Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 11 - Evidence - November 30, 2010
OTTAWA, Tuesday, November 30, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 18:18 p.m. to study the current state and future of Canada's forest sector.
Senator Percy Mockler (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators and witnesses, I welcome you all to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
[English]
My name is Percy Mockler, a senator from New Brunswick and chair of the committee.
Honourable senators and witnesses, the meeting will be in two parts. We will be hearing witnesses for the first hour of the meeting, and then another panel for the second hour of the meeting. In our first panel we will have representatives of three different organizations.
Before I introduce the witnesses, I would like to tell them, as chair, on behalf of the committee, that we are sorry we were late. We were in session in the Senate chamber. Thank you for your indulgence.
That said, from Model Forest of Newfoundland and Labrador, Sean Dolter, General Manager; from Northeast Superior Forest Community, Earl Freeborn, Treasurer.
[Translation]
Ms. Claire Lauzière, General Manager of the Forest Community.
[English]
Also we have, by video conference, the Resources North Association, Kathi Zimmerman, General Manager. Thank you, witnesses. Thank you, Ms. Zimmerman, for accepting the video conference.
The committee is continuing its study on the current state and future of Canada's forest sector. We are looking more particularly at community forests.
Before I ask the witnesses to make their presentations, I would like to start by asking honourable senators to introduce themselves. I will start to my left.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: Fernand Robichaud, from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Frank Mahovlich, Ontario.
Senator Callbeck: Catherine Callbeck, Prince Edward Island.
Senator Ogilvie: Kelvin Ogilvie, Nova Scotia.
Senator Eaton: Nicole Eaton, Ontario.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you, honourable senators. First, I would like to thank our witnesses for accepting our invitation to appear.
[English]
I would now invite you to make your presentations. The clerk of the committee has advised the chair that we will start with Mr. Freeborn, to be followed by Ms. Lauzière, then Mr. Dolter and then Ms. Zimmerman.
Earl Freeborn, Treasurer, Northeast Superior Forest Community: Honourable senators, fellow witnesses and members of the gallery, I am the mayor of the small forestry community of Chapleau in Northeastern Ontario. I am honoured to have the privilege of being here today and representing not only my community, but also our regional partners that are addressing the challenges faced as a result of the economic crisis in the forest sector.
Before we introduce you to the Northeast Superior Forest Community, I wanted to speak to you about our program, the Forest Communities Program. This program that was announced in 2007 is an invaluable tool for communities like ours. It has a five-year funding envelope from Natural Resources Canada that is designed to assist forest-based communities adapt to the changing forest sector.
There are 11 forest community sites across this nation that are united in our mandate to do four things: Build new forest-based opportunities; facilitate capacity building and engage the communities; develop integrated multi-sectoral approaches to forest management; and, internationally, share success stories with other forest communities around the world. These are lofty objectives at any time, but at this particular time, when our forest communities are struggling, these objectives are really critical.
Each region in Canada is addressing these challenges in different and unique ways, and we are doing incredible work. We take the time to learn from each other, to work together in collaboration, and to share our successes from the East to the West Coast and all regions in-between.
We are grateful today for the invitation to address you, and I would like to introduce you to Clare Lauzière, the general manager at Northeast Superior Forest Community, who will provide you with a short presentation of who we are and what are doing in the northeastern part of the province of Ontario.
Clare Lauzière, General Manager, Northeast Superior Forest Community: My job here today is to explain a little bit about the Northeast Superior Forest Community, and talk about our partners in the work we have undertaken in our small part of the world. Within our packages that we sent, I have a slide deck here prepared for you, if you wanted to follow along or just to keep you focused on where the presentation is going.
We have a map in there, and it identifies 12 communities that we primarily service. We have six communities, as well as six First Nations reserves within our region. We have approximately six million hectares of land. We are about two hours west by road of Timmins and about two hours north of Sault Ste. Marie. That positions you right along the coast of Lake Superior. It is a vast region.
When we look at our population of 15,000 people, it converts to about two one hundredths of a person per hectare is all we have in our region. Although we have a large area it is not a huge population base, which makes this work even more challenging.
Our region has felt the economic downturn extremely severely. We have, like I said, a regional population of 15,000 people, 23 per cent of whom are First Nations. Five of our sawmills have closed within our region, which has related in 1,145 direct and over 1,700 indirect job losses. More than 2,800 workers have been displaced. When you are looking at a regional population of 15,000 people, it is a huge impact.
Unfortunately, with small regions like ours, many of these areas are single industry towns. There may be a small transportation industry with CP Rail or CN. There may be a mine that opens from time to time, not as consistently as the forest sector has been. What happens when you have a big downturn like this in our communities, it is not a huge increase in the unemployment rate, which you would see spike in larger centres. Instead, what you see is population decline.
We have had a 30 percent drop in population during this time. That has a huge impact on communities' ability to service their residents, provide for the tax base and give the residents decent service.
I thought I would talk to you about — now that I have set the stage for the environment within which we work — what we have focused our efforts on and some of our successes that we have had. First, I would like to talk about relationship building. In our region, it has been critical to our success to build a strong relationship, not only with industry players but also with our First Nations communities that operate within us. Our board specifically is based on six community partners that applied to the Forest Community Program. We are unique. We are the only site driven by municipalities wanting to work together in partnership.
We have had these six municipalities that have been working collaboratively at the table for the better part of a decade. We have been focused on bringing our First Nations communities to the same table to talk to us together, so when we make decisions that focus around our natural resources, it is partners between municipalities and First Nations making those decisions, which then, down the road, stops barriers from being erected and avoids other difficulties.
This has been a tremendous challenge, as I am sure folks around the table will appreciate. To have First Nations at the table on their own is a challenge, but to bring the municipalities together with these partners and actually make some decisions that can impact job creation has been difficult, but it has been very rewarding.
For the second time now we have had business meetings between mayors and First Nations chiefs. We set a joint work plan where the strategy for the following year and the types of initiatives we want to undertake are done collaboratively. We are working in partnership at all times. We put all our cards on the table together.
There is a lot of talk across the country about the potential of non-timber forest products. This is one of the areas which our organization focuses on. Non-timber forest products, in our opinion, is something that has the potential to really redevelop a region, especially ours, from berries, to birch sap, to cedar oil, to value-added wood products. There is a lot of potential. It takes some innovation and some entrepreneurial spirit within the region to develop these.
One of our biggest success stories was actually with the support of Industry Canada and the community adjustment fund last year. We were able to leverage enough money to help with the start-up of Level Plains Enterprises Inc. Level Plains is Northeast Superior's very first wild low-bush blueberry plantation.
We were hoping to get 55 acres of land cultivated and into production. We were hoping for production to take place in August 2012 with our first harvest. We are very excited to say we have 220 acres in production and our first harvest will be August 2011. We are a year ahead of schedule and we have done five times what we expected. That is through the support of different funding programs that we were able to leverage for these kinds of partnerships.
Another focus for our organization is on the knowledge transfer. We have really benefited by being a part of the Model Forest Program or the Forest Communities Program, FCP, as it is called now. We have benefited by having a network of folks across the country that have the expertise in areas we may not. Rather than starting things from scratch and learning for ourselves what other people may already know, we have put a lot of time in building relationships across the country to share knowledge.
We are also doing that within our own region. We think it is important for us to re-educate our youth on the value of the forest. Over the years, this seems to have been lost somewhere down the road. Therefore, we are trying to figure out how young people who have these new and innovative ideas can focus those efforts around the forest sector. It is also important to consider how we can encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in our kids to be able to invest in our own region themselves rather than expecting others to come in and solve all our economic problems.
People always ask us how we do it. We get support from so many people. We have political leadership within our region that has really bought into this as a model. They believe in non-timber forest products and value-added wood opportunities. They also believe in the value of our traditional mills. We do not want to see any more mills go down. We want to find a way to ensure everyone operates within the forest economy in a cost-effective manner, and ensure that all of our residents have meaningful employment. We focus on collaboration and not competition.
Financial support is key. These types of projects always take money. We have had tremendous success and we have seen support from a multitude of private and public funding agencies. We have taken our $325,000 and multiplied it by six each year. Together with our First Nations partners, we are leveraging at a rate of six-to-one to about $2 million annually.
We have regional buy-in, which is where partnerships factor in. We are only one organization. Part of our mandate is to bring others together; the more people who are united in our cause the easier it gets to do our tasks and the more our region, communities and residents start to believe in the work we are doing. We have over 75 contributing partners to our organization. This is really significant for us because we have only been operating for three years. We were one of the new sites that were awarded the Forest Communities Program in 2007.
Finally, we have the entrepreneurial spirit. Some of my colleagues from across the country might argue with me but I do not think you see the entrepreneurial spirit in Northern Ontario anywhere else in this country. We have people who are willing to invest when the times are tough. We have people coming out with great models; bringing partners together for bioenergy facilities and developing blueberry plantations on their own after hours if they have to; exploring other activities and how to partner and make things more cost effective; and all we have done is facilitate the process. We have been able to put the pieces together, help them access funding and resources, and show them that we can be really positive for our region if we work together and if we plan a strategic approach.
That is basically what I wanted to talk to you about today.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I would now ask Mr. Dolter to make his presentation.
Sean Dolter, General Manager, Model Forest of Newfoundland and Labrador: Thank you for the invitation to present to you. For my opening discussion, I will talk a little bit about the Model Forest of Newfoundland and Labrador that has been around since 1992, first as part of the Model Forest Program and now as an important part of the Forest Communities Program.
