply as a way to support a commodity mill in Quesnel, for example, or wherever in a system that's not really sustainable. I think that decision is better made with a community forest tenure managed by the community.

A. McCracken: If I can say, just to add on to that, as long as most of our wood leaves the valley in this sort of like…. We're taking the beautiful timber that's here on these mountainsides, you know, with its unique properties, and turning it into a commodity in Prince George. We can't fathom thinking about visual-quality objectives — lowering them, you know — or old-growth management areas or riparian zones. For us here, that's insane.

Maybe it would be helpful if I just sort of reviewed our situation. In 2006 the local mill — I believe it was 2006 — sawed their last board, and it was sort of a slow death of our small commodity mill. It wasn't really competitive, and we had some hard logging to do. So the forces of the world conspired, and after 2006 we haven't really had that mill open.

In 2009 a kind of a feature of the provincial forest legislation actually saw the licensee here disassemble our mill here piece by piece and ship it to Prince George. Having a defunct mill near our town meant that there was an additional price to pay, so it was something akin to appurtenancy to say: "Get the wood to the closest mill, or you're going to pay a price."

So it makes sense — right? Try not to ship wood from Fraser Lake down to a mill in Vancouver. Keep things reasonable. Well, that little piece of provincial legislation actually was responsible for the complete destruction of our mill and the finishing of it.

It's kind of an interesting reflection. There are a lot of market forces and a lot of things at play here. I guess what we're looking for from this timber supply committee is…. For the Robson Valley TSA, we still have wood. We've got a lot of wood. It's going to be here for a while. It's hard to get at.

You might think that somebody has sort of put it in a bank, in a way, to come back at it later. I would love to see that when we do log this…. The way that we would approach that is a careful withdrawal from the bank with minding the returns. I'd love to see a really sustainable forest industry.

I'm just going to jump in and tell a little story. When I got here to the valley, I was amazed at the quality and the type and the character of the people. There was a local fellow who was skyline logging. He'd developed his own system for skyline logging. You see how big the mountains are here? This fellow used the mountains to gondola the wood off the mountain, using its own weight to take it to the bottom of the hill.

The guy used five litres of diesel a day to log something like three loads, and he used just an inordinate amount of people. He was logging in these areas that had never been logged before, with really nice timber that he would get a premium for.

The thing is, this operation is really slow. It's high value. By the time…. If the guy ever did get back to where he was, he'd be 200 years in the future. Do you see what I'm saying? There's this other way of doing stuff that we used to have here. It used to happen in the valley. Now what do we see? I see: not wood dropping from the mountain on its own weight, without the construction of roads and without the disturbing of the mountainside.

Now we just watch those trucks roll out of here, and not on a regular basis. It's not every year. It's not generating meaningful local employment. It's once in five years. I exaggerate. I don't have all the numbers. If we had a forestry office, I would. But we see it. When they need it, come in here, take it, ship it down. If anything, it's disruptive to the local economy. It's not a part of the local economy.

So as we look forward to building this in the future, we need to get away from this idea of logging into the VQOs, the OGMA and the riparian zones to sort of maintain an industry that's so unsustainable.

Here in the Robson Valley it does not make sense for us. It's odious. It's more of the same. We can't go in this direction. For us here, we want to see, if anything, an even more careful consideration about how we're treating this resource here.

S. Bressette: The only closing comment I can make, I think, is just that it's manufacturing jobs here that sustain the community, it seems. You know, those are the ones that…. Those are the jobs that fill the schools and support the hospital and all the amenities that we are in danger of losing, I think, here.

To get the manufacturing jobs back here, it seems the community forest tenure is the right tool, I think, to do that, but in its existing condition right now in the valley…. Even though there are three community forests
[ Page 401 ]
here, they are still small tenures. It's hard to really attract those manufacturing jobs back to the valley without having a more diverse timber profile and more volume, basically.

A. McCracken: I guess just to tack on to that, manufacturing jobs here — every area I'm sure is saying that, but local, I think… I just want to point out that there's integrity there. There's a good use of the resource, and I think it represents a wise use for the province.

Again, not to be too parochial and say that we just want the jobs in Valemount or McBride or Dunster and these small areas, but I think that represents, we hope…. That's the integrity that we want to bring to it as a community — that it's not wasting the resource to create these jobs but being really good stewards of it as well — the same way I think you guys hope to influence forest policy.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for the presentation. Each community is different, and what we're hearing here is that you feel that you've lost control of your backyard — right? You lost the forestry office that provided some expertise, out of McBride, I understand. The facility you had manufacturing here has closed its door, and that's tied to appurtenance.

