THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
HALIFAX, Monday, October 2, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 9:02 a.m. to study the potential impact of the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors.
Senator Terry Mercer (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: I would like to welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. I am Senator Terry Mercer from Nova Scotia, deputy chair of the committee, and I would like to start by asking my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Ogilvie: Kelvin Ogilvie, Nova Scotia.
Senator Tardif: Good morning, Claudette Tardif from Alberta.
Senator Gagné: Raymonde Gagné from Manitoba.
Senator Doyle: Norman Doyle, still from Newfoundland.
The Deputy Chair: Today, this committee is continuing its study on the potential impact of the effects of climate change on agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors. We are very happy to be here in Halifax to hear from Eastern Canadian government department stakeholders and stakeholders involved in the sectors of agriculture, agri-food and forestry.
For our first witnesses, we have, from the Government of Nova Scotia, the Honourable Margaret Miller, the Minister of Natural Resources, and I have to declare my conflict immediately. She also happens to be my member. I live in her constituency and I am happy to see her, as always. As well, we have Minister Keith Colwell, the Minister of Agriculture. We would like to welcome you and the officials that you have with you. Thank you for accepting our invitation.
I would invite one of the ministers to start and we will then move to questions from the senators. We will have as many rounds of questions as possible in the time allocated. Who would like to start?
Hon. Margaret Miller, M.L.A., Minister, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Nova Scotia: I’ll start. Thank you, senator.
To my immediate right is Jason Hollett, Executive Director of Climate Change for the Nova Scotia Department of Environment. To his right is Julie Towers. She is my Deputy Minister of Natural Resources. Bruce Stewart is to her right, Acting Director of Forestry for the Department of Natural Resources. Behind is Lisa Courtney-Mercer, my executive assistant.
On behalf of Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, I want to thank the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry for the invitation to appear before you today. It is indeed a pleasure to be here to present to you for your study on the potential impact of the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors.
Forests, minerals, parks and wildlife resources, and the administration of the province’s Crown lands are at the core of my department’s responsibility. Most relevant to today’s discussion is my department’s responsibilities relative to the development, management, conservation and the protection of our forests. Forestry is among the top drivers in our province, employing 11,500 people and generating $800 million in GDP in 2015. This is a significant increase from 2012 when we had 10,200 forestry jobs and $575 million in GDP.
Our government has helped to make Nova Scotia’s forest industry a stronger competitor in the world’s marketplace. As the Minister of Natural Resources, I am committed to unlocking the value of our forests, their great economic, ecological and recreation values.
I’m proud of the progress and learning that we have experienced in managing our forests in recent years. The forestry sector is an economic pillar and foundation industry for our province, particularly in rural areas. The sector has shaped our heritage as a driver of the economy, and for thousands of Nova Scotians it is a way of life. A healthy and sustainably managed forest is vital in creating good jobs, growing the economy and the quality of life for all Nova Scotians. We all in Nova Scotia play a role; our government, as well as industry, the Aboriginal community, academia, environmental and community groups, and individual woodlot owners.
There are also good reasons to take a close look at the forest, the values it offers us and how we can best manage it for a better future. We need to continually re-evaluate our relationship to the forest and to forestry in our province.
Sustainability is the key word, as it is the key to our future forestry prosperity. If we are to have a vibrant forest sector, we need to consider it with economic, social and environmental sustainability in mind. Each of these three sustainable factors is dependent on the other if we are to manage our forests successfully.
The complexity of the issues we face today is increasing beyond anyone of us to solve on our own. Nova Scotia has over 4.2 million hectares of forested lands. That represents about three quarters of the province’s total area. Our forests are life giving. They filter the air we breathe, provide clean water and food, help prevent soil erosion and flooding, provide the wood we use to build and maintain our communities, and support biodiversity by providing habitat for a wide variety of species.
Nearly 60 per cent of forested land in Nova Scotia is privately owned by business, families and individual landowners. Every day, people from all over our province make decisions that impact our forests and biodiversity. Managing our forest is a responsibility we all share. Governments, Mi’kmaq, industry, woodland owners and others, interested groups, and private citizens, we all have roles and responsibilities in the shared stewardship of our forests and biodiversity resources. This shared approach is critical to effective forest biodiversity stewardship.
Trees play a strong role in shaping the structure, composition and function of forest ecosystems in Nova Scotia. In addition, maintaining natural composition levels in our tree stands has the potential to reduce susceptibility to natural catastrophes and to facilitate adaptation to climate change. The lifecycles of many rare bug species are also influenced by tree composition. Plant life beneath the canopy is influenced by the size and the shape of the tree structures and by whether those trees are hardwood or conifer.
Tree species composition affects the quality of the forest floor and has an important role in soil processes, such as nutrient availability and the recycling of organic material.
Nova Scotia’s forest principles and actions are aligned with national strategies. As a member of the Canada Council of Forest Ministers, my department collaborates with other agencies and levels of government to keep up with trends in forest innovation, climate change, sustainable forest management, criteria and indicators, forest pests, and wildlife fire management.
Department representatives have contributed to and participated in the Climate Change Task Force, a collaborative initiative of the federal, provincial and territorial governments of Canada through the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. Phase 2, which was completed in March 2015, addressed climate change adaptation at the forest ecosystem and forest sector levels. Phase 3, initiated in 2015, is focused on furthering interjurisdictional conversations on integrating climate change into national sustainable forest management criteria and indicators, enhancing the integration of climate change considerations into Canadian Council of Forest Ministers fire and pest working group outputs, and continuing forestry are adaptation networking.
Within the province’s Code of Forest Practice, the department directs that forest management will be designated and conducted with consideration of the potential effects of climate change and opportunities to maintain and enhance forest carbon sinks.
Forest practices contribute to the mitigation of climate change impacts by ensuring healthy growing forests in Nova Scotia. Appropriate management strategies need to be undertaken to ensure that forest ecosystems can adapt to climate change. The code also states that the maintenance of natural biodiversity should enable appropriate ecosystem responses to a changing climate. Forest practices should not compromise the ability of forest ecosystems to adapt to future changes.
The Landscape Level Guidelines direct that opportunities for carbon sequestration will be considered in forest management planning and that forest management decisions will consider potential future impacts of climate change on biodiversity, forest productivity and water quality.
For the past six years, the management of our forests, parks, mineral resources, and biodiversity has been guided by a strategy called “The Path We Share, A Natural Resources Strategy for Nova Scotia 2011-2020.” It has guided us as we implement an ecosystem approach to natural resources management. We use this knowledge-based approach in outreach throughout our forest programming, and this report you will able to find online if you would like to pursue that.
For example, my department has initiated a Tree Improvement Program that tests the adaptive capacity of tree species across climate zones. We have been running this program for 30 years with our partners in New Brunswick and with industry to ensure that we have genetically diverse breeding populations across the environmental and climatic gradients.
We have published forest ecosystem field guides for 88 forest community types that detail the composition to support site level ecosystem planning. Our adoption of ecological land classification has helped us to classify nine climatically based ecoregions and support landscape development ecosystem planning. As well, we are providing forest ecosystem classification training for our forest service professionals.
This past Friday, our government was thrilled to introduce amendments to the Environment Act that will allow Nova Scotia to develop a cap-and-trade program that will see and achieve targets for future greenhouse gas reductions, while protecting the pocketbooks of Nova Scotians. The amendments will enable government to create regulations to: set caps, distribute emission allowances and set penalties; enable trading of emission allowances; require companies to monitor and report specific information; set a province-wide greenhouse gas target for 2030; and create a green fund to support climate change initiatives and innovations.
Forestry and agriculture will not participate in the cap-and-trade program directly, although some costs may be passed on through the fossil fuel companies. There may be opportunities for forestry and agriculture, as well as other uncapped sectors, to sell carbon offsets. The province is working with the forestry sectors on this initiative.
I am pleased that we have created a new position within our forestry division that will have a focus on climate change and forest-level carbon dynamics. Our new forest modelling specialist will lead development and implementation of the provincial forest carbon, biomass, bioenergy, and climate change modelling initiatives in support of provincial policy and strategy development. The forest carbon modelling process will integrate with an existing forest modelling framework within the province to assess ecological and economic impacts of the forest and landscape level. He or she will also establish models to track and monitor change.
Forest managers need to be increasingly cognizant of the impacts of their actions on climate change and to foster opportunities to maintain enhanced forest carbon sinks. The monitoring of forest carbon across Canada is led by the Canadian Forest Service carbon accounting team. These research scientists and practitioners have been developing a carbon budget model for over a decade now. My department is exploring the first steps of incorporating carbon sequestering modelling into timber supply analysis using this budget model. The model relies primarily on data provided by provincial and national forest initiatives. It is currently the national standard for forest carbon budgeting and is also internationally recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Forest ecosystem carbon is calculated as a function of the merchantable volume of softwood and hardwood using volume-to-biomass equations, as well as dead organic matter estimates generated from forest inventories. Dead organic matter estimates account for carbon stored within forest floor vegetation, roots, stumps, organic soils and litter. The model is used to assess how much forest ecosystem carbon is stored and lost from forest ecosystems throughout Nova Scotia and assists in monitoring change during the last decade.
Within the investments and research and resources I have just outlined, we are better preparing our forest industry for the impacts on climate change.
With that, I will pass to my colleague, the Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture, and then we will be able to answer questions.
Hon. Keith Colwell, M.L.A., Minister of Agriculture, Government of Nova Scotia: Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the standing committee. I want to thank you for setting your committee up in Halifax. It’s very much appreciated. I am very pleased to join my colleague, the Minister of Natural Resources, to speak to you this morning.
As Minister of Agriculture, I am very concerned about the potential impacts of climate change on this very important sector of our provincial economy. Climate change is an issue that the provincial government takes very seriously and has been working diligently across the departments and with our partners in this sector and the federal government to address.