We have it on the screen there and you also have the speaker's notes for my presentation. We are a proud member of over 50 international model forests, globally. The model forest is divided into regional networks in which we are part of the Canadian Model Forest Network.
Again, our site is an FCP recipient, Forest Communities Program, and represents the island of Newfoundland and Labrador and the mainland in Labrador through our relationship with the Innu Nation.
Since 1992, we have been an extremely important facet of our forest sector, primarily in building capacity and engaging rural forest-dependent communities, the industry sector and all levels of government. We have been involved in conflict resolution between sectors that have not normally been getting along in our province. We have been able to bring them to the table in a constructive dialogue to have them start to forge partnerships. We have also done so with the public in explaining aspects of sustainable forest management.
We have also been extremely important with leveraging knowledge, the skill sets from the community and industry, and also for leveraging financial resources so that no one entity with regard to the forest sector takes on the risk associated with a new innovative practice.
It is about research and integrating all aspects of the use of our forests. We have been concentrating primarily on enhancing traditional forestry, in sawmill production and pulp and paper. However, with the new FCP program, as of 2007, we have been extremely involved in non-timber forest products and especially product development from the waste of our sawmills.
We also bring to the education system what the forest sector has to contribute with regard to sustaining our resources. There is a lot of negative promotion within our education systems concerning the role that our future foresters have to play. We believe we have taken some of our curriculum programs and our local knowledge and provided that as a mechanism to get it into the education systems for our youth.
We have developed new forest space economic opportunities by working with local communities. We work with 26 local communities. We also look at sharing these particular programs and success stories, both nationally through the Canadian Model Forest Network and, internationally, through the International Model Forest Network Secretariat. It is all about assisting our partnerships and being relevant, and we do that through project management and leveraging resources.
This is what we look like in Newfoundland. We do have a test area — our lab, you could call it — which is in the northwestern tip of Newfoundland. We have had a board of directors since 1992, which encompasses all the major land managers so decisions can be made at our board level. However, we also have a management group, which consists of normal stakeholders who may have a conflict with revision of the use of the natural resources. However, we are able to bring them around one table so they can work together on building partnerships.
Since 2007, through the FCP program, we have also been experimenting with engaging 26 different communities. We are now at the community level, not just at the board level, with our industry and government tables. We have two, and one is in the Great Northern Peninsula where we have 21 stakeholders that we consult with. We build their capacity with regard to engaging different economic opportunities from the forest. We also use a municipal model in White Bay South where we engage mayors and representatives from their communities. We do the same type of thing, but use a different structure for building capacity.
The key focuses right now through our new Forest Communities Program are looking at non-timber forest product research and development, which is something new to Newfoundland and Labrador. We have become a voice for a lot of the different agencies and organizations that have been catalysts in this particular area, but we are also concentrating on wild mushrooms and wreath production. Honey production is a new area we have been getting into. We also do birch sap and syrup.
A lot of the communities basically cannot take the risk associated with opening new businesses because they are community members and are fairly risk averse. We come in there, "hold their hands'' and basically build an argument that they should invest and become entrepreneurs within the regions.
We are also engaging in industry, primarily the bioenergy industry, and helping our local industry partners with certification and creating demand within the province, particular with pellet manufacturing facilities. There are two partners in the model forest program. We also convert certain facilities to using bioenergy technology and biomass from our forests.
We are presently negotiating with Conne River, the Miawpukek First Nation, and ensuring that they have the capacity to look at different uses of the forest. We are also engaged with Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, one of our strong partners, in the use of hog fuel.
We have 40,000 to 50,000 stoves in our houses around Newfoundland and Labrador and there is a bad black market with commercial fuel wood. Therefore, right now we are building the business case that local communities can organize themselves in order to contribute to the use of fuel wood from their communities to the urban centres.
We are also engaging in the agriculture industry. Being in a northern climate, we are convincing people that there is another energy alternative to heating greenhouse facilities. That is biomass.
Regarding sawmill enhancements, we are working with our local partner, Burton's Cove Logging & Lumber, with regard to bringing in new equipment and trying to create some value-added aspects to their challenge to the commodity lumber issue.
A large part of what we do is conflict resolution, whether it is moose browsing in the Gros Morne National Park or the establishment of protected areas. We are the neutral — you could call it honest — broker. We basically do not take a side; we are non-partisan. We build the capacity between government departments to talk to one another, and also for industry to talk to the public.
School-based education is a large part of our program. We have a specialist on staff that assists us in building the curriculum, actually meeting with the Department of Education and looking at how forestry can fit into the curriculum and meet their guidelines for teaching.
We also provide communications services to the forest sector. Foresters are not great communicators, but through the Model Forest Program, we were able to come up with some significant communications strategies.
This is what we look like in White Bay South. This is a region that has seen some major closures of shrimp and other fish plants. Within this particular area, we have the mayors sitting on a forest network, and we are concentrating on the establishment of Newfoundland's proposed first community forest to bring revenue back to the community. We are also looking at tourism strategies, horticultural mulch production from sawmill waste, and wreath cooperatives.
This would not have come about if we were not there holding the hands and showing what business strategies are capable of for local residents of those communities. It is all about training and seminars, and also some microloans — even showing them how to write proposals.
We are also engaged at the international level. Since 1997, through the CCFM, Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, criteria and indicators program, the model forest was challenged to look at local-level indicators, of ways to measure our impact upon the forest resources. This has manifested in Canada having the highest rate of certification because local-level indicators feed into certification of our land base, whether it be through the Canadian Standards Association or FSC, Forest Stewardship Council.
We have taken that particular experience, rolled it together and we are now delivering it to Argentina. Through our representative and with the help of the Canadian Forest Service, we have met for the last three years and taken the Canadian experience with monitoring their impact upon forest resources. We are capable of preparing them, hopefully, for future certification of their land base.
This February, we had the pleasure of training the trainer, watching how the Argentinean students we had, or the forest practitioners, are also going to take the message we shared with them and deliver it to other Latin American countries.
I will not read through this but I want to show you beyond the FCP. By the federal government's investment, we are also capable of building capacity with our wildlife sector — our Department of Natural Resources through the provincial government, Parks Canada, the Canadian forests also, and the parks and natural areas division — some of our very important partners.
With respect to return on investment, I wanted to put up this slide to show you that with the federal government investment in our program, we are capable right now of leveraging almost three-quarters of our annual cash income from partner sources, not the federal government. The estimates this year will be up, with partner contributions, to $1.1 million toward our program, versus the $325,000 federal government investment.
On in-kind contributions, we are now seeing our partners taking investments from the Model Forest Program and building upon that, instead of us taking investments from them and managing those projects. That is very positive when our partners can now become autonomous and take programs, which we initiated back from 1993.
In 2012 and beyond, we would like to see ourselves maintain a leadership role in forest management at the community level. We have a national identity in this area, which is globally respected. We also want to be a delivery mechanism, as we are now for our provincial government, but also for federal policy. If it is innovative, we can help build that capacity to roll it out to the communities.
We also see ourselves now and in the future being a global mentor for sustainable forest management. Canada led this journey back in 1992 under the Green Plan, and we are continuing to take that into 27 different countries now and implement it. It is about being relevant to the needs of the rural forest-dependent communities in Canada and to our forest sector.
Thank you for the opportunity to give these opening statements. I end with saying that it is important for us to be efficient with regard to investments in our program, relevant to the needs of our sector, and well respected within our communities and by the general public.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Dolter. Now from Prince George, B.C., Ms. Zimmerman. I think you have heard the conversation and the presentations, so the floor is yours.
Kathi Zimmerman, General Manager, Resources North Association: Thank you. I have distributed paper versions of the presentation that I have prepared. Hopefully, you all have copies of it available, although I will ensure that for those who do not, I will cover all the information included there.
I would like to start by taking this opportunity to thank the Senate committee for the opportunity to speak today and for accommodating me via video conference. This has been very convenient.
I would like to take the next 10 minutes of your time to paint a picture for you of our organization, and share some of the stories of how we are bridging gaps between communities, industries and the environment.
On my next slide, I am giving a quick overview of my presentation. I will discuss who we are, what issues are facing our regions, the local solutions that we have been helping develop toward countering the forestry crisis, as well as local and national partnerships and collaborations that are key to making our work possible. Finally, I will focus on the community involvement in forest management and how that strengthens the economic, ecological and social roles of Canada's forests, which is what we have been specifically invited to address with you today.
The Resources North Association is a non-profit, board-directed society with the mission of building collaborative approaches for resource management and community stability and prosperity. Our association came together by the partnering of two organizations, the McGregor Model Forest Association and the Integrated Resource Management Business Group, IRMBG.
The McGregor Model Forest was funded under the previous Canadian Model Forest Program. Since its inception, since 1992 until 2007, it operated successfully for 15 years. This group got together with the IRM Business Group and recognized the need to start addressing integrated resource management, bringing the different sectors together and getting them to collaborate and work with one another.
We have our core funding under the Forest Communities Program, to the tune of $325,000 a year, and we bring in external project funding to the tune of around $800,000 or $900,000 per year.
I wanted to emphasize the fact that this association is built on a model of partnerships with over 50 members, including governments, industries, communities, First Nations and academics. We have representation from each of those areas that sit directly on our board.
Our area of interest is through Central and Northern British Columbia. We have our head office in Prince George. The area that we cover is about 25 million hectares or 250,000 square kilometres. To give you a sense of what that means, it is almost as big as Labrador.
In our area, we have 25 towns and 30 First Nations, with a population base of around 125,000 people. We are primarily located in the sub-boreal forest regions. As you cross the Rocky Mountains into the northeast, you are bordering on the boreal forests.
