Proceedings of the Subcommittee on the
Boreal Forest
Standing
Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 4 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Thursday, April 10, 1997
The Subcommittee on Boreal Forest of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 10:27 a.m. to continue its study on the present state and future of forestry in Canada as it relates to the boreal forest.
Senator Doris M. Anderson (Chair) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chair: Just before I welcome our guest this morning, I want to remind the members of the subcommittee that there are several items of business which need to be discussed at the end of this session.
We are pleased to have with us today Peggy Smith who is from the National Aboriginal Forestry Association.
Please proceed.
Ms Peggy Smith, Senior Advisor, National Aboriginal Forestry Association: Thank you, Madam Chair. The National Aboriginal Forestry Association welcomes the opportunity to discuss aboriginal peoples and Canada's boreal forest with the Senate subcommittee.
On a personal note, I have a special interest in this because I am from the boreal forest. I grew up in northwestern Ontario. I spent my preschool years in bush camps where my father was a bulldozer operator. He worked for pulp and paper companies until he died. We lived the life of a single-industry town; a Métis family with a father who went off to the bush camps during the week and came home on Friday nights for the weekend.
I made a decision later in my life to go back to school and study forestry as a way of getting in touch with my roots. I have a special interest in understanding what has happened in the boreal forest as a result of our logging practices. That is what drives me in my work.
The subcommittee has heard from representatives of the Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development about government perspectives on aboriginal peoples and forestry. The National Aboriginal Forestry Association offers its perspective as a non-governmental, non-political organization formed after the first national symposium on aboriginal forestry in Canada was held in Vancouver in 1989. At that time, aboriginal delegates attending the symposium identified the need to establish a national organization to lobby for recognition of aboriginal rights and participation in the forest sector.
NAFA opened an office in Ottawa in 1991 and since that time we have been addressing the issue of aboriginal participation on five fronts. We are submitting supporting documents to the committee with our report which you can study further. Our Aboriginal Forest Strategy, which is one of those documents, outlines the five areas in which we have focused our efforts.
The first is in forest lands and resources legislation as an alternative to the Indian Act, to give First Nations control of forest activities on reserve lands and to establish a framework for co-management agreements off reserve.
We have been working on developing forest management tools for First Nations to assist in their forestry activities. NAFA has submitted a copy of our Aboriginal Forest Land Management Guidelines: A Community Approach, which you can also examine later.
We have been working in the education and training field to increase the number and skills of aboriginal people in the forest sector.
We have been working on business development support to enhance the capacity of aboriginal companies to establish forest-based businesses and, finally, NAFA has been working especially in the advocacy and policy development field to provide a framework for aboriginal participation in the forest sector.
Over the past six years, NAFA has worked with aboriginal communities, provincial and federal governments and the forest industry to raise awareness about aboriginal issues in forestry and to help create policies that will increase aboriginal participation. We have also included in our submissions to the subcommittee our submission to the Standing Committee on Natural Resources in 1994 which examined the issue of clear-cutting. Much of the presentation we made to that committee is relevant to this one.
Mainly through the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, made up of provincial and federal forest ministers, there is now a recognition in policy initiatives that recognition and protection of aboriginal and treaty rights and aboriginal participation in the forest sector are essential elements of sustainable forest management. These policy initiatives are outlined in detail in our paper, Significant Developments and Events 1992-1995, and briefly include the National Forest Strategy which, in Strategic Direction Number Seven, made the commitment to develop aboriginal forest strategy, recognize aboriginal and treaty rights in the development of forest management policy, increase forest-based economic opportunities for aboriginal communities and further education and training initiatives designed to increase aboriginal enrolment in forestry programs and change those programs to include aboriginal forest values.
We have also worked with the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers on the development of Criterion and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management which includes, in Criterion 6, Accepting Society's Responsibility for Sustainable Development, the protection and recognition of aboriginal rights in Criterion 6.1, and participation by aboriginal communities in Criterion 6.2. Through these criterion indicators, the federal and provincial governments have made a commitment to measure whether or not they are meeting these commitments and are presenting Canada in the international arena as a leader in this area.
Slowly, these national policy initiatives have been filtering to the provincial level where limited changes in some provinces have been made to reflect these commitments. For example, British Columbia has now a Protection of Aboriginal Rights Policy to ensure that aboriginal rights are not unjustifiably infringed upon by forest management activities carried out by the Crown or its licensees.