Nova Scotia’s climate is as diverse as its landscape. The weather patterns are affected by topography, air movements and a proximity to the ocean, leaving Nova Scotia particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change. Hurricanes and extreme weather events have had a major impact on our region and climate change can already be measured. We have seen a rise in sea level of more than 35 centimetres since 1896, and Environment Canada estimates that Nova Scotia will see an additional increase in sea level of 0.5 metres by 2050, and one metre by the year 2100.
Areas such as the Annapolis Valley are experiencing many different weather effects from drier than normal conditions, to impacts of tropical storms and harsh winter weather.
Because agriculture relies heavily on water resources for irrigation and frost protection, as well as the cleaning of agricultural products for sale and processing, any threat to groundwater supplies in lowlands and coastal areas by salt water intrusion related to rising sea levels is a concern. That’s why we have been investing as a province in our dikes and aboiteaux which are so important for protection of valuable agricultural land. The Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture is tasked with ongoing maintenance and management of the more than 240 kilometres of dikes and 246 aboiteaux along the Bay of Fundy, protecting 14,441 hectares of arable land.
We have been investing, with the help of the federal government through the National Disaster Mitigation Program, continued upgrades to the dike system. This includes a risk assessment of dikes along the Bay of Fundy, which is a joint project cost-shared between the federal government and the Governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Not only does work to upgrade our dike system protect valuable agricultural land and public assets, it also ensures Nova Scotia’s continued access to the mainland and uninterrupted flow of critical goods through the Chignecto Isthmus.
I have to tell you that an extreme weather event that could limit or cut off the access is very concerning to me because of the potential economic impact or the threat this could pose to our food supply and security. We are working very hard to address that concern and protect our future as a province. We have undertaken multiple initiatives to proactively mitigate the effects of predicted sea level rise and increased intensity of storm surge and rainfall events.
As part of an AgriRisk initiative funded under the Growing Forward 2, or GF2, to risk proof Nova Scotia agriculture, a dike vulnerability assessment and flood mapping tool is being developed. It will combine information such as soil type and topography, climate information and land use transition to assist in identifying areas that meet key production requirements and risks. Additionally, a flood mapping project to digitize survey maps of protected agriculture marshland was initiated under the National Disaster Mitigation Program.
In 2016, we initiated the Agricultural Land Usage Review Committee to help solidify the province’s approach to agriculture land protection. We also joined the newly created, industrial led Agricultural Land Policy Committee created by the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, which will play an important role on this issue.
Our AgriRisk initiative is also looking at the impacts of climate change of the wine and grape sector, a fast-growing industry in Nova Scotia that is generating more jobs and economic activity for our rural communities. This pilot project aims to develop a dynamic risk assessment tool that will help the industry forecast future risks associated with climate change and the changing socioeconomic landscape in Nova Scotia.
We are also looking at ways to make agriculture practices more efficient so they have less impact on the environment. We have implemented provincial agriculture programming to support project applications based on best management practices. An Environmental Management Advisory Committee ranks applications under five themes: soil management, water management, product management, manure management and energy management. Through this initiative, Nova Scotia targeted funding for well and pond development projects in 2016, increasing the assistance level from 25 to 50 per cent to help farmers be better prepared for variations in rainfall.
We’re also helping the agriculture sector mitigate the impacts of market volatility that can be affected by climate change. This includes a robust Crop and Livestock Insurance Program and industry access to AgriRecovery, AgriInvest, and AgriStability, federally delivered programming under Growing Forward 2. It should be noted that AgriStability is specifically designed to provide disaster assistance when producers incur large financial losses beyond their control.
Nova Scotia continues to work towards reduced greenhouse gases and emissions through the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. Nova Scotia has committed to establishing a cap-and-trade program to comply with the federal carbon pricing benchmark.
Overall, agriculture is a low contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, currently contributing approximately 3 per cent, and will not be covered under the new cap-and-trade program. However, we recognize that agriculture already plays an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The natural capturing of carbon that happens in the soil through use of minimal to no-till practices means that agricultural land is part of the solution. Manure and nitrogen management, cattle feeding efficiencies and bioproduct production are all opportunities to offset carbon production.
We are committed to mitigating and adapting our agricultural sector to the impacts of climate change. Through the continued management of emission reduction, energy efficiency programs, flood mitigation work, business risk management programs and increasing the amount of legally protected area, we are preserving and improving the province’s environment and economy for future generations.
I look forward to the committee asking questions. Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you.
Before I end, I would like to introduce Loretta Robichaud. She is a senior director with the Department of Agriculture, and Melissa Vieau, and Mark MacPhail, executive assistants with my department. Thank you very much.
The Deputy Chair: Both ministers, thank you very much for your presentations. They have been very informative.
We’ll now go to questions from my colleagues. We’ll start with Senator Doyle, who is from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Doyle: Thank you. That was very interesting indeed.
As people involved in both the agriculture and the forestry sectors, you’re engaged on a continuing basis in discussions on carbon emissions and the carbon footprint. We hear as well that the reduction of the carbon footprint is bound to carry with it a price. It’s difficult to determine, of course, what that price will be in the long run.
But in the farming sector, is the consumer heavily informed and heavily involved in the fact that there could be a premium to pay for products that are not only green but are produced in a greener way? Is the consumer involved in discussions on that to any great extent? Is there any concern coming forward from the man or the woman in the street, so to speak? Do you have any opinions you could share on that, because we sometimes hear that the consumer is left out of the discussion of carbon pricing, the carbon footprint and what the end result might be for the consumer?
Mr. Colwell: That’s a very good question. I will give you a different type of answer, if you don’t mind.
Nova Scotia has the highest per capita number of farmers’ markets in Canada. Typically, a farmers’ market is made up of vendors that are a little bit higher in price than the general run-of-the-mill grocery stores, and a lot of the vendors are doing more traditional type farming than production farming. So there is a good group of people in Nova Scotia that take this very seriously. They want to know where their food comes from. They want to know how it is produced. They’re willing to pay a slight premium for a better quality product. I think that answers part of the question. That group of people is getting larger all the time, which is very positive.
Senator Doyle: Yes.
Mr. Colwell: We also have a group of people that don’t even know where the food comes from. They just think it comes from the grocery store, and that’s being quite frank. You will find that across the country because they have never been exposed to farms. They’ve never been exposed to any place that would be anything but the grocery store. We have a group of people like that as well, and that’s real. I don’t know where the people think the food comes from, but that’s the opinion.
Senator Doyle: It’s true.
Mr. Colwell: But you will find that across the country if you ask the question.
I guess for too many years we’ve been so spoiled in Canada in being able to go to the grocery store and buy anything we want, as long as you have the cash. Most people in the country don’t go hungry any more today; thank goodness.
We really have to do a better job educating people where the food comes from. I know in the programs in my department it is done. Select Nova Scotia is really working hard on that.
Mr. Colwell: We have Open Farm Days, which are fantastic and get people out to the farms. This year we had the biggest attendance in history at those events. We go to Mic Mac Mall, a local shopping mall, and they have animals. So you get a lot of people exposed to that who may not get to a farm.
We’re seeing our production increasing in the province in agricultural products, which we have to do. I’m extremely concerned about food security. We now produce about 17 per cent of what we consume when you only look at agriculture products. But if you take in fisheries products, we’re probably pretty close to self-sufficient if people wouldn’t mind eating fish every day.
But it is something we’ve got to work on a lot harder. There is a lot of interest in that. A lot of people in the province are starting to realize that there is a food security issue, and I talk about it all the time now. People confuse it sometimes with food quality. We need both, food quality and safety, but we also need supply. In reality, if we were cut off, if the dikes flooded out in the Tantramar Marshes area, we would be out of food. Probably the shelves would be empty in one or two days. People would buy it just to have it. So it’s a real risk and a serious risk.
The other thing that we hope to do is a more detailed climate analysis. We’re trying to get a series of monitoring stations in place in the province and to better utilize our weather information. For instance, we had one claim for insurance last year where a family claimed that there was a drought where they were. The nearest weather station, which was quite far away in a different microclimate — Nova Scotia is made up of a tremendous number of microclimates — showed lots of rainfall. In reality, we had no way to prove that that individual farm did have a drought. So we couldn’t pay any compensation for it under ag insurance, even though they were insured. So that’s a serious issue. It is a very complex issue.
Senator Doyle: Yes.
Mr. Colwell: But I can tell you that we have a great group of people working in our department and through the Federation of Agriculture. It’s a pleasure to work with them, and there a lot of good things are happening.
That’s a long answer to your question.
Senator Doyle: A good answer.
One gets the impression from stakeholders across the country that they are complaining about the impact of carbon pricing on their individual competitiveness, especially when you consider that there is no harmonization at the international level. Are the provinces looking at that problem? So might it open up a whole new area of competitiveness in the farming industry if carbon pricing in the United States is different than it is in Canada?
Mr. Colwell: It could be. It’s a bigger issue than I’ve been involved in, quite frankly. I’ll be honest. But from what I understand, Nova Scotia has already met all the carbon requirements the federal government has. It’s the only province in the country that has done that.
I’ve discussed this with the premier many times, and evidently our farming industry is not going to be affected by a carbon tax at this point. We’ll have to wait and see how it all works out, of course.
Senator Doyle: Why would that be?
Mr. Colwell: Well, we’re going to be exempt from the carbon tax because we’ve got such a low carbon footprint now. It’s only less than 3 per cent, and we’re making strides to make it even lower. Industry is doing a lot of work using manure for electrical generation, and those sorts of things will also help the situation greatly.
Senator Doyle: Right. Thank you.
Ms. Miller: Thank you, Senator Doyle, for the question.
Before I became Minister of Natural Resources, I was also Minister of Environment for Nova Scotia. It gives me a little more insight into it. We’re all ingrained into our own departments, and these sectors don’t always overlap.
Part of the cap-and-trade system, the reason that we did this, was to have minimal impact on the pocketbooks of Nova Scotians. There will be a minimal impact, obviously, when you’re dealing with trucking companies and fuel companies who will be under the cap-and-trade program because they are huge emitters. There will be a minimal impact on fuel prices, but not to the extent that it would have been if we had gone into just a carbon tax system. Then everybody would have paid; everything would have paid.
