Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call second reading of Bill 28, Forest Amendment Act.

In Section A, the Douglas Fir Room, which will start at 3 p.m., it will be Committee of the Whole on Bill 20, Access to Services (COVID-19) Act. After that, it will be Committee of the Whole, Bill 22, the FOIPPA amendment act.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 28 — FOREST AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

Hon. K. Conroy: I move that Bill 28, the Forest Amendment Act, 2021, be read a second time.

Our forests make B.C. one of the best places to live. They’re cherished places for us all, supporting plants, wildlife and our watersheds. Our forests have been a source of family-supporting jobs in all regions of British Columbia for generations and continue to be an integral part of the fabric of who we are as a province. We all want to leave healthy forests as a legacy for our children and grandchildren, and we know if we take care of our forests today, they will be there for future generations.

However, we know that our forest industry is facing a number of challenges, whether it’s wildfires, the impacts of pine beetle, climate change or old policies that consolidated control of our forests in the hands of too few. Past practices aren’t working and need to change. Trees have been cut down when prices were high, and mills have shut down when prices were low.

There is significant concentration of forest tenures in the province, and we know almost all of the available forests for harvesting are already under tenure. This makes it challenging to promote innovation and attract new participants to the sector, including value-added operations and made-in-B.C. manufacturing. This short-sighted approach has left workers and communities behind, ignored First Nations rights and title holders, and has left some of our most rare and ancient forests at risk.

[2:50 p.m.]

We will fail British Columbians if we keep the policies of the past. We owe it to them to fix these problems and take care of our forests. That’s why we’re taking a different approach to better share all of the benefits of our forests for today and for generations to come.

Our government believes in a healthy and vibrant forest sector where First Nations and the people who live near the forests are the first to benefit from this public resource. New tools in our toolbox are required for government to realize that vision.

These amendments will provide government with a new legislative tool called special purpose areas. These special purpose areas will allow government to reduce timber harvesting rights of existing forest tenure areas, fairly compensate the tenure holders and redistribute the harvesting rights to First Nations, community forests and B.C. Timber Sales.

Additionally, amendments to the Forest Act will give government a new mechanism to redistribute forest tenure to advance reconciliation and support our market pricing system. For tenure holders, new compensation rules will provide greater certainty around compensation levels in situations where harvesting rights are altered. The compensation will be based on the contract between government and the agreement holder and ensure the payment is based on the reduction in harvesting rights held by the agreement holder.

The new compensation provisions will address vague language in the existing legislation and protect British Columbians and government from windfall settlements while providing fair compensation for agreement holders. Where we see the downward pressure on the available timber supply, government needs to make sure that the industry remains competitive and diverse.

New tools ensure that license reductions will support small- to-mid-sized operations and First Nations licence holders when the allowable annual cut is reduced across the timber supply area. These changes will ensure that First Nations are meaningful partners in how forests are managed and that communities have a sustainable future with new, innovative opportunities.

Consultations with First Nations related to the proposed amendments have been undertaken. First Nations were notified of these proposed amendments in the summer of 2021 as part of broader engagement on the intentions paper.

Changes to the Forest Act will also require area-based tenure holders to share inventory information with the chief forester. This will increase transparency and support the chief forester in making informed decisions regarding our public forests.

There will be changes from the Ministry of Finance in these amendments. The Forest Act requires a fee — referred to as a fee in lieu — to be paid to the government for timber exported out of the province. The fee in lieu ensures that British Columbians receive their fair share of resources revenue for timber not manufactured in the province.

These amendments will provide the income taxation branch within the Ministry of Finance with the authority to audit and make assessments in respect of the fee in lieu. This audit process is consistent with those already in place for stumpage fees.

We know that outdated forest policies aren’t working for the majority of British Columbians. The forest sector is changing, and our legislative framework needs to ensure that we support workers and communities; advance reconciliation with First Nations partners; and take steps to support a strong, sustainable forest sector. We cannot continue to operate with legislation and regulation designed for the industry of the past.

These amendments support our vision for forestry, where workers and communities benefit from secure, innovative forestry jobs for generations to come; where Indigenous peoples are full partners in sustainable forest management; and our oldest and most ancient trees are protected. We’re taking action to ensure our public forests are managed in the public interest. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to better care for our resources — to better care for our forests, for today and for generations to come.

[2:55 p.m.]

J. Rustad: I thank the minister for her rather brief comments about a bill that is 70-some-odd pages, dropped near the end of the session. I am very surprised, quite frankly, that a bill of this weight would have come in at the end of a session, jamming possible debate on it, with such an important change to our forest sector.

It’s shameful that we haven’t seen this kind of a bill come in at the beginning of a session and be a highlight of what a government would do, instead of trying to sneak it in at the end and trying to stifle, quite frankly, debate on it. It is shameful to see that approach to such an important piece of legislation.

The legislation, as the minister just described, touches on a wide range of things. It touches on old growth and old-growth protection. We’ve seen an announcement earlier — just a month ago or less, a couple of weeks ago — about old-growth protection. It’s a key piece in terms of this act, because what it will do is it will reduce the annual allowable cut. It’ll reduce the area available for harvesting. Those reductions fit into Bill 28 in terms of how companies will actually end up being impacted and how the reductions will end up being fed through.

It’s for that reason, Mr. Speaker, that I’m going to talk about the old-growth reductions as well, as part of my response to this. It’s because this is an important piece of understanding the shift that is coming to the forest sector. The minister talked about new, innovative opportunities. Well, I would tend to think that if that’s what the minister is expecting, she’s doing a very good job — and this government is doing a very good job — of destroying the existing opportunities and destroying the existing forest sector.

I’ve had an opportunity, since the minister’s previous announcements, and since Bill 23 was introduced and now Bill 28, to talk to a number of communities around the province, to a number of workers around the province, to some First Nations, and to companies as well.

Here’s the impact that we’re seeing. It’s pretty hard to say to a community like McBride or Valemount that these changes are going to create a new, innovative opportunity, when in fact these changes are going to shut down the forest industry for those communities entirely. The jobs are gone. To a small community like McBride, even losing five, ten or 20 jobs is huge. The ripple effect of that, in those communities, rips at the core of what the community is.

I was speaking with another company just recently about this. There’s a process that you go through in forestry. The process is, of course, that you go through, you identify the inventory, and you identify the wood you want to harvest. You go in, you do consultation, you submit for permits, and you do more consultation.

It’s a long process. The process can take months and sometimes years to be able to get wood under permit. Of course, it’s important to be able to put wood under permit for a number of years, because you have to be able to have the flow of wood to be able to keep those jobs going within communities, within the facilities.

When you suddenly have an announcement come in that says, “No, you can’t log this anymore,” well, now you’ve got a mill…. You know, at one operation, for example, in Revelstoke, 85 percent of the fibre that they were counting on — that’s under permit or that they were working on permits on to get through — is now suddenly not available to them. They might be able to adjust and go after other wood, but that could be a year or two for them to be able to get permits.

I mean, is the minister serious in saying that those jobs are going to be deferred for a year or two? Of course, that can’t happen. That can’t happen to families. That can’t happen to individual workers. What about the communities? There has been no socioeconomic analysis whatsoever around that announcement or, quite frankly, the additional bills that have been moved in. It’s very disturbing to see that happening.

The reason why I’m saying this from a perspective of being disturbing is that I grew up in a forest family. My family moved here. My dad moved to British Columbia in the late ‘40s and started logging on Vancouver Island. He moved up into the Interior and started sawmills and was involved in logging pretty much all of his life.

[3:00 p.m.]

I grew up…. I learned how to drive when I couldn’t even reach the pedals, sitting on my dad’s knee on a forest road. My first jobs that I started working in the summer were working out and doing forestry, helping out on a landing.

When I was age 14, I was driving D8 cats before I even had a driver’s licence, and graders, helping to build roads and do forestry work. Forestry is in my blood, as it is, I know, with everybody who is passionate about the forest sector.

The issue that has come up here with these changes is going to impact, according to COFI, 18,000 jobs, 18,000 families. Communities, quite frankly, are going to be devastated. One mayor said: “I guess we’re going to have to roll up the sidewalks.”

That’s not fair. It’s not appropriate, and it’s certainly not the way to be introducing forest policy. It’s certainly not the way to be treating hard-working families in this province.

If you go out into this Legislature, you’ll see four pillars, four main themes that were captured in this Legislature — fishing, agriculture, mining, forestry. We are gutting one of those pillars, one of those pillars that helped to build this province, that helped to build this Legislature.

I get it. The government wants to create some changes and do some adjustments, but you don’t have to burn the building down to build it up again. There are ways to sit down and work with industry, with labour, with First Nations, with communities to be able to make changes without having to destroy the sector that helped to build this province.

When I think about Bill 28 and the adjustments on the fibre and that fibre availability, I think back to the devastation that happened to the pine beetle epidemic that destroyed so much of our pine beetle forest in British Columbia and has caused some significant reductions in our forest sector.

Then I hear the designations for old growth, and you go and look at the maps, and some of that dead pine is now designated as old growth. These are dead trees. They’re not old growth.

In addition, there are areas that have been burnt in the massive wildfires in previous years. Some of those areas are designated as old growth. They’re burnt. They’re dead trees. There are other areas of old growth that have been designated, set aside, that are 40 years old.

A forester reached out to me and said: “I went in there just a few years ago and helped to thin that stand.” That’s not old growth. What are we doing here? Why are we designating these areas, reducing the working land base of a forest sector, destroying 18,000 jobs because of mapping errors and ideology?

In British Columbia, we are blessed with having about 60 million hectares of forested landscape. Out of that 60 million hectares, there’s approximately 38 million hectares that are in an original forest state that will never see forest activity, leaving about 22 million hectares that are available for the timber-harvesting land base.

Out of that, we’re talking about taking another 2.6 million hectares in reduction. In the name of old growth, there’s 11.4 million hectares of old growth in British Columbia, and between 75 percent and 85 percent of that is already protected. How much is enough?

Does every last piece have to be protected? What is it we’re trying to do? Has there been analysis on the biodiversity and the changes that have happened? Has there been analysis, or even performance measures, on what this will actually try to achieve other than a political goal, a political outcome? No. There hasn’t been.

[3:05 p.m.]

We’ve got a report that came to government with four out of the five people in that report with direct ties to the Sierra Club. You don’t think that’s biased? Think about what the screaming would be if four out of five members of that panel had been — I don’t know — working for Canfor. You don’t think there would have been a scream of “biased” in a report?

Yet that’s the report that these decisions have been made on. Not because we are protecting the environment. Not because we’re meeting goals of biodiversity and balance — and balance is needed in the forest sector — but because there’s an ideology that went into the creation of that report and that is now going to devastate potentially 18,000 jobs in this province. And then this bill, which we’re debating here today, will describe how that carnage will be handed out, community by community, in the province of British Columbia.

I am passionate about this, as I know that many other people are passionate about this. But I’m passionate about this because I care about my communities. I think about my riding in Nechako Lakes. About 42 percent of the economic activity is forestry. That’s huge. Forestry supports the agriculture that happens in my riding. Forestry has opened up the mining opportunities that are in my riding. Forestry has opened up recreation and hunting and fishing opportunities. Forestry built those communities, along with agriculture. And forestry is now going to be decimated in that area without changes.

I want to use an example of these changes. I hold here a report from Domtar in Kamloops. It was just three weeks ago that I had met with them to go over the report and what they’re planning to do. They were excited about their future.

They were excited about the fact that they had a four-phase program in place to do investment in this province, to do investment in their mill, to be able to secure jobs, to be able to transition as part of the declining cut, to be able to make sure they were a vibrant part of Kamloops and the surrounding area and, most importantly, to be able to support the other mills and the other forest operations in the area, because they all work together.

Fast-forward to an old-growth announcement. These plans are garbage. They’re scrapped. There’s zero investment now. They’ve completely shelved it. In fact, they may very well be out of chips within a couple of months and having to think about closing their operations for good. A company that was prepared to spend tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in the province building a future, building a vibrant, healthy forest sector, creating innovative opportunities, has been gutted, simply because of an ideological position taken by this government.

These jobs are important. It’s not just important for the people in Kamloops and for the families that are working there but to all of the surrounding areas. The way that modern operations work today is chips are a very vital piece of the economics of making a forest operation work. They’re not going to be around to take the chips. So what does that mean? Now they’re going to have to think about shipping them, potentially hundreds of kilometres further away, increasing the cost and decreasing the revenue they get from it. Will those mills now be viable? Or will we see a chain-reaction effect that comes with the potential loss of a pulp mill?

These things would have been known if a proper socioeconomic study had been done, if a proper analysis had been done, if engagement had been done. And if the government then wanted to do it, at least then they could stand up and say, “Yes, we know we are going to be destroying this particular sector and this particular group,” but they didn’t even know that.

[3:10 p.m.]

In the announcement, it was clear that they just had done an analysis on the back of a napkin. That is shameful. And that is so disrespectful to a sector that has been such a vibrant part of this province since its inception.

I have often talked to the forest sector, to workers — unionized or contractors. I have often talked to them about the fact that we should be proud of our forest sector. They agree. They’re proud of what they do. They get up every day, and they’re proud of how they operate in the forest. They’re proud of the reforestation that happens. They’re proud of the renewal that can happen. They are proud of the jobs and the revenue that’s created from our forest sector.

Think about this. I’m standing here in this beautiful building that is the centre of democracy in British Columbia. Look at the wood that is in this building. The desks. Even the pencil. Wood is part of our everyday life. Wood is the most environmentally sensitive, the most environmentally friendly product that we can possibly think of using.

It captures carbon. Look at the wood structures that are in this building that have been here, what, a hundred years, more than a hundred years? That carbon has been captured and sequestered for that length of time and will be hopefully for another hundred years, assuming we don’t have an earthquake or something and cause real grief in this building.

All of that aside — I shouldn’t laugh; that would be absolutely devastating — this wood is just an example of what our forest sector does. Think about what the replacement would be for wood if we weren’t using our forest sector. What would we do for paper? What would we do for medical masks? The fibres go into helping protect our health care workers. The fibres go into everyday life. That wood fibre is critical, not just for us in British Columbia but around the world, and we’re part of that.

The best part is: you plant a new tree, you capture that carbon, and you utilize it for the good of our society. You plant a new tree, and within 40 years, that tree has now sequestered a tonne of carbon. We planted 300 million trees last year. We plant almost that many trees every year. That means every year we are sequestering 300 million tonnes of carbon just from planting trees. We’re taking the carbon that is old and decadent and utilizing that carbon for our products, utilizing it for our everyday needs.

Are we going to replace that with steel? Clearly, we’re not going to replace that with plastics. What’s the replacement, if we are not using fibre? We need a healthy, vibrant forest sector, not one that is decimated by ideology but one that we can be proud of; one that finds the balance between protecting the environment needs, making sure that we have those important environmental values for our future generations and also making sure that we have family-supporting jobs that are renewable, that are sustainable.

We’ve got about 15½ percent of this province in parkland already. We’ve designated parks on some 15½ percent. That is probably something to be proud of, considering it’s more than any other jurisdiction in Canada. I think that it’s, quite frankly, more than any other jurisdiction in the world. We’re doing a good job of protecting and having those values for future generations, better than any other jurisdiction. As a matter of fact, we’re 1½ times to 2 times the recommendation of the United Nations in terms of protected areas already in this province.

On top of that, all the old growth that is already protected: 36, 38 million hectares of forested land that will never see industrial forestry activity. But somehow it’s not enough. It’s too much to ask that we have a portion of our province that supports this vibrant, healthy forest sector and that meets all of these environmental goals that we all, I think, agree on that we would like to achieve.

[3:15 p.m.]

When I look at Bill 28 and I think about how that devastation will be distributed through the communities…. I had an opportunity to have a quick chat with the mayor and councils in my own riding. There was shock. There was anger. There was frustration. Tremendously, what it was the amount of uncertainty.

There’s hope in terms of the transfer. The minister, in previous announcements, talked about transferring wood to First Nations, and I support that. I think First Nations have been a growing component of our forest sector and need to be a growing component in terms of the forest sector. It’s a great opportunity for economic development. It’s a great opportunity for engagement and to try to move from, quite frankly, managing poverty to managing success.

When that announcement came out about the deferrals, there was a press release that came out from the First Nations Forestry Council.