There is also the national Model Forest Program which is entering Phase II, and with it came the announcement that there would be one aboriginal-led model forest to be chosen and established later this year.
Tied with these policy initiatives is the move toward the voluntary market-driven certification of sustainable forest management systems and products. NAFA has been involved with the Canadian Standards Association process and the Forest Stewardship Council and has developed a paper on the possible implications of certification for aboriginal communities, which we have also provided to you. Both CSA and FSC principles include recognition of aboriginal and treaty rights and participation of aboriginal peoples in forest management. The FSC Working Group in Canada is now establishing standards or beginning to set out standards for eco-regions. Their work on setting standards for the boreal forest in Canada will help focus attention on this important ecosystem.
I am raising a red flag. Certification also carries a hidden threat in an era where governments are losing or giving up their responsibilities to regulate forest management in the public interest. We need to be very careful about private, voluntary, market-driven systems. They do not take the place of government regulation.
The problem with policy is that to be effective it must be applied, and we are a long way from addressing the past exclusion of aboriginal peoples from the forest sector, the one area in which you would think aboriginal people naturally belong. However, we still face low employment in the sector, exclusion from licensing and access to resources on Crown land, a frustratingly slow land claim settlement process, and inadequate funding for forestry on Reserve lands, a particularly important area because it is where many First Nations have built their knowledge and capacity to carry out forest management planning and operations.
The slow pace of change is a result of many factors, and among them are this split in jurisdiction between the federal and provincial governments with the federal government having constitutional responsibility for "Indians and lands reserved for Indians", and the provinces having constitutional responsibility for natural resources.
Second is the lack of strong national leadership in setting a direction for the solution of problems faced by aboriginal peoples in Canada in relation to forest management, particularly in the era of federal cutbacks to programming. This has been especially felt by aboriginal communities with the cuts in the Canadian Forest Service, and the service's reduced stability to offer forest management and research support.
Third is the provincial tenure, licensing and forest management systems which ignore aboriginal land claims, traditional land uses, and treaty rights to hunt, fish, trap and gather while at the same time they are giving long-term control over large land areas to forest companies to log without adequately protecting or providing for aboriginal values or access to these resources.
Fourth is the refusal of both federal and provincial governments to recognize aboriginal peoples' rightful place as equal partners in forest management. As an organization, we continue to stress that aboriginal peoples are not just another stakeholder in forest management planning processes, but by prior occupancy of this country and by the rights that were established through treaties, have a special place when it comes to forest management planning.
The boreal forest is the largest ecosystem in Canada and home to over 500 aboriginal communities who depend on that forest for their way of life. It is what defines them as peoples; the Cree, the Ojibway, the Dene, the Chippewayan, the Dogrib, the Slavey and the Naskapi. To redress the historical exclusion of aboriginal peoples from the very land upon which they have depended will take strong national leadership and provincial commitment to work jointly with aboriginal peoples. The framework is in place. What is needed now is action.
The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, in its final report released this year, has outlined the steps which need to be taken. We have included for you the relevant sections of the Royal Commission Report on the forest sector. We urge you to review the Royal Commission's recommendations and give them serious consideration in your deliberations on the boreal forest.
Senator Spivak: I am encouraged by the steps you are taking. I was not aware of the existence of your organization and am very happy to learn of it.
Do you have any information about what is happening on the ground? Is it correct that a great number of forestry companies have begun operations in the northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in the last five or ten years?
Senator Taylor: There are between five and ten.
Senator Spivak: It seems to me from what we could gather in meeting with them that while they give lip service to aboriginal land claims, in effect those claims are being ignored. In Manitoba, it is almost as if they do not exist because the map is empty. Yet the nations north of The Pas have very detailed maps of their traditional land uses.
This is the most brutal kind of resource development and it ignores the enforcement of laws in Canada, treaty rights and disputed land claims. Is this view too pessimistic?
Ms Smith: No. It comes down mainly to the split in jurisdiction, although I do not want to let either provincial or federal governments off the hook on this one.
In the last five years, the courts have raised the issue of aboriginal rights, especially with the new Constitution Act which enshrined aboriginal rights. There have been a number of court cases which are defining and stating responsibility for how these rights must be protected. Those court decisions are slowly filtering down to the provincial level, but there is still a tendency on the part of provinces, when it comes to aboriginal issues, to say it is federal jurisdiction. The tendency of the federal government, when it comes to natural resources, aboriginal access to those resources and protection of rights, is to say that there is nothing they can do, that the provinces have that responsibility.