When you talk about comparatives, at the time we were working on this, Nova Scotia had the highest power prices, I think. I don’t know if Ontario has beat us yet on that one. But that was because of the initiatives that have already been done to lower our GHG levels. With what we are doing now with the cap-and-trade program, I think only about 20 industries will be involved with it, and they will be working with exchanging carbon credits. So it will have a very minimal impact on the agriculture industry.
Senator Ogilvie: Minister Miller, I have a couple of questions largely for clarification.
You mentioned that 40 per cent of the wood in Nova Scotia is privately owned. Is the remainder entirely Crown land, or do you have classifications other than private and Crown?
Ms. Miller: Thank you, senator, for that. Yes, it’s more than 40 per cent. I believe 70 per cent of the province is privately owned and 30 per cent is Crown land. Of that, through the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environment, we are working to reach our target goal of 13 per cent of protected areas. We are currently at 12.39 per cent. We are hoping to hit 13 per cent in the next year or so. That is the plan. I believe that answers your question.
Senator Ogilvie: Yes.
The 40 per cent, I think what you actually said, were woodlot owners. Could you clarify what the 40 per cent was? Perhaps I didn’t hear it correctly. You used the term “40 per cent” and you used it in connection with woodlot owners. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were conveying there.
Ms. Miller: The percentage is that 18 per cent of the companies are private and the rest are small woodlot owners.
Senator Ogilvie: Break that down for me. What is the rest in terms of percentage?
Ms. Miller: I will pass that on to my deputy minister.
Senator Ogilvie: Is it 18 of the 40?
Julie Towers, Deputy Minister, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Nova Scotia: The amount of Crown to private is always shifting a little bit with acquisitions and disposals, but roughly 35 per cent is Crown in Nova Scotia. Eighteen per cent is large private. Those are generally associated with forestry businesses, mills, whether they’re active now or were in the past. The remainder of that would be the small private woodlot owners, the folks who own 100 acres here and there.
Senator Ogilvie: Thank you very much. That clarifies it for me very well.
Within those small woodlot operators, the remainder from the numbers that I was just given, what would you say are their top two concerns when they come to the Government of Nova Scotia?
Ms. Miller: Absolutely marketing. In the western area, certainly they are very concerned about getting their products to market. We had the closure of a large mill in the area several years ago, and that has devastated the markets in the west. I would think that would be the singular biggest thing; not having markets, not having market access for some of the lower grade wood products.
Senator Ogilvie: And the next major issue?
Ms. Miller: I would almost say marketing and marketing. It seems to be the main thing we’re hearing about. Maybe a little bit about diversity and finding alternate markets for products, whether you are looking at heating with chips or something like that.
Senator Ogilvie: I live in an area where there are largely small woodlot owners. Over the last several years, starting with the previous government, a major issue has been the regulations that have been brought in around the use of their own private woodlots. Many of them have brought those issues to my attention. The single biggest thing that I hear in my area is the issue around the changes in the way they can actually operate on their own land. This has to do with wet areas, as you know. Has that largely evaporated as a concern for small woodlot owners?
Ms. Miller: We certainly respect the private woodlot owners. When you’re dealing with wetlands, that becomes an environmental problem and that has to be addressed.
We have heard from small woodlot owners and from large companies. I mentioned the study that goes to 2020. We’ve actually engaged Professor Lahey to do another study of our forestry practices in Nova Scotia. He will meet with people, stakeholders like that, small woodland owners, and really give us an updated version of what the industry looks like.
Things have vastly changed in five years. Between world markets and environmental concerns, it’s a different world. You wouldn’t think five years in Nova Scotia would make that much difference.
Professor Lahey will be doing a completely independent and extensive report that he will be bringing back to us by the end of February, and then we’ll have more concrete answers. We will be able to tell you more about the main concerns of private woodlot owners: if it is environmental concerns; if it’s marketing; where we are and what direction government needs to go in.
Senator Ogilvie: Minister Colwell, with regard to farming in Nova Scotia, many areas across the country have experienced a significant increase in the number of small farms of 100 acres or that sort of thing. What is the situation here in Nova Scotia over the last, say, 5 to 10 years?
Mr. Colwell: Nova Scotia has the largest number of new starts in farming in the country. Most of those are very small. We don’t have the huge farms that you would see in the Prairies or in any area like that. But we do have a good cross-section of very efficient farms that produce a wide range of products, mostly mixed farming, and then we have the smaller organizations. We have some very successful small farms. So it’s real diverse in Nova Scotia.
Senator Ogilvie: I heard a report on the radio recently that over 90 per cent of the new startups in Nova Scotia were small farms under 100 acres; most of them, in fact, under 10 acres. Was that a reasonable comment from that report?
Mr. Colwell: Yes, it was.
Senator Ogilvie: And those, obviously, are clearly mixed farms in order for them to survive on that land. My understanding is a great deal of that has to do with people wanting to get into agriculture. The cost of farm land in the Annapolis Valley is one of the most profitable items that we actually have in natural resources in the province. So it’s clearly understandable how it’s difficult to get into big farming in Nova Scotia. But I would think that it’s a very encouraging sign to see the number of smaller farms.
I live down the valley. I was born in Summerville, Hants County. When I grew up they were all small farms; 100 to 200 acres. Much of that land isn’t used at all for farming today, but it is still highly productive. I would think it’s very encouraging to see the number of smaller farms and mixed farms coming back into operation.
Mr. Colwell: Yes, and it’s hard to get into farming today because it is virtually impossible for someone to buy out a large farm in the province if they’re not a family member and have a transition plan in place. They are just too expensive. It is just not the land but the equipment as well. There is a huge cost in equipment, and there is the expertise you need in order to farm today. But we’ve got a lot of very excellent farmers in the province.
The small farms are coming. I was informed a while ago that there is one farmer that made over a quarter of a million dollars a year off of two acres. So they were getting really high-value products.
It goes back to the first question we had. People are willing to pay an extra bonus, or an extra price, but that is the exception and not the rule. It is possible to do it on a small farm, and it is nice to see people getting into it.
Also, I think a lot of people in Nova Scotia want to go back to a different lifestyle, a little bit more relaxed lifestyle, and a farm definitely is like that until you look at your bottom line at the end of the year; then sometimes it is not much fun. But it’s really good, and I think that’s why our farmers’ markets are growing so much as well.
Senator Ogilvie: I don’t think you mean “not busy” in your term “relaxed.”
Mr. Colwell: No.
Senator Ogilvie: Most small farmers I know would consider themselves very busy.
Mr. Colwell: At least you don’t have to battle with the traffic and everything else like you do here. It’s an extremely busy job.
I was born on a farm. It wasn’t a real small farm, but it was in the family since the 1700s. It is a lot of work seven days a week. But even the small farm is a different type of lifestyle and people want that lifestyle.
Senator Ogilvie: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Minister Miller, in your presentation you did not mention the softwood lumber dispute with the Americans and its effects. In the previous dispute, the Maritimes were excluded from dispute because of the way we produce the product here. With regard to the extreme taxes or duties that the Americans have put on softwood lumber, do you see a short-term effect and, obviously, a long-term effect that that is going to have on the industry here?
Ms. Miller: Thank you, senator.
We are very hopeful. Nova Scotia has been doing a really good job. We don’t subsidize our softwood lumber, which makes us more competitive and more in tune with what is expected in exporting our softwood lumber. We are very hopeful that the response will be as we hoped.
It will be a different world if things change dramatically with softwood lumber deals. So I am very hopeful. I like to think positive, put it that way.
Knowing that we’re doing a good job and knowing that we have a great team working for Nova Scotia and for Canada, I’m hopeful that the outcome will be positive and that we will be able to move forward. If it doesn’t, that will be a different bridge to cross and we will have to see what the future brings.
What we are doing anyway is looking for markets outside of the U.S., establishing more markets in different countries. I believe we are already involved with China and finding other markets around the world.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Tardif: Thank you, ministers, for being here this morning with your team. It is very much appreciated by the committee.
Minister Colwell, you mentioned that, in order to help farmers better deal with the effects of climate change, you are putting in different management practices for soil, for water, for product, for manure, and for energy management. I have three questions related to that.
Are these approaches sector specific? Is there is an economic burden on the producers in putting forward some of these approaches? And are farmers open to changing their practices?
Mr. Colwell: Well, I would have said when I first took the position of minister almost four years ago that the farmers weren’t necessarily open to change. But I can tell you in that time it really has changed.
Our mink industry had a major problem, and they really stepped up to the plate, even in a time when they were experiencing price reductions in their products. They put in manure handling practices that were actually legislated. There were a few complaints at first, but at the end of the day, they really did a great job.
We’re finding more and more that the industry is stepping up and trying to find solutions in conjunction with us or on their own. We have a lot of interest in biofuels from manure. That serves two purposes. It gets rid of the gases that are causing environmental problems and turns them into electricity, which is very positive for us.
I would say overall the industry is very open to this. They see the future in the farming industry in Nova Scotia. The larger farms are probably ahead of the curve in many cases. I will give you one example.
There is a company that sends broccoli to the southern U.S., the Carolinas to be exact. The Carolinas got so warm they couldn’t grow kale any more. So they asked them, “Why don’t you try growing kale in Nova Scotia?” As an experiment they planted 10 acres of kale, using farming practices that have been developed here. At the end of the day, they came to find out that they have four times the production than they’ve ever received per acre in the Carolinas. The Carolinas came up and looked at it and said, “We can’t do it; it’s too warm.” That is an innovation that one of the farmers did themselves.
We have had a great productivity increase in our blueberry fields, which is a problem for us in marketing. The markets have not gone away; they have actually increased substantially. Using science and technology to put these changes in place has really made a huge difference in our productivity. In other words, we don’t have to have as many acres to get the same production. So that has helped.