The comment, in particular, from the forest operations of the Líl̓wat First Nation says: “Líl̓wat Nation just spent several million dollars to purchase a forest licence in their territory so they could have a bigger say in decisions regarding forest management in their territory. And now the government comes along and is trying to tell nations what they can and can’t do?” He adds: “The province claims they consulted with First Nations, but we don’t know who they were talking to.”

This is the First Nations Forestry Council.

You would think when the minister stood up and touted several times in her speech on Bill 28 that First Nations and people are first to benefit and touted the engagement with First Nations and how important that was…. And here we are with the First Nations Forestry Council saying they don’t even know who they talked to. How is that engagement? How is that being respectful?

The press release also went on to say…. This is from November 1, 2021, when Chief Bill Williams says: “The honour of the Crown cannot be met through fundamentally flawed consultation.”

It’s sad. I mean, I was the former Minister for Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, and we did a lot of work with First Nations: signing agreements, particularly agreements around forests and revenue-sharing; taking wood, for the very first time in the province, and putting a cut in the hands of First Nations; helping them to be more engaged in activity.

Many First Nations have started their own companies, have bought equipment, have gotten mortgages and for the first time in their life, have basically gone into debt to become entrepreneurs. They’re impacted by this too. They’re impacted by these decisions, just like everyone else is.

Chief Williams from the First Nations Forestry Council also says: “To do this requires a consistent recognition of Indigenous jurisdiction, not just sometimes when it’s convenient.”

Dr. Charlene Higgins, the CEO of the First Nations Forestry Council, says: “How many times do nations have to call the province out on their consultation process before they will actually change it?” It goes on to say: “Unfortunately, we have yet to receive any acknowledgment of our offers to work collaboratively. Instead, they have chosen to do their own thing.”

Those are the words of First Nations engaged in the forest sector, the very First Nations the minister is talking about when she’s talking about Bill 28 and wanting to see them more engaged. How is that engagement? How is that right?

[3:20 p.m.]

This doesn’t make any sense to me at all, unless these decisions are being made for political ideology, as opposed to actually what the minister is saying that she would like them to be made for.

In another press release from the First Nations Forestry Council on November 3…. Information came forward, and they were very concerned about the announcement, once again. Out of the press release, it says: “Thirty days to respond is trying to rush First Nations into making decisions that, once again, in no way support an informed and meaningful consultation process.”

We all stood in this chamber and supported First Nations and efforts that went on with First Nations. I spent a great deal of time, over four years, as the longest-serving Aboriginal Relations Minister in B.C., building those relationships. Was it perfect? No. There is always more that can be done. There is always more that should be done. But I was always straight up and forward wherever I could be with First Nations.

I don’t see how this announcement by the minister on old-growth deferrals is in any way straight up and forward. Many nations, when they heard the announcement…. This is, once again, from the press release on November 1. It says: “For many nations, this was the first time they’d heard or seen it.”

Now we’re in a situation where we’ve got this ideological change that, once again, according to COFI, is going to cost, potentially, 18,000 jobs, see up to 20 sawmills close, potentially a couple of pulp mills. I just referred to the challenge that Domtar is going to be facing in Kamloops. A bill, then, that, like I say, is going to distribute how that punishment will be inflicted upon a forest sector.

B.C. Wood is a group that has done a lot of work in the province. They’re all about value-added. They’re all about extracting the highest value and the best value they can out of the trees. I know the minister is passionate about this and wants to do this. The minister has talked at length about wanting to see more value from our forests. Yet they say their sector is going to be hit the hardest — that value-added will be hit the hardest through this process.

I’m not quite sure how that will work out unless, of course, the minister wants to bring the whole forest sector down to nothing and then try to build from the ground up. It certainly seems to be the approach that this government is taking.

Mr. Speaker, I notice I’m running low on my time. Just to let you know, I am the designated speaker for this bill. I’m getting a stare from the minister, but that’s okay.

Interjection.

J. Rustad: I am talking about the bill. The minister says I’m not talking about the bill.

In this bill is the path for taking wood back from companies from decisions government has made — decisions like deferrals. This is how that damage will be inflicted. In order to understand that section of that bill and that process that’s going to be in there, it’s important to understand why it needs to be in there, because there is damage being done to the sector.

I was back talking with mayors in my community. Many of my communities have community forests. The minister mentioned that in this bill, there will be an opportunity to be able to enhance community forests through these special purpose areas, this extraction that will come out of the forest sector. But with the announcement on old growth…. For example, in the Granisle community sector, 65 percent of their available timber is now going to be reduced because of old growth — 65 percent.

[3:25 p.m.]

They’ve looked at it. They’ve come up with the numbers. This is what they’ve told me. The minister is shaking her head, I suspect because the minister hasn’t even looked at the community forest at Granisle and what the impact of that may be.

There’s another huge challenge with the deferrals that were announced, and that’s access. There are some areas…. I heard from one company operating in the Revelstoke area that said these deferrals effectively isolate an entire valley, which they won’t be able to get access to. How will they put a road through, a deferral, if it’s a protected area? They can’t get into the fibre behind it, further reducing the amount of fibre that will be available.

I’m encouraged when nations, like the Cheslatta Carrier Nation in my riding, according to the mayor, are saying no to these deferrals. They don’t want to see it. Maybe that will be one area in the province where we don’t see the deferrals go ahead.

My understanding, from many of the other nations, is they’re also very reluctant to say yes to these deferrals. As a matter of fact, I suspect there will be a lot of them that will say no. It will be very interesting to see whether the minister, through this consultation process, these 30 days of consultation, will actually listen to First Nations or whether they’ll carry on with this ideological drive to destroy the forest sector.

Much of the information that the minister is looking at, in terms of these deferrals which flow through to Bill 28 and the reductions that will come and pass on to companies, is based, actually, on inventory information, quite frankly, that needs to be updated.

As I mentioned earlier, there are areas that have been deferred that are 30 or 40 years old. There are areas that have been deferred that are burnt. There are areas that are deferred that are basically dead pine. So I wonder what the plan is, through this bill — and I’ll get into this more under the debate on Bill 23 — to update that inventory, to be able to really do that full assessment and analysis of what the devastation will be.

I find it interesting, as well, when the minister talks about, in this bill, how First Nations and people are the first to benefit. Well, here are some quotes from the United Steelworkers union in their press release around deferrals. I’m curious as to how the minister sees Bill 28 as seeing these benefits go to the people when…. This is a quote from Jeff Bromley, from the United Steelworkers Wood Council chair: “If even half of the 2.6 million hectares identified by the government are removed, jobs will be lost as multiple mills, value-added operations and pulp mills close permanently.”

He goes on to say: “In the past three years, eight operations with USW workers across B.C. closed, and 1,000 good-paying, family-supporting jobs were lost. The impact from this process will almost certainly multiply across the province.”

It goes on to say, in the press release: “The government says 4,500 jobs will be lost, but USW’s information suggests the real number could be four times that much.”

This is certainly, as the minister said in her opening comments, putting people first to receive the benefits. Unless she’s referring to an unemployment cheque, I’m not sure exactly the benefits that she’s talking about.

Jeff Bromley goes on to say, and this is from November 3, 2021: “If First Nations who’ve been given 30 days to respond reject the plan, will the government listen to them?” That’s a very valid question.

Of course, Mr. Bromley also goes on to talk about the bias of the Sierra Club, as I had mentioned earlier, in terms of that ultimate decision around the old growth and the old-growth report.

[3:30 p.m.]

As we get into the debate on Bill 28 and we look at the new rules for passing on these reductions — the rules around these special management areas, which have the potential to quite literally wipe out a woodlot, perhaps even a community forest or a tree farm licence as areas are taken back — it’s curious how that will create a healthy and vibrant forest sector.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

I want to refer to a letter that was sent to me after the announcement. This is also from November 3. This is a letter. I’m not going to say the name, because I haven’t asked permission to read the letter into the record, although it was sent to the Office of the Premier, to the minister, as well as to many other MLAs. It says:

“The recent B.C. government announcement for 2.6 million hectares of forest is extremely concerning to me and my family. I have lived in a forest-dependent community in north central B.C. and am a registered professional forester with ABCFP. My family consists of generations who have depended on our forest sector, and our family income supports the next generation of British Columbians. As a professional forester, I have seen the working forest land base become more and more constrained over the course of my career, but this announcement dwarfs them all and appears to not be aware of its own consequences.”

It’s a professional forester with generational experience working in the forest sector. He goes on to say:

“I acknowledge that the details of the model are not for you, Minister, to fully understand or manipulate, but you do need to be aware that the model does not appear to meet your intentions of preserving rare old-growth ecosystems. I don’t know if you viewed the deferral areas yourself, but the areas tagged for deferral do not encourage better ecosystems. For example, I have seen deferral areas that significantly overlap a major river or existing cutblock. Are these old-growth areas?

“I have seen 100-by-100-metre-square islands of deferred area in the middle of a proposed harvest area. Ecologically, these islands of old growth would be better off aggregated into more complex old-growth systems. There are too many concerns I have with the data.”

He goes on with a lengthy letter about his concerns for the forest sector and the concerns with this announcement.

As I mentioned, I’ve talked to a number of people about this. What’s encouraging is the minister has actually reached out and talked to some of these people too, talked to some of the communities that will be affected.

You know what the minister said to these communities, to communities in my riding? She said: “Don’t worry. We’ll throw a life-support line to you to keep the community alive.”

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

A community is not looking for a life support, a lifeline. They’re looking for jobs. Small communities are looking for the types of good-paying forest jobs that support the family and that support a community unit. That’s what they want. They’re not looking for a lifeline. If you’re a small community and you’re trying to attract people into that community, it’s virtually impossible to be able to do that if you’re talking about a community that’s on a lifeline.

I see our hon. Speaker is here with a ruling. So I would be happy to reserve my place in the debate and move adjournment to the debate.

J. Rustad moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

[3:35 p.m.]

Standing Order 35

REQUEST TO DEBATE A MATTER OF
URGENT PUBLIC IMPORTANCE —
RESPONSE TO SEVERE WEATHER EVENTS

(continued)

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, earlier today the official opposition House Leader raised a matter of urgent public importance under Standing Order 35. I informed the House that I would take the matter under advisement. However, I understand that an agreement amongst all caucuses has now been reached. Therefore, I will not provide a ruling.

The debate on the motion regarding the response of the government of British Columbia to the emergency flooding and landslide situation will commence tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m. for one hour. Thank you.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

Hon. S. Malcolmson: I call continued debate on Bill 28, the Forest Amendment Act.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 28 — FOREST AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

(continued)

J. Rustad: I was talking about a lifeline for communities. I’m glad to hear that we’re going to be doing an emergency debate about many other communities that have been impacted by floods and slides and many other individuals. Lifeline may be very appropriate for that debate.

For forest communities, quite frankly, to quote one of my mayors with that…. When they heard that, they said: “That’s insulting.”

The minister also, in that call, talked about the fact that there are 1,000 health care openings, and there might be opportunities to be able to transition workers to health care openings. I’m all for being able to retrain and to do that, but I’m not quite understanding how somebody who has a skill with a chainsaw is going to be able to have a skill with a scalpel, or how somebody who has skill with driving a logging truck is going to have skill with driving an ambulance. The skills aren’t really transferable.

When you’re talking about people who have put their lives and built careers in the forest sector, that’s not an easy transition to even think about. I was actually quite surprised that the minister even suggested that.

The reality for many people is that if this goes ahead, if Bill 28 proceeds in the distribution of the damage that’s caused by this old-growth deferral, some small communities are going to cease to exist, become retirement communities as people move away. What happens is that when a worker loses a job, when a mill closes, when a logging job ends, there isn’t a job in a small community like that just to go into.

It’s not Vancouver. It’s not Richmond. It’s communities like Vanderhoof and Fraser Lake and Burns Lake. Those workers will then have to find work elsewhere. For a time, they may travel, but eventually, they’ll find a job somewhere and decide to move their family. So it’s not just a lost job in a community. It’s splitting up families. It’s people having to move away for employment.

I’ve seen, over the years, the changes of the forest sector. You know, I remember back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when there used to be tremendous number of people working in the forest sector. Technological innovation has created, obviously, a big shift. I saw what happened to many communities, small vibrant communities, that have really struggled and have been in decline.

Not directly related to forestry but to mining, Granisle was a community of — what? — 1,100 or 1,300 people at one point. When the mine shut down…. It’s now a community of about 390. It’s pretty devastating for the community and for the people that grew up in that community. But that’s what communities feel like. To quote one of my other mayors in my riding, they said: “It feels like Desert Storm — one thing after another pummelling the sector.”

[3:40 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: Excuse me, member for Nechako Lakes. Just a procedural glitch that we need to address. If you could take your seat for a moment, I’ll recognize the acting House Leader, who will move second reading.

Hon. S. Malcolmson: That is just what I meant to say. Thank you.

I move second reading debate on Bill 28, the Forest Amendment Act.

Deputy Speaker: Nechako Lakes, please continue.

J. Rustad: Do I rewind and go back to where I was? Do I get an extra ten minutes on the clock?

I appreciate the nuances. Having been in this building for a long time, I know that there are things that have to be done in the correct order. As a matter of fact, when the acting House Leader called it, I kind of went: “Huh?” Then you proceeded. So I thought: “Okay, carry on.”

In any case, like I was saying, the way this announcement rolled out and the reaction that I’ve seen from community after community across the province…. It was described to me this way: “This is the worst announcement ever made by a government.” And it’s not even so much the announcement but the fact that there are no details, the fact that there is uncertainty and the fact that families don’t know what their future is. Do they start looking for a job now? What happens? What is going to be happening? How is this going to unfold?

There are no details. There has been no analysis. There has been no engagement. There has been no discussion. Quite frankly, it’s a process by a government that clearly doesn’t seem to care about the very people that the minister talked about in her opening statement. If that’s the benefit to people, I’m sure that people would say: “No, thank you. Keep your benefits.”

I looked at one of my other communities, the community of Fort St. James. I’m passionate about that small, little community, and I’m very pleased that the Minister of Health assures me that they’re going to go ahead with building a new hospital up there. What happens if the mills close? Is that hospital going to go ahead? Population is certainly going to change. The needs of the community are certainly going to change if those mills in that area close.

How does this impact that community? There are no assurances. There is no engagement. How will that community proceed? It’s already sitting in a situation where it’s short seven nurses just for its current hospital, and nurses are overworked in that area. How does that community attract new nurses to the area with this kind of uncertainty that has been dropped by this government?

In a call by the minister to mayors on Vancouver Island, once again, a community in the north Island was talking about the challenges and the need to be able to attract health care professionals. The minister was excited about identifying a possible opportunity to transition forestry workers into health care workers. Once again, I’m sorry, but that’s a little out of touch with somebody who came out of high school and worked in a mill or somebody who has mortgaged their house to buy a logging truck and is trying to figure out how to make payments and will suddenly no longer have work. It’s pretty hard to think about how that person transitions into a health care position.

What’s needed is to pause this approach, to actually go out and engage and tell people what this will mean on the ground, to work through these issues — not to give 30 days to First Nations and then let communities know what’s going to happen. That’s just unacceptable.

[3:45 p.m.]

We have a situation, as well, as we go through this and look at Bill 28 and look at how this redistribution of these decisions will happen. Most people don’t think about forestry from a Lower Mainland perspective, but over 40 percent of the forestry jobs in the province are in the Lower Mainland, with direct and indirect jobs. That’s a pretty significant amount.

It’s not surprising that the Surrey Board of Trade also weighed in on this issue. In their press release on November 2, they say they’re disappointed with the B.C. government’s decision on harvest deferrals, and the economic viability of the industry is jeopardized.

It goes on to say in this press release: “The deferral process is going to jeopardize many businesses…. Hundreds of employees will be laid off due to this deferral process. Every day businesses are making tough decisions on how to preserve their bottom line and remain profitable, and this deferral will have devastating impacts on B.C.’s economy and people’s livelihoods.”

It goes on to say: “Surrey is home to many wood manufacturing companies that are significant employers, such as Teal-Jones Group, S and R Sawmills, Pacific Lumber, Catalyst Paper, the Sundher Group, Key West Forest Products and Riverside Forest Products, to name a few. Workers and businesses are dependent on a healthy forest sector.”