NAFA is saying, through the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, that we have to start putting this into practice. It is a joint effort. There can no longer be this continual passing of the buck back and forth between federal and provincial governments. Aboriginal peoples must be at the table and be a partner in ensuring that those problems are solved.
Senator Taylor: Were you present when the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs appeared before us?
Ms Smith: I have read their presentation.
Senator Taylor: You should have been there because I asked them about this issue and there was thundering silence and complete ignorance in that area.
Ms Smith: There is no ignorance. It has been stipulated through the Constitution, through the Indian Act, that the federal government has responsibility for Indian lands. "Indian lands" means the reserves on which aboriginal peoples were put. Some people refer to them as concentration camps or similar to concentration camps. Those reserves removed aboriginal people from their traditional lands and territories. Most of those reserves are too small to support economic development activities. They are too small in land area to support forestry businesses. As a result -- and Indian Affairs was quite frank about this -- the forests on those reserve lands have become severely degraded, probably worse than other forests in other areas because there has been so much pressure on them.
Until there is a co-operative effort and commitment from provinces and the federal government together to work on these issues, nothing will change.
Senator Spivak: There are pre-existing aboriginal rights, and it is not just a question of the reserves. There are even fiduciary obligations which have been transferred to the provinces which have never been exercised. In terms of specific instances, there is almost no land that has not been allocated to forestry companies. In many instances, the native people are told to deal with the forestry company when it comes to jobs.
Your approach seems to be that if we co-operate something will happen. What sorts of remedies are coming from the courts in specific cases? I know the Lubicon Indians, for example, have an on-going court case, yet my understanding is that they are logging on the disputed land claim.
Ms Smith: The injunction against Daishowa-Marubeni is still in force in Lubicon territory.
Senator Spivak: They are not logging on the disputed lands?
Senator Taylor: The disputed land is okay. They are staying off. They are logging on traditional lands where hunting took place. There are always three sides. There is the reserve, there is disputed land and there is traditional land.
Senator Spivak: What is it that the Lubicon are claiming then? They are claiming a certain portion. Are they not claiming their traditional lands?
Senator Taylor: They are claiming that their treaty rights are being destroyed.
Senator Spivak: They are claiming the whole ballpark, and in the meantime they are busy logging there.
Senator Taylor: They want joint management.
Ms Smith: That is right. I also want to caution you that there is not a unified stand even in Indian country about forest management.
Senator Spivak: I understand that.
Ms Smith: Some aboriginal communities want to get involved in the forest industry as it exists. There are always problems, but they get involved in the forest management systems. There are a few First Nations who have managed to get provincial licences, albeit very few. You can count them on one hand. They have received provincial licences and are supplying wood to the mills. They have become part of that industrial system.
Other aboriginal communities are still very dependent on the land and are carrying out traditional activities like hunting, fishing and trapping, and they want to protect that way of life.
The Cree in Northern Quebec as a group are trying to ensure that their people have the option to continue a traditional way of life, so they want to change the way the forest companies operate in their territory. Right now they are campaigning to try to change those practices, but they meet resistance, particularly with the provincial government and with the forest companies, although things are starting to change. It is a complex situation.
Senator Spivak: Do you know what the James Bay Agreement said about the Cree rights to those lands in terms of ability of companies to log? How was that resolved?
Ms Smith: Forestry was not included specifically in the James Bay-Northern Quebec Agreement because it had to do with hydro development, and there was no logging activity in the area when the agreement was signed. Some people thought that there never would be because it was too far north.
The way I see it, there are two boreal forests. There is a boreal forest that has been logged and there is the new frontier. The new frontier is northern Quebec. In my part of the country, it is north of the 50th parallel, Nishnawbe-Aski Nation territory. It is in northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and now it is even getting up into the Yukon and Northwest Territories. It is a telling statement that industrial development is moving further and further north all the time.
It is an issue of particular importance for us because in that far north area many of those aboriginal communities are still reliant on the land for their way of life. It is a critical time to change forest practices so that we can continue a traditional way of life but still benefit from economic development. I do not think the two are necessarily exclusive.
Senator Taylor: You mentioned Yukon. Yukon is much later in getting under way than other provinces. They have an ideal arrangement in the Yukon with the First Nations. Are you familiar with that?
Ms Smith: Yes, I am.