The issue that faces our region is the forestry downturn. The Senate has identified at length the multiple facets that have contributed to that downturn.
One of the key issues that affect our region is the mill closures and shutdowns that have occurred. In the Senate's report, I have seen that there are 48 mill closures and shutdowns that have occurred between the period of 2003 and 2005. That trend has continued over the last couple of years since.
One thing that is unique to British Columbia is that we have ecological conditions that compound that. We have the mountain pine beetle epidemic that has devastated our pine forests, which will likely prove to be far more significant and long-lasting than the downturn that is currently attributed to our economic conditions.
Many of you are well aware that the predominant factor that has allowed mountain pine beetles to reach epidemic levels is climate — numerous consecutive mild winters and drought-like summers. That has also been contributed to by the fact that we have a long history of replanting our forests with monoculture pine stands. This has allowed the mountain pine beetle to explode and reach epidemic levels.
In terms of the social conditions, we have, in the last couple of years, over 3,000 job losses. With a small population base, that is very significant. High unemployment, population declines, increasing poverty and crime. Over the five years previous, the Senate identified that there were over 10,000 job losses and layoffs in that period, the highest in Canada.
On top of this, we also have rapid growth in emerging sectors — oil and gas, transportation, mining, energy and tourism are all making their way into our regions and developing. There has never been more of a need for consideration of cumulative impacts of having all these multiple sectors developing on one land base.
With respect to the action, as Ms. Lauzière mentioned earlier, we are focusing these on the mandate set out under the Forest Communities Program, the first one being to develop more forest-based economic opportunities.
What do you do when the forests you depend on for all our economic activity are entirely dead and pose a huge wildfire risk? Is there an opportunity to be found here? What we have been helping our region explore are the opportunities in agroforestry and bio-energy, two growing sectors that can help offset the impacts.
Agroforestry allows us to convert the dead forests to productive sites with alternating crops of forests, trees and agricultural products. It can also be mixing forestry and range production.
Bioenergy is a rapidly growing sector with dead pine being a significant feedstock supply which we have an abundance of. We currently export, in B.C., 80 per cent to 90 per cent of our wood pellets to Europe. We certainly have the capacity to supply local facilities with the feedstock needed, and we have the space to develop those facilities. It is an emerging opportunity we are trying to take advantage of.
Resources North hosted two workshops over the past year to promote the development of these two sectors in Central and Northern B.C. Speakers provided participants with information needed to pursue these new ventures and enabling diversification of our forest-based opportunities.
Steering committees were made up of 8 to 12 partners, and they provided the strategic direction for these activities. In addition to the workshop that we developed on bioenergy, we also produced an update to the guidebook that was developed by the Province of B.C., Pursuing Biomass Energy Opportunities and Technologies in British Columbia. This updated version allowed the latest information on technologies, funding opportunities and sources to come to our region.
In testament to the success of these workshops and activities, we were approached by one of the local First Nations, the Saik'uz, to ask us how they could go about establishing a bioenergy facility with their band office and related buildings. The partnership we had established with our steering committee and the many people who came to the table to help these events occur allowed us to partner up the community with Green Heat Initiative, who was able to go out and do an evaluation of their community to assess the feasibility of establishing a bioenergy facility on-site.
The second action that I will discuss is facilitating capacity building and engagement of communities. Two projects relate to this. With bioenergy receiving significant attention in our region, and wind energy becoming more prevalent, we are looking at promoting the additional alternative energies available, including solar, hydroelectric, hydrogen fuel cell and geothermal. We are working in partnership with the Omineca Beetle Action Coalition, which is an organization of mayors and councillors in the area that has been established to help address the pine beetle issue.
We are looking to establish an alternative energy centre where communities, organizations and companies can turn to for determining what the best options are for them for renewable energy. It is still very much in the initial stages, and to date much of the work has focused on the bioenergy component, which has had the most success.
We have also established a northern climate change network that addresses community impacts and adaptation to climate change. This brings together the many players in the field of climate change. They are focused more on the adaptation component, so what do we do to adapt to climate change and the factors occurring, such as mountain pine beetle, rather than mitigation, so the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. We are working to increase awareness about new information, projects, tools and resources to make adaptations to try to minimize the effects of climate change on our communities.
The third action is to promote and share integrated multi-sectoral approaches to forest management. This is where Resources North really focuses our efforts. Addressing integrated resource management and cumulative impacts is one of the biggest challenges that our communities face, especially First Nations who, by law, need to be consulted on all potential developments on their traditional territories.
How does a community know or decide what the effects will be if a mine is established next to an oil pipeline, which is next to a forestry cutblock? How can they assure that the environmental, cultural and economic values that they hold are balanced?
We are currently working with the Saulteau First Nations, which is 250 kilometres north of Prince George, as well as the District of Mackenzie, to investigate these questions and help the establishment of a cumulative-effects assessment.
We also support several partners in their work toward recovery actions for woodland caribou, as well as the Nechako white sturgeon. We are also supporting our partners, the Council of Forest Industries in their educational program, natural resource management and career counselling for youth, which are being delivered across five communities in the area.
Finally, our board operations are a key component of how we receive direction and advice from multiple stakeholders. At the table we have 16 directors representing the provincial government, municipalities, First Nations, academics, businesses and industry associations from forestry, mining, tourism and oil and gas. Each project we do is reviewed through these lenses and consideration is given to all aspects to achieve the best balance possible.
The fourth and final action is sharing best practices and information with forest communities across Canada and around the world. We are currently working with Natural Resources Canada to test drive a guidebook called Pathways to climate resilience: A guidebook for forest-based communities. This will be piloted in Canada across four provinces with 15 model forests across the country, collectively organized as the Canadian Model Forest Network. We are able to address issues at a national level in a coordinated manner.
There is also interest from the model forests in Russia to pilot this project, potentially through the International Model Forest Network, which Mr. Dolter mentioned we are a member of.
Similarly, there are five Canadian model forests where we have brought together and coordinated activities that are related to caribou management in Western Canada. We have brought together researchers and managers from the four Western provinces to share information on work that is currently under way. We have identified opportunities for collaboration and information exchange, and discussed potential solutions that the network can bring to the table.
Currently, we are working towards a proposal that would see the development of strengthening a process for local involvement for development and implementation of recovery plans that involve industry, communities, First Nations and local stakeholders.
In conclusion, I would like to bring some of the experiences that we have here in B.C. to the table. Having experienced the effects of the mountain pine beetle, we know that ecological crises can even trump economic ones, that adequate consideration must be given to those factors and how they influence the forest-based communities. Long- term thinking, planning and adaptation are absolutely necessary to address this.
Diversification within the forest sector as well as into other sectors is necessary for community stability. Sharing the information and knowledge that we have across the country only makes sense, and the forum that we have with the network allows us to do that. Along those lines, I would certainly like to invite any members of the Senate committee who are interested to join us up here in Prince George. Hopefully, we will be able to get you out and show you some of the activities we are involved in. Maybe you will see a caribou, maybe a sturgeon. If neither of those, certainly we will be able to show you many a dead pine tree.
I would like to end by saying that collaboration is absolutely paramount. The value of the Forest Communities Program to our communities has been the neutral platform, or sandbox, where people can come together to work toward solutions without biases. It allows us to build the bridges that allow the forest sector to collaborate with communities and other sectors.
Working together is key to accomplishing these objectives, and this program is unparalleled in its ability to enable these partnerships to exist. Together, we are definitely stronger. I would leave you with the final slide, which shows our working partners at the table with us.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Zimmerman and witnesses, for the information you have provided to the committee. It has been enriching. With that, we will start our questions.
Senator Eaton: It is all very interesting. Ms. Lauzière, I loved your presentation because we have been hearing a lot from other people about what you are doing. It is very interesting to see you wrap it up so nicely.
When you talk about blueberries and mushrooms, you also talked about value-added wood products. Can you tell us a bit about that and what you are developing?
Ms. Lauzière: This is one portion of our program that is being led by our First Nations partners. We are looking at developing a cluster model approach where wood products that are coming in are used; any wood waste or any piece of a tree that is not currently in use finds a use.
We have an issue in our region as well when it comes to poplar with a lot of the OSB, oriented strand board, mills that are also down. It is not just the sawmills that are down but the OSB mills are down as well because there is no market for poplar. That then impacts our sawmills. All of a sudden they have this product they cannot cut in these areas anymore, so it is impacting their bottom line.
One specific value-added program we are looking at is wood torrefaction.
Senator Eaton: Can you explain that?
Ms. Lauzière: It takes what is traditionally an underutilized species, like poplar, and puts it through an intense heating process that strengthens the wood to the point where it is extremely hard like a hardwood, which would then have different uses. These types of programs are done and these types of technologies are done.
Sometimes you find boats off the West Coast of Canada that take these products and are doing some of these types of new technologies, and have new value adds being put on their poplar. Deciding what to do with poplar is a real issue for us. It would help our sawmills and our industry all around, so we are trying to do cluster model. That would allow our sawmills to turn poplar into hardwood that can be used for products.
We have a new cedar mill that opened within our region since NSFC, Northeast Superior Forest Community. I believe it started in 2008 and they do things like cedar shingles and chips for gardens. They can manufacture decking. They do all sorts of different products.
Although in terms of development in new technology, it is really torrefaction that we are looking at but we are helping our other industries find uses for their products.
Senator Eaton: Do you have relationships with any kind of research coming out of universities in terms of some of the new products being developed, for instance, at the University of Guelph? Do they come to you?