Earlier I talked about B.C. Wood, who many of these people are connected with. They’re concerned that they may be the hardest impacted by this decision. These are communities like Surrey and Delta and Richmond, Mission, Maple Ridge, all along the Fraser River.

Deputy Speaker: One moment, Nechako Lakes.

Hon. S. Malcolmson: Mr. Speaker, I would be grateful if you could encourage the member to keep his comments focused on the bill at hand. We’ve been quite tolerant here. This is legislation about redistributing harvest rights, about a compensation framework, about requiring tenure holders to report forest inventory and about an auditing system.

We’ve been patient, but the letter that the member just referenced, dated November 2, is impossible in its relation to this legislation, because this legislation was not tabled until Monday. That’s my suggestion to the member.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you for your comments.

Do you want to make a comment regarding…?

J. Rustad: If I may carry on?

Deputy Speaker: Yes.

J. Rustad: Thank you, hon. Speaker. I’m pleased that the member has found her voice in this. Clearly she doesn’t understand forestry, because when you reduce the cut on forestry, this is the bill that distributes it.

It’s directly related. It’s a shame that you don’t understand what the impacts are going to be and how this bill is related to what the person from Surrey has to say.

Deputy Speaker: Member.

J. Rustad: My apologies, Mr. Speaker, through you.

Deputy Speaker: You can apologize through me, if you like. You can also apologize to the member.

Please keep your comments through the Chair. That way, we can keep the passion a little bit down.

J. Rustad: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m going to carry on with the quote from the Surrey Board of Trade, because it is relevant to what is happening and what is discussed in Bill 28. “We have heard from many experts that this consultation process with First Nations is not effective, and a timeline of 30 days does not respect the capacity and level of work required to provide a response.” The minister, in her opening comments to Bill 28, talked about how important it is to have the First Nation engagement, yet here is example after example, directly from First Nations and others, that show that process is flawed.

We’re proceeding with a bill, in Bill 28, that is going to outline how that devastation will be played out in the forest sector, through the redistribution of cut. It’s important to understand just how that will be, which is why I keep pulling up these quotes from the old-growth impact. Quite frankly, if you weren’t reducing the cut, if you weren’t reducing the area of old growth, you wouldn’t necessarily need these new rules, because you wouldn’t have to be going out and figuring out how you distribute that cut and who you impact.

[3:50 p.m.]

The Truck Loggers Association has been around for a very long time. They’re a very proud organization, and they have a lot of members right across the province, particularly on the Island and the Lower Mainland.

Their comment that came out, associated with this, is nothing short of a damning indictment, I guess you could say, of the government’s forest policy. These are the people who are directly on the ground who are going to feel the impacts of these approaches. So when you reduce the area base of our timber harvesting land base by 2.6 million hectares, which is what old growth does, this lays out the map as to who’s going to lose that 2.6 million hectares, who’s going to lose the cuts and where those jobs are going to be.

You know what, Mr. Speaker? We wouldn’t necessarily have to be here talking about this, this much right now, if there was a proper socioeconomic analysis done and we knew where all that is. But we don’t, which is why everybody is so upset. This is why thousands of workers across this province are talking about disruptions and protests to try to make their point. I don’t blame them. This is their livelihood they’re talking about.

The Truck Loggers Association says:

“This announcement sends a message to multi-generations of B.C.-born and -raised forest workers who have dedicated their lives to running independent, innovative, small- and medium-sized businesses that continue to reinvest in British Columbia and support a sustainable industry that they are not a priority to this government. Government appears to have completely ignored that they provide tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity and revenue to help fund health care and education to 140 communities in this province.”

Pretty straightforward when you think about Bill 28. The minister doesn’t like to link her previous announcement to this, but they are all linked together. They are all linked together.

I saved the quotes and the information from COFI till the end in terms of the quotes that I wanted to be able to add into the record on this Bill 28 debate. I did that because I wanted to be able to describe to this House the impact to communities, the impact to individuals, the impact to contractors and workers, because they’re what is most important. I think the minister would agree with me. But at the heart of those individuals is also the corporation, the company that turns that fibre into those jobs through the activities that they have, through the investments they have in this province.

As I described from Domtar, these announcements have ended capital investment. We’re going to see this over and over again across the province. Capital is going to flee this province, and it already has. We’re seeing all the investments south of the border, and that’s because of all the uncertainty that has been created by the processes and the announcements, of course, that this government is making.

COFI said: “Today the province has indicated it will be proceeding with a process to defer a further 2.6 million hectares of forests in B.C. If fully implemented, this move will have a profound and devastating impact on people, families and communities across the province.”

We have had the labour union representing the hard workers in this industry. We’ve had the contractors and the truck loggers who represent the people up and down this province that create this vibrant forest sector. We have heard from the communities and community leaders around this. We’ve heard from industry around this. Most important, we’ve heard from First Nations around this.

What does it take before the government will realize that they have created a mess and they need to pause? The minister can shake her head all she wants in disbelief. She can live in a bubble, but this is the reality.

Interjection.

J. Rustad: She says we’ve created it.

We didn’t defer 2.6 million hectares, Minister. No, we didn’t. You did.

Deputy Speaker: I will remind the member again.

J. Rustad: Through you, hon. Chair.

The minister….

Deputy Speaker: That’s the second time.

[3:55 p.m.]

J. Rustad: I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This government’s announcement has created this devastation, not things from the past. They’ve made this decision. They made it politically, and they made it politically based on four people with direct ties to the Sierra Club, plus one additional person. Somewhat biased, I would say.

They made the decision that is going to gut communities. This Bill 28 will be the path to show you which communities are going to be impacted and how that will play out. They made the decision not to engage and to inform people as to what this will mean, creating tremendous uncertainty. They have made the decision to drive investment from this province.

As I said in the beginning, I grew up in the forest sector. After my time of working in the woods, where I did logging, I did tree planting, I did layout, I did reconnaissance work, and I did timber supply analysis…. I’ve worked in just about any component of the forest sector you can think of. After that, I’ve been involved now in politics, looking at communities, looking at how to support and grow those jobs.

The minister loves to tout a comment of 30,000 jobs lost. Well, let’s talk about the 25,000 to 30,000 jobs lost in the ’90s, since we’re talking about decades ago. But perhaps we should actually point to another stat. At the bottom of the great recession, as it was called, in 2009, from that point to 2017, the previous government saw almost 10,000 job gains in our forest sector. We’re the only province in this country to see gains.

The minister likes to shake her head and disagree. I suggest to the minister that she should look at Stats Canada as opposed to listening to NDP rhetoric, because that’s where that information comes from: directly from Stats Canada. Almost 10,000 job gains over that period. You know what? Since this government has been in power, that’s been gone. That’s lost. That’s already disappeared in the province of British Columbia, and now we’re talking about, potentially, another 18,000 jobs.

Bill 28 will be the author as to where the axe falls, where those jobs will be lost. It’s not a very good record, especially from a government that talks about values and wanting higher value instead of volume. But I also remember, in 2017, the then Leader of the Opposition running for election in Merritt, saying there would not be a mill closed under a government led by the NDP. Wonder how that worked out. Clearly, that wasn’t a promise that was kept.

When I go through and look at all of the information…. I had the opportunity to have the briefing on Bill 28 from the ministry staff. There were a couple of other interesting little things I just want to touch on.

I don’t want to take away, though, from the devastation that will be happening to communities, really, across the province, but one of the interesting things that is in here is it adds the power for doing auditing and review of companies that are charged a fee in lieu to make sure those fees are being paid to government. I wonder if there has been an example of where that hasn’t happened. Most of these companies are publicly traded companies. They have to meet rigorous accounting standards. They have to meet rigorous reporting standards.

I’m very surprised that government seems to think that there is revenue that has gone missing associated with that, but I suppose it will create a few more jobs in the bureaucracy. We’ll see over time whether or not that turns up anything. If it does, good on them, but if it doesn’t, be a bit of a waste I would say. But we’ll see. That’s one other component that certainly will be in Bill 28.

[4:00 p.m.]

The other thing I want to touch on is these special purpose areas, because this is a tool that I think the minister is pretty proud of, in doing. Special purpose areas, as it was described to me in the briefing, will allow government to be able to target an area and extract that area out for redistribution to B.C. Timber Sales or to First Nations. Okay. That sounds reasonable, except when you think that most of the area around the province is volume-based.

By extracting an area out, you’re actually able to go in and take what you would consider to be the best wood that’s available and not a representation of what a timber supply area may be. In other words, these very special areas have the potential to take out the cream within a forest and leave the remainder. That may be the intention that the minister is looking at in terms of utilization of this. I’ll be very interested when we get into committee stage to find out if that is truly her intent. But it seems to be that’s what the purpose of that is.

That will have unintended consequences on a number of levels — first of all, with stumpage. If these special purpose areas go, all of them, to B.C. Timber Sales and become stumpage, you’re talking now not a representation of a supply area but the best of a supply area, which means if that is now going into the timber-pricing system, it will then bias the rest of the wood at a much higher level than it should be charged at, making stands potentially unviable because of high stumpage. I wonder if the minister has done that analysis. That’s a piece of information I’ll certainly be interested in looking into when we get to committee stage on this bill.

I also look at it and think when a company — particularly on the coast but even in the southern Interior and other areas — goes into an area to log, they often have some very good wood that they get, some stuff that is mediocre and then some stuff that is rather poor. It’s that very good wood that makes the economics work to be able to go after the entire area, to be able to bring the logs in that feed the pulp mills and create the jobs. If you take that one component out, will it be economical to log the rest of it? What is the impact that will have? I haven’t seen any analysis. It will be interesting to ask the minister, during the process, whether there will be that kind of analysis.

Also, when you take that component out of an area and you have a number of companies around that might have an interest in that, because it is higher-quality wood, you’re going to get quite a bidding war. How does a small new company — the minister talked about wanting to create new innovative opportunities — that is just starting out…? How are they able to compete to be able to get that kind of wood, when everybody else is going to be chasing after it and the price is going to be high? I fail to see how that will create new, innovative opportunities in our forest sector.

The Premier, back at COFI — I think it was 2018, or maybe it was 2019, at COFI — famously said he recognizes that some of their policies may have unintended consequences. When you’re doing forest policy and when you are impacting lives, potentially 18,000 jobs around the province of British Columbia, I think they would hope that it’s not being done at a level where they don’t know what the unintended consequences might be. I think that’s what has the forest industry really scared, because the job losses are potentially horrendous, the impacts to communities, the impacts to lives.

[4:05 p.m.]

What else will come from this? How else will these impacts unfold in our forest sector? It’s an unknown, because the analysis has not been done. As we go through, in listening to the debate, I hope there’ll be members of the government side that will stand up and speak passionately about a sector, quite frankly, that needs champions. It needs champions for the reasons I gave earlier in this debate — because of the strong environmental benefits of a vibrant forest sector. The carbon that’s captured, such as in the wood that’s in this building….

I see the minister chuckling as I say things like this, but it’s true. It’s a very important piece of our environment and our needs.

Even with something as simple as the recent floods and the slides, which have devastated people and devastated communities, there’s suddenly a run on things like toilet paper. That’s a very important product that comes from forestry. There are so many products around the province that utilize our fibre and our forests. I find it hard to think about what replacements for any of that could be. As we look at what’s happening in British Columbia and also in other jurisdictions in the world, there is a finite amount of fibre that is available. What are the alternatives if we continue to see reductions in what we harvest on the land base?

I can tell you, when I think about how Bill 28 will distribute this around the province…. I actually visited Fairy Creek this summer. I visited Pacheedaht as well. I had a conversation with the environmentalists that were trying to protect the old growth in that area. I have to say that there’s passion, but there’s also some reason and ability to be able to look at trying to find balances. Where the balance is, is the debate. It’s not all or nothing.

It’s disturbing to think about the amount of misinformation and the inaccurate information that was flowing around — inaccurate information, quite frankly, that I’m worried has led to this decision of deferrals — which, of course, through Bill 28, will lead to who ends up taking the hit and how that’ll play out. One of the recommendations from the old growth panel was that there would be a single source of accurate information. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing that, so we have tremendous amounts of misinformation that are out and around. That is creating all kinds of challenging issues right across the province when it comes to managing our forest sector.

It’s unfortunate, because a forest sector like this…. Like I say, I’m proud of B.C.’s forest sector. We do forestry better than any jurisdiction in the world. We have more land that is certified through international standards than any other jurisdiction in the world, in terms of the management. I think our professionals in this province are some of the best anywhere in the world.

We need to do work on inventory. We need to do more work on the base information that is there and available. Hopefully, the minister’s future budgets will actually have some money do some of that work. It’s critical work that’s needed and that will help to be able to give that information around reliable and accurate accounting for things like old growth.

When I look once again at Bill 28, and I look at the special purpose areas, it makes me wonder what that information is going to be based on — these areas that are going to be targeted. I’ve had the good fortune, in my career, of spending a lot of time in the forests and looking at forest inventory data and seeing how inaccurate some of that data can be.

[4:10 p.m.]

I remember walking through one stand that said it was a beautiful spruce balsam stand, getting in there and realizing it was all fir — beautiful, beautiful Interior fir. I kind of wondered: how could that have gotten so wrong in our inventory?

There is work that needs to be done to reinvest in our inventories to make sure that we have accurate information about what’s out on the land base. It’s not just about the soils and the potential for growth, but it’s also about what’s actually happening on the land base.

When I look at how things will be distributed under Bill 28 and the old-growth impacts on that, I wonder how forest health will really play into it. Many of the areas that have been designated as old growth have spruce beetle outbreaks in them. If you’ve got a spruce beetle outbreak in an area that is protected — which then will, therefore, reduce the cut under Bill 28 to various companies — how does that impact the neighbouring stands when you can no longer go in and manage to deal with that spruce beetle outbreak because it’s now protected, it’s now deferred?

This is what led to pine beetle problems in the ’90s. That flowed over into 2000. There was a refusal to go in and deal with the problem, because there was a huge problem in a park. We had a devastation from our pine beetle in the province because there wasn’t a political will to do the right thing. That came out of the ’90s. Now we’re seeing a similar thing.

There were some 300 hectares, I think it was…. I can’t remember the size of it. I think it might have been larger than that. Sorry, it was larger than that. I can’t remember the size — I apologize — but an area that was protected, up in the northeast, for caribou. The area up through there is riddled with spruce beetle. Those trees are going to die — they’re going to fall down, and those beetles aren’t just going to stay there — but are in areas that have been set aside for habitat.

I can tell you that I’ve walked through stands that have been infested with spruce beetle. I’ve seen what has happened when a windstorm came through to those stands, the criss-crossing of the trees on the ground and the inability to get through them. That’s not habitat. There’ll be no benefit to caribou from that kind of protection. Yet these are the kinds of decisions that are being made for ideological reasons — not based on, quite frankly, good science.

That does make me wonder, when I think about these special purpose areas, the inventory and the data that’s going to go into those decisions and what the consequences are to the remaining wood and the viability of that to our forest sector. How will that play out? This gives government the tool, but how will that tool be used? Will it be used? Where will it be used? To what extent will it be used?

Will it be used because some company says “I want something,” or will it be used based on a scientific analysis, with performance measures? Will that be the way it’s used? It’s the way it should be, if you’re going to use a tool like that, to make sure that it’s achieving the objectives that we want to be achieved. For far too long over the years — whether it’s wildlife management decisions on the landscape or visual-quality objectives on the landscape — we do all these decisions on a landscape, and we don’t do any analysis to say: are they meeting the objectives?

I’ve seen hillsides of visual-quality objectives that we don’t want to have over a certain amount in a disturbed state. They’re all dead. They’re all dead pine. They’re all a fire trap, waiting for a fire to come over the ridge and burn it all. Is that the intent of a visual-quality objective? Is that the intent of information that feeds into decisions like the ones that are going to be made in Bill 28? Without performance measures, without ways to be able to judge the decisions, without ways to be able to audit and assess those decisions, how do we know that it’s achieving the objectives that were laid out?

These are all important questions when we talk about managing forests, particularly when you talk about issues of wildlife management and issues of biodiversity — but, most importantly, issues of the jobs and the families that are fed by those jobs and the communities that are supported by a healthy family.

[4:15 p.m.]