Senator Taylor: Is it as ideal as it is portrayed to be?
Ms Smith: No. The First Nations in the Yukon have a further power because their claims were settled. Under the claims they have been given certain rights and responsibilities for resource management, but the rights are limited to provincial and federal jurisdictions, so it limits them to some extent. They do have renewal resource councils. They are trying to work out a tripartite arrangement for developing forest management plans.
First Nations as well as federal and territorial governments are working under extreme limits. They do not have a forest inventory. They do not have foresters in the territory. They do not have land use plans or forest management plans.
Senator Spivak: Does that not stop them from cutting down everything in sight?
Ms Smith: No. Recently they faced this spectre of industrial development because a lot of forest companies from British Columbia started coming north for their wood supply. The stumpage fees at the time were 10 cents a cubic metre.
Senator Taylor: Similar to Alberta prices.
Ms Smith: They have had to go through this massive change and try to face up to what will happen in the forestry development in the Yukon. It is the same in the Northwest Territories.
Senator Spivak: There are several issues here. One is the issue of forestry companies and the ability of native peoples to have their traditional use of the land. The second is the disputed land claims.Where are the rights there and what is happening? The third is destruction of the forest, conservation or sustainable development and the ecosystem approach.
Ms Smith: You are missing out economic development.
Senator Spivak: I am not missing out economic development.
Ms Smith: It is a crucial issue for First Nations as well.
Senator Spivak: I know it is, but it is in sustainable development. It is in the third part. Economic development is not any different from sustainable development, because if you completely ruin the resource, it is not a renewable resource any more so there cannot be any economic development. That will happen in 10 or 15 years if the current rate of development continues.
Senator Taylor: Your report is very well done. You should send it to all the daily newspapers in Canada. I think you would find there is a lot of support for the forest being preserved. It could be a letter to the editor or an article. The public is on side but they do not realize what is occurring. As a matter of fact, when we heard from representatives of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs the other day, they seemed to think that the world stopped with the land claim. The public must be made aware of the game that is occurring between the federal and provincial governments at the expense of working toward self-government for the First Nations people, which is a great economic resource for you.
Does the NAFA consider this a bio-diversity issue? You mentioned economic development. Does your organization look at trapping and the spiritual needs as well as environment? You look at forestry as a total ecosystem while most forestry associations are interested in cutting and growing trees.
Ms Smith: I would like to refer you to our Aboriginal Forest Management Guidelines. Those guidelines were designed for First Nations as a tool to help them in their forest management planning and operations. We have taken a holistic approach, including timber harvesting and regeneration, and we base it on ecosystem management. We take into consideration forest protection issues and all forest values, including non-timber, fish and wildlife, and recreation. We have tried to do it on the basis of community planning so that there is not a single interest group driving the process, which has been the big problem with forestry in Canada in the past. Single interest groups, mainly the industry, are controlling it.
Senator Taylor: Madam Chair and I were both surprised to learn from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs that they knew of no case in which an aboriginal trapper had been compensated for his trap line being destroyed.
Ms Smith: The Cree in Northern Quebec are concerned because the industry is offering their trappers compensation for destruction of trap lines. They worried about that because it means that the industry does not have to deal with the Cree as a political organization and does not have to sit down and negotiate standards and guidelines for how to carry out their practices. They approach trappers individually and offer to buy them a new skidoo or a truck in return for being able to log the trap line. That is not a proper approach.
Senator Taylor: In the U.S., they call it buying pollution rights.
You mentioned the dangers of certification. I had thought that it might be good because the stamp of a well-run ecosystem on lumber would make a big difference, certainly in Europe. Can you explain your concerns with certification?
Ms Smith: Certification is fine if it is working in conjunction with government regulation. If certification becomes a substitute for government regulation, we have a problem, because we no longer have the ability to enforce, regulate and monitor the forest industry.
At this time, that is not happening in Canada. Some provinces are handing over responsibility for forest management entirely to the industry. Ontario is doing that, for example.
Some people see this as a positive move. I worry about it. The provincial government's constitutional role is natural resources and forest management, and the responsibility to protect the public interest is there. If they step out of the regulatory role and hand it over to the industry, we have lost control as a province or a country, and that concerns me greatly.
Senator Spivak: Do you worry that it is a public relations exercise and that it will not be verified?
Ms Smith: The systems that are being put in place are fairly strong in that they must carry out third party independent audits, but I do not trust them implicitly. To have trust in things, I must go on the ground and see what is happening.