Ms. Lauzière: They have not done so specific to value-added wood. We are contacted probably every two to three months from different research programs from universities. We are currently affiliated with some research people who used to be from the University of Waterloo, but now they are out in Saskatchewan. We also have a research program from the University of Toronto that is more about watershed management.
We have not embarked on that road yet for value-added wood products. Hopefully down the road, those are absolutely the types of relationships we are looking to build.
Senator Eaton: Thank you. They are doing some interesting work in nano-products. It will be interesting. May I ask a short question?
The Chair: Certainly.
Senator Eaton: You were talking about problems with a monoculture stand of trees that is very easy for a pine beetle to come through and wipe it out, were you not? Did I misunderstand you?
Ms. Zimmerman: That has been a contributing factor.
Senator Eaton: Are you trying to support too many trees now with all the reforestation? Is that also a factor or not that the soil has too many trees to support?
Ms. Zimmerman: Are you talking specifically about landscape tree density?
Senator Eaton: Yes, I am explaining badly. One of our witnesses recently was talking about over-treeing; the land is becoming overly dense and therefore the immune system of the tree has been weakened.
Ms. Zimmerman: The really interesting thing about the lodgepole pine is that it is an early successional species, so it naturally comes back on the landscape as one of the first species to colonize. It often colonizes densely and has natural thinning processes, so I think that may not be an issue. It certainly has not been raised as a concern in our region.
The reason it has been a problem with mountain pine beetle is that stands that might traditionally have been a combination of pine and spruce and maybe subalpine fir have been converted over to a monoculture of simply lodgepole pine. Lodgepole pine is typically planted because it grows the fastest; it is an early colonizing species. That has been a forestry practice done in British Columbia for quite a few years, before we really realized that having the diversity and multiple species is more beneficial.
Senator Eaton: Are you educating and trying to get people now to grow a multiple of species?
Ms. Zimmerman: Fortunately, we have come to that realization over the past 10 years. There are the 20 years that preceded that where we went about planting monoculture pine stands everywhere. We have had a lot of initiative that came through the British Columbia forest practices code which promoted biodiversity and different stand types. That was to try to prevent the kinds of things we are experiencing now, where you have the mountain pine beetle able to march through the region and leave an unlimited supply of dead pine trees in its wake.
Senator Mercer: Thank you, witnesses, for being here. Ms. Lauzière, you talked about 220 acres of low-bush blueberries. That is a significant size, although I come from Nova Scotia where we consider ourselves the blueberry capital of Canada. Did you chose a specific type of low-bush blueberry to use, and where did you get that species from?
Ms. Lauzière: We have actually done cultivation; we have not actually done a plant for blueberries. Within our region in Northeastern Ontario, within our forest types and soil types, blueberries are natural spreaders. They do not really need to be planted. In fact, we did test trials where we tried to plant different species of blueberries and they take more effort to cultivate and to get them to grow. It takes years and years.
Therefore, along the northeastern Superior coast, we took these 220 acres to start. I want to add that we have 2,000 hectares that will be in production in the Chapleau region, so we will give Nova Scotia a run for its money in the coming years. That is what I am hoping for.
We are doing the traditional Northeastern Ontario wild low-bush blueberry. They might not be as large as the high- bush ones you find, but you also will not find any seeds in them. They are definitely tastier.
Senator Mercer: The low-bush ones have always been tastier. You will have a hard time competing with the quality of the ones from Nova Scotia, but that is an aside.
Mr. Dolter, you used the term "hog fuel'' in your presentation and I am not familiar with it. Perhaps you could tell me what hog fuel is.
Mr. Dolter: It is a ground wood species which would be a fairly low-valued species. When a harvester now goes into the wood, they have several piles. The first pile will be pulp logs; the second would be for a sawmill; and a contractor would have a third one, which would be an energy wood. Also, there is wood that cannot be used for anything, for one reason or another. It may be dead; it may have a fairly high cull value, which means a percentage of the log is dead. That is taken to one central yard, which is one of our partners, and they grind it up into mulch, and that is injected into the boilers of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper to overset the use of Bunker C.
Senator Mercer: In your presentation, you talked about beyond the FCP is service to our partnership. In your wildlife division, you show a Lower Churchill impact study. Again, I am from Nova Scotia and we have a particular interest now in the Lower Churchill with the recent agreement between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador on the transmission of power from the Lower Churchill. What did this study tell you?
Mr. Dolter: It was primarily conducted by the proponent, which is one of our partners, the wildlife division in Newfoundland, under the Department of Environment and Conservation. We worked with them in looking at different flora and fauna, which would be under their department's environmental assessment process. That particular report went right into the environmental assessment process.
I would like to have a departmental representative telling you what the results of it showed, but there was not anything that was that detrimental to specific species. It was just a case in which most of those particular research projects enable us to take resources from our partners and hire people to do those assessments. I would be happy to provide you with the report after these consultations.
Senator Mercer: That would be appreciated, if you would do that through the clerk.
Ms. Zimmerman, we visited British Columbia, and I visited several times in various committee activities. We have seen the devastation of the pine beetle. This summer, we saw the results of some of the wildfires as well.
In the reforestation process that you are going through, how extensive has that been and how far north have you been able to go? The region you have in your map starts in the south at Prince George and goes north of Fort St. John.
Ms. Zimmerman: That is a really good question. The reforestation efforts cannot keep up to the deforestation efforts. Right now, we are coming to the close of what we have called a bit of a boom period. Given that we have as much standing deadwood as we do in our forests, there have been increased annual allowable cuts in order to address the issue, especially with regard to the safety of surrounding communities. There has been a lot of effort in removing those trees to prevent wildfire-urban interfaces.
There has been a fairly significant amount of harvesting happening over the years, so we are just coming to the end of our boom period. Unfortunately, what that means is that we will be moving into our bust period, where we do not have the cut available to us that we have had in the past. That will take quite a bit of time to recover.
In terms of your question about reforestation, what is happening is that because this is considered to be salvage harvest, we are not getting the same money that we would get from a normal cutblock; the stumpage rates are lower. There are not as many resources that are available to go into the replanting.
We have also had some fairly significant cutbacks in our provincial government, as most people have experienced across the country, so programs such as our replanting program have been considerably reduced. We are not able to keep up to replanting the areas that we are harvesting in.
With regard to your question of how far north the replanting goes, I am afraid I am not able to address that completely. I know that the efforts to replant are distributed across the province. It depends on the companies and the organizations that are harvesting in those areas.
Senator Mercer: You said the deforestation is far outstripping reforestation. Is that because of the pine beetle or is that because of active harvesting?
Ms. Zimmerman: It is because of the harvesting of the beetle-killed forests. A standing dead forest will stand in that condition for many years. It is not until we actually go in and take those trees down that we have to deal with the replanting.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you for your presentations. You are very interesting and knowledgeable. I am not a regular member of this committee, so I have to admit that I really was not very knowledgeable on this forestry community program. However, it seems, by your presentations, that it has been very successful.
I notice that it will end in 2012. I am just wondering, if there is another program — I certainly hope there is — are there changes that you would like to see made?
Mr. Dolter: I must say when we received the first change in 2007 with regard to the mandate of building strong rural communities, it was not a significant leap but it was still a change that needed to occur. I believe the federal government did the right thing with regard to concentrating our efforts and our network that had been 15 years in its development, to centre it on communities. I would not like to see the focus and objectives of the program change.
Perhaps the areas we are investing in, and a bit closer relationship with the Canadian Forest Service within our regions, together with a little bit more policy driven with regard to innovative solutions to meeting some of the demands from rural forest-dependent communities, would be aspects that a lot of FCP sites would welcome.
Ms. Lauzière: Upon renewal of this program, I think I share a lot of the same beliefs as Mr. Dolter. The program really has it right in terms of the mandate and what the role of this program is designed to be.
My background specifically is economic development. I have been an economic development specialist for over a decade now. During this time, there are very few programs like this that provide an organization with the opportunity to have seed money, which means core operations where you can have a staff that works for you, that you can be consistent and say we have five years of funding so we can get this done and someone will come and work for you for a five-year term.
We cannot offer full-time or consistent lifelong jobs, which may have been common a decade ago or two ago. It is not anymore. Giving us the opportunity to have multi-year funding allows us to secure the skills we need in order to do this. I think there is flexibility in the way the program operates, and the way the program allows the sites to operate, and that should continue.
What would be nice with this program is to allow better collaboration nationally. We are currently working on a national caribou strategy for all the sites within the boreal forest that have issues pertaining to caribou within their regions. Together with myself, Ms. Zimmerman, the Manitoba Model Forest, the Foothills Research Institute, and Susan Carr at the Prince Albert Model Forest, we all deal with the same issues. We are dealing with them a little differently but there are lessons to be learned in building that cohesive link.
Some areas put focus on different things. Hopefully, we are able, through this program, to build regional networks — perhaps at a landscape level, whatever the level might be — partnerships that make sense. We are big fans of partnerships at Northeast Superior Forest Community, but we do not think they should be forced. We think partnerships come out of a natural progression and the boreal forest is one that links a big chunk of this country. It gives us the opportunity to position ourselves out to the world as leaders in terms of boreal forest management.
Those are the only changes, from my perspective, that would be something that should happen with a renewed program.
Ms. Zimmerman: I will corroborate everything that Ms. Lauzière and Mr. Dolter have put forward.
As with all things, it would be wonderful to see the program expanded. As a network, 11 of us are funded through the Forest Communities Program but there are an additional 4 of us all working towards the same goals and objectives that are not. It would be great to see the opportunity to bring additional federal dollars to their table, too, so that we can facilitate the work that we do at the national level as well as the international level.