It was in the 1990s when a former NDP Forests Minister said, “We’re the government. We can do anything we want” — paraphrasing. I see the decisions around these bills to be very similar. This is being done, driven by ideology. I remember, quite frankly, many of the people that were working in the ministry, that came back to work in the ministry prior to this current government but in their previous iteration, who worked on the jobs and timber accord of the ‘90s. Clearly, their approach then has carried over to what they’re doing now.

What were the results then? It was devastation to the forest sector — driven up and became the highest-cost producers. Nobody wanted to invest. Jobs were disappearing. That was the result of policy that wasn’t well-thought-out, that didn’t have performance measures. Are we seeing the same thing today? It certainly appears to be the pattern. The only thing that is not attached to it is the nice catchphrase, “jobs and timber accord.”

When this government took power in 2017, there was a promise, from the Premier, to solve the softwood lumber agreement with the United States. The reason I raise that issue is because when you look at the compounding issues that lead up to Bill 28 and the fibre distribution that’ll happen, those tariffs come into play in the viability of the cost structure in British Columbia.

Time and time again, we have heard that this province is the highest-cost producer, in British Columbia. How does this bill, and how do these series of decisions that are made by this government, help that situation? If we’re a high-cost jurisdiction, that makes our industry vulnerable to any downturns.

We’ve been very fortunate over the last year and a half to see very high timber prices — very fortunate. That has led to a lot of forest activity, people working, people being very active in our forest sector. What happens when those prices turn down? What happens when our industry becomes vulnerable again and we’re a high-cost producer? We’re adding in more challenges and issues through Bill 28, Bill 23 and issues like the old-growth deferrals. It’s no wonder that industry is not looking to invest in British Columbia.

I had the chance this summer to visit with the San Group. The minister mentioned San Group during estimates last spring, so I thought: “Oh good. Okay, I’ll go have a visit with them to see the investment that they’re making in Port Alberni and how they’re tying together all their operations.” It’s a good investment, I have to admit, but I also think you’ve got a private sector company that’s doing this.

When they came in and made that investment, the first thing that happened is the community of Port Alberni wanted to raise the taxes on their property. That was the first thing that they wanted to do, because they had, obviously, reduced the taxes to try to attract investment. You know what the company said? The company said: “If you do that, we’ll have the trucks here tomorrow and the equipment will be on it, and we’ll leave.” In a private company, they can do that kind of thing. They can make that kind of shift on those kinds of investments.

It’s a great operation that they’re doing, but I wonder how this will impact them. I wonder how this series of decisions will impact the operations that they are hoping to be able to be successful in this province, because I would agree with the minister: we want to see more of those kinds of investments in British Columbia.

That was a pretty unique investment, because it had the port facility, and it tied together their operations that make it all work. I’m not hearing any other companies that are jumping up and down and saying: “I want to do that kind of an investment in British Columbia.” At the end of the day, without that kind of investment, without those new dollars, you’re not going to have — as the minister called it — new, innovative opportunities.

[4:20 p.m.]

This government loves to use buzzwords to describe what it’s doing, as opposed to what’s really happening. It’s just like calling a capital tax on assets a school tax. It makes it sound nice and innocuous, as opposed to what it really is. We’re seeing the same sort of thing with bills like Bill 28.

A “special purpose area.” Think about that. Why is that language used to describe an area of takeback, an area of creaming the high-quality fibre for government purposes?

Like I say, I’ve had a chance to talk to so many mayors now, the communities, the companies, the workers. I was on a call just last night with a group of workers who are feeling devastated by this series of decisions. They’re angry. They want to get out and express that. Their hope is that there is a way to be able to raise this debate within government and to find a path for government to say: “Maybe we’ve gone too far. Maybe we should pause. Maybe we should do more engagement. Maybe we should do the analysis and understand the impacts.”

They hope that they might be able to bring that to this Legislature, to this government. They hope that their First Nation allies, who are also expressing concern, as I read from many quotes, will help to put pressure on this government to change its position, to back down, to allow for a more appropriate and more engaged process of change as opposed to ripping at the very heart string of our forest sector.

My hope is that pressure that will come through protests, through letters, through engagement with MLAs on all sides of the House, through engagement with ministers…. The hope is that there will a sober second look at what’s happening. That sober second look will then give government an opportunity to do the right thing and put jobs, put families, put communities in the same balance as the environment and needs for the rest of the province.

Clearly, that balance seems to be missing. Clearly, there is no champion for the forest sector in this government.

I look forward to hearing the discussions. I look forward to hearing the debate from members of the government side, from members of the Third Party, from members of my caucus on this bill — and more than this bill. This bill is the summation of actions that have happened over the last four years and, certainly, over the last three weeks. It’s a summation of the direction that it’s going in our forest sector.

If all of this carries on the way government is saying it will, my fear is the forest sector will not look anything like what we’ve ever known in this province. Maybe that’s the intent of this government. If it is, they should come right out and say it.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the time today to talk about Bill 28. I look forward to the debate as well as the committee stage to come.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member. You don’t need to thank me for the time. You’ve earned it. We’ve all earned it.

A. Olsen: I rise today to speak to Bill 28. I’ll do my best to speak to Bill 28 and not just directly to the comments that were just put on the record, although it will be a bit challenging for me.

[4:25 p.m.]

I think that what’s important to acknowledge here is that while I share the frustration of the member for Nechako Lakes that 150 or 160 pages of legislation were put in front of us to debate with less than six days to do it…. That is particularly challenging because the changes that are being proposed in the legislation that’s been put on the table for us are important.

While I disagree fundamentally with some of the items that have been raised and the way that they’ve been raised, I think that it’s the exchange of ideas and the exchange of different opinions that help us, in this place, to better understand what’s being proposed, and it’s the exchange of ideas that will help government in terms of understanding the impact that the changes are going to have. Everything that we do in this place, necessarily, will have some impact. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing it.

It is particularly challenging to give the full due, care and attention to 160 pages of legislation — highly technical changes that are being made — and to be able to pay full respect to how those proposed changes will impact the people, the sector, the economy of the province of British Columbia, revenue — all of those important aspects that we need to be having definitely in front of us as we are debating and doing this work. It becomes very, very difficult when we are not given the benefit of time that is necessary in order to give a full account, I think, to the changes that are needed to be made.

There are changes that need to be made in the forestry industry in this province. I think the aspects that I find most troubling with what has just been put on the record is that we, apparently — from the critic from the B.C. Liberals — can continue to operate in exactly the way that we’ve been operating, pretending like we have an endless supply of timber, pretending like the only value that we need to be putting on our forests is the value of timber, and that we can have that debate in the context of what’s going on around us.

I find that to be shocking. You know, there seemed to be a part in the debate that I just heard where there seems to be some kind of ongoing struggle between the opposing sides of this place about who has done more damage to the forestry industry, which government — the B.C. NDP or the Liberals — has caused the most job losses in the industry.

The notion that we can continue to do what we have done, the notion that we can continue to capture forestry as is captured in this rotunda, in perpetuity, in this province is just a fallacy. We don’t have the benefit of those grand, ancient forests that previous generations did, because those were logged, because they are in the desks of this place and on the walls of this place and many, many places around the world.

[4:30 p.m.]

I don’t share the same opinion of the previous member who spoke in my attachment to the way things were. But that should not be misconstrued that I have any less fear for the impacts of a declining forestry industry or the decisions that are being made on the people that are in the forestry industry. I think those two are often misconstrued.

Simply because I don’t think that the forestry industry can continue to exist as it has in the past does not mean I lack compassion for the people that are working in the industry. In fact, we’ve been long advocating, first as partners in a confidence and supply agreement and now as members of the opposition, for fundamental changes to the forestry industry in this province. At the centre of that is the recognition that the forestry industry has changed. Tens of thousands of British Columbians have lost their livelihoods, and neither side of this House has really done much about it.

The mechanization of the forestry industry has probably cost more jobs than anything else. I’ve talked to people who worked in the forestry industry and say that two individuals in machines can do what 40 individuals used to do in the same amount of time. There, just in and of itself…. While both sides of this House debate who’s been worse for forestry, neither seem to be willing to talk about the impact of mechanization and the support for the families that lost those jobs.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

While we have watched vast, huge parts of our forestry sector be literally put on boats and shipped away so that other jurisdictions around the world can process that fibre, nobody seems, in this place, to want to talk about the impact that that has had on the number of jobs in the forestry sector, because it happened, you know, in the big, bad days of the 1990s, when the B.C. NDP were in power, and it happened in the big, bad days of the 2000s, when the B.C. Liberals were in power.

I have no patience nor much time for this debate that goes on in this House about who’s been worse for forestry. While that debate has been going on in this House, the forestry industry that we should have — a sustainable industry that provides high-quality fibre to markets locally, regionally, nationally, internationally — has been cut down, has been clearcut off the sides of the mountains, making us more vulnerable to wildfire. Then wildfire makes us more vulnerable to landslides. The landscape management, the lack of proper landscape management in this province over decades, frankly, is embarrassing. We need to call it what it is.

The reality of it is that our own actions have been contributing to climate change — and the fact that we plant tree farms in this province and not forests. Anybody who’s spent any time out there can immediately tell the difference between a tree farm and a forest, an old-growth forest or a naturally occurring forest. There are massive differences. All you have to do is look at the undergrowth. It’ll be the first indication that you’re standing in what is a fibre farm, a tree farm.

We’re still one of the only jurisdictions around that just clearcuts, that just draws a box on a map and then goes out and just obliterates the entire hillside. You can get in your car and drive around the logging roads on Vancouver Island, and you can see the impact that it’s had on creeks and streams, driving over bridges of former creeks that no longer exist anymore, because, well, if you just look up the hillside, all you see is just a barren landscape, devastated.

[4:35 p.m.]

Here we are, advocating, in this place, for funding to protect salmon streams at the same time as we are devastating the hillsides right above where those salmon need to return home to. They leave an ecosystem that can support their health and well-being, and they return to a wasteland. Sure, it’s not deforestation, because we’ll plant a tree farm in place of it. That tree farm will resemble nothing of the biodiversity that was there.

The current government has promised to protect bio­diversity. We even were close to doing it, from what I understand, yet we’re still much further away than I think many in this province would like to see. So, for me, I don’t think that we need to be lamenting the days of old, because the days of old have got us to exactly where we are today, and that’s a pretty troubling situation in many landscapes.

As the member for Prince George–Mackenzie said, just take a tour on Google Maps. Just take a tour on the time machine on Google Maps, and you can see for yourself. All the flowery words that were just said by the previous member who spoke…. You can see it for your own eyes if you take a visit on Google Maps and watch as British Columbia’s landscape has been chopped into blocks and cut down.

Then we have to deal with the economic, social and environmental devastation that we are going to be debating in this place tomorrow: the impact of floods, the impact of climate change, the impact of a climate crisis, a climate emergency — all of those things. It’s one thing to stand in this place and say that this forestry industry is perfect and that we should preserve it like it was — that we should make it a fossil and just keep it the way it was forever.

I encourage anybody who has the means and the ability to go out and look at it for yourself. It doesn’t take you long, standing at the bottom of a cutblock, to feel a really empty feeling in your stomach about what it is that we’ve been doing to the landscape of this province — not this government, not the last government, not the previous incarnation of the previous government or the former incarnation of a party that doesn’t exist anymore. Over decades in this province, we have undermined and eroded the very ecosystems that we rely on to keep us healthy and to protect us.

I don’t have much attachment to the way things are currently operating or the way things have operated. We absolutely have to operate differently. Anybody who is impacted by that — we in this chamber have a responsibility to help them through. We have made commitments to Indigenous nations in this province. This bill is creating mechanisms for us to be able to deal with a fundamental conflict over land that has existed since before we cut the first tree and since before this was a province.

In fact, we are dealing with those issues now because when those boats of Europeans first showed up on the coast of British Columbia, they looked and they said: “Look at the timber. We can build the Royal Navy out of that. By the doctrine of discovery and the doctrine of terra nullius, we can grant ourselves the authority to do it.” Frankly, that’s how we’ve been operating every incarnation of every government from that day forward to this day — today — that we’re looking at legislation that will look at special purpose areas.

[4:40 p.m.]

There’s a reason why special purpose areas, as I understand them, are area-based and not volume-based: because Indigenous nations’ territories are not volume-based; they’re area-based.

We can complain about the fact that we’ve been looking at the forest on volume all we want. It has no connection to the fact that we have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that we’re looking after the primary conflict that has existed in this province and in this country — but we’re responsible for this province — and that’s the conflict over land. That’s the statements that we’ve made about sovereignty and title and ownership of land over vast swaths of this province that the courts in our province and our country have been saying to us for decades: “You need to sort this out.”

That’s the reason why this bill, this forest act, in concert with another forest act that is currently before this place, and in an intentions paper that I’ve got all sorts of issues with, is being moved forward. It’s the debate in this place that I think will, hopefully, improve those so that we are not talking over top of one another and talking at cross purposes and so that we understand what it is that we’re talking about.

There’s a lot of language that’s being used here and I think a lot of rhetoric that has been used around forestry. But the reality comes back down to the reality — that we have to sort these fundamental problems that we face with our landscape out. Indigenous nations have to be a part of it, and we have to create mechanisms.

The Tsilhqot’in decision in 2014 should have been a flag for anybody in this province who has been paying attention to forestry, the forestry industry and the issues that have been related to title, rights, sovereignty, decisions that are being made.

The Blueberry River First Nations decision that came down this summer should be another flag for people that we cannot continue to undermine every single aspect of Indigenous nations by having one conversation at this time and another conversation and another conversation and another conversation and never talking about the cumulative impacts of cutblock after cutblock after cut­block. We’re not talking about the 15 cutblocks that came before. We’re only talking about the cutblock that we’re talking about today.

What is the result of that? The result of that is exactly what you see when you get in your car and you drive the logging roads of Vancouver Island or the Okanagan. I drove those roads in the Okanagan as a kid growing up. I was sick to my stomach when I flew up there two years ago, because the forests that I remembered being there were lying horizontal, or they were already gone.

We’re wondering why it is that entire hillsides are washing down into rivers and creeks and streams, destroying infrastructure in this province at the cost of billions of dollars. Somehow, arguments are going to be made to muster a defence for that kind of behaviour. It’s mind-boggling.

While I will stand up and debate aspects of the way the government is doing this work, this work needs to be done. While the work that’s being proposed in this legislation may not be how I would have done it, or how it’s being articulated may not be how I would articulate it…. I might have a different opinion about how we should be engaging with Indigenous nations as partners.

I’m going to do my best to try to separate the two pieces of legislation that are in front of us and do my best to try to speak to the one that is here in front of us today and not get carried away on another piece of legislation or on an intentions paper that is apparently providing the overall framework.

[4:45 p.m.]

The reality of it is, is that our industry is consolidated into a handful of companies that have an incredible amount of power and an incredible amount of information about our landscape. That’s exactly the way it’s always been, really.

I mean, there was a point in time when there were a lot of small companies — community companies, family companies. But the reality of it is…. I think it’s important for us to go back and to be reminded of the fact that big multinational corporations had their hands on these resources at the very beginning.

We talked about it yesterday — Louis Riel Day and the Hudson’s Bay Company selling land to the Dominion of Canada. It was at the heart of the Red River Rebellion and the creation of Manitoba.

The reality of it is that we have been operating in this province for decades, pretending like Indigenous nations don’t have more of a say than they actually do. I think I got that right. I made the point, anyway. Now we have to do something about that, because we can only lose so many court cases.

If the events of the last few days have not been enough of an indication…. I can’t believe that we’re going to stand in this place and hear arguments to support the landscape management regime that we’ve had over decades in this province and then tomorrow stand up and have an emergency debate on the impact of massive floods, the impact of climate change and the impact that our own decisions over decades in this place have had on the landscape of this province. I mean, I guess we might, but that would, I think, indicate a level of cognitive dissonance that is truly shocking.

I think that it’s important to acknowledge, as I have done here in the opening comments, that the current state of affairs in this province has been serving interests that are not necessarily those interests of the people of British Columbia. They’ve certainly not been serving the interests of the flora and fauna of this province. I think that it’s important that in concert with what is being proposed in the other forestry bill, we change our approach to landscape management in this province.

In order to do that, there are going to have to be some changes to how the business of forestry operates in this province as well. That doesn’t mean that there will not be forestry in this province. I don’t want anything that I am saying here today to be misconstrued as not supporting a sustainable forestry industry in this province.