As you say, there are a whole bunch of factors at play for the decision that was made there, including — I think it was explained — as a way of staying competitive in the world markets.

Nevertheless, you're also describing a scenario where you could have manufacturing, that there are people that could use the wood, are willing to pay the price and have their own markets but don't have the capacity to go in and get the wood. What you're suggesting is that the community forest may provide that.

I have a couple of questions around that. What is the cut in the area on average, and what is the cut for the community forest? I apologize if you already said that.

S. Bressette: For the community forest, it's a 40,000-cubic-metre cut. We're just in the process of recalculating after the mountain pine beetle impacts here, so we expect that to go down. Where it ends up at, I'm not sure. I'm guessing maybe around 30,000.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): And Carrier bought the timber for the area, so you're talking about the timber going to Prince George. But are there any other directions? Does it head south at all? Does it go into Alberta? Are there any other locations that seem to take wood from the area?

S. Bressette: Yeah. The surrounding area is mainly under the Carrier licence. That cut, I believe, is up around 180,000 metres, in addition to another one on this end.

S. Bressette: So far that's where it's been going — to feed the Carrier mill in Prince George.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): The other vehicles that are supposed to be there. Now it's no longer a small business program. For a long time now it's been B.C. Timber Sales, as you know. How big a cut does B.C. Timber Sales put up in the area?

S. Bressette: B.C. Timber Sales has been unable, really, to put much out for viable blocks because of the appraisal — the way the stumpage system is working right now. They've got some tough ground. They've got the same thing as us. We're a long ways from any mills, so when they put up a block under the system, the stumpage is too high. It prohibits the volume from going, really, anywhere. So it's been very minimal as far as BCTS.

N. Macdonald (Deputy Chair): Now, one of the challenges with the program, of course, is that when you get into situations of monopoly, it makes B.C. Timbers Sales, too, a challenge for any local manufacturing to get in and get….

Just to be clear, because I know there are other questions, and maybe I can come back. You're talking about area-based, but to be completely clear, you're talking about community area-based, community-controlled.

Of course, sometimes when we're talking area-based, we're talking about company-controlled, but it would do you no good to have area-based if controlled by Carrier or something like that. That doesn't allow you to meet your social objectives. You need it to be controlled by the community if you're going to get the manufacturing and other value-added going here.

S. Bressette: Yeah, that's basically…. The offset of the appurtenancy removal is community-controlled.

A. McCracken: Very clearly, yes. That's right. We see the community-based community forest is the way to go. Thank you for recognizing that. So often…. I was saying earlier to some of the MLAs at breakfast that where the company's headquarters…. There are some real subtleties that play into this. If Carrier was a Valemount-based…. If we had a very similar situation but Carrier lived and worked in Valemount, I think we would see a different sort of management of this.

It's not just forest policy that influences the conduct of those people doing business in the forest. Certainly, as
[ Page 402 ]
things become more and more centralized, you kind of lose the…. There's a potential to become a little harder, a little bit more…. The choices are really clear economic choices rather than serving the needs of the community.

S. Bressette: I'll just make one quick point. To put it in perspective, we're talking expansion of the community forest program. The Valemount community forest, for example, has requested an increase from a 40,000-cubic-metre cut to 60,000 metres — so an increase of 20,000 cubic metres.

The community forests make up 1.5 percent, I believe, of the provincial annual cut. So it's not like we're saying: "Move over, Carrier — now community forest." It's just a minor expansion, taking a piece so that it helps offset that appurtenancy removal. That puts it into perspective, that the expansion isn't…. We're not talking a big broad expansion of community forest tenure necessarily. That would be too radical, I think, of a change.

A. McCracken: We would love to experiment with 180,000 cubic metres more of community forest. If it's possible to arrange that, we'd like to give it a shot.

D. Barnett: Thank you for making a presentation to us this morning. I have a couple of questions. You're talking about expansion of your community forest, and you mentioned that you had a private-sector enterprise who could not obtain the species necessary for that person's particular operation in your community for value-added.

If you were to expand upon your community forest, would you then have a greater species available to use so that if a value-added company did come along, you would be able to service whatever type of species of the resource was necessary?