Senator Callbeck: There is one other area I want to ask about, and that is young entrepreneurs. You said that you have the best entrepreneurial spirit in Northeastern Ontario. Why is that?
Ms. Lauzière: In Northern Ontario, we really have the support of government to build the entrepreneurial spirit in our young people. There is a program called the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation. It has a specific youth entrepreneurship program that actually provides cash grants — non-repayable contributions — to young people who want to start businesses. It is something we really think is key.
Within our region, we had a 30-per-cent population decline, so the people who wanted to leave our region are gone. The people left in our region are committed to it. That type of commitment goes from parents to children.
The idea is how you foster the entrepreneurship. We do business plan competitions. We changed the business plan competition that goes on throughout our region; it is now focused on wood and young people who are looking at the forest in a new way. One person who had written a business plan to do a blueberry plantation was flabbergasted to know someone had thought of his idea and was making a viable business out of it. He had no idea about regions like Lac-Saint- Jean or Nova Scotia. He just thought, "I grew up in this great region and I love the outdoors. What do we have in abundance?'' It was as simple as that.
With a lot of our young, it is as simple as that. They see things every day through eyes that we do not see. Maybe we are jaded or have had a lot of experiences with things that have not worked, or have been tried and perhaps we will not try that again because this person tried it and it failed. Young people do not have that. They are more committed to the environment than ever before with green energy, green solutions and growing their own food. There are all kinds of these opportunities.
With our close relationship with our First Nations partners, we are doing cross-cultural awareness programs so that our youth, which are in non-First Nations communities, are actually learning about some of the traditional beliefs of the First Nations' youth. People then realize they can make their own tea. They can make the traditional cedar boats or it can be tamarack birds or anything else. There are opportunities out there.
We are finding that once you give kids the opportunity to think for themselves, they are more than happy to do so.
Senator Callbeck: How much is this grant you talk about for young people?
Ms. Lauzière: They get $25,000 cash from the government right off the top. There are other funding programs like the Canadian Youth Business Foundation that can top it up another $15,000. Plus there is youth entrepreneurship through things like Service Canada that will actually pay their salary on top of it. There are these different programs that you can manage to stack.
Senator Callbeck: Is that $25,000 a provincial program?
Ms. Lauzière: That is a provincial program. Again, it is only specific to Northern Ontario. This is something that most regions in Canada do not have access to. I think they should and there is a benefit. There is always the risk. For every good business idea, there may be one that might not cut it in the end. However, it teaches young people to figure out if they are interested in being an entrepreneur. It is a tough job and it is not for everyone.
Senator Callbeck: Can I go on?
The Chair: Yes, madam.
Senator Callbeck: Mr. Dolter, you talked about bringing the forest sector to the educational system. I would like you to talk a little bit about that.
Mr. Dolter: We have a program that we initiated with the Department of Natural Resources, our provincial department that looks at our forests. We have surgically dissected the Department of Education's curriculum guide for teachers. We looked at 32 different objectives that teachers have to deliver in their classrooms.
We specifically packaged what our forest sector has to offer to training and educating our youth through our educational system into a 45-minute educational video. It includes quite a few other materials, handouts and workbooks that we can contribute to our teachers. We can do in-servicing in order to train them about the good news stories about our forest sector.
We also have Forest in a Backpack for our primary students in our high schools, which is in every district office. That program takes any forest practitioner and gives them the tools necessary to teach our youth.
The issue we have been looking at is that kids are making decisions not to enter into the forest sector at a very early age. We have to combat that right now and we have to combat that in the elementary school system, and in the high school system, especially. We worked with the departments responsible. We have also worked with the wildlife division and the parks and natural areas division to show the kids there is a positive message with sustainable forest management and Canadian forests, and that this could be for them a first career opportunity. However, we have to do that in grades 6, 7 and 8 and have programs that actually meet with the objectives of the teacher and what they have to do as an educator.
This program was released last year in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It has been really successful. There has been an internship program, also, in which the model forest is involved with the Department of Education.
Senator Callbeck: Are you trying to promote entrepreneurship here, too?
Mr. Dolter: Very much so.
Senator Callbeck: Or just the forest sector?
Mr. Dolter: Entrepreneurship, but we are also trying to promote a business opportunity. It is not all about pulp and paper to us or sawmills. It is also about value-added and pre-engineered wood. It is about the plethora of different products that we can get from the forest.
Our educational component does not just deal with traditional industries. It also deals with the new emerging technologies and new products that are out there. We have a fairly large section on non-timber forest products.
We are trying to educate them and give them a little bit of a vision of the future. From that, we hope to develop the entrepreneurial spirit.
Senator Callbeck: Ms. Zimmerman, I believe you talked about educational programs in camps for youth. Maybe you can talk about that.
Ms. Zimmerman: That is correct. One of the great programs that our partner, the Council of Forest Industries, does is put on these two-day camps where they bring Grades 11 and 12 youth out to a camp where they focus on developing their skills in natural resource management. They are learning some of the tools of the trade for forestry. They might also be learning about wildlife management practices, mining activities, oil and gas development, et cetera.
A lot of times they are getting hands-on experience and are learning how to drive the ATVs, all-terrain vehicles. They are getting out there and learning how to do tree measurements and surveying that is needed in forestry. They are also learning the general principles and skills that are needed, as well as the educational requirements that would allow them to pick up the courses they need through their senior years in high school in order to go on in an education program in one of those natural resource fields.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you very much.
Senator Mahovlich: When the Senate visited the Vancouver Olympics, we were very impressed with the Oval, the rink out at Richmond where they speed skated. They used the pine beetle wood. Is there a demand for that type of wood? It was very attractive.
Ms. Zimmerman: Certainly. We market it as "denim pine,'' actually. It does have a very distinct look to it. It has the blue stain fungus that gives it its unique colouring. There is a demand for that and it is being marketed specifically. There are a lot of promotional products available. As you say, the podiums were actually constructed out of pine beetle wood as well.
There is a market but that market is limited. There is only a certain amount of time that that wood remains viable. You can harvest a tree that is denim pine that has the blue stain fungus in it which gives it that characteristic look for approximately eight to ten years. After that point, the fungus actually breaks down the lignin fibres in that wood so that the strength of the material does not meet code and is no longer being used for structural elements.
Senator Mahovlich: We have to hurry, therefore, and get it into use. I was wondering where the most successful blueberry plantation is, or is there one?
Senator Robichaud: New Brunswick.
Senator Mercer: No, Nova Scotia.
Senator Mahovlich: Georgian Bay.
Ms. Lauzière: Are you referring to commercial industry?
Senator Mahovlich: Yes.
Ms. Lauzière: There is no current commercial industry in Northern Ontario. In fact, there are no commercial, wild, low-bush blueberries anywhere in Ontario. All the blueberries in Ontario are high-bush so far. Our plantation is under development but, in general, you give yourself seven years from the time you have site prep to the time of first harvest.
We have been successful in fast-tracking that process. Our harvest will come August of 2011, and the site has been under development for about four years. That is what we have worked on.
In essence, the one site we have on Lake Superior, around Wawa, is our first of a network of what we are hoping will be six plantations. With these six plantations, the idea is that each of the community partners, or First Nation partners, can develop their own plantations and sell into a regional hub as a cooperative. The cooperative then markets out to the rest of the world.
From the indications we get from Quebec, they are estimating we need between 2,000 and 3,000 hectares of blueberry plantation land to become a world-class producer of blueberries.
Incidentally, once we went to Quebec, they came to look at the land we have within our region and the first thing they said was, "How much? We want to invest and would love to be a part of it.'' Although we encourage investment, we also encourage our region to become self-sustaining. The further we get down in the development process of these plantations, the more an ownership stake our own region takes into it, and it becomes ours. Then, if we need investment to supplement that, we look for that when it comes.
Our first and most productive site will be the Wawa location. We have a total of 400 acres there: 220 are ready and are completely developed and will be harvested in 2011. The rest we are still in the development stage of. The second phase will take place in Chapleau where we have a commitment for 500 hectares, up to 2,000 hectares of land. We had some consultants from Nova Scotia, from a blueberry farming family, come in to look at our land. He came up just last year and saw the area that we are talking about. They call it the Sultan Flats area. In the Sultan Flats he said he had never seen blueberry land like that in his life.
Senator Mahovlich: Did you send him back to Nova Scotia?
Ms. Lauzière: We did.
The Chair: Thank you very much, honourable senators. Before we ask the second panel to come forward, I thank the witnesses for the information they have shared. If you permit me, there are three questions that I would like to bring to your attention, and I would like you to send your responses in writing to the clerk.
Looking at your program or programs with the provinces, are the provinces and territories supportive of a community-based approach to forest management and also economic development? If you want to share information on that, we would appreciate that.
Also, when we talk about silviculture and plantations, we look at areas, as Ms. Zimmerman said, of monoculture. I do not know if you have experience with other species, but we would like to have information on that.
Also, what is your interrelationship with outfitters and fish and wildlife associations within your own model forest communities?
With that, to the witnesses of the first hour, thank you very much for the information you have shared with us. I will now ask the second panel to approach the table.
We now have, from Eastern Ontario Model Forest, Mark Richardson, General Manager.
[Translation]
We also have Ms. Colette Robertson, President of the Lac-Saint-Jean Model Forest.
[English]
We thank you for accepting our invitation to appear. We have a time frame, and I have assured the committee that we will adjourn by 8:30 p.m. With that, I will now invite the witnesses to make their presentations. According to the clerk, the first presenter will be Mr. Richardson, followed by Ms. Robertson.
Mr. Richardson, you have the floor.