The wild west forestry industry, I don’t support. But a sustainable, selective forestry industry that recognizes that we have a responsibility and a duty to ensure that we are not undercutting our ability to continue to survive on this landscape, as well, and that we have a duty to future generations must be reflected in our forestry policy, and it has not been. What has been reflected in our forestry policy is the rights of major multinational corporations.

I think the important aspect of this bill is that the government has made a decision that they’re going to, at some point, need to or will buy back tenure. They’re putting in place, in this bill, the mechanisms to be able to do that. Complex formulas, pages and pages on end of complex formulas, about how to compensate for tenure and AAC are in this bill.

[4:50 p.m.]

The commitment that we made to Indigenous nations was not the kind of commitment that has been achieved and was not what is achieved through the forest and range consultation and revenue-sharing agreements. We’ve made a commitment to share decision-making over their territory and a revenue-sharing that goes over and above a small fraction of the money that is generated from the forestry operations, and we have a responsibility to put in place a framework that achieves that.

Now, we’ve heard consistently throughout these processes that the provincial government — and I’ll get into this in the other bill, but it needs to be mentioned here — has fallen short on what the expectations of consultation, engagement and relationship-building are.

I think what’s important is that we recognize that there are considerable steps being taken here to advance us towards the kinds of relationships, and to give the government the tools to be able to understand what inventory is on the landscape and how to secure that inventory or those landscapes to be able to have the negotiations to ensure that Indigenous people can make decisions over their territory.

This isn’t, necessarily — this is where I think, from the environmentalists’ perspective — to say that logging isn’t going to exist. It’s going to say: who benefits from the logging, and how does the provincial government benefit from those logging operations? That’s the relationship with Indigenous nations.

I’m going to leave it at that for now. I think it’s important to just reiterate that we cannot — we do not have the benefit to — continue to operate the forestry industry as it’s been operated for decades, no matter who’s been operating it. We have to fundamentally change. The courts have told us we have to change our relationship with the landscape and our relationship with Indigenous people at the centre of that conflict.

Anybody who’s been on the landscape knows that the kinds of debates that we’re having in here are not reflected in the past work of trees and forests that are out there. We’ve done considerable damage. Unfortunately, we are paying the consequences of the damage that’s been done on our landscape — this week, this summer, next week and in the years to come. We cannot continue to have the same kind of debate in this place that we’ve had, pretending like the impact of that debate isn’t translating on the landscape. It is. They need to be connected.

There will be change in how the forest management happens in this province, so it is incumbent upon this provincial government and future provincial governments, when making those decisions about managing forests and managing resource extraction, to support the people who are impacted by those changes and to support them well in advance of the impact that’s happening.

I think this is part of the challenge that this and future governments will have in this: being able to plan well enough in advance not to support those people as the job is going away but to support those people in a transition over a period of time that makes sense. It is the abrupt changes, the abrupt shifts, that are really challenging for people and families who live in communities across the province, so a transition requires that investment early on.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I’ll take my seat and thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 28.

[4:55 p.m.]

Hon. B. Ma: It is my privilege and honour to rise to speak to Bill 28, the Forest Amendment Act.

I wanted to take a moment, this opportunity, to acknowledge the many people in my community who have reached out to me to express their love of B.C.’s forests and who have expressed to me a deep concern for the old way that forest management has been carried out here in British Columbia.

These forests, as everyone in this House knows, are a fundamental part of British Columbia. People across the province have recognized how important they are to our people, to our economy, to our environment and biodiversity. What I’ve heard from so many community members is how people want these forests to be strong and healthy, here for generations to come to enjoy, to support our ecosystem, and also to support a strong, high-value, sustainable forestry industry, as well, that creates good jobs, family-supporting jobs, jobs that our communities can depend on and be proud of.

You know, I don’t think it’s a secret in this House that, representing a local community that’s very urban, I don’t have a lot of forestry sector workers in my riding. That is why I’ve been equally as grateful for the conversations that I’ve been able to have with people outside of my community who do work in the forestry sector. I’ve gained so much insight from hearing from these workers directly, and I’m so grateful to them for their time.

In particular, I had the opportunity to visit the North Thompson earlier this year and had the privilege of speaking with a man who had been working in the forestry sector all of his life, nearly five decades, largely as a scaler. Working in the industry, he had a lot to say about his experience, his lifetime experience there. One of first things he started talking about with me was how he was so worried that the forestry sector and the jobs that sustained him and his family would not be there for his children and his grandchildren because of the way that things were going right now, because of the way that things had been going over the last couple of decades.

He had, like I said, no shortage of observations to make. He told me that a few key private players had almost all of the power in the sector and that the people needed to take back control over what was all of ours to benefit from and all of our responsibility to take care of. He talked about the need to provide First Nations and communities and smaller companies the opportunities to benefit from the forest sector and new opportunities to benefit from the forest sector.

He talked about the need for increasing transparency about forest inventories and harvesting activities and about the challenges that the sector has had, that the workers have had, with raw log exports, the challenges that there were with ensuring that communities and British Columbians received their fair share of the benefit in a way that was sustainable.

He lamented the direction that the forestry sector had taken over the first decade and a half of the early 2000s into sort of around 2017. He really emphasized the need to take action to ensure that this industry is strong, healthy and sustainable for generations to come so that his offspring and their offspring and their offspring could actually rely on strong jobs in this sector well into the future.

I’m incredibly grateful for the work that the minister has done on this file. This is an extraordinarily important and complex file, and I’m pleased to support her and our government’s vision for forests here in British Columbia, a new vision for forests. I will be supporting this bill.

B. Stewart: Well, it gives me pleasure to rise in the House today to talk a bit about Bill 28 and, I guess, the choice that the government has made to make adjustments to the Forest Act, which is significant.

[5:00 p.m.]

First, I want to talk about the benefits of wood. I think everybody here appreciates that. I know that the previous speaker talked about the cutting of timber and how egregious that appeared to him in terms of the way that it’s managed.

I think one of the things that we need to remember about forest harvesting is that it’s a continuum from what we didn’t know 100-and-some years ago when British Columbia was first founded and timber was being harvested. Logs were being cut up into materials for, as he described it, I think, boats going back to Europe and things like that. That may well be the case. The only thing I would say is that those practices, obviously, have had to have been modified over time. I think that it’s important.

He talked about forests that were — reforestation. Do we know the perfect solution? One of the things that I know from some of my colleagues who actually farm — I know that I know a bit about farming, having done it my entire lifetime — is that the practices that my grandfather and my father used, etc., need to evolve into better management, whether it’s the soil or the way that we do things. I’m not certain that some of the things that we did even 30, 40 years ago….

He talked about the Okanagan. That’s, of course, where I live, and I see what’s kind of going on in terms of the reforestation, etc. I look at the forest, etc. I use the forest. I walk; I hunt; I fish. The forests are an incredibly important area, and I know it’s important that we don’t forget that this is an amazing product — trees sequestering carbon and the fact they make products that are very integrated with the environment. When they decompose, etc., when they get discarded, or when houses or whatever come down, the fact is that they compost or turn back into organic matter, which is something that I’m sure that you all know.

I remember being in London in about 1994, and there was this term “war in the woods” that was going on. I happened to be in Trafalgar Square, and there’s the Greenpeace organization scaling Nelson’s statue in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Of course, it got a lot of attention, and that’s what its intention was. Did it improve things? I think that it certainly spotlighted things that I know that….

Talking to the forest companies here in British Columbia, I don’t think that they themselves would necessarily want to be in a situation where they had to change practices. Sometimes industries don’t change fast enough. Why is it that we have an issue with fossil fuels right now? Why didn’t we see that coming? I mean, we’ve been driving cars for a few years, most of us that are in this building, and the fact is that this immediate shift and conversion over to electric or other types of technology, etc., can be more natural if it’s done over a period of time.

I want to just talk a little bit about forestry in this province. The reason I want to talk about this is…. I had the opportunity, in about 2012, to work with the minister’s colleagues — the Minister of Labour, former members Bill Routley and Norm Macdonald. We travelled the province, and we travelled to every small community. I didn’t even know that you could get into some of these communities. Even though I’d driven the highway, I’d never been to Dunster or McBride. I was at Burns Lake, where the mill blew up. Of course, we were up there. We went all the way up to the North.

I think that one of the things we did do on that particular…. We were doing a review of mid-term timber supply, the high-level stuff. The province is 93 million hectares in size, roughly, and 55 million hectares is kind of what would be considered to be merchantable timber. But of that, there’s probably a base of 20 million. I know there are other people who know those numbers far better than me.

One of the things that we were really looking at was because of the impact of the mountain pine beetle. I mean, there’s nothing…. You can’t compare it. I mean, okay, what happened on Sunday — we can’t compare that to other things that have happened in the past either. However, I think the point about it is that is we were looking for solutions.

[5:05 p.m.]

One of the things that Bill 28 does contemplate, but on a very tiny basis…. And I do think that one of the things that we saw in that were the differences in the way that forests were managed. I can vividly remember being in the Quesnel forest district and looking at how the forest companies ….

As a matter of fact, there’s the member right there. He was out there with us as well. But going out and seeing…. I thought that they planted trees everywhere, and of course, we see that they actually disturb the soil, and it’s reforested. That works better in that particular forest district than it does in other places.

I have to say that I think it gave us an appreciation from whether it was selective logging done by people that used teams of horses to do…. That, obviously, is at the lowest level — selective logging. I think that that was in, well, somewhere south of Prince George. But the bottom line is that the whole dispute about whether clearcut versus…. Those are the right practices.

I’m sure, as the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Forests know, there’s no one-size-fits-all. That’s what we discovered when we were on that particular tour, which took weeks. Of course, we had a very specific deadline in that particular case. But I do think that it’s because it was such an important part of the economy.

Obviously, when it came out, maybe decisions that could have been made weren’t made. The bottom line is that when it happened…. I mean, I’ve walked in forests, and I’ve seen it, where the mountain pine beetle has just…. I honestly couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it and the devastation that they caused. I mean, the pulverizing, if you want to call it, of the trunks, etc.

The whole thing about it is that those mountain pine beetles completely wiped out forests and the stands of timber. There was a period of time that we actually needed to make a decision. Do we increase the allowable cut? Do we just let it fall over and die and become unusable? So there was a very specific course of action that was an increase, of course, knowing…. Nobody likes to see the decrease, but the fact is that the annual volume had to fall down or come back down, etc.

The mountain pine beetle was a natural occurrence, just like Sunday’s events were. It wasn’t something that was caused by your government or ourselves, but we made choices and decisions. I think that that’s one of the things about the consequence of trying to take advantage of that — reducing stumpage.

It’s not that we wanted to reduce stumpage. I mean that’s not the idea at all. What we wanted to do was make certain that the fibre didn’t go to waste, and the fact is that those areas were reforested. I know that there’s lots of discussion about reforestation in terms of areas, and I would love nothing more than for the minister to be telling us about how many tens of millions or hundreds of millions of trees and how many millions of hectares we’re reforesting after the devastating forest fires of the last few years.

I know in my particular riding, I had a small sawmill wiped out and a couple of homes. Of course, Neal Morgan, is without his business that he had. Of course, the timber around there, in and around the White Rock Lake fire, is not all gone, but, certainly, there are reduced uses of that particular timber.

One of the things that I think…. That tour the Minister of Labour and myself and our critic went on…. We saw the value of fibre in those communities. I mean, in those days, it was relatively early days for the pellet industry. I’m sure that many of the members that are here…. Or I’m sure in Stikine or places like that, there’s a lot of this value-add in terms of what’s happening in terms of fibre supply.

A couple of years ago we visited a new pellet mill outside of Terrace, a place where the wood stands are decadent. They’re not really very good. But the reality is that there are other uses for fibre that have been not necessarily properly utilized.

I appreciate the fact that this bill is attempting to try to find pathways forward, not only for community forests or First Nations and things like that. But let’s just go back, about those communities that we visited — Smithers, Houston, Burns Lake, Prince George, McBride, Dunster, Valemont, Blue River. I mean, it goes on and on. And Merritt.

[5:10 p.m.]

Honestly, the jobs…. You know, those are the direct or, let’s say, indirect jobs that are attributable to this. We already have Bill 23, which is going to change things dramatically.

I don’t know if our critic mentioned it, but he and I had a recent meeting with a company that’s family owned. It’s been in operation for over 70 years. I know the founders. Unfortunately, they’ve both passed. That particular company is a model employer. I think, even considered amongst its peers, it’s a model company. They have three mills, and they employ well over 1,000 workers. They have a pole mill in Lumby.

I think the thing about it is, with the recent changes under Bill 23…. They’re a very heavily value-added fibre processor, if you want to call it that. The maps that I have been shown, etc., show a reduction in fibre supply to that particular group, if everything goes as planned, of up to 85 percent, for the mill in Revelstoke. And 85 percent just means that they’ve lost 350 jobs, if they don’t have fibre supply.

That is a big problem. Of course, it happens to be a cedar mill that does value-added processing. There are lots of cedar mills down on the coast. I mean, it’s trapped in there.

I visited Dick Jones down at Teal-Jones a couple of years ago. I looked at the creativity and imagination that they use to add value to every stick of wood that they process. They certainly didn’t want to see it going into some sort of waste or something like that.

Now, I know that, admittedly, Dick isn’t a supporter of our particular party, but he is very integrated into the whole business. I know that on export log sales, Teal-Jones is often one of the companies that’s in there, trying to elbow its way in to make certain that every available…. I mean, they’re smart. They’re thoughtful.

I think, at the end of the day, one of the things that’s going to happen is…. Between Bill 23 and Bill 28, which we’re talking about today…. I think that we have to recognize the unbelievable economic impact of what forestry and all of the subsidiary jobs create in this province.

What do they actually mean? Well, in my community, I have not only the people that founded Gorman’s mill and their siblings and their grandchildren working there but hundreds and hundreds of other workers in the Shuswap, in Revelstoke as well as in West Kelowna. Those particular jobs are important. They’ve created the community.

Yes. We’ve got something that shouldn’t be in the House here, and it’s probably eating wood. It’s some sort of bug that needs to….

Anyways, I think that one of the things that we don’t want to lose sight of is the fact…. You know, the amount of…. I know that the Minister of Finance is not here. I know that the amount of revenue brought in by the entire forest industry to the provincial government is so important. So consultation is specifically important.

I know that the Minister of Labour and I walked away with a much different viewpoint. I think we agreed. We did make some recommendations. Did we adopt them? Not exactly. We should have.

We did see Dunkley Lumber out of Prince George. Area-based management works. It’s mentioned in Bill 28. I like that, but the bottom line is: does it goes far enough? Is it going to be taking volume-based management and moving over to area-based management? That is specifically what….

I think that we saw very good examples with mountain pine beetle in that particular forest company — area-based management. They went in, and they were aggressively cutting timber that was…. The early mountain pine beetle, while it went through their stands…. They made certain they ferreted it out as best they could, and they survived and did a better job in managing their forest. They weren’t just high-grading, which I think is one of the things that, in this particular case, Bill 28 is trying to maybe somewhat address.

[5:15 p.m.]

It’s a fact that we have to add value. I know that the people that I have in my particular riding add value. For every mill they have, they add a lot of value. As a matter of fact, their trademark is “Gorman’s finest boards.” The bottom line is that they’re in a totally different business than many others.

I know that when it comes to companies that are down on the coast, I’ve seen mills that are in Ruskin and places like…. Well, take LMI Technologies. They’re in Burnaby. Who would have thought that the forest industry had an impact? This is a company that I visited a couple of years ago that does log scanning. They essentially make it so that they optimize what’s coming through the mill to make certain that we’re getting every available possible board foot out of a log and making certain that…. Well, as the word says, optimization.

I think about Dick Jones, and I see what he’s doing, and I think about all the mills that are down in the areas where people don’t think that forestry is really in their community, etc. It affects an awful lot of jobs, more than what the eye sees. It’s not just the ones that are in Williams Lake and north of that. I say that, meaning that there are big mills. That’s come as a result of demand for a competitive product that is being produced here in the province.