There is a role that aboriginal communities can play in enforcement and monitoring what is happening out there. People are still on the land and they see what is happening. Their role as stewards and watch dogs and environmental monitors is an important one. There is still no place for that. Maybe with some of these new systems that are coming into place there will be.
There are all kinds of problems with certification, and credibility is one of them. If they are not credible, those stamps will quickly mean nothing in the marketplace. People will not pay any more for those types of products and they will be useless. The system has a stake in making sure it works, otherwise they are out the window. The PR continues, certification or no certification. Public relations is a large part of forestry.
Senator Spivak: That is true. I have seen how this happens. When you refer to anything that seems to be an authentic or authoritarian document, people begin to believe it. It is one thing to stand up and say something. It is another to back your arguments with a document. It becomes a lot more authentic.
I want to ask you about co-management. In Manitoba, the co-management agreements really do not work and they are not co-management. In other words, the company manages and the agreements are devised simply to manage the impact of logging, hydro, road development and mining on game and fish, and mostly they do not even do that.
Do you have examples of where co-management agreements are actually working?
Ms Smith: No. I did my undergraduate thesis on a survey of natural resource agreements signed with aboriginal people in Canada. I looked at co-management and tried to define the word as joint ventures, contracts and all those kinds of things to see whether they were serving aboriginal interests in the area of cultural protection, economic development, recognition of rights and, most important, decision making.
My definition of co-management is 50-50. Other people define it as co-operative management, which can run the range from simply advisory to some decision-making to possibly 50-50.
The problem is that if provincial governments do not recognize aboriginal rights, treaty rights and land claims, there is no basis for co-management. There must be some legislated recognition of aboriginal rights by provinces before those things can be effective.
In Ontario, the one I thought had potential was the Wendaban Stewardship Authority with the Temagami. They set up a joint committee with 50-50 representation. In the case of a dispute that they were unable to settle, they decided on calling in a mutually-agreed-to joint arbitrator. They had a forum outside of ministerial authority for settling conflicts. To me, that was a good form of co-management.
Wendaban Stewardship Authority folded because of lack of provincial support and also because of dissension within the community about whether this was the right thing to do.
Senator Taylor: Did you look at the Meadow Lake one in Saskatchewan?
Ms Smith: Meadow Lake is not a co-management agreement. They have a provincial licence. It is a forest management licence agreement.
Senator Taylor: Is it co-operative?
Ms Smith: No. They operate under the provincial licensing and tenure system.I mentioned that there are a few First Nations across the country who have provincial licences, and Meadow Lake is one of them.
Tanizul Timber in northern British Columbia is another one. They have a tree farm licence with the province of British Columbia. Tanizul is an interesting case because they worked with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs to give legal weight to the agreement, or to give them the ability to carry out the tree farm licence because they use partly reserve land and partly Crown land. So there was a special arrangement there. There is a clause in the Indian Act which refers to the Stuart Trembleur licence, so it was a special negotiation that went on to allow that to happen.
In northern Saskatchewan, the Peter Ballantyne Band is trying to negotiate a forest management licence agreement. When First Nations do that, they accept provincial guidelines, regulations and forest management planning framework. What is important about the aboriginal-led model forest is that it may be an opportunity for First Nations to find a different way of working together. Although they do not have a licence and they do not have forest management responsibility, the fact that they have support from the federal government and some funding to do different work may give them the freedom to start exploring a different way of doing things.
We need to do more of that. The problem with the way things work now is that the tenure and licensing system excludes any kind of experimentation or looking at other ways of doing things. These large area, long-term management licences mean you cannot set up community forests. The wood supply is allocated and that is it. You live with it for 25 years and if you want to negotiate, you are forced to negotiate with the company. That is provincial responsibility.
In Ontario, when the NDP was in power, they set up a pilot project for four community forests to look at a different kind of tenure system. It lasted for five years, and then the program finished. In British Columbia, the same thing occurred. They have experimented a little with alternative tenure systems. They set aside some areas and then they give small business licences and things like that to allow groups other than large forest companies to have access to timber.
The Chair: Could you comment on the Indian Act optional modification that is presently before the House of Commons?
Ms Smith: I prefer not to comment on that. We have had discussions as an organization and I will give you some of the background about the work that our organization has done.