S. Bressette: Yeah, that was what was behind our expansion request — to diversify our species so that we had more options to, for example, support the cedar manufacturer but, as well, just get as much diversity in the timber profile as we could.

D. Barnett: Another question. Upon an expansion…. Your 30,000 or 40,000 cubic metres that you have now — do you sell that locally, or does that also go to outside enterprises that are looking for timber?

S. Bressette: We've been selling as much as the local demand can handle. Working with the Hauer Brothers mill, working with other small local manufacturers, it amounts to maybe about 20,000 cubic metres per year.

S. Bressette: They're in the Tête Jaune community, but they're one of the only mills remaining in the area, so we've been working closely with them. They've been basically getting almost all of their timber supply from the community forest for the last couple of years now.

D. Barnett: I heard what you said about how you feel very good about area-based tenures for community forests. How do you feel about area-based tenures for the private sector?

S. Bressette: I'm a believer in area-based tenure, just in general. I think it's a better way to manage the forests, manage the land base. You know, the volume…. There's just more onus on the manager, basically, to take care of their little farming area, if you want to look at it that way.

D. Barnett: I have one more question, if I can find it. Within your long-term plans for your community…. I have been here and discussed it with your past council. They have some very ambitious recreational ventures, things like that. Are you still moving ahead with those? I know a lot of those ventures take place out in the landscape. Have you had cooperation with ministries, etc., to help you move forward with those?

A. McCracken: Absolutely. Yeah. We have to say that we do have a lot of things on the cooker in terms of recreation. And we are getting great support from the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation, tremendous support to take us in that direction.

I want to respond to that in a textured way because I feel sort of the weight of my community on me — all the people who are here and not here in the forest industry. I kind of want to qualify that.

We've always felt we have a future in tourism here, but we also want to…. This forestry piece is about us and the province sort of cooperating and finding a way to relate to each other with integrity. It's so complex. There are so many issues there.

When we explore our tourism potential, we're partnering with, if you want to say, new licensees, in a way. It's a complex relationship. In many ways it's very much a private relationship, really private enterprise — a little less than, say, a forest licensee, for example. It's funny that we can compare these this morning. But our future in terms of tourism, and the way it's been laid out for us, really depends deeply on, we'll say, foreign investment, on really large forces.

Forestry has been a way of taking what grows around us — our roots, in a way — and applying that to the real world and making our way in the economy. And the tourism thing — I just want to say we are going for it. We really appreciate the work of the province.

Anyway, these are questions probably not for this hearing, but thank you for asking, and thank you for bringing
[ Page 403 ]
it up. I think we've been seeing a real commitment from the province to help us try and find: "Okay, Valemount, what's your strength? How can you go forward?" That's really noteworthy, and it's a great thing.

I also don't want it to take away from this thing. We felt we've had this hearing coming for awhile maybe and say: "Hey, we don't feel like Valemount is off in a good space in this forestry industry." Keep those two together, you know.

We're over our time, but given that we don't have any other presenters on the list at this particular point, I think that if you're willing, Mayor, we would like to carry on with some questions. We have four other people that would like to ask questions as well.

D. Barnett: My last question is…. This resource that you're looking for. I know it's cedar for this private sector enterprise within your community. Have you approached the forestry staff and done some work with the forestry staff to try and help your constituent?

A. McCracken: Yes, absolutely. Shane has been a tremendous resource here, in the way of local ones, to take that down and go through the list of resources that we have available. So we've explored some very complex, multi-jurisdictional things, you know, to try to do a timber trade with B.C. Timber Sales, with the licensee, all of these complex things to try to generate that, but we haven't had success. There are some amazing opportunities out there, and yet we're still at kind of first base.

If I could respond to one of your questions. You asked about the amount of the volume. For the benefit of any locals that are here, too, I do want to say that when Shane says that about 20,000 metres stays local, that's tremendous, because you have to remember that some locals that are in here are asking for music wood, asking for other things.

So the community forest, unlike any other licensee, is like: "Okay. You need something out of my forest. I will find it for you." But the reality is that you have to build a block, and you have to take a lot of other wood, and you have to find something to do with that. That means a lot of…. It's a different way of managing the resource.

In order to get you 5,000 metres of a particular kind of fir, we may have logged a larger block and sent a lot of that down the road for commodity mills, because that's rightly where that resource belongs. It's not going to be made into violins, for example.