The agricultural college and one of the equipment manufacturers have come up with a spraying device. Well, it’s something you should have a chance to see. It’s state of the art in the world. It actually identifies weeds and only sprays weeds when it goes through the fields at about 20 kilometres an hour. It has got high-speed cameras. There is a sprayer attached to each camera, and it only sprays the weeds. So there are no herbicides on anything but weeds in the blueberry fields. It is a breakthrough. It has saved about $54,000 an acre a year, plus the health benefits and the overall benefits of the energy costs.
Those are just a couple of examples of things that have happened. The industry is really innovative and we’re lucky to have some topnotch universities that are helping us do that here.
Senator Tardif: Thank you. That probably would have been a follow-up question.
I will pick up on what you said about the blueberry patch and the instrument. What incentives are you giving to the universities? Is there a grant? Are you working in partnership with universities in developing these new materials? What incentives are you giving your agricultural producers to improve their practices and become more resilient to climate change?
Mr. Colwell: I know that the old Going Forward 2 and the new program we have now, the Canadian Agriculture Partnership, or CAP — I can never remember that one. We’re still working on Going Forward 2 until we get that one in place, which I thank the federal government for because that’s something we desperately need in Nova Scotia. But in that program, we have some science and research development projects.
What we have done here in the last three years is really tightened that up. We want to make sure that we don’t do research just for the sake of research. Theoretical research is fantastic and we need to do a lot of it, but we want direct connection between the farming industry and what is needed in research. So we’ve changed the programs and put more accountabilities in place so that at the end of the day we can get more successes like the spraying system and a productivity increase in the blueberry fields, just to name a couple.
We’ve done a lot of things. We’ve become more proactive with the industry and talked to them more closely. We get their ideas of where they need to be. Some farms and some places need particular things to become more efficient, and we will usually work around their needs to try to get them to become more efficient.
Overall, it has been working very well and the industry has really responded. We’ve fronted a couple of research chairs, which has a real benefit long term in the province.
So we’re on the right track. It’s a slow process and very meticulous because each farm is a little different from the one beside it due to our unique climates. We have microclimates in the province that are unbelievable. I would never have realized that this was really the case until I became Minister of Agriculture.
Senator Tardif: Thank you, Mr. Minister.
Senator Gagné: Before I ask my question, I want to mention that the committee was in Shanghai last fall. I would just like to congratulate your government for the excellent presentations at that expo. You were really well organized and very present at the expo. It was the agricultural exposition, which is the largest expo in the world, and I was very impressed.
The Deputy Chair: Minister Colwell was there.
Senator Gagné: Thank you.
Minister Miller, you mentioned that shared stewardship is key to sustainability moving forward. I think it is really important. We have sometimes a tendency to work in silos, and I was wondering if there is a relationship between the forestry sector and the agriculture sector that enables both sectors to transfer knowledge and best practices? I think we are in a new bio-economy. I was wondering what you have in place to share that knowledge between the two sectors.
Ms. Miller: Thank you for the question.
I’m not aware that we have specific programs to share, but I can tell you that as a government we have not been working in silos. We have many multi-department projects and things going on. We’re actually very involved with breaking down the barriers between departments. When we are sitting around a table, repeatedly we’ve seen different issues come up that have to do with agriculture, with the environment, with the Department of Natural Resources. We bring all the stakeholders to that table, have a discussion, and break down those barriers. It has been very effective.
We were talking about small business and the forestry sector. I hope you don’t mind if I answer another question. It was a comment about private woodlot owners and the concern there. As a government, we try very hard. We have a system for determining how treatments on our Crown land is done, whether it is going to be a total harvest, a partial harvest, selective harvest — how it is done.
Those same limitations that we have on Crown land are not on private land. Private landowners have the ability to do whatever they want on their land as far as harvesting goes, as long as they are not infringing on environmental sensitivities.
I just wanted to include that because I thought it was important to acknowledge that the challenge we have as a government is that you can’t actually tell a private woodlot owner, “No, you can’t clear-cut your land because that will give you the most money,” which is what happens; that is how they will earn the most money. Perhaps they should be looking at different management techniques.
That is why I’m looking forward to hearing Professor Lahey’s report and what he thinks about all of this.
Let me read these notes from my colleague. Actually, let me ask the person writing me the notes to answer your question. He
Ms. Towers: Bruce and I will tag team on some of this. This is an area that Bruce deals with in forest research.
You asked about programs. We have a few things. There is an inter-departmental working group on agriculture policy, so collaboration is encouraged at the policy level.
There is quite a bit of soils research and mapping. Bruce can expand on that.
Another thing is because we do have nurseries for growing tree seedlings, we interact with Perennia, which is the agriculture innovation company.
Keep in mind that of those over 30,000 private woodlots in Nova Scotia, many of them are farm woodlots. So whether they are currently farms or were farms, they have agriculture land and forestry land as well. Our Federation of Agriculture works with Forest Nova Scotia regularly on all kinds of issues, whether it’s private land access or anything else.
I’ll turn it to Bruce, if he wants to add to that.
Bruce Stewart, Manager, Forest Research and Planning, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Nova Scotia: I’m not going to add much to what Julie has said. One of the more important projects we have going on right now is soils mapping, a nutrient analysis project. We work in partnership with Dalhousie agricultural college to get a better indication of the nutrient regimes in the soils all across the province. On the forestry side, we are most interested in that for forest management purposes, although the agricultural side is also taking that information and integrating it into updated soils maps, updating the old Agriculture Canada soils maps.
We have worked in the past with the Perennia research station looking at agroforestry opportunities. Our nursery has a number of research projects looking at sun crops that would be considered agroforestry, and we are working more actively with Perennia to look at further opportunities.
Ms. Towers: There is one more I almost forgot to mention. Our wildlife division of the department, for probably 15 years now, has been working in cooperation with some of the national wildlife organizations. The funding comes into the province to do agricultural biodiversity work. So they work with the farmers on farm plans. At the same time they do environmental farm plans, they also do biodiversity plans. It relates to how they can incorporate elements of biodiversity into their farming practices. That has gone very well. It has received a lot of recognition. It involves Duck Unlimited, Wildlife Habitat Canada, et cetera.
The Deputy Chair: The ministers did mention soil types in their presentations. What do you see as the results of the studies that you are doing on soil types? Is it improving the yields, or is it understanding which land would be best to bring into production or take out of production?
Mr. Colwell: We are very fortunate in Nova Scotia. We have some unique soils. I briefly touched on the wine industry in Nova Scotia. People don’t always agree with the statement I will make, but we have probably the best bubbly wines — we can’t call them champagnes — in pretty close to the world now. We have unique growing conditions.
It’s the same as our apples. Our Honeycrisp apples in Florida last year were selling for US$5.99 a pound. Right next to them were Oregon organically grown apples, Honeycrisp, $4.99 a pound. The $4.99 a pound ones were in a small bin and the Nova Scotia Honeycrisp apples were in a huge bin, and we actually sold out last year. We totally sold out of the high-value apples: Honeycrisp, Sweet Gala, Tangos and other ones. So it is a whole different approach.
The wine industry has seen the same thing. We are only small. We cannot compare in size to B.C. or Ontario. We are where Ontario was about 25 years ago in size. But one of our very small wineries went to Champagne, France, and competed against the French for their champagne. Now, we can’t call it champagne, because you can only call it that if it is produced in Champagne, France. They won the gold medal.
The people who organized it said, “Well, this is not possible.” They took the bottles and put them in brown paper bags. Some of you might remember the guy on the park bench with his brown paper bag. They put all the wine in a brown paper bag and, lo and behold, they won the silver medal. So they had no choice but to give it to them. That is the first medal of any kind in the world that was ever won outside of Champagne, France. It sent shockwaves through the system. The winery is L’Acadie; a small little winery.
One of our other wineries has been identified as one of the top 14 wineries in the world to produce champagne type wines. There was a story about Michelin’s restaurant in London; that same winery has their wine on the menu now. So we see great opportunities for Nova Scotia.
The land value in the valley, look out. Some of it is being sold already for as high as $20,000 an acre for a vineyard. Ontario is $35,000 an acre. B.C. is $140,000 an acre, and that’s unimproved land with trees on it.
We are getting a reputation for really high-quality wine, and that has largely to do with our department working with the industry. But really the entrepreneurs have decided that it is a great opportunity for Nova Scotia.
When you look at the different soil conditions we have here, climate change, so far, has been positive in that regard. But we still have lots of issues, such as our microclimates. We really need to get a network of test stations set up so we can check where the climate is the best for growing whatever product it is. Kale is an example of one thing we had never grown before, and we’re growing other products.
Apples have always had a history in Nova Scotia. If you haven’t seen a modern apple orchard, it’s hard to tell it from a vineyard. They go straight up and they have trellis systems, except the trees are a little higher than the grape vines.
A lot of the technology has been developed in Nova Scotia through the federal research station. These apples, the federal government did that.
Perennia has been mentioned a couple of times. Perennia is a company. I own Perennia, as long as I’m minister, of course. It is a unique place that takes ideas to an end product, and they have done that very successfully.
One project I am very excited about is happening in close cooperation between Natural Resources and ourselves. We are in the midst of the biggest liming project in the history of North America, on the West River in Sheet Harbour. Now, this is my Fisheries hat, but it also has huge implications for the forest industry.
The soil in Nova Scotia is very acidic. In that particular river it is so acidic that it’s bleaching aluminum out of the soil. So a long time ago, when I was first a minister, I met my agriculture director, and also with Fisheries, and I asked this question, “Where the farmers lime the fields, do you have any problem with pH in the rivers or the brooks?” They said, “No, none.”
Now, oddly enough, I had never talked about that before, just because I never had to. So we looked at a project with the Nova Scotia Salmon Association working on the West River. They didn’t have the resources to lime it, so we approached Natural Resources, and successive ministers in that department have been very supportive. As a result of that, the pH level is coming up in the river. Also, we are bombing the land, not the water, and it will also help the forest area. That area is a really good producer of softwood lumber materials and pulp. It will help both.