NAFA developed an alternative piece of legislation to the Indian Act that would give First Nations more control over forest management. We negotiated with the federal government up to a point, and it has been left that the First Nations themselves must come forward to support the idea of this kind of legislation.
I do not want to comment on the optional modifications because it is a political issue and the Assembly of First Nations and the provincial aboriginal political organizations have all come out strongly and said they are not happy with the way that has been developed because they were excluded. There was not proper consultation done and for that reason it belongs in the political arena, and I will leave it there.
Senator Taylor:Is it a fact that the federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs has given $600,000 to the Saskatchewan bands that are working on what they call co-management?
You mentioned that one of the problems you have is funds for business development support. Is there no section of the Department in Indian and Northern Affairs which is trying to fund you? I guess that other areas do not necessarily get what Saskatchewan got.
Ms Smith: That money for co-management was part of the minister's negotiations on self-government. His approach was to fund activities in different sectors in different parts of the country. Saskatchewan was chosen. According to the minister, different pilot projects are going on in different parts of the country to support the move toward self-government. That is how it happened. It is a single pot of money for a limited period of time.
The problem with funding forestry in aboriginal communities is that the only thing the Indian Act says is that the minister must issue timber permits for any logging on reserve land. That is the only reference to forestry on reserve land in the Indian Act. The minister must issue permits.
That system has broken down over the years. It is only in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan that permits are still being issued. In most parts of the country, logging on reserve land has been unregulated for a long time, with the result of degraded forest land base on reserves.
Senator Taylor: I remember the ones in Calgary.
Ms Smith: Yes, the Stoney. That case is one of the reasons the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs supports our organization. They have worked with the Canadian Forest Service and set up this new First Nation forestry program. So they are continuing to provide some funding that used to come under the federal-provincial transfer agreements for forestry on Indian land. It is a smaller pot. It is finished in five years and they are saying there will be no more. You must be self-sufficient in forestry. There will be no more money after that point. They do not see it as a fiduciary obligation. NAFA argues that it is.
Their obligation is to manage forest resources on behalf of First Nations for their benefit, and that includes more than just timber permitting. It includes looking at all values and making management plans that reflect the best practices in forestry. There are a whole lot of things that should be going on.
They stay in the game because they know that there is a chance that their fiduciary obligation will be defined in this way. The Stoney are suing them for not carrying out their fiduciary obligation for forestry on their reserve land.
Senator Spivak:We did not get a chance to pursue economic development. Canada has chosen to develop its vast natural resources by letting foreign companies come in and start huge operations. That is seen as economically beneficial to Canada as well as to the companies. I do not know if there has been a cost benefit study done to see whether that is the case. I suspect it is probably not the case because I know that with one of the operations in Manitoba there is little economic benefit to the Manitoba taxpayer.
In northern Manitoba, there were small local timber companies which could have been parcelled out and the number of jobs would have been the same, but they did not choose to do that. Could this be a viable means of economic development?
Aboriginal peoples or even local communities could not mount the sort of huge forestry operations that are currently in place. What is your view on that? Is that how you view the economic development in very broad terms, if we could live with the law in Canada instead of outside the law?
Ms Smith: It is my view. My understanding of the history of our forest industry is that if you want to see the effects of free trade you look at what happened in our forest industry. There is high-volume resource extraction with large outflows of product and capital to other countries who own the companies, with resulting jobs.
The issue of us being hewers of wood and drawers of water has been a matter of debate since Confederation. The Kennedy Commission in 1916 talked about this problem. Canada has talked about it as a country. The provinces discuss it regularly.
I chaired a task force for the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines in Northern Ontario in 1992 on value-added in the forest sector and looking at what potential there was to develop this.The industry has become so concentrated and so huge, and we are so dependent on it, that it will take very committed and concerted action on the parts of provincial and federal governments to change that situation. I do not think there is political will to do that.
Senator Spivak: There is political will on the other side to get as many foreign companies in to cut as much of the forest as possible. Do you think that is a viable goal for economic development? Is that what you are proposing; smaller licences, maybe alternative ways of logging for aboriginal peoples, and an ability to push for this on disputed lands? There must be some places where there is enough of a land base to support a logging operation.
What is your view of economic development in aboriginal communities if they were not being overridden by huge forestry companies to such an overwhelming extent?
Ms Smith: We are advocating that. We are doing a study right now on value-added for First Nations. We discussed that people should look at the value-added market, and particularly that First Nations should look at the integration of cultural and spiritual aspects with product development.