B. Routley: Thank you for your presentation. I want to let you know that you're not alone at all in your belief about appurtenancy and certainly about community forests.

In the Cowichan Valley we have the community forest board that has been frustrated in trying to achieve increases in their community forest. Their frustration not only lies with the lack of timber that's available, but also….

Imagine if what forest you did have was being exported right from the province — not only from your community but from your province. That's what's happening now to communities like Lake Cowichan, Youbou. Campbell River used to have a mill. Those resources are being exported right from the country. That's a huge issue.

Really, when you're talking about local control…. I said just this morning that when I used to sit on the sawmill rate determination committee and go to mills that were undergoing technological change…. I've been in the forest industry since 1970 and have seen the huge change.

Kind of the first wave would be the technological change, which is still ongoing. But there was dramatic change in…. For example, all of the greenchains were done away with by the J-bar system and all of the technological computerization, optimization that has done away with more and more jobs.

It has resulted in the province kind of looking at it as a wood-basket approach. So you have this wood-basket approach that doesn't necessarily align with community needs or community concerns. It's also true that the more we improve technology….

Again, I used to say to management: "One day you're going to have somebody drive up in a really nice car and push a great big green button, and the mill will start. There might be one or two tradesmen that you bring in or fly in to have a look at the problem." That's really not the model that I think….

That kind of direction that we may be heading does create a situation where more and more communities are getting angry with what they see going on within the industry. The industry needs to be cautioned to build the community support. Part of that is with what you're talking about — these little bits and pieces that would at least give the community something — right?

I've heard the same thing. In Lake Cowichan the mayor wanted two loads a day, and there's probably a load every two to three minutes travelling through town. They wanted two loads a day, and they can't get it. You should talk to the mayor there in Lake Cowichan. He'd be happy to share your position in terms of the concern for wood supply in connection to community. It's a very real issue.

I think you really dealt with two of the issues of our committee. One was the issue of area-based tenure — right? So you've got a very clear view that if there was going to be an area-based tenure, I think I'm hearing loud and clear that you would support more community-
[ Page 404 ]
based tenure in an area-based model. You would take it that step further.

I think you're also saying that if there are going to be any changes to land use plans, it needs to be done in the community. Again, you're not alone in hearing those kind of statements. Whether that's Burns Lake or Prince George or just about any place that we've been, people are saying that they would like their communities to be involved in any discussions about the land use plan within their region or community.

That brings me to my question. How far is the land use plan that affects your area? Just for greater certainty, are you saying that you would like to see that plan updated, and when was the last time it was reviewed, if you would know that?

S. Bressette: I don't know if I know the exact answer to that — when it was all put in — but certain stages of it. Old-growth management areas, for example, I believe were put in about 2003 or so, which were established. The visual constraints, I believe, were quite a bit earlier than that. A lot of the riparian kind of stuff came out of that era too, I think.

For example, the old-growth program, or the initiative. It's built right into the provincial old-growth order that there is supposed to be reviews on that every, I believe it was, five years. Those reviews haven't happened.

It just makes forest management sense to me that that review process should be followed so that you're continually updating your approach to managing those areas. Really, old-growth management area — there really isn't any management in it. They've just drawn a circle on a map and that's now a park. If you're really talking about old-growth management, we should be progressing somehow in there or talking about it.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Your Worship, for your presentation, and Shane, for the insight in what is truly probably a very unique TSA in the province in, you know, the confines, the recreational opportunities and the pressures you face.

I guess with the loss of the mill in 2006…. What efforts have been made to try and attract either that same company or other companies to the area in creating more of a localized startup?

I understand that the five-person mills are important, but the reality is that the fibre is here in the valley. Obviously, if you believe in an area-based management system, you have a local mill that's tied to the land. They're here for a lot of different reasons. They have a claim on the ground that it's important that they participate sensitively in the other opportunities that are out there.

S. Bressette: Probably the most efforts have been sort of a collective approach with the other community forests — McBride, Dunster and then down towards Wells Gray — trying to view that as one basket of wood that we can offer to somebody, if it's a larger manufacturer, to come in.

There have been some efforts there of just collaborating with the other area-based tenures and saying, "Collectively, we can offer this much volume," as a way to attract a large producer.

Outside of that, there have been efforts…. There are a lot of smaller operations, including some bioenergy kind of stuff, that have been filtering in over the last couple of years here. There's been a lot of discussion with those groups in trying to find ways to come up with fibre supply agreements to support that.