The Norwegians have done this for years. At 25 years to 50 years, this application will help the soil and the water. We’ve already seen a huge increase in Atlantic salmon in the river. It was almost extinct. So it’s a great project between the Nova Scotia Salmon Association, the Atlantic Salmon Association, Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture, and Fisheries.
When they put this together, even Northern Pulp, which sometimes gets a bad reputation in the province, were first on the list to help. They really stepped up and made a big difference to the whole project. It is a cooperative thing.
I will stop there, because I could talk about this for a while. It’s pretty exciting stuff.
The Deputy Chair: Both ministers have talked about there being no silos in this industry and about the interaction between departments. Does that go beyond Natural Resources, Fisheries and Agriculture? Are other departments involved in breaking down those silos and contributing to successful natural resources and successful agriculture sectors?
Mr. Colwell: Well, I believe so. We have project teams now in the province. If there is an issue, we work closely with all departments. Needless to say, my two departments work closely together. I’m the minister for two, so that helps. But Natural Resources is a great partner on things that they need and we need. The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal is great to work with. All the departments work together very well and it’s a great way to work.
Minister Miller can talk about it more than I can.
Ms. Miller: One of the other examples is environment. The environment role now has really changed and grown throughout multiple departments. The inspection services and conservation officers are now under the Department of Environment. Food inspection is through Environment.
We have a state-of-the-art monitoring system through the Department of Environment that oversees many departments and many acts. It helps us interact. When Environment sees an issue with something that comes from either the conservation officers or the food inspectors, they go back and interact with all those departments to try to resolve issues. It’s been working very well.
Our deputy ministers all meet on a regular basis. Our executive assistants meet on a regular basis right across government. We have strategic initiatives teams that are coming through the premier’s office to all departments so that there are no closed doors. There are no barriers. If something is happening in Nova Scotia, a broad range of people know what is happening, are dealing with it and moving forward.
I have some more notes here regarding Aboriginal collaboration. Thank you for that, Julie. This is amazing. It just keeps going.
Julie is a former CEO of Aboriginal Affairs and certainly that works very well with collaboration with Natural Resources. I will let Julie speak to that.
Ms. Towers: We are centralized in how we organize Aboriginal consultation. There is an Office of Aboriginal Affairs that works with all the line departments and the resource departments. Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources, Environment and Energy are regularly interacting with the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia. I know you will be hearing from the confederacy later.
One of the other programs that we have in place relates to land and land access for the Mi’kmaq. We’ve seen a bit of a shift where a lot of the original interest was more on forested lands. But it’s growing into interest in potential agricultural lands so that they can also look at aspects for economic development for their communities. We you are starting to see that shift as well.
Senator Gagné: Now what about Ottawa? What about the Government of Canada? How is that relationship going as it pertains to forestry and agriculture?
Ms. Miller: As a relatively new player to the game, I’ve been to my first natural resources ministers’ meetings, but it’s been very positive. We seem to be on the same page. We have the same challenges, whether it’s softwood lumber exports or working with Aboriginal communities. It’s a big issue on a federal level and on a provincial level, as well as many other things.
I don’t think it stops at any level. It’s a very cooperative government. I saw no issues at all on the environment side. We have worked to make sure that the Department of Environment in Nova Scotia becomes part of that Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change. We have something moving forward now that will help with that. I think Jason can probably speak to that a little more.
But we are very cooperative. I come away from meetings feeling very good about the state of our province and where we are as a nation.
Senator Gagné: Could you be more specific pertaining to recommendations that we could bring back as a committee regarding the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors? What recommendations could we bring back to the government that would help Nova Scotia plan and mitigate the effects of climate change?
Ms. Miller: Thank you. I will pass that on to Bruce Stewart, who certainly will be able to answer and to give you his wish list.
Mr. Stewart: Last week I was in Ottawa to join CFS and representatives from all across the country as they undertook a strategic planning exercise that they call Science-Policy Dialogue, which they’ll finish up next spring.
I also was working later in the week with the New England governors and Eastern Canadian premiers on climate change and connectivity initiatives, again with broad jurisdictions.
Next week I will be meeting in Fredericton to explore NSERC research grant proposals related to climate change.
All of these things require funding, of course, and the ability to collaborate. You were asking about collaboration, and it’s really the hallmark of the times we live in.
With regard to the ability to get our researchers out and interact with broad jurisdictions, the issues are getting complicated and you can’t address most of them inside your own province or jurisdiction. You have to be able to interact nationally and internationally on conferences and workshops. We need good communication means to do that and access to programs. So there are program proposals coming out now related to climate change, with various dimensions, and we need to participate on those as Nova Scotia.
The amounts of money and the size of these research proposals are fairly large. Again, it’s more than a single jurisdiction the size of Nova Scotia can do on its own. So we need to be able to participate and access that science at a national level.
Mr. Colwell: We’ve got some very specific things we are working on. We really need a better network of monitoring stations for weather: rainfall, temperature gradient, sunlight hours. Because of our microclimates, we can identify something maybe half a kilometre away that might be perfect for another type of crop we never thought about. We need to do that, which takes time.
We have to do very specific things, I believe. You talked about cooperation. The cooperation between my two departments and the federal government has been incredible. The ministers have been great to work with. They listen and usually provide us with a direction where we can work together, and that’s been very positive. I was a minister years ago and that wasn’t always the case. Now it’s a whole different story. The Minister of Agriculture is fantastic to work with.
We went through the negotiations for the Growing Forward 2 replacement, the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. We made some suggestions that were taken into consideration, and at end of the day it pretty well came where we needed to be. That put in place some programs that will help us move forward in the province, which we desperately need to do.
I am so concerned about food supply in the province, in the country, from the standpoint of security. I think we have to do more around that. We have to really push that. We’ve been talking about it here for probably about a year. Look at the studies that have been done by the United Nations that say we’re not going to have enough food. It was done about five years ago now, I think. Within 20 years there won’t be enough food to feed the world. At that time, 65 per cent of the middle class in the world will be in Asia.
I appreciate the comments on our Asian trips. We have been doing a lot of work. The premier tells me I must have a house in Asia, but he keeps sending me. When you come back it’s no fun because you are so worn out, but we are making major inroads there that I think that will help all Nova Scotians and indeed all Canada. It’s one road where you have to build relationships and it’s a long road.
But overall, I’m very happy with my departments — and I am hearing the same thing from my colleagues – and their interaction with the federal government.
The Deputy Chair: Minister Miller.
Ms. Miller: Mr. Hollett has a few comments he wishes to share.
The Deputy Chair: Yes, please.
Jason Hollett, Executive Director, Department of Environment, Government of Nova Scotia Environment: Thank you, senator. I just wanted to echo the sentiments from the ministers that the relationship with the federal government has been extremely positive recently on the subject matter, especially on clean growth and climate change.
I would also echo Minister Colwell’s comments on the need for better data and better research. That is really the basis of the actions that we need to develop in the coming years to better understand the impacts of climate change, in particular, but in the resource industries as well. The support of the federal government is necessary on those pieces.
Another comment we also like to bring up on a regular basis is that a lot of work is being done right now on so many issues across the country, but the smaller jurisdictions sometimes have a hard time keeping up. We have in general a smaller staff complement on these issues and there is a lot of work being done.
In my field of expertise, there are tens of working groups on climate change, including mitigation and adaptation. We continue to raise that as an issue, the capacity and the resources to keep up with the pace of work that’s being done.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Ogilvie: Minister Colwell, the Honeycrisp apple is a marvellous indicator of nutrients in the soil. I recently saw a display of five different jurisdictions of Honeycrisps, and I wouldn’t have recognized three of them as even being part of the North American production. It’s an incredible indicator that Nova Scotia just happens to have the perfect circumstance for it.
I would also say that I think the wine industry has had a tremendous impact on the traditional farming industry in the valley, the bushes and tree variety of agriculture in the valley, and the pace at which they are transforming or changing, or trying new varieties, is a great deal.
Minister Miller, I have a final comment on the issue of the forestry. I think a lot of it is how officials interpret the regulations in the local jurisdiction. Governments come up with really nice plans, including septic systems, for example, and then the people required to enforce them throughout an area often have very different views than what many thought the original intent was.
One issue that comes to me is the ability to cross streams, many of which on a mountain are simply runoffs. They are not traditional. I don’t want to pursue that. That’s why I raised the question with you, and your answers I appreciate very much.
The question that I have for you goes back to your comment on carbon tax versus cap-and-trade. I read an analysis recently that suggested that either system should in the end have the same overall financial impact on a society. That is, they are intended to deal with the larger problems, or the problems proportional to their size, and to stimulate society dealing with it and meeting it.
The major criticism that the analysis had of cap-and-trade versus a straight tax is transparency. In cap-and-trade, the government of the day is totally in charge. It’s very difficult for an ordinary citizen, or even the groups impacted, to get an idea of where the money collected is actually going once it’s transferred out. I am wondering what your criticism of that analysis would be.
Ms. Miller: Thank you, senator. I’m definitely going to pass on your question to Jason. He is probably, I would say, the author of our cap-and-trade program and knows all things about climate change and cap-and-trade. I was almost sorry to leave the Department of Environment and go to DNR because he wasn’t going to come with me. He had a lot of important work to do, so I will let him answer that question.
Mr. Hollett: Thank you, minister.
We don’t have any criticism of that criticism. I think it’s a fair assessment, and it has to do with focusing on the objective of the tool you are choosing.
You are correct that carbon tax is a very transparent price placed on the consumption or combustion of fossil fuels at the source, and consumers can see that very clearly. Cap-and-trade functions a little differently in that it places a restriction or a limit on the amount of carbon that can be released in the jurisdiction, and it creates a market to achieve those reductions in the most cost-effective way possible at that time. So while the ultimate objective is the reduction of carbon emissions in those jurisdictions, there is a little bit of difference in the execution.