For instance, there is a First Nations person in Winnipeg who manufctures coffins. He has been making coffins for the aboriginal community and doing a good business. He does it simply. He puts the four coloured ribbons and things like that on the coffin.
It may be we could incorporate aboriginal designs into furniture and have a specialty or niche market. With log houses, perhaps we could incorporate carving and design into the actual structure. There are a myriad of ideas.
The way the economic development is structured, most First Nations people in the industry have been the woods workers; the loggers who cut the pulp logs and take them to the mill. Yes, you must have a land base; you must have a licence and tenure. You must have the ability to finance a mill because in value-added mills the equipment is expensive.
Senator Spivak: The provincial governments give all kinds of money to foreign companies to finance mills and in many cases those loans are forgiven.
Senator Taylor: In Alberta they are forgiven. Mind you, it was a $250 million loan to a native Albertan, who might have been 22 years a Tory, that was forgiven. Mitsubishi of Japan has not made a payment on their debt on the grounds that the mill is not profitable. Mind you, they are doing their own accounting.
I am a member of the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. I mentioned there the issue of aboriginal rights going down the drain with the federal government using the 1930 Transfer Resources Act as an excuse to be through with forestry.
Yet, I have a different perspective than you. After all, the courts have decided that hunting rights extend far beyond reserve lands, that they extend over the entire province and over any time of the year. Surely the habitat in which the hunting exists must be the same.
I invite you to make a presentation to the committee on Aboriginal Peoples along that line.
Ms Smith: May I ask members of this committee what you can do to make changes?
Senator Spivak: It depends on the circumstances. We certainly have the ability to have a platform of communication. We have the ability to initiate legislation, although not legislation which involves a tax or a funding.
The first thing we want to establish is what is actually happening. That is harder to do in some situations than in others. That is the limit of our powers.
Senator Taylor: When we started this study, we did not think too much about aboriginal peoples. It is only after field trips in Northern Manitoba and Northern Saskatchewan that we realized what you are saying about the whole forest as a bio-diversity. We were worried that the bio-diversity aspect was being overlooked in the development of the forest, and now we are talking timber. We also find that there is an aboriginal component.
The Senate has power to initiate legislation. We can initiate a levy, which is subtly different from a tax.
Also, in the Senate there is usually fairly close balance between the ruling and non-ruling party because it is so slow in changing as time goes on. Particularly because we are founded on the basis of geography rather than population, minority rights are important to the Senate, and certainly if there is a minority in Canada it has to be our First Nations people.
I encourage you to tailor this report a bit and present it to the committee on Aboriginal Peoples as well. It will not hurt if we come at it from both aspects. I believe you have a problem that most of society does not yet know about. You have an extraordinarily good position in this because right now we are discussing changes to the Constitution and self-government. Five hundred of the 600 bands in Canada live in forested areas. I see a very close tie here. You should be planting the seed now.
Senator Spivak: That is a good idea. It is not just a question of rights but of a whole culture which may be destroyed, and is on the way to being destroyed in more ways than one.
Which aspect of this did the Royal Commission deal with?
Ms Smith: It dealt with everything.
Senator Spivak: In terms of forestry, did it deal with the fact that aboriginal rights are being totally ignored?
Ms Smith: Yes. It dealt mainly with the issue of access.
Senator Spivak: Did it deal with rights and ownership as well?
Ms Smith: Yes. The binder I provided contains that section.
Senator Spivak: Senator Taylor says that people do not know about this. That is probably true. At least they do not know the detail.
At one point prior to the Charlottetown Accord, or perhaps it was prior to the Meech Lake Accord, there was an great disposition in the country toward redressing aboriginal rights and self-government. However, that feeling has passed. It is strange how things go in and out of fashion.
The real solution to this is in the courts, with penalties attached to transgression of the law. The law is there but it is not being enforced because no government is willing to enforce it.
What is your view on that? In your statement you seemed to lean toward consultative or co-operative processes. I know that is necessary, but do you think that in the end that will be effective, or will it be the courts?
Ms Smith: Change comes through a multitude of processes and this is one of them.Others include the courts, direct action, self-government and aboriginal people simply implementing their own systems. There are a myriad of ways in which change comes about.
Senator Spivak: If you live long enough.
Ms Smith: We always live with change. It does not matter how old we are.
The Chair: Thank you very much for a very interesting and informative presentation, Ms Smith.
The committee adjourned.