Mark Richardson, General Manager, Eastern Ontario Model Forest: Honourable senators, on behalf of the many partners of the Eastern Ontario Model Forest, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present here today. I will say in this presentation that I will not mention the word "blueberries'' unless you ask questions about it.
The Eastern Ontario Model Forest is a membership-driven, not-for-profit, community-based organization. We have a strong board of directors, and not a day goes by that I am not grateful for their involvement in this program.
We have a bunch of management committees that deal with some of the science aspects and some of our programming components. We also have a number of special advisers, and we do this with five core staff members and some seasonal ones, depending on our funding programs. We are also strongly dependent on the many volunteers and our partners that support us.
I cannot emphasize enough the fact that the Eastern Ontario Model Forest and many of the other ones here — all the ones you have heard about tonight — are partnership-based organizations. We do not operate unless we have partners at the table. That has always been our motto and we continue to this day.
To me, this slide speaks to the value or the power of partnerships. We have been around for 18 years now. With the original federal investment of about $11.4 million since 1992, we have managed to generate additional funding of around $13.7 million and undervalued in-kind support of about $8.7 million. That speaks to the power of what partnership does, and what a little bit of seed funding that can be provided to a community-based organization can do.
You guys right now are in the Eastern Ontario Model Forest, believe it or not. I will put this offer to you; if you want to visit us in Kemptville, our office is 30 minutes south of here. We would be happy to entertain you, take you around and show you some of the things we do. You can learn a bit more about who we are, how we operate and some of the programs we have.
This is also settled landscape. We have over one million people within our region, so it is vastly different than many of the other ones you have heard about tonight. Our core area is about 1.5 million hectares and we are part of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest region. It is a different type of forest region, requiring different management regimes and different approaches to community involvement.
We have a fairly porous boundary and much of our activity is directed outside of our core area. We work cooperatively with anyone that supports our vision and our long-term goals. Over the 18 years we have been around, we have participated in many different projects in Southern Ontario, down in the States, in Quebec and in some of the other regions as well.
The International Model Forest Network was started by the Government of Canada back in 1992. It is a good news story. We are very proud of our affiliation with the International Model Forest Network, as we are with the Canadian Model Forest Network. We are also an ambassador for the FCP program, the Forest Communities Program.
Many visiting dignitaries and delegations that come to Ottawa come to meetings at the Canadian Forest Service and then we will take them out and show them a bit about what model forests and the FCP are all about. Just in the last year, we have had delegations from Russia, a couple from China and one from Chile as well.
There are many challenges with the forest sector in this region. Our board has clearly identified that we need to be better affiliated with the sawmill industry that is in the upper Ottawa Valley. They are the bread and butter of this region, as far as the forest sector goes. There are a number of mills that exist up there.
They tend to be family-owned operations that have been in existence sometimes for more than three generations. In the recent downturn of the forest sector, none of those mills has closed, I am happy to say, although many are just hanging on by their fingernails. If there is not a change in our direction, there is a possibility that we will lose some.
This is Lavern Heideman & Sons that you see on your screen now. They deal principally in red pine, but they do some other species as well. They are an FSC-certified, chain-of-custody mill. I will talk more about that in the rest of the presentation.
Here is your typical load of logs ready to go to the mill. I want to emphasize the product mix we have here. In the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest region, approximately 5 per cent, or 20 per cent of the value of that harvest, would be veneer-quality logs. Then we have another 25 per cent, which would be saw logs. Finally, we have about 70 per cent that would be what we call fibre-quality wood, which would be pulpwood, wood for energy or something else.
The biggest challenge our sector has right now is finding markets for that fibre-quality wood. In this region, because we are dealing mostly with a hardwood species mix, we can still sell saw logs, but principles around sustainable forest management dictate we need to find markets for that fibre-quality wood in order to manage our forests sustainably over the long run. If we cannot find markets for that, we will go back to the practices we suffered through years ago, which includes mostly high gradings. We will lose the genetic resource that we have and the quality of the forest for future generations, which would be a problem.
Because we live in a settled landscape here, we have a lot of landowner disconnect with respect to both the federal and, primarily, the provincial government. There are many landowner organizations out there that do not like government interference in what they are doing. This has been a challenge, mainly for the provincial government, although we have not experienced that. We still operate with some of the folks that are part of the landowner associations. We are seen as a bit of an honest broker on the landscape, so they will sit at our table and participate with us, although not always.
Another big challenge is inappropriate forest management practices. You do not want to sell your logs to this guy; that is why I have blotted out this phone number. We have done a lot of extension over the years in talking to landowners. I actually caught a landowner once writing this guy's phone number down on this piece of paper, so I thought from now on I will blot it out completely.
We are talking to landowners about principles around forest management. One of the worst things you can do is have a logger walk in without understanding what you need to do to manage your woodlot properly.
Invasive species are a nasty problem and represent a very significant threat to this region. The Asian long-horned beetle, which we do not have around here, may be the one good news story Canada has right now. We may have exterminated this pest from the Toronto area.
Before coming back to the model forest, I spent two years working with Environment Canada in their invasive species policy unit. I know a bit about these species and what the potential is. One thing the Government of Canada can do a fine job at is keeping these critters out of the country.
I will talk about some of the solutions. Forest certification has been one of our flagship projects for the last 10 years. Forest certification is grounded on the principles of economic, environmental and social responsibility for the management of that resource. It is effectively sustainable forest management. It is about third-party verification of the forest management practices and, in my opinion, it is the only tool that is appropriate for the private land that we are part of.
Certification is about bringing fibre to the market. In the last 10 years, more so in the last 3, we have brought over 6 million board feet of sustainably managed wood to the marketplace. We have reached out, through this certification project, to a new type of landowner. Many of them were afraid to touch government programs; they did not want to have anything to do with it. However, the fact that certification provides that assurance of good forest management gave them the opportunity to participate in a program they are now proud of.
Here are some of the results of that. That building is a Limerick Forest chalet. The logs are certified material that came from the forest around there. Forest certification is about selling fibre to the market. There is great opportunity in Eastern Ontario, as there is in the rest of Canada, to get this done.
We have also developed a chain-of-custody certification program for maple syrup. I actually brought 12 bottles and you are certainly welcome to take one from the bench. This comes from a sugar bush here in Eastern Ontario. He was the first syrup producer in all of North America to have a forest chain-of-custody certification. Certification is not about the syrup; it is about the forest management practices leading to the production of that syrup.
Here you can see some of the many partners we participate with in the certification program. Again, we are a strong partnership-based organization.
I will now talk about wood for energy because it offers a great deal of potential, not just here locally in Southern Ontario but across the country. The Eastern Ontario Model Forest is participating with companies like Ontario Power Generation to help them facilitate their transition to weaning themselves off coal by 2014. They have wholeheartedly adopted the idea around chain-of-custody certification as the mechanism by which they are obtaining their fibre. There is a great deal of opportunity. This is a bit of a transition also into the agricultural sector, because we have great potential in Southern Ontario to actually produce hybrid poplar and hybrid willow that can be used for value-added projects as well as energy crops.
That glittery green bug is the emerald ash borer. It is currently here in Ottawa. It is a very nasty pest. Although ash is not a major forest species for us as far as economic value goes, it is an important component of our forests and there is very little evidence to show we can stop this. I know the science is catching up to the effort but there is a long way to go. The key is to keep these pests out of the country in the first place. That slide I am showing you is ground zero. It was found down by the Lone Star just east of here a few years ago.
The Regional Forest Health Network is a group that the model forest facilitates. It is made up of municipalities, First Nations and forest delivery agencies. Their role is to take the developing science and policy framework and transition that down to the landscape. Often that is a big challenge for organizations in this area. Sometimes there is a gap between science and policy and the actual application of that onto the landscape.
The Ontario East Wood Centre is a centre for value-added commercialization. I will pass these around if we have a bit of time. These are hemicellulose-free wood pellets. It is about value-added, so there is a process by which we are partnering with a university in Syracuse. We are looking to facilitate a pilot plant through a process like this that will extract hemicellulose, which is a component of the wood. That hemicellulose can be distilled into other valuable chemicals which add value to it. Those pellets there are a suitable energy crop, but they are also water repellent and are essentially ash free. With pellets, ash is everything.
The area of environmental goods and services is another project we have going on. We are exploring mechanisms to value some of the non-traditional products coming from the forests, such as wildlife and water. How do you go about compensating a landowner for producing clean air, clean water or wildlife habitat? There is a long way to go on this, but we are certainly making headway there.
I have a couple of observations. Community involvement and programs like the FCP offer great opportunities to implement good policy and science. We have been doing that for 18 years. We are very grateful for the FCP program.
Markets for fibre-quality wood are vital for forest and forest sector sustainability. Again, I will say that if we cannot find a market for our fibre-quality wood, then the sustainability of our forests is at jeopardy.
The other side of it is that everything is connected. Multi-sectoral collaboration is critical. I would like to see more horizontal movement within governments so that agriculture and the CFS are collaborating on projects that directly involve communities. There is good opportunity there and I think that is one area where there can be some movement forward.
All the partners here are dedicated to preventing what you see on my final slide.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Richardson.
[Translation]
Colette Robertson, President, Lac-Saint-Jean Model Forest: Mr. Chairman, thank you for having us. My presentation will be in French, but you will find the English version in the folder that you have received.
At the outset, I would say that forests and blueberries constitute expertise that we have in our region. There is no need to discuss it: everyone knows that the best blueberries are in Lac-Saint-Jean. It has to be said that it is important and fortunate that expertise is exported because experimenting and being able to export expertise so that others can apply it and develop it in their regions is the very foundation of the model forests.