Senator Ogilvie: The other side of that is the use of the funds by government. With the carbon tax, it is a straight balance sheet. All governments are claiming the money will go right back into continuing to reduce and incentivize sectors. It’s very clear, whereas in cap-and-trade, it’s much more diffuse. I can see the political value of cap-and-trade. It is more difficult to get access to the numbers and also more difficult to see the application. Those paying the taxes in the end claim not to be as convinced that the money is really going back into sectors that are going to transform it, because government can determine where the monies are spent, as opposed to the carbon tax which is a more direct link between the source of the pollution and the recipients of the government investments.
Mr. Hollett: Yes, that’s correct. In British Columbia, for example, where they have a carbon tax, the government there decided to make the tax revenue neutral. So they reduced corporate taxes and personal income taxes in proportion to the revenues that they collect from the carbon tax.
In a cap-and-trade system, you have different flows of revenue. It can be between industries themselves that are trading the emissions allowances to try to bear out those most effective and least costly emissions. You also have the potential for government to gain revenue from the auctioning of allowances, and that government should be clear and transparent on the programs they are putting together.
Senator Ogilvie: And this is how it should be.
Senator Tardif: Minister Colwell, you spoke about your concern for food security. I’m just trying to understand. It’s unusual, I would say, for a province in Canada to be concerned for itself in relation to food security. Is it because of the rising water possibilities and the fact that with climate change water levels could rise and the dikes may not be able to hold? Is that your concern with food security? Or is it just because there is not enough agricultural land in order to provide that food security to the people?
Mr. Colwell: We are always concerned about our dikes and keeping them in place, but that is not the total solution. The problem is that in addition to our food security, Nova Scotia also exports very close to $400 million a year in agricultural products. So we have to have a balance of the whole thing.
But the point is that with the growing population in the world there will be a need for more protein, and we are already seeing that. I have travelled to China, probably more than all my colleagues, selling agriculture and fisheries products, and we’ve been extremely successful at it.
The problem is if we don’t have enough food to feed our province. If a dike fails between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick on the lands there that are protected by dikes, trucks would stop flowing and our food supply would dry up pretty quickly. Now, that would be a disaster. It would take a while to get that corrected, but it would be corrected and we would probably have to transport by ship instead of by truck until the dikes got fixed, depending how bad the problem was.
But we really have to look in Canada about feeding our population. We have to have the ability to feed our own population in Canada.
Right now, if you don’t count the fishing industry, just agriculture, we can only feed about 17 per cent. We have a goal of going to 20 per cent of our agricultural products to feed the population in Nova Scotia alone. I don’t know what the other provinces are like. Quebec and Ontario might be in a better situation where they have more farmland in production.
Farms have to be competitive. If we get a serious problem because of climate change, such as a hurricane comes through and destroys all the crops, we have to take that into consideration too. It’s a real balance.
I talk a lot about food safety. I also tell farmers that I want them to make money. I was told I was the first minister who has ever done that in history that they can remember. That is important, because if they don’t make money, they can’t grow. It doesn’t matter if you have a 10-acre farm or if you have 5,000 acres.
But we have to achieve a balance. We probably have enough food in the province if we take our fishing industry into consideration, because we’re the biggest exporters of seafood products in Canada. We export about 38 per cent of the total Canadian industry. So we probably have enough.
At the end of the day, we have so many areas where farms are being abandoned for different lifestyles. I’m a prime example of that. My family farmed in New Brunswick since the early 1700s. My generation is the first generation that is not farming on that land, and that is a long time. I’m a direct descendant of the United Empire Loyalists, and my grandmother’s family still has the original grant that was given by the Queen. Not many people can say that.
But this generation didn’t continue with it. I have cousins that are accountants. One of my cousins was a career military officer, and the list goes on and on. All of us have left the farm.
We have got to stop that transition. We’ve got to make sure we move it back, and that all goes back to food security. That’s a long answer, but it’s a very important topic because we’ve gotten so used to feeding ourselves in this country by the grocery store. We have to stop that.
Senator Tardif: Thank you, Mr. Minister.
The Deputy Chair: Colleagues, I would like to thank the panel for being here. It’s been very informative. I hope both ministers have understood that the question period here is a lot easier than the one in the House of Assembly. We do appreciate your insight and that of the officials you brought with you. It’s been very informative and will be very helpful in our study.
Our next witnesses, from the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, are Angeline Gillis, Senior Director, Mi’kmaw Conservation Group, and Michael Benson, Climate Action Project Coordinator.
The floor is yours and then we’ll go to questions from my colleagues.
Angeline Gillis, Senior Director, Mi’kmaw Conservation Group, Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq: Thank you all for having us here today to discuss the topic of climate change and the impact on the forestry sector.
As many of you know, my colleague and I work for the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, which is a not-for-profit tribal organization that has served seven Mainland Mi’kmaq communities for the last 31 years. It is amongst the largest Aboriginal organizations currently in Atlantic Canada and employs over 60 staff on an annual basis. Our mission at the confederacy is “to proactively promote and assist Mi’kmaw communities’ initiatives toward self-determination and enhancement of community.”
Today, our organization, the Mainland Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia, and our fellow Nova Scotia friends and neighbors are participating in Treaty Day celebrations just outside these doors. Yesterday was Mi’kmaq Treaty Day here in Nova Scotia. It is a day where we celebrate the living treaties between the Mi’kmaq and the Crown. If time permits, I would like to invite you all to come join us in those celebrations.
Today I am here to present on the impacts climate change will have on the lands that my people have lived off for thousands of years. In talking of this subject, it reminds me of my responsibility to the seven generations that will follow me, and I question whether or not our generation, my generation, has done enough to protect our waters and lands for those children who will come after me. Have I done enough to ensure that there will be safe drinking water; that there will be food that can still be harvested off the lands, or that there will be healthy forests to hunt, trap, camp and explore? The social, cultural and economic impacts climate change will have on our communities if we are not able to adapt in a way that protects their very way of life will end negatively. If we are unable to adapt to climate change in a way that incorporates the Mi’kmaq concept of netukulimk, which equates to sustainability in the English language, we will see a depletion of traditional foods, medicines, crafts and practices.
It is important to remember that there is more than just an economic benefit in forestry. If we are to move forward we must include the positive long-term social impacts in the overall examination of the impacts of climate change.
There is no doubt climate change is happening. We are witnessing it with the unpredictable weather patterns that are happening all over the world. It is happening right here in Nova Scotia with the drought we experienced last summer, the warmer winters, and the introduction of new species onto our landscapes and into our waters. In fact, it is happening at such a rapid pace that our efforts are no longer proactive but rather reactive, which has become somewhat of a theme in the environmental field we work in.
That said, we must be cautious in how we react and ensure it is in a strategic manner and less out of panic or fear. To accomplish this, the idea of collaboration with all stakeholders will be especially important in the development of new policies, programs, and regulations that will address the changes that will happen as a result of climate change. It is an action where government, indigenous groups, environmentalists and industry come together and develop the aforementioned items as one and not in individual silos.
There is a concept that is used quite often in our research efforts here in Nova Scotia — “two-eyed seeing.” It was coined by an elder, Albert J. Marshall, from Eskasoni, Nova Scotia. He believes in the importance of bringing both the traditional knowledge and the Western science together to conduct our research. However, we have taken it a bit further in that we are also including “local knowledge.” The successes we are witnessing as a result of this concept, the idea of bringing different voices into our research projects and groups, is why we are suggesting that our government take this very same approach. People who live off these lands, both indigenous and local, who have spent their whole lives in and around the forest landscapes can assist this government in identifying methods that work and don’t work when adapting to climate change.
As some of you may already know, the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia are working towards managing large pieces of forested land outside of our communities. I believe Julie Towers was just here, and she may have spoken of the MFI lands.
Learning from others’ past practices and deciphering the “do’s and don’ts” of forestry, we have identified the need to provide healthy habitat for all species — black ash, deer, moose, white ash, yellow birch, et cetera. These are all species that are currently of concern or at risk, and we hope to accomplish this by practising more responsible stewardship of our forests. This includes using a variety of harvesting methods to diversify forest structure; allow for natural regeneration and manage for higher quality timber; leaving some areas of high density forest to provide cover for wildlife; developing detection and control mechanisms to quantify existing threats and begin determining control strategies; introducing mandatory firebreaks in the form of wetlands and/or marshes that could also sequester carbon, filter runoff water and provide a host of beneficial ecosystems services; maintaining soil productivity and minimizing carbon loss from harvested sites, et cetera.
We are also in support of increasing stored carbon and managing for mature trees that sequester large amounts of carbon, which will allow us to manage crucial habitat for many different species. Yes, our management model will be different in that it will align more closely with the values of our people, in that there is less clear-cutting, less spruce planting and increased tree species diversity. However, we are also identifying ways — that is, identifying international markets for non-timber forest products — to ensure that there are also economic benefits to our communities that will assist us in achieving best management practices.
With respect to carbon credits, there is the potential to benefit the forestry industry by fostering innovation. However, there needs to be a set of guidelines and an arm’s-length certification body that can establish quantifiable carbon sinks that will allow land owners to sell carbon credits to industry. This will allow the varying values by all stakeholders to be achievable on the landscape and will transform the forestry industry though the use of intensive, ecosystem-based management. Forested lands, especially evergreen lands, have a large acting capacity as carbon sinks. If equated properly, the forestry sector could claim significant credit in the cap-and-trade system.
A great example of this approach is the Cheakamus Community Forest Carbon Offset Project. The community forest is located adjacent to the Resort Municipality of Whistler, within the traditional territories of the Squamish and Lil’wat Nations. The project uses the selling of carbon offsets to allow them to increase protected areas and use lower impact harvesting techniques. The project reduces GHG emissions by approximately 10,000 tonnes of CO2 per year through avoided and modified forestry practices laid out under the CCF Ecosystem Management Plan. All of this work done in B.C. is only made possible because the province has led the way in developing a carbon sequestration system. We need Canada to implement programs that encourage new ecosystem-based management of lands to incorporate carbon offsets onto the landscape.