What does Bill 28 do to help create certainty for the mills that are out there, for the people that are employed in this industry? It’s the uncertainty. We have to try to minimize that if we can. That’s partially by creating real certainty. I know that that’s important. If we want, let’s say, more robust biodiversity management, then we have to make certain that we find a way to do a better job. I’m a farmer, but I’m not a forester. We want to make certain that we’re improving the social and economic well-being of working families in the resource-dependent communities.

I think that it’s important that…. The forests have their place in British Columbia. We heard about landslides and all the things, etc. I don’t think that clearcuts necessarily look particularly attractive. I fly over them, and I see what happens when the soil is eroded, etc. I would disagree with the people that suggested that on steep hillsides, that was the right way to do things. They might disagree with me, and they probably do.

I do think that what we do need to do is make certain that we incentivize and encourage. If we’re going to have a higher-cost way of doing things, we need to make certain that we incentivize. I don’t necessarily see that. Perhaps maybe in committee stage those questions will come through, because there is an awful lot in this large bill.

I think that it’s important that we…. There are a lot of things in here. Special purpose areas. Obviously, that’s something that is terminology, but I do think that we need to better understand that and how that’s going to affect the livelihoods of the companies and their employees that might lose those rights. Now, I know it says that’s going to be compensation. There’s no formula. Or maybe there is a formula in there. I apologize.

I think that the fact is that what we do want to make certain is that there is a value to…. These mills have, over decades, invested in buying…. Whether it’s volume-based or area-based management, they have invested and bought allocation, if you want to call it, just like chicken and milk and all the other supply-managed boards that are out there. There is a value, a quantifiable value. I think that most companies would want to make certain that if there is a reduction, they would be properly compensated at fair market value for what that is.

I think that the takeback, if you want to call it, of the special purpose areas…. What we want to make certain is that there is an understanding that it’s not just a reallocation. I’m sure it’s not exactly that. But the fact is we’re taking something back that is…. It’s Crown assets, but at the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is trying to make certain that we maintain those jobs. I do like the idea of value-adds, but I don’t see it in this particular bill. I just see the wording that suggests that it’s going to be there.

[5:20 p.m.]

We talk about the deferrals. Is this going to lead to an increase? The minister used, I think, about 4,000 jobs that would be affected by Bill 23. What’s the impact of this going to be? I don’t know. I don’t know if she knows. I don’t think that when you put the two together…. I’m not exactly certain how that impacts.

What I will tell you, though, is that COFI, the Council of Forest Industries, has estimated 18,000 jobs. We have seen the people that are directly impacted. The steelworkers that work in these mills say that they’re devastated by the impacts of these things and the impact that they’re going to have. They’re worried about their jobs. We had that Western Forest Products strike with the workers for a long, long time. That doesn’t do anything for Port Hardy, Port McNeill and all of the other communities north of Campbell River.

I do think that it is important. Sometimes things just don’t make sense, and they need to fail or be shut down. I think that outside of Campbell River — or Nanaimo, maybe — there’s a former sawmill there that is just kind of derelict. It’s kind of an eyesore. I think that that’s not what we want to be doing. We want to make certain that there’s resiliency and that these communities know that those are good-paying jobs and that there are spinoff jobs, like I mentioned with LMI — about the opportunities for technology and ideas from people that are working in there.

Data is really important. I do think that that is important — that we do know what exactly is happening in our forest, on our land base. I think that in Bill 28, it suggests that there’s auditing and some other things like that. We do want to make certain that it’s used for the right purpose.

I mean, in the way that it’s kind of suggested, it looks like it could be more punitive. Maybe that goes on. I’m not a forester; I don’t know. But I do know that the bottom line is that accurate data in the hands of the chief forester of the province of British Columbia is extremely valuable to make good decisions.

One of the things that this bill talks about in terms of value and the compensation amount that is going to be…. The bill states: “…an amount determined by the minister based on the net income that would have been earned on the sale of the harvested timber….” It leaves the discretion to the minister, cabinet and OICs, which, maybe, will determine what compensation companies like I just mentioned…. Gorman’s, Tolko, which are both nearby, harvest timber there, etc. What’s the takeback going to look like?

I just spoke the other day about the Westbank First Nation community forest and their award, the Robin Hood award, that they had achieved because they’re good foresters. I’m sure that the Gormans are well in that camp.

I do think that the approach to compensation needs to be a system where it’s clear and where it’s not easily altered by the minister in the sense of just through regulation or a stroke of the pen, it can be allocated. I do think that that’s important.

Who is going to decide where these special areas are located? Where they are coming out of? Is it going to be the chief forester? What are the parameters? I know that it talks about some of the intent in those particular areas — expanding First Nation forests.

I hosted round tables for forestry in my riding. Well, we hosted them all across the province, because of the importance of it, but I know that I hosted about 50 different logging companies from in and around my area, and we had a chance to talk about that. First Nations were at the table. They talked about the fact that they are a relatively small community forest. If it were bigger, they would be helpful in terms of making certain that there was that certainty.

I can speak to people that are value-add producers that are up around Enderby or Armstrong. They didn’t have any guaranteed supply. They were looking for certainty. What type of certainty? Let’s say that we take these special areas, and we give that to a First Nation. We’re going to charge stumpage, and then the First Nation is also going to add value onto that.

[5:25 p.m.]

What is that going to cost? How is that going to work out for the people that are not just value-add? What about the regular suppliers like the ones that I mentioned, Downie Timber up in Revelstoke? It sounds to me like it is still that level of uncertainty that we want to make certain we eliminate.

The other thing with these special purpose areas…. I wonder, if I’m allowed to cut in a certain area…. The geography in British Columbia is relatively challenging in a lot of areas. How does somebody that wants to harvest get through a special purpose area? Can they get access through that? I don’t know. It just is a question that comes to my mind, in the sense that it’s one of those unforeseen things. I don’t know if the permitting is available for that. I’m sure the minister probably has answers to all of these, when we come to those questions.

This legislation…. I guess that my concern is: is it going to pick winners or losers? I don’t know where the takeback is going to come from, but I’m sure that we’re going to see some of that in the future.

One of the things I mentioned about data…. We saw, with high stumpage fees, especially when timber prices were down in the toilet, that the bottom line was that the rolling average that’s used in our neighbouring provinces on a monthly basis did have some advantages. I mean, I think the reason we principally do that is because of the softwood lumber and that we’re trying to keep the tariffs, which are on our lumber going to the U.S., in check. Of course, we know that they don’t produce enough material.

Anyways, they collect an awful lot of stumpage from us. I do think that a more dynamic management of data would be a good investment for anybody that is in the forest sector — more certainty about what they’re looking for.

I guess, really, what Bill 28 is, is a major overhaul to forestry tenures. I think that happens from time to time. But I do think that we do need to have time to make certain that we properly get a chance in committee to ask those tough questions, to allow us to make certain we understand the understanding of some of the things that have been raised by myself and the critic.

I guess, really, we’d like to know if local communities, First Nations and the smaller companies that have, perhaps, more opportunities with value-add will get access to that. How will they get access to it? I know government wants to diversify this sector, and I applaud that. I think that that’s a good thing. But we do need to make certain that it’s not meant to be punitive, just because of what I described about the mountain pine beetle and the damage that it did. I mean, it impacted everybody.

Of course, I’m sure that in the back of people’s minds is the high cost of housing, which I think everybody here is well aware of, and the cost that wood was selling for, per 1,000 board feet, up until recently. Of course, it’s had a precipitous drop, which happens. I mean, it’s very cyclical. But at the end of the day, in the people’s minds is that the forest companies are benefiting from that. And of course they benefit, but they also have to carry all that capital, all of those people. They try to carry it through the slow times.

We need to try to make certain that they are resilient. That’s the cyclical nature of that. I honestly think that it’s so important that we do work with that. So I look forward to the fact that this bill will give greater certainty.

I guess the other thing is that the replaceable forest tenure held by First Nations will double. I look forward to hearing more details in committee stage from the minister as we go through that.

I hope that we can solve…. I have a note here about softwood lumber, and I know that many of the mills that are exporting down to the States would like to know how this is going to further the solution on softwood lumber.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to speak on Bill 28 today.

[5:30 p.m.]

G. Kyllo: It gives me great pride to rise in the House today to speak in response to Bill 28, the Forest Amendment Act, 2021.

As we know, our province’s economy was largely founded on the forest sector. It provided very important family-supporting jobs throughout British Columbia for a century and a half. Many of us live in homes where the primary construction material is lumber.

There has been talk about climate change and the impacts of forestry on even some of the impacts that we’ve recently seen, with respect to the significant amount of flooding that’s been happening in the area.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

We also need to recognize, obviously — it has been said by some of my colleagues, previously — that one of the most renewable resources we have in this province is, indeed, forestry. The opportunity to sequester carbon in our desks or in our homes is, certainly, one area that should be recognized as part of this conversation.

Now, the forest sector provides a significant amount of economic revenue, as we know, and family-supporting jobs around the province. In many small communities, like in my home community of Shuswap, the forest sector is one of the top leading job creators, providing economic opportunity in many small communities around B.C.

There is, obviously, a need to protect the environment. I think all British Columbians are very proud about Beautiful B.C. It has been our slogan for at least as long as I can remember.

It’s the tackling of the sometimes competing opportunities that we have in our back country — tourism, recreation, hunting, fishing and, of course, wildlife protection and habitat conservation.

Deputy Speaker: Just a reminder to members, we’re supposed to be wearing our masks when we’re not drinking or speaking.

Thank you. Appreciate the cooperation.

Sorry, Member. Go ahead.

G. Kyllo: Thank you, hon. Speaker. It’s important that we mind the rules, especially in this chamber.

Talking about some of the enormous impacts that we have in our back country…. I’m blessed to live in one of the most beautiful areas of the province and, indeed, Canada, I believe — the Shuswap riding. Amazing mountainous region. Great lakes. Shuswap Lake, one of the best boating destinations in western Canada. Many of our rivers and lakes and tributaries, obviously, support the thriving tourism sector, but it’s largely those family-supporting manufacturing jobs that really are the backbone of many of the small communities around B.C.

I think it’s important to note, with the tabling of legislation that can have significant impacts on the economy, on family-supporting jobs, that it’s imperative that government take the time to do necessary work to have a full understanding of what that true economic impact would be.

If I think back to my time working with the former Minister of Jobs, Tourism, Skills Training and Labour, where I had the privilege of being responsible for B.C.’s jobs plan, it was absolutely paramount in discussions when we were looking, and government was looking, at moving forward, whether it was regulatory change or new legislation, to have a full understanding of the unintended consequences that may be associated with different pieces of legislation or regulation, especially when it comes to what is actually growing the economy of our province and providing those very important family-supporting jobs.

There was an economic impact assessment that was largely completed and looked at in advance of the tabling of any new legislation, and it was important for government to have a full understanding of what the impacts, the true impacts, on the ground, of legislation is.

I’ve got to say I’m really disappointed that, from what I have seen, this government has not undertaken that hard and very difficult and significant work. There seems to be a real lack of understanding, with respect to the impacts on rural communities.

There is a lot of conversation about the urban and rural divide. I think it just has to do with, quite often, a lack of understanding. If you’re living in Maple Ridge and you may be displaced or lose your job, Abbotsford or Chilliwack aren’t too far down the road. But if you’re in Mackenzie and you lose that very important family-supporting job, there are not a lot of other jobs available. There are no other communities within a close commute.

[5:35 p.m.]

Losing a job in a community like Mackenzie would mean dad now has to either go away to try and find work or to try and uproot your family from the community that you live in, to try and find an opportunity to move to another area or another region of the province. So the impacts are extremely significant.

In Shuswap alone, I’ve spoken to a number of the large mill operators in the area — largely, many of them, specializing in what the province is talking about, with value-added manufacturing. Canoe Forest Products, a plywood manufacturing plant located in Canoe, halfway between Sicamous and Salmon Arm, owned by Gorman Bros. — a huge supporter not just in providing those very important, family-supporting jobs in the community. They are supporting ball clubs, hockey teams. They’re always willing to give back — a family-based company that has their true hearts in the community.

This piece of legislation, to my understanding, will impact and reduce the available harvest for this particular operation by approximately 20 percent.

Another mill, a large mill actually operating in Kelowna — a 60 percent impact. Just think about that: a 60 percent reduction in harvest. In a mill just to my immediate west…. The member for Columbia River–Revelstoke — the mill is actually located in his riding. The community of Revelstoke is a neighbouring community. Many individuals that live and reside in the Shuswap riding work at Downie Timber. This is a specialty manufacturer. They’ve invested about $150 million in that facility since they purchased it back in, I believe, the ‘70s — 300 direct jobs.

They’re a specialty manufacturer, about 70 percent cedar, providing a lot of cedar siding and interior finished cedar products — an amazing corporation that provides, again, 300 family-supporting jobs in a community. But if we just think for a second what the impact that…. This piece of legislation is looking at impacting their available harvest in the next two years. The number that I have heard is upwards of 80 percent.

Now, for many mills, they have to be running at, at least, 70 percent capacity just to break even. Even a 30 or 40 percent reduction doesn’t just mean that the jobs are reduced by 30 or 40 percent. Even a reduction of 20 percent may be sufficient, a large enough impact that the mill is actually closed. A 20 percent reduction in harvest could result in 100 percent of jobs lost for some of these operations. But with Downie Timber in Revelstoke, it’s unconscionable to think of the impact of an 80 percent reduction in harvest.

This is where I think it’s important for the government to give a clear picture of what these impacts will be. Revelstoke is a community of about 8,000 people. The provincial average for employment, when B.C. is at full employment, is only 54 percent, so let’s just assume that about 50 percent of the residents living in Revelstoke are working at any given time. That’s 4,000 employees.

To lose 300 manufacturing jobs will also mean there’s going to be an equal number of jobs in the bush. Those are actually the cutters, the fallers, the truck drivers. So you’ve got 600 direct jobs potentially at risk of being lost. For direct manufacturing jobs in a community that relies on bringing outside dollars into a community, the economic spinoff of the direct or indirect job creation is three to five times.

For every direct job that’s created in the mill, there’s an additional job that’s actually created in the bush. And then there are another three to five jobs that are created because that individual who now has full-time employment can buy a new vehicle, might be able to buy a home — and, of course, all of the other funds that flow through a community.

[5:40 p.m.]

Impacting 300 jobs at Downie Timber is not just 300 jobs. It’s 600, when you take into consideration those that are actually working in the bush. Then you times that by a factor of three to five. Even at the lowest multiplier of three times, that’s 1,800 jobs in a community of 18,000, where there are only 4,000 people employed — absolutely devastating to small communities.

I’m very disappointed. I’m shocked that government would actually be entertaining to make these types of significant changes, which will have potentially devastating impacts on communities, with literally zero consultation. No consultation with the mill operators, no consultation with the unions that actually provide many of the workers in many of these jobs, and certainly not with First Nations.

Now, there’s a gentleman in my riding, Brett Barnard. He has Mt. Ida Nursery. They also operate a woodlot. He was kind enough to share with me…. He and his dad both shared with me some time last week, and they were kind enough to follow up with a letter to talk about the impacts. It’s interesting — what Brett has set out. As a member of a professional association, the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals, he says: “I have to follow a code of ethics. The categories for a code of ethics include competence, independence, conflict of interest, due diligence, integrity, forest stewardship, safety, professionalism and reporting.”

He goes on to say and set out some of the concerns. His number one concern starts off with: “The old growth technical advisory panel is made up of five people.” And he references: “See page 2 of the terms of reference.” Four members of the panel, the panel that was appointed by this government, have ties to the Sierra Club, one of whom was a campaign director. Now, even the forest professionals follow a code of conduct that talks about independence and conflict of interest. But this government has chosen to disregard the most basic tenet of what we would feel would be a fair, open and transparent process by appointing four of the five individuals that have a very specific view when it comes to the forestry sector in our province.

Brett has also shared with me that of the woodlot that he and his family have operated for a number of years, they have a 600-hectare Crown land lease. He said that equates to about 300 loads of logs every five years, so not a very big woodlot. But he goes on to share that, every four years, he has to make application for a cutting permit. That’s the authority to harvest timber. And every time that he has to make his application, the application has to be referred to six First Nations that have traditional territory within the area where his woodlot exists. “Last October I submitted the information for referral, and it took eight months to complete the process.”