A. McCracken: How can we attract a mill here? We don't have access to timber. We cannot start something with 40,000 cubic metres. It's not easy ground. We are out of the game. I'm sorry. Yeah, because you dealt us out of the game is why we haven't been looking for a mill. We do not have the opportunity.

Mills start with some significant timber. So if it were up to us and we had a say in it, we could go and say: "Hey, buddy. We've got 300,000 cubic metres. Do you want to come take a crack at it?" We would do that. We would have done it long ago. But that's not how we operate in the province. We don't have a say like that.

It has been bought and sold. The people who have bought us have a reputation for not being run off. Really….

So that's one of the interesting things here for this group to consider. How do you run off a licensee? How do you break up licences? How do you shift? We've gone down this direction of having these massive tenures. Has anybody thought about it? "Oh wait. How do we pull the plug? How do we take two million cubic metres and somehow divide that up into contractors or whatever and get a bunch of other mills?"

What we find is…. My great hope for the Valemount forestry is that this hard-to-get stuff is going to be worth a lot of money. It is going to be worth it. You're not going to have easy access to timber.

There is such great potential for this skyline logging, for high-lead logging — for this expensive, intensive form of logging. I love the fact that it creates…. It's not just one guy in a feller-buncher. It's people with some skill and expertise.

So there's hope for the TSA. I guess the question to reflect on you guys is: if things radically change and this timber becomes worth a great deal to the province, how do we take that step? How do we invite the mill here, to say that we're going to use these resources well and go to this intensive thing?

Right now it's tough, because the commodity mill
[ Page 405 ]
owns it. So if you look out there, probably those beautiful trees…. Those ones are in the community forest. You have to look over the rise there. If you look over there, those are going to turn into 2-by-4s. And if you ask local people, that's always been a tremendous waste.

S. Bressette: I think that is the key. The solution might not be to come in with another commodity mill utilizing a 200,000-metre cut or something in this valley, especially given the diversity of the timber profile in the valley here. I think there's a better way to use that, and it's probably more a conglomeration of smaller operations that are using different parts of the profile — higher jobs per cubic metre, that kind of thing.

Initially, when I started with the community forest and talking with some of my colleagues, that was our thought: "Okay, we can pool our volume together. We can offer maybe 100,000 metres. Is that enough to restart the mill or do something like that?"

The thinking now is starting to maybe shift a little bit. Maybe that's not the answer for the valley. Maybe that's not the sustainable way or the best way to utilize the profile here.

H. Bains: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Shane. I think your presentation clearly shows, as we've seen in some of the other communities, the passion that you have for your community and the effects, whoever the government is, of its policies on local communities.

You touched on appurtenancy. I could vouch — my colleague here — that I spent most of my working life in the forest industry. I've heard many who have similar stories to tell, who feel that they are victims of the removal of appurtenancy — not only appurtenancy but also cut controls. They kept some activities going in the community, even during bad times.

But there was that incentive for them to continue that activity every year, although at a much lesser rate. You know, it was minimum 50 percent. In good times it could go up to 150 percent, but over a five-year cycle it was plus or minus 10 percent. It made sense. It made sense for 40 years, ever since that thing was created. Anyway, it's not there, and we see the results.

To me, forestry, in order to fully maximize its potential to support communities, has two major components: logging and manufacturing. I don't believe you're suggesting that even if you are given an additional 100,000, 150,000 — if you've got 180,000 cubic metres of timber available to you — you would simply continue to log and sell those logs and create a few jobs in logging. That's not what I'm hearing you tell us.

It's the same thing. Either you log those logs, or someone else is logging today. But you would have some control. I get that.

I think the question is — and you tried to answer part of it: if you don't have it, how do you approach somebody? I'd like to hear from you your vision of using those logs. What would you do? Even if tomorrow this committee said, "Look, the recommendation is that the community forests are expanded, and Valemount gets 180,000…." What is your vision? How would you utilize that wood to maximize jobs per cubic metre of logs that would be available in your area?

I understand that a lot of trading goes on — you know, swapping the logs — because a lot of wood is not suitable for certain parts of whoever is operating here. But at least that will give you that trading power. You could use those and get the appropriate profile out of those logs.

I think the question is…. Your community and other communities are probably going to be going through the same thing because the total basket is going down, as you know, because of the post–pine beetle. There will be a lot of pressure on the current operators. You heard of eight mills going down, based on the volume of fibre available.