In conclusion, in moving forward we hope that the approach taken by Canada with any new developments respecting forestry is inclusive of the indigenous perspective. We feel that we have an insight into these lands that is separate and apart from what is offered by Western science. Furthermore, the losses that I also noted earlier will have a deeper, more significant impact both culturally and spiritually on my people than what I feel it will have on others in the sector. We are always willing and able to work with our partners, but that willingness must exist at all levels.
The government could assist us in the values we are all trying to achieve by continuing to commit to providing resources to develop educational materials for all Canadians regarding climate change and its impact on forestry. Currently, the funding availability for groups like our own is slim to none. The work we do is from identifying “one off” project-based concepts that we then pitch to our project partners. For a sector that is undergoing a review with respect to its need to adapt, there is no funding available that invests in conservation or stewardship activities in forestry. It seems as though most funding provided is directed more towards industry than it is the environmental/Aboriginal groups like our own. This in essence takes away those opportunities to collaborate as the capacity to undertake the work does not exist.
There is a need for further research into new innovative ideas but also a need to renew research on existing practices that were developed before we came into the environment we are now faced with. In my years in this position, forestry has been the most difficult unfunded program I have had to work with. The time is now to invest if we are expected to protect our lands. Invest in the stewards of these lands and we will all work together to protect our forests for not only our future generations but for yours as well. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
We will now go to questions, first to Senator Doyle.
Senator Doyle: Thank you for your very interesting presentation. I’ve met with a number of Mi’kmaq groups during the meetings of the Aboriginal Peoples Committee that I am a member of, and we’ve always been informed of the Mi’kmaq connection to the land. That seems to come out quite a great deal when we have Mi’kmaq people in.
Here in Nova Scotia, is your connection to the land recognized in the same way by government when you’re doing business with government? I am thinking of things like timber rights. Do you have rights to a certain amount of timber, Crown lands, and hunting, farming, fishing, that kind of thing? Is there special consideration for the Mi’kmaq groups in that regard?
Ms. Gillis: Yes and no. A lot of matters are taken to what we call the Assembly of Nova Scotia Chiefs. We have our hunting. Our hunting rights are established.
With respect to land use, for as long as I can remember we’ve only had our reserve lands.
Right now, currently under discussion are the MFI and C4 lands that the province is looking at licensing to the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia for our own land management uses.
Senator Doyle: Do you get involved in woodlot development and woodlots generally? I notice there are quite a number of woodlots here. Are you involved in that in any way?
Ms. Gillis: Recently, my group has partnered up with a company, Port Hawkesbury Pulp. That agreement stemmed from the same types of discussions that take place at the assembly level. They essentially provide us with resources to train individuals to work in the forestry sector. Over the course of the last year, my group has trained anywhere from 20 to 30 community members to work in silviculture and also work on those lands for PHP to conduct silviculture. So we’re trying to get people trained and get boots in the forest, and it is through those types of relationships.
Senator Doyle: You mentioned clear-cutting. We had people in last week; I think it was an Ontario group. I asked a question on clear-cutting, and having asked the question I was made to feel like it was a thing of the past. The people who complain about it are people around 70 years old. It is no longer part of the way that people harvest timber. Do you disagree? Is clear-cutting still a problem?
Ms. Gillis: I do believe it is.
Senator Doyle: Do you really?
Ms. Gillis: Yes, I do. I guess it’s the way in which they prepare the forest for clear-cutting that’s the problem. We talk about reforestation. We talk about planting. We hear all the good stuff that people are attempting to do. The problem is that they are clearing the diversity of the forest and raising one type of tree because it grows faster, and then they’re cutting it. What happens is it destroys the soil composition. So eventually they’re not going to be able to plant anything, and at that point what do we do?
It’s not necessarily the act of clear-cutting; it’s what they’re doing. If they just allowed for natural regeneration, then you might have fewer people opposed to it.
Senator Doyle: So all that would be done because they are trying to harvest mature timber and make it more financially viable.
Ms. Gillis: That’s right.
Senator Tardif: Thank you very much for a very interesting presentation. I am very impressed by your presentation, especially with the indigenous perspective of combining traditional knowledge with more common scientific knowledge as well as local knowledge.
When you were speaking about the funding that is available for this type of research, you seemed to be disappointed with the lack of funding available to the type of research that you think is absolutely necessary as we move forward in looking at the impacts of climate change on your lands and on the forestry sector in general. Could you expand on that further?
Ms. Gillis: Sure. Currently I have a number of different programs, and forestry is one. Michael Benson works for my climate action team. Then I have an aquatics team and then a solid waste management team. We work in all these different sectors.
Within our climate change group, we are able to assess our community vulnerabilities to climate change — that is, reserve land vulnerabilities — and prepare strategic mitigation and adaptation strategies for the communities.
However, there tends to be less of a focus on forestry itself. We have gone in and tried to look at the availability of funding to essentially do the same type of study: assess, mitigate and prepare our forest for climate change. That type of funding doesn’t exist in the forestry sector. A lot of the funding in forestry is directed more to industry research and less so for the conversation stewardship activities that we would undertake in forestry, which makes it very difficult for us. A lot of the funding we do identify for forestry is economic development funding, which is great in terms of enhancing our community, but not so great when we are trying to protect the environment. So that funding is limited for us and I think for most environmentalists in forestry.
Senator Tardif: When you talk about conservation projects or research, are you talking about seed diversity in the forest? Are you looking at species development? What are you referring to exactly?
Ms. Gillis: With respect to studying climate change on the forestry?
Senator Tardif: Yes.
Ms. Gillis: I will turn it over to Mr. Benson.
Michael Benson, Climate Action Project Coordinator, Mi’kmaw Conservation Group, Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq: In that regard, we are looking at a number of issues. A big part of what we are looking at is forest dispersion and shifting. As our climate warms, we are going to have a new and introduced species either retreating or advancing into our forested lands. Along with that, it is going to change ecosystem habitats, which brings into account traditional species management, like moose, deer and other populations.
We are also going to be looking at forest fire management. Although we are going to have an increase in moisture and precipitation overall, we are going to be experiencing longer, drier summers, and this will lead to an increase in drought and in the risk of forest fires.
Along with that we have fewer checks and balances on a particular species. We look at different bark beetles that require either a very long winter or a natural fire or a natural cycle to eliminate them. With the changes in temperature and the shifting of forests, we no longer have natural checks and balances to mitigate and manage what traditionally are a natural cycle. What we are looking to do is engage the forests in ways whereby we can restore these natural cycles.
Some of the work we do, as Angie mentioned, is looking at adaptation strategies. But it is easy to adapt a community because you can look at infrastructure. With forestry it is a little more different because you are dealing with a natural system. The funding that is unavailable right now is looking at natural approaches, natural notions of fire breaks or natural pest management, because some of these don’t quite factor into the “take it to the pulp mill” attitude.
Senator Tardif: Thank you.
Senator Gagné: What percentage of forest land do you manage in Nova Scotia?
Ms. Gillis: Right now, about 40,000 hectares of land in Nova Scotia will be managed by the Mi’kmaq. That is not something that is complete but is about to take place. That is a growing number here in Nova Scotia between the assembly and the province.
Senator Gagné: We had two ministers testify earlier this morning, and they were saying that shared stewardship is the key to sustainability moving forward. I have heard you mention that that is key to making sure that we do have forests and agricultural land for all the generations after us. Could you describe the partnerships you have with the Government of Nova Scotia, other First Nation communities and the federal government?
Ms. Gillis: I would say our aquatics program is our best program, and that is done in partnership with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. That came through the Aboriginal Aquatic Resource and Oceans Management Program. That is core funding for our group to undertake science and research activities out on our freshwater systems and in the oceans and address priority needs identified by communities there. I would say that is our best federal partnership.
I am also currently working closely with Bruce Pike from Natural Resources Canada. We started talking last year, and he is great; however, he is limited in what he can do to provide us with the resources we require. With him, we work more on the economic benefits that the communities can have off of managing their own lands.
We partner with all of the Mi’kmaq communities in Nova Scotia. But also, as a result of our AAROM, we have partners for other AAROMs that span Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Quebec because they have similar programs.
We also have partnerships with Environment and Climate Change Canada. We do a lot of one-off projects with them.
The Clean Foundation is another big partner for us, and universities as well. We work very closely with Dalhousie agricultural college, Acadia University. We have partners there that provide us with labs as well as some of the expertise we require for analyzing our results.
So we’ve established and continue to build on those partnerships. Forestry is growing. We’re trying to get it there.
Senator Gagné: So what I am hearing is that funding is the issue for your community.
Ms. Gillis: Yes, for forestry.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. You made comments about shared stewardship. We have not heard a lot about shared stewardship, although we’ve heard about shared interests. This is new. Are you pleased with the shared stewardship that you’re engaged in the provincial government and the various departments?
Ms. Gillis: With respect to the province, I don’t do a lot of work with the province. I think we’re going to start trying, especially with the lands that are about to come to us. We’re going to try to improve on that. But with any of my programs, I would say forestry is probably going to be the only one so far that will be with the province. The province tends to work more with the assembly than with the technicians.
The Deputy Chair: It is interesting that the ministers who were before us earlier this morning mentioned a relationship with the Mi’kmaq community and the importance of that. That’s a positive step.
You mentioned the species at risk. You gave us a list and I’m afraid I don’t remember them all. If some of those species are about to be gone from Nova Scotia, one would assume that they were of little value commercially if they’re not being regenerated. I won’t play the devil’s advocate, but why should we be concerned about a species that had little value being gone?
Ms. Gillis: A prime example of that is black ash. If you talk to any Mi’kmaq in Nova Scotia, black ash has been around for beyond my years. I speak to my elders and they educate us and show us the craftsmanship of the work they can do from a black ash tree. They tell us the stories of their childhood and their parents’ childhood. It was something they took pride in. It was something they were able to carry forward to us. You can’t really put a price on a black ash basket.
The Deputy Chair: I have one.
Ms. Gillis: If we think about our way of life and our practices, the traditions we hold, they make up who we are. They are our stories. Can you say that it holds no value?