Now, this is 600 hectares, six First Nations, eight months, yet the government is undertaking a new piece of legislation that impacts about 2.6 million hectares, 204 First Nations. Somehow this government feels that it’s acceptable to expect First Nations to actually understand what the legislation is intended to achieve and to comment back in 30 days? Thirty days. First Nations around British Columbia, the 204….

[5:45 p.m.]

I would do a wager on this. I’d be willing to bet that this government has not even taken the simplest of acts to even send the 204 First Nations a copy of the legislation that is tabled in this House. Think about that for a second. This is a government that stood and moved forward with the UNDRIP legislation. There was going to be a new way of doing business in British Columbia. How disrespectful is that — to expect that 204 First Nations can somehow undertake the consultation to clearly understand the impacts of this legislation in 30 days? Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

This policy is going to have, without a doubt, significant impacts. I don’t think anybody in this House believes that the current trajectory we’re on, the current process, is not deserving of a review, of some changes. But we can’t run to the finish line all at once.

These changes that are proposed in this legislation are going to have devastating impacts to rural British Columbia. I have said in this House many times that in my view — and, I think, in the view of many mayors and councillors — a healthy community is a working community. When we see increases in unemployment, we see more pressures on families, family finances. It leads to more family breakups, increased dependence on drug and alcohol abuse, increases in crime.

Where is the economic impact? Where has been the consultation with those local mayors and councils that rely on these large, major mills to pay a significant portion of the taxes that help those municipalities provide all the necessary services that we rely on? Has there been consultation with local mayors? Certainly not that I’m aware of.

We know that there has not been adequate consultation with First Nations. Yet here we have a government with a majority who have made their decision on how they want to move forward, and they’re literally ramming it down the throats of business owners, small rural communities and First Nations. I find it absolutely offensive.

Now, the bill itself sets out a number of pieces. I guess we will have an opportunity, when we get to committee stage, to maybe provide government an opportunity to provide a bit more detail about the specificity of what some of the clauses of the bill actually refer to. But what I am hearing from industry and stakeholders is that there is so much ambiguity at this point, government is basically giving themselves the opportunity, through regulation, to make further and additional changes as they see fit, without the opportunity for the necessary scrutiny even of this House.

Just the timing of the legislation alone, I think, is enough to cause great concern. The House reconvened this fall on October 5. From what I’ve seen, the most significant and substantial legislation that has been tabled are these two forestry bills, the first of which was tabled just a few short weeks ago, and the other one that was just tabled this week.

The one bill was approximately 150 pages, and it got tabled in the final two weeks of the legislative calendar. If this legislation truly was as important as this government has indicated it is with respect to their agenda, it should have been tabled at the start of the legislative calendar so there would be additional time to be able to understand, truly, what it is that government is trying to undertake.

[5:50 p.m.]

I support jobs and economic opportunity, especially in my riding of Shuswap. We’re all elected in this place to stand up and to fight for the communities and the constituents living in the ridings that we actually represent.

I’m upset, as many of my colleagues are. We’ll see, I guess, as we go through. This is just the second reading debate. I’ve seen only one additional speaker from government’s side actually speak, and I know there are members from the government’s side that live in forest-dependent communities or provide representation for forest-dependent communities. I’m really interested to see if they’re also willing to stand up and to fight for the ridings that they represent. Or will they remain silent, sit in their seats and follow the direction of this administration?

It appears heartless. It appears to not be backed in any economic evaluation. For that, it causes me great concern. I will continue to stand and fight and speak up for the negative impacts that this piece of legislation and many of government’s initiatives are going to actually have on small communities throughout the Shuswap and throughout the province.

M. Morris: This House knows that my views are quite different than those of some of my colleagues. My colleagues accept my views, just as much as I accept theirs, and that’s what we’re all about. We’re a big-tent party, where everybody is given the capacity to express their views and their thoughts on what’s going on.

One of the guiding principles that I’ve adhered to all my life, particularly in my working life, is to seek first to understand and then be understood. After living the number of years that I have, and being an outdoors person all my life — as a trapper, a hunter, a fisher, a camper — I’ve seen the cumulative effects of forestry and resource development in my area and right across the province. It’s led me to spend a lot of time researching forestry and understanding what those cumulative effects were all about.

I know that government has done a lot of work. I first went to government back in 2011 with my concerns over cumulative effects when I was a member of the B.C. Trappers Association. I know they’ve developed the cumulative effects framework, and they’ve done significant work on that over the years.

We’ve been harvesting wood in British Columbia, now, for well over 100 years. But it’s ramped up this last 60 years. That’s when we introduced clearcut logging to the province — about 60 years ago. The effects on biodiversity, our flora and fauna, I don’t think are broadly understood by many in this House and by many folks across the province, because they don’t spend the time out in the wilderness like I have over the years.

The impacts of the 75 years of the sustainable-yield strategy I spoke about before in this House — it was adopted in 1945 — are focused solely on growing and harvesting trees, liquidating old growth, as one of the commissioners stated. I believe it was in the 1975 royal commission on forestry. We’ve transitioned, now, into managed forests — or working forests, as industry terms it — of conifer plantations.

My task now is to be understood so that we, as elected representatives in our communities, have the big picture of a very complex natural environment that we all live in. By recognizing all the collective values of our forests, not just the fibre but all of the collective values, I think we can prevent — and I’ve told this in different groups I’ve spoken to — killing the goose that lays the golden egg in this province here.

[5:55 p.m.]

We do have biodiversity that is second to none in British Columbia. One of my colleagues spoke earlier about British Columbia and what we have here. We have 94 million hectares. British Columbia is the most ecologically diverse province in Canada.

We’ve got five million hectares of wetlands, lakes, rivers and streams. We have 36 million hectares of alpine meadows, mountains, rock and barren ground, and the remainder is covered in vegetation. That’s where the 50-odd-million hectares comes from that I’ve heard referenced before.

Of that, 22 million hectares is in the timber-harvest land base, but the rest is a variation of different types of vegetation. Some of it is not harvestable. Some of it is uneconomical to harvest. Some of it may be considered as old growth.

I’ve got lots on a trapline that my family has, north of Prince George. Three-inch diameter black spruce is considered old growth, according to the definition. I’ve got some in my office, there. It’s close to 150 years old, but it’s three inches in diameter. That’s considered old-growth.

There’s hemlock. There’s a variety of different conifer species in those higher elevations that are not economical to harvest, and they provide such a high level of biodiversity for a lot of the animals that we have.

I also have to emphasize that I and my colleagues are in complete agreement that this legislation is ill-conceived and is going to be detrimental to our rural communities and to our First Nations. We’ve already heard a number of the issues that cause concern, but we differ on why we disagree.

The bill is about reallocating timber, assigning tenure to First Nations and community forests. The bill, though, is still stuck in the rut of that incomplete strategy that I have referenced before, the sustainable yield strategy from 1945. It contemplates dragging these changes out over an agonizing time period, ten years or more, but it’s still only tinkering with the system. It’s not taking into consideration all the other values on the land.

The question that jumped out at me when I read through this bill is: what timber? First Nations have an opportunity. They’ll be benefiting from this tenure reallocation. But I think when they get out there, they’re going to be shocked to learn that the volume that is being promised to them isn’t there. The volume of harvestable timber. I have to emphasize this: the volume of harvestable timber.

Our province is covered in trees. We have 22 million hectares of trees within the timber harvest land base. We’ve got millions of hectares that are outside of that, that have trees on them as well, but I’m talking about harvestable trees.

When I talk about harvestable trees, I mean something that we can go in and cut down and we won’t have to worry about the other values on the land if we do it properly. But if we go in and we harvest in cycles that will eliminate hundreds of species of wildlife, hundreds of species of flora and fauna in the province, I think we need to re-examine that position that we take on this.

Up in my area, there’s the marten. There’s the fisher. We used to have an abundant population of them. Raptors like grey owls and the goshawks used to be in abundance up in that area. A lot of those animals…. There are 65 species of wildlife in British Columbia that nest or den in tree cavities. Those tree cavities don’t start developing until the trees are 70, 80, 100 years old.

[6:00 p.m.]

In essence, by cycling through trees before they can accommodate this wildlife, we are effectively eliminating those 65 species of wildlife from British Columbia.

I’ve got a report, which I’ve had for years, that I looked through. It was commissioned by Forests and Lands back in the mid-1980s. It was talking about the impacts of clearcut logging — by that time, we’d been clearcut logging for about 20 years in British Columbia — on marten and fisher, part of the mustelid family. The report was in 1986, but it had the Omineca region of the province as one of the most densely populated or having the most dense population of marten and fisher in the province. They were all over the place at that particular time.

What they were saying about the clearcut logging was…. The temperature on the ground increased significantly enough that it was too warm for the marten. There was also not enough food sources for them if the clearcut was too large.

The marten themselves den and have their young in the old-growth forest. As that old growth was disappearing, the marten populations disappeared. There’s no count. The province doesn’t do a very good job on inventory for wildlife across the province here, but if you talk to any of the trappers that are out there and have been out on the land for 40 or 50 years, like I have, they can see that the marten populations are down probably by 90 percent.

In many areas, the marten population has been extirpated. In many areas, the fisher population has been extirpated.

The Forest Practices Board did a review of marten habitat in the Cariboo a couple of years ago, and they had some recommendations come out of it. One of the things that they found was that all of the fisher habitat had been logged. It was gone. That was as a result of a lot of the pine beetle harvesting that we had at that particular time. It will take probably a century before the habitat grows back sufficiently enough for the fisher to return.

We may end up having to do what the United States has done. I participated in programs like that in British Columbia here years ago, where we live-trap animals like marten, like fisher, like lynx. That’s happening right now. They’re transplanting them into areas where they were extirpated down in the other parts of the province here. I would hate to see us get to that particular point.

I mentioned raptors as a valuable part of the biodiversity population that we have throughout the province here. The Interior. Every night I could go out when I was out in the bush, and I could hear owls all the time. I haven’t heard an owl now for several years. One of the other raptors that was predominant throughout the interior of the province was the northern goshawk, a beautiful bird. The plumage that the males had on them was a nice silvery-blue colour. They were prolific, all over the place. I haven’t seen one now for probably 15 to 20 years.

There is an interesting study that was done recently up in the interior of the province. They were looking at goshawks, in particular. In this particular forest timber supply area, they had determined that prior to existing industrial harvest, this area probably had 400 goshawk territories. Now they feel that it’s down to 30 goshawk territories. They call it territories. They say that you need 2,400 hectares of untouched forest around each of these goshawk territories in order to provide the environment for them to survive. They’re down to 30 goshawks.

Now, goshawks are like any other raptor, like any other animal in the wild. They’re very territorial, and they fight to the death. If they lose their habitat, they fly into the next area that might sustain them. There will be a fight to the death, or the other one will get chased out, the weaker one, and could starve or die of other causes.

[6:05 p.m.]

The same thing happens with fisher and marten. They will go into the adjacent area that might be able to sustain them, and they won’t survive.

Forestry has been going on for well over a century in British Columbia here. I go back to comments that the chief forester made back in 2003 in a presentation to the UBC forestry students. He was talking about the fact that up until the mid-1990s, forestry never took into consideration riparian areas, wildlife habitat. There are a number of things that they never looked at. They just looked at: “We’ll cut a tree down. It’ll grow back in 100 years, and we’ll be able to cut it down again.”

It wasn’t until probably into the early 2000s before those factors were required to be looked at. Of course, they were put into the regulations on the Forest and Range Practices Act, the planning and practices regulations. As I mentioned in my previous discussion on the bill we had here a couple of weeks ago, it still didn’t meet the requirements that were necessary to protect the wildlife that we have out there.

We look at our salmon and steelhead in critical decline across the province. I’ve recently read some hydrological reports that indicate…. Well, there are a number of factors with hydrological reports there, but I’ll talk about the equivalent clearcut area. That is used as a hydrological tool in the province.

I think it was back in the 1990s that the province determined that if it’s a community watershed, only 20 percent of that watershed would be the equivalent clearcut area. You could only have 20 percent of it clearcut. If it was a fishery-sensitive watershed, you could have 25 percent. Any other watershed would be 30 percent. Those were established, and they are still used today. There was a note that Forests and Lands put out here, back in 2017, that reinforced those numbers.

It’s a complex formula. I’ve talked to hydrological experts in the last while, and it’s a complex exercise they go through because of the terrain, the type of soil, the rocks, the growth. There are a number of factors that are taken into consideration, but those numbers still remain the same — 25 percent.

Fishery-sensitive watersheds. If we look at the watersheds where the steelhead spawn, as an example, we see numbers declining. Those watersheds have been clearcut in excess of the 25 percent, in these fishery-sensitive watersheds — right from the confluence where they join another river or where they join a lake, all the way up to the source of that particular watershed.

Like I said before, the Chilako watershed in my riding — and it’s in the member for Nechako Lakes’ riding as well — has an equivalent clearcut area of well over 80 percent. That was determined back in 1980. It used to have salmon counts well up into the thousands. Over the last 20 years or so, those numbers are now single-digit numbers.

Habitat. I walked a lot of that river last summer with a fisheries biologist. He was commenting on the importance of deciduous growth and the other parts of a natural environment along those streams here that would promote salmon habitat.

We used to have moose populations in the Interior, guaranteed. If you were out hunting, the success rate was pretty high. Government documents show a sharp decline from 2005 to 2015 and another decline from 2015 up until…. I believe the record was around 2019. The cumulative impact of those moose population declines was somewhere up around 90 percent.

[6:10 p.m.]

There is a biologist working for government out of Prince George who made a presentation at the University of Northern B.C. He talked about the impacts of clearcut logging on moose habitat and habitat for many of the other animals there. What he was saying was that for the protein value in the moose browse that was in the clearcuts, the further away from the edge of a mature forest that you got, the protein value declined, to the point where a moose would have a full stomach of its favourite browse, but there was no food value in it.

They’ve done a moose-collaring study up there, and they found all kinds of issues there. I won’t go into all the details of it, but starvation was one of the critical factors there, and perhaps that led to predation, because predation was another major factor with the animals there. Those are the kinds of issues that need to be kept in consideration, moving forward, with any kind of a forestry program.

British Columbia can still have a viable forestry program, a viable forest sector. I know a lot of people in the forest sector. I worked in the forest sector as a young fella. I had relatives involved. They had a logging outfit. I still see people who work in the forest sector who own their own equipment. They are as concerned as I am about where these trees are. I stop and talk to them out on the trapline when they’re going by.

When you have a truck driver that has to go 200 or 300 kilometres into the forest to get a load of logs to haul back to town, that gets to be a long period of time.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I think all the members understand the relationship to the bill, but for those that are watching from afar, could you, every now and then, tell us how that relates to the bill that we’re dealing with?

M. Morris: Yes. Thanks for the reminder, Chair.

This bill is about reallocating tenure. But there is more to…. When I talk about reallocating tenure, a lot of this has to do with that — landscape plans. There are a number of other things involved in that. But there is no mention in there about all these other values of the land that I’ve been speaking about for the last several minutes here. I think that needs to be a consideration that has to be injected into the process.

Like I said, the First Nations and the communities that have community forests are going to be quite shocked when they go out there and look at what they have. If they make a decision and if the decision is made in this House that this moves ahead and we are going to be cutting down trees when they get to a certain age without any consideration for the other biodiversity on the land, then so be it. But I want my voice to be heard, saying that I think this is the wrong direction to go. I think that we should have a more ecologically-based forest system.

We’re not in government. I’m not in government. My job over the next few years is to bring everybody around to my way of thinking, moving forward, and we’ll see where we are by the time the next election rolls around here.

I think it’s incumbent upon everybody, every elected person in this House, to go out and have a look and see what’s out there — see how big these trees are and see what wildlife habitat is left along the rivers and streams that we have in the province that provide the basis for our salmon and our steelhead and all fish species in the province here, and bird species.

A paradigm shift is required. I’ve heard members talk about it in the House, and I’ve also talked about this with members that are involved in the forest sector. Mackenzie is in my area. There have been families that have worked in the forest sector in Mackenzie since Mackenzie was first developed in 1968. There have been families that have been involved in forestry and logging across this province for four generations and more.

We’ve been logging for four generations and more, but we have adopted technology and systems to log faster and to cut faster than we ever have before. I don’t want to see it end up like the Atlantic cod fishery, where they’ve got to shut everything down completely because there is nothing left to fish for.

[6:15 p.m.]