How do you view that you could show the world you're different? "This is what we are planning to do with that wood you're providing us. We can prove that we can have X number of jobs per cubic metre of logs available, compared to what we have today."

A. McCracken: That's a very big project, and I want to laud the work of OBAC. Jim Burck is doing some work here. I don't know his title. The Omineca Beetle Action Coalition is taking that work seriously.

See, the thing is…. You also asked this really difficult question. It's: "Okay. Say we gave you some tools. How would you dig yourself out?" I just want to say that we've got some great guys in Shane, and we've got some really great operators here. But honestly, it's not really fair to ask us that question, because we haven't been in an opportunity to consider that — to say: "How do we go forward, and how do we find the products?"

Do we believe that there's a possibility? Maybe I can help by just saying some of the things that happen here now. I think that in the room — if he's still here; he is — we've got a fellow that does shake blocking. He does fantastic work.

Now, I tell you. You can do that in a lot of places in the province. This guy has got heart. He runs a local operation. He and his wife have run it for years. They do a great job, and they do a high-value project. So it's kind of magic. He wears a smile on his face because he lives in a beautiful valley.

He's able to be competitive. I don't know how, but he does it. So these cedar products that he sends out are one.

We have a local forester who was just in Montreal a couple of months ago playing on a piano created from
[ Page 406 ]
the wood that he logged and milled and sent to Quebec — fantastic. It's crazy. The piano was actually assembled in China. The soundboard manufactured in Quebec. The wood from this valley.

A very proud day for me when I learned that our wood — the antithesis of this chopping it down and running it through a mill — and finding that straight, clear spruce and getting it the highest value, an incredible value…. What a proud day. He's involved in a lot of instrument manufacture.

He doesn't want to put himself out of business, but he's saying to me: "Andru, there are lots of resources like this. We could have other people doing this work that I do and providing music wood."

That puts Shane in a tougher situation. Mills always like to see those big spruce come through because they're really nice and juicy and easy to put through the machinery. But that's not where they should be going. So Shane is trying to fight these guys off and say: "No, you need to take this load of wood, even though some of the cream is not there anymore." He needs to negotiate that and make sure we don't lose our shirts.

The other mill, Hauer, produces large timbers. They do a great job. They've been operating steady for years and years and years. They seldom have shutdowns, and when they do, it's sort of seasonal, and they come back up. They make really big timbers for markets.

If you ask, "Okay, why here in Valemount? Why these big timbers, and how are they so successful?" people don't have an answer ready. It's a family that knows the business. They do a great job, and they have access to an 11,000-cubic-metre cut, which I will say that other licensees have tried to buy out to amalgamate with the rest of their licence.

You think: "Well, here's this little mill, private licence, which is just 11,000 cubic metres, that has been employing 20 people straight." These guys are one of the major economic forces in Valemount — a little family mill.

Those are some of the things and other value-added projects. We would take that seriously, given the opportunity. We would take that, yeah.

H. Bains: I acknowledge that the question wasn't fair, because you haven't been in that situation. I just was generally looking for some suggestions, as you may have some suggestions for the committee.

What are some of the ideas you may have in your mind, or that Shane has, that we could take and ask somebody to put out? I do agree. Some of these entrepreneurs…. You give them the opportunity, and they'll turn something from nothing into something really good — right?

I've seen a mill in my neck of the woods, just in my backyard. They have a sawmill. They have a shingle mill that we toured. They make shakes. Then there's a little spray-painting booth out there. They paint them or turn them into different colours that they need for the market, then put them in boxes and sell them.

A neat part of that was that there was one corner that we saw. This person had a table no longer than what you're sitting at. He'd pick up waste from the shingle blocks that are left there. He's making piano covers — you know, the thin cedar veneer that goes on top.

This is a sawmill. You don't expect that kind of work being done in a sawmill, but because the owners, the entrepreneurs, have those kinds of minds, they can actually turn nothing into something.

I think that's what you're looking for. Communities are looking for that kind of opportunity, and you're saying that you don't have that.

So thank you. I agree that the communities need to be in a better position than some of them are today because of a lot of different factors.

S. Bressette: The value-added manufacturers and the opportunities are there, and they're starting to become more and more frequent, I think.

That's why we're saying that the community forest tenure is the key, I think, so that you've got the flexibility and the options to work with those opportunities as they come to you, as opposed to where the majority of wood is sort of tied into commodity-based licensees, where they're just not set up to separate out small components of the timber profile to address those opportunities. It hasn't worked, and I don't see it working in the future.