Who are we? We are a research and experimentation partnership of forest communities. We know that our communities in Lac-Saint-Jean depend on the forest. Among other things, this includes a partnership between the Lac- Saint-Jean Montagnais Council, which is a Quebec Innu First Nation, and two regional county municipalities that include the surrounding towns.
The special feature of this partnership is that this is the first time the municipalities and the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation have worked together.
So we are in the process of defining our vision. We have to combine our strengths and expertise in order to develop tools, knowledge and skills for the integrated management of forest resources.
When we talk about collective expertise in our region, it is mainly because we have the Model Forest section, which is a small team; we have been with the Forest Communities Program since 2007. We have three permanent full-time resources: the general manager, an administrative assistant and a communications officer. And all the personnel who work on the projects are recruited from our collective expertise. So these are all the organizations from our area.
We figured that people have expertise across our area to create this synergy. We only need to pool that expertise in order to develop it so that we can go a little further. So these are organizations that share the expertise across our area.
When you start putting in place an organization like the model forest and you depend exclusively on training programs, you do not want to have to lay off all staff when the program falls through. So by using the area's expertise with the resources that work there, we can continue the partnerships that are being established under this program.
What resources do we have? I think it is important to show the financial leverage that comes with this program. In forest green, you see NRCan's contribution and the involvement of the forest communities, what our communities have pooled together in order to make this partnership a success.
Other partners also contribute financially. The revenue from certain projects is in red. For example, among other things, in 2008-2009, we experimented with a planting machine, and the revenue from that was allocated to the project because we were working with a forest contractor in that part.
Since July 2007, we have been involved in 34 research and experimentation projects. I am going to tell you about the results that have emerged from some of those projects. We have four projects with strong economic development potential; we have nine tools for knowledge and skills reinforcement, six of which are in new business sectors, including biomass and degraded sites; and we have five in education and public awareness. We have more than 50 publications to our credit, and we are also taking part in various local, national and international events.
One of the projects we have worked on is forest mushrooms.
In your folder, you will find the guide to the edible mushrooms of Lac-Saint-Jean, the potential of which we are currently surveying. We are developing collective commercialization models for processed products. The packages I have brought contain chanterelles in tubes and dried mushrooms. They can be served as condiments, either with meats or in sauces; you can also make creamed mushrooms. You can see these mushrooms in our guide, and you can taste them too. I will let you discover them.
Senator Robichaud: Do you eat that with maple syrup?
Ms. Robertson: That is something else. You can also try them with maple syrup, but not on their own. The folder also contains the final report on the mushroom project which has not yet been published. That project represents an investment of approximately $165,000 by the model forest, and it is a project in three phases.
A new economic activity is emerging that is improving knowledge and increasing public interest. There is strong demand, and a lot of people are interesting in picking mushrooms.
There has been a lot of training for pickers, and stakeholders have joined in. The supply and diversification of local products has improved. These results have led to the development of a land management policy designed to promote access to non-wood forest products.
Another project that we are concerned with is the production of birch syrup. We experimented with this two years ago and last year. We started by selecting the birch areas and gashing and harvesting. Then we processed the birch syrup.
I have brought some, and there is enough for everyone to taste. What is interesting with birch syrup is that it is comparable to maple syrup and molasses. These are similar products, but each has its own specific characteristics. I would say that birch syrup is somewhere between maple syrup and molasses. To help you taste your syrup, I have brought you some bannock, an Indian bread. It was hot when I left this morning, but it is nevertheless still very fresh and good.
[English]
Senator Mercer: We have not eaten yet.
[Translation]
The Chair: We have not had supper yet; this could be a starter.
Ms. Robertson: I also brought a bottle of spruce beer. It is empty because I was afraid they might confiscate it from me at the entrance to the building. It is made by a local entrepreneur who operates a micro-brewery. He has conducted some experiments with spruce beer. It obviously is not a beer that keeps for a long time because it does not contain any preservatives, but this is the beer that has made a stir and it was produced by the micro-brewery La Chouape, short for Ashuapmushuan. For the moment, spruce beer is more a seasonal beer because it is still at the experimental stage.
So you see the bottle. If you ever want to taste spruce syrup beer, you will have to come and visit us. The tastings and disseminating the results required an investment of $145,000 by the model forest.
Obviously there has been economic diversification through sustainable forest development, and thus an increase in knowledge of new niche areas that result in local product development. There has also been regional and provincial business stimulation at the provincial level. Among other things, we have had visitors from Beauce, the Lower St. Lawrence, Lanaudière and Quebec regions that are interested in these processed products, particularly spruce, and who want to harvest sap and who have only one place where processing can be done. But these products are still at the experimental stage.
Another project I want to talk to you about is moose hunting, which was done in two phases. The first was zoning the area to improve management of the herd, the moose herd. The second was the moose hunting pilot project with an aboriginal guide in the Ashuapmushuam wildlife reserve, in aboriginal trapping areas.
This is a $48,000 investment that has produced highly conclusive results. All the hunters that we received as part of the pilot project saw moose. They did not kill them all because they were not all good hunters, but they saw them. They will improve and then will want to come back and hunt in the region. Ultimately, it is a good thing that they are not all good hunters because that protects the herd.
With regard to our new specialized tourist products, we are currently in a partnership with the Société des établissements plein-air du Québec and with Sépac, which manages most of the wildlife reserves. There are hunting guide jobs for aboriginals and increased revenues from hunting, and for Mashteuiatsh's Innu first nation, there has been a harmonization of forest uses through the promotion of cultural exchanges with the First Nations.
Those are the three projects I wanted to tell you about concerning the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean Forest Model. At the international level, we are also working in a partnership with Cameroon. We have organized workshops with the people of Cameroon on needs for training on wood residues in order to discover value-added non-wood forest products. The African Network of Model Forests is about to develop model forests in the Congo basin.
The Africans and the African Network of Model Forests have entered into a contribution agreement that will enable them to operate. In concrete terms, what we are doing with these people is a pen project. They wanted to use certain wood residues. Here I have a pen made of padauk. In the partnership, we wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to make hybrid pens using woods from both Cameroon and Quebec. It is made of maple and paleloba. The people there are working on this project creating micro-businesses. We are still developing the business plan and evaluating the value chain that these projects may represent.
Our aim is to develop our forest communities through the sustainable development of the forest environment with a view to continuing to live from the forest.
Earlier we talked about training and awareness to enable young people to choose forest occupations. Last week back home, we introduced a kiosk called Les Accrocs de la forêt, or Forest Addicts. It is a multi-sensory kiosk that enables young people to taste and touch forest occupations, at an age where they have to make their career choices.
This can help them develop an interest in forest occupations. The way the kiosk works is that it is like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in which each person admits his addiction to the forest. People say they are proud to be addicted to it because they belong to communities that rely on the forest.
My conclusion to my presentation is a reflection of what is found in the model forest. And that is that sometimes we can go faster alone, but we go much farther together.
Senator Robichaud: You talked about a few projects that you are currently carrying out, but what problems are you encountering in marketing these products? You have mushrooms, you have spruce sap and spruce syrup.
However, for your products to wind up on market shelves, you nevertheless have to meet certain health conditions, do you not? Is it a problem for you to get through that stage?
Ms. Robertson: Particularly for mushrooms, what causes a problem is more the distribution network. It is not like when we go blueberry picking, when we pick them and there is a place where people can buy and sell. We do not have that established network for the mushroom market. That is where the model forest comes in, to see how to develop that. Currently, there is all the knowledge; a lot of people who have an interest come and do the training because it is important to make the right choices when you pick mushrooms. Last year, they established places where we could take the mushrooms, sell fresh ones and process them in order to dry them. So we are in an experimental phase; then we will be able to go to more regional markets or markets further afield than just the local market.
Currently, to be able to experiment properly with this issue or to develop it, it is more at the local market level. We set times when we can pick mushrooms at one place, so that we can develop the distribution network.
After that, once we have really acquired all the right ideas about these products, we will have to prepare a business plan, which will enable us to go further into product and market development so that this becomes a promising economic activity.
Senator Robichaud: A number of witnesses have talked to us about spruce sap. They told us we currently import it from Switzerland. But are we at a stage where we could put spruce sap on sale here in the country?
Ms. Robertson: That is the same problem we are encountering. When we identified the areas where there was good potential from spruce that we could harvest — it takes a lot of work to go and harvest spruce sap. That is why it may be a little less profitable when we want to develop that aspect. At one point, we organized open houses to show people how we processed it and what we harvested. What people told us was that a lot of people have their little woodlot and have small spruce trees; they harvest spruce sap and could supply it without each one being able to process it. That stage proved to be interesting in our experimental findings. Perhaps we could do it in the same way as people gather milk, just collect spruce sap where people harvest it and have a place where we can process it.
It is these ideas that could be put to use and could have a slightly more promising future than just going and collecting spruce sap. There is also a period that we cannot exceed, somewhat as it is for maple sap — it is a little later — so you really have to watch out for that. There was an interest in having people supply a place where they could take spruce sap because they do not have enough of it to be able to process it. These are things we are currently looking at.
Senator Robichaud: It is a little like in New Brunswick; we have a kind of coop where blueberry producers meet and market together. We hear it said back home that it takes just two or three blueberries from Lac-Saint-Jean to make a pie. I doubt that.
Ms. Robertson: That is because they make jelly with the rest!
Senator Robichaud: I would like to see the pie!
Mr. Richardson, you have passed around a bag made of hemicellulose. Tell me about that; these are not really wood pellets such as what you currently find in the market, are they?