We have an opportunity here, now, to turn the dial and to bring in a forest policy, a different way of thinking than we had 75 years ago when we adopted the sustainable yield strategy. We need to change our thinking on this and come in with a strategy that recognizes all the values on the land base, where we recognize the flora and fauna and the interconnectivity that all of these species have in the environment that we have — that contribute to clean water and clean air, that contribute to reducing the forest fires, that contribute to just about everything that we stand for in British Columbia.

Like I said before, we were the envy of North America for the ecological diversity that we had here in British Columbia.

I spoke to a wildlife biologist one time. He was talking about how North America was anchored in two corners. One is with Florida and all of the biodiversity they have down in Florida, and the other one is British Columbia. I have to agree with him. The number of species that we have in British Columbia is second to none across North America. We can still have that. We just have to adjust the dial, change our way of thinking so that we’re inclusive of everything.

I hope the First Nations, when they look at this, take this into consideration as well. I’m sure they want to see the biodiversity maintained to a level that they can still go out and harvest their animals and their berries and their mushrooms and the things that we all live on. I’ve lived on moose meat most of my life — and wild harvest animals and whatnot.

This is something that I will talk about passionately. I think this bill goes in the wrong direction. I think it’s still tinkering with the old sustainable yield strategy. It’s an incomplete strategy because it only focuses on the fibre. It doesn’t focus on all the values.

I think part of the problem that we have…. This paradigm has become so cemented in the way we do things. It’s become an ideology that we’re fixated on and that’s taught in our universities and our colleges.

We need people to start thinking in a completely different way. The future of British Columbia depends upon it. The future of British Columbia depends on the decision that’s made in this House, moving forward here, on how we address forestry in future years, a century out. We can’t look at ten or 20 or 30 years out. We need to look at a century out.

I think, if we do it the right way, we’ll still have a forest industry. It’s going to look completely different. We’re still going to have thousands of people employed in it, and we’re still going to have people making a living off of it. We’re still going to also have people in adventure tourism, in wildlife management, people harvesting the protein off the land to feed their families. There will be benefits for everybody if it’s done the right way.

Get out. Have a look at it. If you can’t get out and have a look at it, put it on your big screen TV at home, and bring up that Google Earth Engine and Timelapse, which I’ve talked about before, that shows land sat images from 1984 to 2020. It will show you the changes that have taken place over that period of time. I think you’ll be probably shocked at what you see when you go through that.

Mr. Speaker, I share the same outcome as my colleagues do, with respect to the bill. I think it’s wrong. But I got to that in a different way.

Thanks very much for your time.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member. Thank you for bringing us back to the bill.

Peace River North.

D. Davies: Thank you, hon. Speaker, for the opportunity to give some remarks on Bill 28, the Forest Amend­ment Act, 2021.

I want to thank my colleague from Prince George–​Mackenzie for his remarks. We certainly do recognize biodiversity. He’s brought these remarks many times in the past. We’ve had these discussions, and we certainly recognize those points. I think it’s about balance, about how we look at our forests.

[6:20 p.m.]

I look at this legislation. It’s quite large, and I know that’s been mentioned before. We have just a few short sitting days left in this session to debate a critical piece of legislation, along with all the other pieces of legislation that we still have to talk about.

I think it’s shameful that this has been brought up right at the end of the session. I also think it’s shameful that we haven’t had anybody from government, other than the minister who introduced the bill and one member who spoke for three or four minutes to say that she supported the bill.

This is a bill that could impact areas around the province. This isn’t just an Interior issue, in the Cariboo-Chilcotin or Nechako Lakes or Peace River. The impact on this, in reality…. I’ll tell you, it’s easy to find out where the forest industry is in this province. A lot of it’s in the Lower Mainland. There are forestry companies, logging companies and trucking companies associated with forestry located in….

I’ll read the list. Many companies are located in Surrey. Vancouver. Richmond. Maple Ridge. Agassiz. Delta. Chilliwack. New Westminster. North Vancouver. Mission. Langley. Burnaby. Coquitlam. These are all forest communities in the province of British Columbia.

We have not seen a government MLA stand up to talk about the potential impacts that this will have on their communities. As my colleagues before me have already spoken about, there is great potential to have huge impacts from what this legislation might do in our communities. By the way, I only listed off the cities that these forest companies are in. The list is quite extensive, and it’s quite easy to find out how many companies are listed in those communities.

What is forestry to British Columbia? I’m sure that most people here understand the value of forestry. Of course, if you’ve ever been in this place and you walk out into the rotunda and you look up at the ceiling, you see our founding industries — agriculture, mining, fishing and forestry, as one of our founding industries. Still, to this day, it is one of the largest industries in our province.

Bill 28 has the potential to put all of that at risk. Forestry in British Columbia is worth $13 billion in GDP, which translates into almost $9 billion in wages. Those are good-paying wages for families in Surrey, in Abbotsford, in North Vancouver and in Vancouver — good-paying wages that keep families prosperous, which are possibly in jeopardy. One out of every 25 jobs in British Columbia is connected with forestry.

Recently, and I’ll talk a bit about this here shortly, the connections between Bill 23, which was finished last week, and now the introduction of Bill 28, and the linkage between those…. One linkage — and I’ll say it probably too many times — is the instability that it creates within the sector, over and over. Companies want stability. Companies want to invest in something where they know what the outcome is going to be. This bill takes that away and puts it in the circle of cabinet as a decision that can be made there, which is not what companies are wanting.

[6:25 p.m.]

Manufacturing. We talk about manufacturing in this province. One out of every five manufacturing jobs are in the forest sector, in the province of British Columbia. Many of those jobs, specifically in the manufacturing piece, specialty to value-add, are in the Lower Mainland, are in the Surreys, are in the Vancouver area. Those are in jeopardy.

When I got elected in 2017, I didn’t know a lot about forestry. I don’t even…. I’ve probably learned what my colleague from Nechako Lakes forgot today around forestry. It is a very complex issue. But since 2017, I have learned a lot. When I look at my community in Fort St. John or Fort Nelson, my region, people associate us with oil and gas, but we have a very robust forest sector in the northeast.

We have a pulp mill just south of Fort St. John, in Taylor. We have a lumber mill in Fort St. John. We have an oriented strand board mill in Fort St. John, a pellet plant. We have a couple of smaller mills. Associated to all of that are all the other jobs out in the bush. It’s thousands of jobs — thousands of jobs that I’m here talking about today that are potentially at risk.

I’ve been lucky to have conversations with many people up in the northeast — Fort Nelson, Fort St. John area. A couple of them, certainly, have sat with me and walked me through some the policies over the past, present. I don’t think anybody is saying that things have been perfect or things are perfect in British Columbia. We know they’re not. Even industry said that we do need to update. They recognize that.

As we’ve heard already from some of my colleagues, these updates need to be done in consultation. They need to be done in consultation with people in the communities. They need to be done in consultation with First Nations communities. They need to be done in consultation with the industry.

This bill, Bill 28, substantially amends this Forest Act, allowing government to reduce timber harvesting rights of existing forest tenure holders, to come up with a complex formula to redistribute the timber harvesting rights to whomever that might be. It’s not in the legislation. Again, another decision that’s going to be made around the cabinet table, in secret, given to whomever — maybe First Nations, maybe some communities, Timber Sales.

The member for Nechako Lakes talked about this stability. We see this in many different sectors right now. The stability in the province of British Columbia is chasing out investment. It’s chasing out investment in forestry. You’ve just got to look at where Canfor is investing all of the money right now. It’s not in British Columbia.

The minister can shake her head. The fact is that is where the investment is happening. The oil and gas industry leaving in droves. Mining. I don’t even know what’s…. When was the last time a mine was approved? This is just on and on, an attack on the economy, an attack on people’s jobs in my riding and the ridings around the province, whether they’re held by an opposition MLA or a government MLA.

These huge decisions will be made around a cabinet table on who gets what. Another winners and losers being picked by this legislation.

[6:30 p.m.]

We’ve heard a lot about ideology. I think a few of my colleagues have mentioned ideology in this bill as well as in many other things. An ideology is a form of social or political philosophy in which practical elements, unfortunately, aren’t always considered. What does this look like on the ground, practical?

We heard words on Bill 23 — that that legislation was seen as a gut punch. I can tell you this is just another one on some of our communities. This is from industry that is saying it. These are people that work in the forest sector that are saying it.

People in my riding…. I’ll talk a little bit about Fort Nelson and the story…. I’ve mentioned Fort Nelson in this place a lot of times. Fort Nelson was a forest community. It relied on forestry. It had an OSB mill. It had a lumber mill. That went away. At the same time, the natural gas sector picked up. Over the past decade, we’ve seen that switch dramatically again, where the natural gas sector has dried up.

There was nothing left for that community. Families stayed behind because they couldn’t sell their homes. So these communities…. One of the working members had to move elsewhere, most of the time out of the province, to go work maybe in Alberta, maybe to go work out east, so that they could continue to send and support their families back home in Fort Nelson.

This is what happens in small communities when you take away an industry that people rely on, or a couple of industries, which happened up there. People leave these communities. These communities dry up, and they become ghost towns. I don’t want to see that for any of my communities in my riding. I don’t want to see that with any community in the province of British Columbia.

I think there is room for balance. But by making these secret decisions around the cabinet table about who gets what and who doesn’t, pitting winners and losers, or picking winners and losers in this, isn’t the way to do it.

Over the past couple of years, there has been some really good news in Fort Nelson. I go up there quite regularly, talk to the different players that are working up there. There was a great community forest that’s been brought in. What does this legislation mean to that, the community forest and the partners and the community players that are part of that community forest?

The potential of a pellet plant. I know the minister is very aware of these success stories, and they are success stories. But what does this legislation do to that? I can tell you that if someone is looking at investing, whether it be in Fort Nelson or another community in British Columbia, in the forest sector, I think they’re going to look twice. They’re going to think twice because of what Bill 23 has done and because of what Bill 28 could potentially do.

The folks in Fort Nelson are just starting to feel some hope in that community, but Bill 28 has now put on a layer of uncertainty around that hope. The hope of, you know, their spouse maybe having a job in their community where their children are growing up is now at risk. I even look, in my own community of Fort St. John, where I mentioned…. We’re the home of some of the bigger companies. We have LP, Louisiana-Pacific. We have Canfor in the area.

[6:35 p.m.]

Talking to people that work in the forest industry…. I’ve got many friends that also work in the industry. They expect that they will be impacted by this legislation. They know they’re going to be impacted by Bill 23. But compounded with this, what does that look like?

My colleague from Nechako Lakes…. When we get into committee stage, these are going to be questions that we will be asking — about how this lays out in our smaller communities, how this lays out in all of our communities, communities that all of us represent.

People that have jobs — these jobs that we represent — are worried about them. That’s what we’re trying to highlight here, in this second reading of Bill 28. It’s that this has real potential. It has created a lot of fear out there in the industry around: “Will I have a job at the end of this year? What is Christmas going to look like?”

I and, I’m sure, others care about our communities. We care about these people. These people are the ones that reach out to our constituency offices on a regular basis, visit my constituency office.

In fact, I’m going to be up in Fort Nelson here in a couple of weeks. I’ve already got a day of appointments of people that want to come and talk to me about this stuff, about Bill 28, Bill 23 and all the other things that we do in this place. Sitting in an office in Victoria with the swift signature on a pen and understanding that impact that it has in Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Williams Lake or 100 Mile House….

Interjection.

D. Davies: Okay. I don’t think government is doing it differently.

I have never seen such a lack of transparency, ever, by a government — on this bill and many others before it. We’ve had those conversations in here on almost every single bill — about the lack of transparency, the lack of consultation, the lack of engagement. Sorry, the lack of meaningful engagement, I think, is key. Government can go out and say: “Yeah, we engaged. We’ve talked. We had a town hall.” Then we shoved the Legislature down your throat, regardless of it.

Interjection.

D. Davies: Yeah. You know, four minutes of debate. I mean, it’s preposterous to actually say: “We do things differently.” Differently than what — the Soviet Union?

Communities will be impacted. They will be impacted by this legislation. I worry for my communities. I worry for the communities around this great province.

I do believe that we are all in this place because we do want what’s best. At least, I like to believe that. But there are things that don’t add up.

We understand we want to innovate. We understand we want to balance the economy with the environment, but we’re not seeing that. We’re seeing a very Lower Mainland, kind of centric, approach. I understand that this legislation is to promote innovation in forestry, and I think it’s a commendable approach. We want to do as much value-added. But at the expense of everything else? Again, there needs to be balance.

As I mentioned a moment ago, what worries me the most is this ability that gives the cabinet table the tools to pick the winners and pick the losers, who gets what and who doesn’t get what. How does that instil stability in the forest sector? It doesn’t.

[6:40 p.m.]

I could read pages of quotes from industry, from people that work in the forest sector, who talk about the instability that is in the industry right now because of this government. That is where all of us are mostly getting our speaking notes from: on the ground, in our communities.

B.C. Council of Forest Industries: “Small, medium, large, family-owned and Indigenous-owned forestry companies, contractors, suppliers and workers are extremely concerned that the province is moving in this direction.”

Don Kayne: “If fully implemented, it would have significant impacts on our hard-working employees and their families, along with our Indigenous partners, contractors, communities and the entire industry.”

I could go on for my remaining eight minutes and read quotes from industry players and associations attached to the industry.

When we are speaking, we’re not just speaking because we want to ruffle feathers. We want to bring change to this legislation. We’re here representing these people that live in our communities. I’ve got a number of media reports here that are covering this story as well, which are also talking about the concerns and the issues around this legislation, around Bill 23. You’re right, Mr. Speaker. The minister is doing things differently, and it’s not looking out for the forestry workers in this province.

I go back to this because this is what’s most concerning to me around how these decisions are going to be made at the cabinet table — Who gets what? Who doesn’t get a tenure? — and coming up with the cost of these tenures that are taken away. I already look at the issues in my riding and other ridings around the province, on the land — whether it be caribou, which has been a significant impact to people who are on the land, or cutting off access to back country.

I know that in my area, they’re in the midst of rewriting the land and resource management plan. These are huge issues on the land base that are happening. Is this the government’s way to set up…? “Well, yeah, we’re just going to take that away — the whole northeast. We’re just going to take it away, and we will do what we want with it.” It worries me. We’ve been worried a lot before. This goes back to the whole consultation piece.

Government has come up, and they consulted on the caribou. How did that go? It was a joke. There was zero consultation on caribou. They showed up with a plan. They presented at a town hall or a number of town halls — some of which, I might add, where most of the entire community showed up at these town halls.

They got a little worried. They appointed someone who had a name up there: “We’re going to appoint Blair Lekstrom, and we’ll listen to him.” Well, Blair made these points. Still nothing. They rammed the original plan down the throats of British Columbians, with no meaningful consultation, no engagement, no listening and no transparency.

[6:45 p.m.]

The same stuff is happening here. The same stuff has happened in Bill 23. I could probably pick up the order paper and list off every other bill where proper engagement and transparent engagement didn’t happen. You’re right, Mr. Speaker. This government does do things differently. They’re not engaging with British Columbians. They’re not listening, certainly, to British Columbians.

Deputy Speaker: Member, you’ve said that twice now. It’s inappropriate to say that I said whatever it is that you said that I said.

D. Davies: Sorry, to the minister, hon. Speaker.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you.

D. Davies: It’s very unclear in my mind, in the mind of Peace River North — and the folks up there, everybody that works in the forest industry — how these special purpose areas are going to work with all these different competing pieces on the land base happening right now — what this is going to look like, what was introduced in Bill 23, how it’s going to overlay with Bill 25. Again, you can just imagine why the industry is absolutely shaken to the bone right now on what the future of their industry looks like.

I know that earlier my colleague from Nechako Lakes read a number of quotes from different people. The government doesn’t like hearing those. But the fact remains that this is an industry that provides for British Columbians, that is being threatened under Bill 28. Communities like my community are being threatened.

We have major concerns with this bill. I certainly don’t support this bill; my community does not support this bill. I know we will have lots of questions during committee stage as we move forward.

With that, I will take my place and turn it over to my colleague from the Cariboo.

Noting the hour, I will reserve my spot. I want to make sure that we reserve our spot. Okay.

D. Davies moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Committee of the Whole (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. K. Conroy moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 6:48 p.m.