To me, how we would promote value-added manufacturing — that kind of thing…. I think that's happening on its own, but the key to promote it is to have the tenure and the fibre supply available for it. Community forests, I think, are the way to go on that.

J. Rustad (Chair): I'll wrap things up with a couple of questions. First of all, thanks very much for the information and what you've presented.

A question around appurtenancy. Historically…. I come from a sawmilling family. I've been in and around the industry all my life. We have seen hundreds upon hundreds of sawmills go down over time, to a point today where we have wood moving all over the place — trucks going back and forth down the highway to various mills from various supply areas. Much of that happened in the '60s, '70s and '80s and even in the '90s.

How did appurtenancy work under those circumstances in the past? What difference do you see today, as opposed to all of those circumstances in past decades?

S. Bressette: Well, as it applies to the Robson Valley, anyhow, we had a veneer mill in McBride and a sawmill here in Valemount. They basically ran steady, right up till the appurtenancy removal there, which I believe was about 2002 or so.

Basically, it was the end of the mills at that point. It be-
[ Page 407 ]
came a better investment for a larger company in a larger centre to invest in a higher log delivery cost and just invest into a more modern mill in a larger centre than to invest in some of the outlying, outdated mills.

Rather than putting money into that, appurtenancy removal allowed them to bring the wood into one major investment there. That's the way I see it, anyhow.

J. Rustad (Chair): I thank you for that. It's just that we had seen that pattern for many decades prior to what had happened out here.

Having said that, actually, I want to get on to the community forests — in particular, the community forests for here, and Dunster and McBride. When were those set up?

S. Bressette: McBride has been around about ten years. Valemount has been around about three years. Dunster was just awarded its licence this past year.

J. Rustad (Chair): The reason why I'm asking that is…. You talked about needing cedar, in particular. You were having trouble getting access to cedar, so you wanted to expand. I know in McBride…. I'm sure their community forest must include a chunk of the ICH which has that cedar-hemlock complex that would have wood available — and likely Dunster as well. Do you ever work with them in terms of trading logs back and forth, to be able to get the type of wood that a facility here needs?

S. Bressette: Yeah, certainly we do. The difference is…. The cedar type from really about Valemount and then going north is a different kind of cedar, basically. It's a thinner shell, a lot more pulp kind of content, more of a post-and-rail type of cedar. So some cedar has come this way, certainly, to feed the shake mill and some of the value-added manufacturers here that deal more with the sawlog type of cedar.

The type of cedar stands that would service the local manufacturers here don't really…. They're not very common in McBride.

J. Rustad (Chair): Right. Okay, so it's a different type. You've got a little bit more solid type of cedar in the south of here that you're going after.

S. Bressette: Basically, Valemount and south is a little higher-quality cedar, if you want to look at it that way.

Then, the last question I have for you, Andru, is…. We're looking at a situation, as we talked about in the beginning, where we're going to be…. The cut is going to be dropping by about ten million cubic metres over the next number of years, in terms of the supply. The Prince George supply area alone will see a reduction of about four million cubic metres from its current cut level. Pre–pine beetle, of course, was a little bit lower than that, so from pre–pine beetle, it's about a three-million-cubic-metre drop from what's being cut today.

That's going to add a tremendous amount of pressure in terms of the overall supply. Most of the wood is already allocated or is part of the B.C. Timber Sales program. So I guess the question I have for you, when you're asking that you'd like to see the community forest expanded here…. You'd like to be able to see more wood stay in this area. Are you looking, then, to take a licence away from someone else, shut a mill down in another community, to have an opportunity to look at possibly creating a mill here? Is that what you're asking?

S. Bressette: That's kind of where I was getting to the perspective point there — the expansion of the community forest. There are going to be impacts for the bigger licensees regardless, with the four million downsizing there. The expansion of the community forest program is not to replace the big mills, but it's good timing to take a small piece of it because there's already going to be an impact. There are already going to be adjustments.

I don't see the community forest program expanding to replace, say, the volume-based quota system — at least, not at this point. That seems like too big of a shift to me. Maybe eventually it could go there, but I realize you can't really expect that to happen right now.

But the community forest, provincially, is requesting an expansion, which amounts to, I believe, about 3.5 million cubic metres. That's what the provincial association has said would satisfy the expansion requests of the communities in its membership. So 3½ million cubic metres, provincially, is a pretty low number.