[English]
Mr. Richardson: No, they are not. The pellets you find in the market are different from that. Their makeup is the same except there has been a chemical extracted from that. Hemicellulose is one of the sugars that makes up our wood, and when you take that out, those pellets basically provide a little more heat value, there is much less dust or ash in there, and they are hydrophobic so they do not dissolve in water. It offers great opportunity from that perspective of getting value added because those chemicals can be turned into other chemicals and sold to offset the cost of producing that.
In Ontario, we do not have one operational pellet plant, to my knowledge right now. They are coming, but the economics are not quite there yet. It may be that combined with the potential to extract chemicals and sell them as a secondary product, then there will be an economic case to say that pellet mills will be a viable entity on the landscape.
Senator Robichaud: What happens to the chemical that is extracted? Is it lost?
Mr. Richardson: No, they distill it down into a number of other products. In some cases, there may be more value in the chemical that is pulled out than what we have left here.
I can send you the report that was produced from the United States on the value that comes from those, and what the chemicals are used for. It is a word about that long, but it has a fair amount of economic potential. Right now, I know Canada is a net importer of the products that the hemicellulose is distilled into.
The Chair: If you want to share that information with the committee through the clerk, we would appreciate that, Mr. Richardson, please.
Senator Mercer: Thank you both for your presentation. We keep getting good news, and the bits of good news but also potential.
Mr. Richardson, in your presentation you talked about federal program funding of $11.4 million. How was that rolled out? You said it was over a number of years.
Mr. Richardson: It is accumulative funding since 1992. We were one of the first Canadian model forest program sites that were established so we had base funding through, first, the Canadian Model Forest Program for fifteen years, and now under the Forest Communities Program for three years, so I have just amalgamated that value.
Senator Mercer: Has it escalated over the years?
Mr. Richardson: No, we have had a declining budget actually. We started off under the Canadian Model Forest Program with a budget of around $1 million a year and then, during phase two, I believe it was reduced in half. I think we maintained that funding level approximately over the remaining third phase of the program. Right now, just like the other sites, we get $325,000 per annum. That money I look at as being seed money. It helps pay the staff we have and keep the lights on. Ms. Lauzière talked to that, and it is part of the way we are able to promote the model forest and to also maintain our programming levels.
One of the most difficult things we have right now, because there is money and programs out there, and we can get access to that funding, is that they are on a project-by-project basis. The challenge for us is to find the core funding that allows us to pay the staff salaries and maintain our office. Once we have that, then we can go out and market our ability and generate funding through other sources to actually deliver the programming on the ground.
Senator Mercer: Ms. Robertson, you indicated, as you went project to project, the cost of those. Could you give me a breakdown? I think you tried to do that in one of your slides on the source of revenues. You talked about a number of projects, one being for $165,000, one for $145,000, $48,000 and so on.
What is your source of funding? Is it similar to Mr. Richardson's and, if so, is it all federal money or is there some money from the Province of Quebec?
[Translation]
Ms. Robertson: The funding mainly comes from the provincial government, through the Forest Communities Program. We are talking about one dollar for one dollar. For every dollar invested, we have to come up with one dollar. A portion comes from provincial funding through other programs. Some funding comes directly from the communities, but it is accounted for in the forest communities.
[English]
Senator Mercer: So there is no federal money at all.
[Translation]
Ms. Robertson: Yes, we have the Forest Communities Program. For every project, half of the investment comes from the Forest Communities Program and the other half comes from the forest communities. The more the forest communities contribute, the more projects we can carry out.
[English]
Senator Mercer: It seems you both told us the development of new products and everything from birch sap to birch beer to new products that Mr. Richardson showed us. However, it is the marketing issue that we are at; that is the stage where we are asking people to be innovative, so people are being innovative. They are coming up with new products that are interesting and which we might be able to sell somewhere.
However, we do not have the next stages to get it to market. There are no programs that governments are involved in that are facilitating that; am I correct?
[Translation]
Ms. Robertson: The model forests are experimental projects. From the moment a product or projects shows promise for development purposes, it will take a different path that is more like economic development. Then we will see various types of support to help establish a business plan.
We are using the funding from the Forest Communities Program and from the forest communities at the research and experimental stage. We are showing you the projects that have promising development prospects. However, it has happened that we have invested in projects with limited potential and have had to abandon them. When a project has potential, we consider possibly involving organizations that can develop it on an economic basis.
[English]
Mr. Richardson: You are right: Developing a strong and sustained market for any product, be it a non-timbered forest product, sawn timber or wood pellets, is key to having an industry that will be around for the next 15 years. If we do not have that, we will just be dealing with some of the "flash in the pan'' industries that we do not want to be working on.
The Chair: We have just eight minutes remaining.
Senator Callbeck: I just want to continue on with Senator Mercer asking you about the funding. As I understand it, the Forest Communities Program is a five-year program. The money comes from the federal government and there are 11 sites across Canada, which each get $325,000 a year. Is that right? Therefore, you knew in 2007 that you would get that much a year for five years, right? What about the province; where does the province come in here?
Mr. Richardson: That is an excellent question. The province in our program has been very supportive of the Eastern Ontario Model Forest over the years. We have in the past had substantial investment from them. It certainly is not there as much as we would like it to be right now and there are challenges with their part.
Right now, we get a substantial in-kind contribution from the provincial government, but we do not have any cash coming in unless it is through special programs. Therefore, they have never been a strong contributor to our program as far as sustained annual funding. They may have been back in the beginning of the Model Forest Program, but they also sit on our board of directors, too, so they make a solid contribution to our program.
Senator Callbeck: Do you know about other provinces?
Mr. Richardson: I do not; I cannot speak to that.
Senator Callbeck: You were here probably for the last panel and heard me ask them about this program and whether it will be continued or changed under another name or whatever in 2012. What improvements would you like to see?
Mr. Richardson: There is always an opportunity for increased funding. Right now, we have core funding that allows us to maintain our staffing levels and deliver some programs.
As far as improvements go, there is an opportunity for the Forest Communities Program to be better aligned with some of the other government departments: Environment Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, perhaps. If they were collaborators in the program, then it would help us immeasurably as far as the programs we deliver.
I look at us as a conduit for science and policy that we can transfer down to the landscape. There are ample opportunities for us to do that for some of the other departments just as much as we can for the CFS.
[Translation]
Ms. Robertson: The province supports us through financial contributions under the program. We are working in partnership with two regional county municipalities that have a per capita ability through taxes. We do not have that kind of economic tool. So we have to resort to certain programs to obtain the necessary funding to meet our community quota. These partners contribute to our research findings and often take part in doing our work.
Apart from improvement, we have to maintain the program to ensure we can pursue research and development. Without this minimum funding, the work cannot be done. We are unable to find this funding elsewhere. Every good business plan and every good business has to start with a developed product.
If we want to bring together forest users, we have to put in the time and energy to ensure good governance. Without this program, I am not sure we would have been able to sit down with the two RCMs and the First Nation. So this program has had a leverage effect for the exchange. Communication is not always easy. Talking to each other does not mean understanding one another. Synergy between partners and compromise are necessary. This program has enabled us to achieve this objective. The five-year time table provided for in this program's segment that we are talking about is a very short period of time.
We obviously think we have results that can enable the region to view wood not as a log to be developed, but as one of the assets the forest environment contains. It is this attitude that we are changing and we are still in the early stages of that change.
[English]
Senator Callbeck: It is important to have that core funding.
Senator Mahovlich: Mr. Richardson, you spoke of a different type of beetle. Fifty years ago we were attacked by the Dutch elm disease, a beetle brought over from Holland, I believe. That is why they called it the Dutch elm disease. Has the elm tree made a comeback in Eastern Ontario?
Mr. Richardson: There are still elms there. It has not made a comeback. There are two beetles that spread Dutch elm disease. One is an invasive beetle. That came over on nursery stock, I believe, back at the turn of the century. The elm tree has not made a comeback. It is still there and there are opportunities to promote elm, but there is no guarantee you will have it.
We saw an interesting thing after the 1998 ice storm. Many of the elms in Eastern Ontario started disappearing. Whether that is because there was a more virulent strain of the disease or a higher bark beetle population, I am not sure. Many of the stately elms that we had, especially on Highway 15 between here and Kingston, have disappeared.
Senator Mahovlich: Ms. Robertson, I see your book here on mushrooms in the Lac-Saint-Jean area. How many different types of mushrooms do you have?
[Translation]
Ms. Robertson: I have not read the entire book.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Are mushrooms becoming more popular in Canada, as they are in Europe? Any time my father punished me, he would take me out to pick mushrooms. That was his punishment. In Europe, mushrooms are popular, such as in omelettes. Are they becoming more popular here in Canada?
[Translation]
Ms. Robertson: Yes, I believe they are becoming much more popular. In fact, there are also mushroom varieties that depend on the type of forest. The inventory enables us to see the various varieties, and that depends on a lot of things. We have also seen that a lot of baby-boomers, who are now retired and in very good shape, are very good at gathering mushrooms. There is also a definite fad back home that we previously did not have. So with the vitality of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, it is possible that is becoming more popular than in Europe.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Even though we are concluding, we cannot invite you yet to birch beer, blueberry beer or even to taste the mushroom with a little bit of decoration of our birch syrup and maple syrup. I have to agree, Mr. Richardson, I put a pellet into this glass of water and there is no doubt in my mind that it has more BTUs, British thermal units, than the traditional pellet.
With that said, we thank you very much for the information you have provided.
[Translation]
Thank you very much. The blueberries from Lac-Saint-Jean are no doubt a very good product for the people from Madawaska.
(The committee adjourned.)