Then the timing is especially good, since the impacts of taking volume away are already going to happen regardless. If there's a little bit of that that goes to the community forest program, it's good timing to implement that now.

Does this wood belong as 2-by-4s? No. So yeah, just like the province, I have a resource here. We have a resource as a community. We feel some entitlement to it, right or wrong. We feel like it belongs to us.

If it leaves the valley, let's see it go to the highest and best use. I think that would be a reasonable accommodation for us, to say: "Yeah, use it, but let's create something that makes some money and creates some jobs and that is done in a sustainable way."

But no, we're…. Because the province has mismanaged the resource, if you want to say that, or because the environment has conspired against us and we're in trouble now, don't fight fires by selling out my community. No,
[ Page 408 ]
absolutely not. That is not an acceptable answer.

You're here, so I'll just tell you. If you guys want to think about the future and you're saying, "Yeah, we're under too much pressure," maybe think about reducing the overall cut out here for a while. I mean, it's just being logged at a go every five years or something like that. What about that? How do we have integrity with this resource?

I don't want to see a mill in another community closed, but I don't think that's a real question. It's not up to me. It's not where I'm at. All I can tell you is from my perspective. Are we using this resource with integrity? No. So I'm just flagging it down, saying: "Hey, there's something going wrong here. There's something that's askew. Let's take a look at it."

Because other parts of the province are in really dire straits, they need to go through that squeeze. I know the squeeze. I've been here for the last ten years. I know what it looks like when a community goes from having a resource to not. Yeah, it sucks. It's terrible. You lose families. Your society crumbles a little bit. You get into drug addiction. It's a tough time, and having been through it, I guess the wisdom that I can offer is: let's be careful with this. Let's try to plan it out into the future. That's what we're saying.

We are on the other side of that, you know — just so you guys know. We are kind of like some of the communities that are facing this crisis right now. So if you have any questions relating to that, to say if you want to talk to Burns Lake ten years from now, you can ask us questions here, because that's kind of how we feel. We're on the other side of this. Maybe we could be a resource that way for you.

J. Rustad (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. It was actually one of the reasons why I was hoping to be able to come here, because I know that the community has been through a closure and what that impact is. So thank you for that and for taking the time here with our committee today.

A. McCracken: Thank you for coming. I think it shows real integrity, and I want to say to all of you, especially the people that have been in government during this hard, hard time in forestry that it shows real integrity coming to Valemount and bringing up these issues, because it hasn't been easy. It doesn't all fall on your plate. Some of it does; others don't. I think you guys are just doing your office a tremendous honour by coming to us and talking to us about these issues.

At this point now we don't have any presenters signed up to present to the committee, although we have an opportunity with an open mike. I'd like to make that offer to anybody in the room, if they would like to come forward and present some thoughts to our committee.

After hearing this and after hearing the public consultations in the process we've gone through, if there are any other thoughts that people may have or comments about some of the things that they've heard, I want to remind people that we have until July 20 for people to give us some written submissions on their thoughts. Once again, the website associated with that, to give us that information, is www.leg.bc.ca/timbercommittee.

We weigh all of the input accordingly, and our process, once we have finished receiving that, will be to sit down, review all of that information, compile it together and try to come forward with some recommendations. Once again, that report will be to the Legislature by August 15.

Our next committee meeting is this afternoon in McBride. Once again, I want to thank everybody for coming out today here in Valemount and presenting us with the information. They're very much appreciated — the perspectives we've heard.

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

Chair:	* John Rustad (Nechako Lakes BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Norm Macdonald (Columbia River–Revelstoke NDP)
Members:	* Harry Bains (Surrey-Newton NDP)
	* Donna Barnett (Cariboo-Chilcotin BC Liberal)
	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	* Bill Routley (Cowichan Valley NDP)
	* Ben Stewart (Westside-Kelowna BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Other MLAs:	Hon. Shirley Bond, Minister of Justice and Attorney General (Prince George–Valemount BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Craig James
Committee Staff:	Larry Pedersen (Technical Advisor)
	Jacqueline Quesnel (Administrative Coordinator)

Witnesses:	Shane Bressette (Valemount Community Forest Co. Ltd.)
	Andru McCracken (Mayor, Village of Valemount)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON TIMBER SUPPLY

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
TIMBER SUPPLY