The Deputy Chair: As a natural extension of what you have said, would it not be incumbent upon the Mi’kmaq community to try to protect those species on land that you control?
Ms. Gillis: We are trying.
The Deputy Chair: You’re trying.
Ms. Gillis: We are trying, absolutely. We’ve actually accessed the Aboriginal Fund for Species at Risk Prevention Stream to go out and identify black ash stands that aren’t currently listed under any database and put mechanisms in place to protect, collect seedlings.
We are working with the Canadian Forest Association. They are going to help us hold some seeds in order to grow them out.
But we’re trying, and that is what we try to do with any traditional species.
Salmon is another one. Why save salmon? It was a commercially viable fishery until that was completely depleted.
The Deputy Chair: Yes, and now we are now only into farmed salmon. If you buy salmon anywhere, it is almost always farmed salmon.
Ms. Gillis: I boycott. I won’t eat a salmon anymore. I used to love it, but not anymore.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Doyle: In April of 2017, the Council of Atlantic Premiers announced the establishment of the Atlantic Clean Energy Program. Are there any clean energy technologies in use right now that can benefit the agricultural sector or the forestry sector in Nova Scotia?
Mr. Benson: I certainly believe so. A lot of the energy we are looking at is in regard to production, industry capacity and managing and processing a lot of that wood. When it boils down to it, we are looking at an increase in hydro, an increase in wind and solar technology.
There are also biofuels. There is a potential to reincorporate into self-generated energy what could previously be wasted, such as non-commercial timber forest products. Not only could it be converted into a viable source of high-efficiency energy, it could also reduce transportation costs as well as some of the transmission and the energy costs associated with moving that from one point to the other.
I think a large potential for investment in this industry is replacing some of the coal-fired industries that we’ve been running on for years. As recently as 2010, the use of coal was banned in the forestry sector, and as the price of renewables continues to decline, it will be interesting to see traditional industries embrace those and help move them forward while reducing both their costs and environmental impacts.
Senator Doyle: The objective of the Canadian forest products centre is to remove about 30 megatonnes of carbon dioxide by the year 2030. Now they say it can be accomplished by using products from wood to go into green buildings and what have you. Is that a good idea? Will it put further pressure on the forests?
Mr. Benson: It’s a really interesting part of the industry because in many ways the commercial systems are going to continue, and the use of timber in green forest products is essentially a storing of the embodied carbon of the tree.
Senator Doyle: Right.
Mr. Benson: Through post-processing, you tend to lose a lot of that stored, fixed physical carbon into the atmosphere, which leads to an increase greenhouse gases. I think if done properly, there is a potential to divert some of that processed commercial wood into a carbon capture and storage mechanism. In that sense, it’s a way to continue the development and commercial use of things while also efficiently storing carbon in a building structure.
Other industries, like the concrete industry, are looking at pumping carbon into concrete. Trees are a natural form of that. They are sequestering the carbon into their physical embodiment through photosynthesis. Essentially, their mass is carbon from the atmosphere, just processed. If stored properly, it’s a way to actually have carbon as a built-in infrastructure system.
That said, I don’t necessarily see it expanding the commercial forestry industry. However, it could replace some of the waning demand that is traditionally seen and maybe even help bolster the industry as it enters its sunset years.
Senator Doyle: Thank you.
Senator Tardif: Canada’s forests play a critical role in the carbon cycle by taking out the carbon dioxide from the air and reabsorbing it in the trees and in the soil. You mentioned that it would be important to have a certification policy whereby carbon sinks could be measured and quantified. That is an interesting idea. How do you see that as providing more carbon sequestration and perhaps generating economic activity? How do you see that going forward?
Mr. Benson: Thanks for the great question. That’s one that I have been very interested in, especially as a young person moving forward. We like to look at different ways of managing the land.
Moving forward with carbon sequestration and sinks and adding commercial value to the land essentially means that as the forest grows, it is going to sequester more and more carbon. Putting a framework around that whereby the landowner can sell those carbon sequestration credits gives the landowner an incentive to maintain the land and an incentive, more so, to maintain a standing forest of trees or to maintain glades and wetlands in tandem with forest management.
If you could have a framework to quantify how much carbon that particular land is sequestering on an annual basis, put it on a gradient and show landholders with the standing forest that their land will become more and more valuable each and every year, that in turn will give more standing value to ecosystem services and more incentive to conserve particular standing forests. In that way you can add more economic value to standing lands by renting out their carbon sequestration capacities.
Right now there seems to be a provincial monopoly on our upcoming cap-and-trade system. However, if given the opportunity to engage independent owners, independent producers, Mi’kmaq communities or landowners, they will have an economic incentive to leave the trees standing.
With that come the non-commercialized benefits of erosion control — clean air, clean water, habitat for species — and that factors directly into some of the work I’m doing on flood mitigation. So if we can put value on a standing forest that is also stopping the town of Truro from flooding, then that is perfect in my books. It’s just a different quantification of conservation lands and merging it with economic values.
Senator Tardif: Are you using forest land for agricultural purposes?
Ms. Gillis: Not currently, no.
Senator Tardif: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: One of the problems that Nova Scotians have, of course, is that we pay the highest power rates in the country. As a Nova Scotia resident, I know it all too well. Many of us try to find ways to be more efficient. I have installed heat pumps in my home, but I also supplement my electric heat with a woodstove. It’s become more and more difficult to find sources of reasonably priced, good hardwood. Is this an area that the Mi’kmaq community is looking at as an opportunity from a marketing point of view?
Ms. Gillis: It is, yes. In fact, some of our communities are building homes now with the intent of putting fireplaces in each of them. The plan is that will assist those communities by bringing in firewood from the lands and put community members out there on the lands to cut their own firewood if need be. But we are looking at that, yes.
The Deputy Chair: One of the issues is that many people in Nova Scotia and in Atlantic Canada have switched to pellet stoves. It is a use of wood. Me being an old guy, I enjoy the heat, but I also enjoy the ambience of a wood fire. So there is competition for that wood that might have normally been available to people using wood for heat. It’s now going into pellets.
Is the pellet processing something that the Mi’kmaq community is also looking at? It seems to be a very big sector and a growing market.
Ms. Gillis: Yes, we are looking at it. We’re looking actually at the methods that are used to harvest wood for those pellets. Our concern right now is that we’re cutting full trees for that purpose. I don’t think that was ever the intent.
The Deputy Chair: I agree.
Ms. Gillis: This is concerning for us because to remove those full trees and/or even the deadwood, you’re essentially destroying the soil composition of the forest. I think if it was done properly — and again, this is where I feel it is important to you bring in that “two/three-eyed seeing” approach to managing these forests: What we are seeing on the ground is happening as a result of cutting for that sole purpose.
The Deputy Chair: A number of years ago this committee — and I guess I’m the only remaining member of the committee that was on the trip — visited Irving’s tree farms in northern New Brunswick. The one thing that impressed me was the management of the floor of the forest. They made sure that the trees they wanted to grow had the best opportunity to grow by removing the things that were not necessary for the health of those trees. Is that part of the process that you’re hoping to introduce in the Mi’kmaq-controlled forests?
Ms. Gillis: The process undertaken by Irving in New Brunswick?
The Deputy Chair: Yes.
Ms. Gillis: No.
The Deputy Chair: Your theory is to allow nature to take its course.
Ms. Gillis: Yes.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Gagné: Are you well equipped to manage, track and measure the changes in your forests? Are you able to recruit young professional scientists who can help you manage your forest lands?
Ms. Gillis: I believe so. Five years ago, I took on the AAROM program, and there was myself and two other staff. I now have a staff of 25 and it only continues to grow because of the passion that we’re finding in these young scientists. For a while, there were no jobs for these students coming out with masters of science, biology, environment, and I scooped up as many as I could at that time.
I absolutely believe that with the capacity we currently have, with the impact we’re having on the younger generation coming up — I employ 13 summer students every summer to introduce them into the green sector. I take on two to three interns every year. That is just growth. I can’t foresee that stopping. Those aren’t set numbers. I believe that we will be able to grow that even further now that we have these lands to manage.
Senator Gagné: Thank you.
Senator Doyle: Have you detected any great change in forest growth or agricultural yield or production or quality that could be attributed to climate change? What have you noticed over the last five-year period with regard to forest growth and production?
Mr. Benson: That’s a very interesting question because with our longer growing season and warmer winters, certain forests are actually seeing an increase in productivity. In some areas we are noticing that there is more carbon in the atmosphere for them to grow their systems. There is more nitrogen in certain soils to grow their root systems.
However, to speak to some of the changes, some of the work we’re doing right now is aerial photography. We are looking at past changes in shorelines. But, of course, where our province is heavily forested you can very easily see the different shifts. We’re witnessing a large portion of the impact as a forest dispersion and a forest shifting. Where we have traditional mixed wood forest, we are starting to experience a retreat of certain tree species and a reintroduction of others.
Although forests can change, ecosystems can change, the animals within them are having a difficult time doing so as well.
Another impact we’re noticing is an increase in pests. The emerald ash borer is on the way, and that is one that directly goes after the black ash trees. We have birch bark beetles, and there are a number of different pine beetles out west that they are killing off entire ecosystems. That’s problematic because the landscape is becoming more favourable to them.
As our forests are shifting, the natural management methods are leaving with them, which leaves the door open not only for the introduction of pests and invasive species, but also removes the capacity to naturally handle what previously was a balanced cycle.
Senator Doyle: Of course, you will probably get an increase in bugs and pests as fire in certain areas of the provinces drives them into other areas and different species of wood.
Mr. Benson: In some regards, yes. Fire has always been a natural cycle. I tree planted with Irving throughout university to pay for my schooling, and I was very familiar with Irving clear-cuts. I think I planted over 500,000 trees. With the monocultures, they will plant row by row and remove any undergrowth or any natural spacing of it. So when a forest fire comes in, there is no natural forest break. A natural forest would deal naturally with a forest fire, which is part of the rejuvenation and regrowth process. However, as we start to alter that, the forest fires are going farther, longer, and are much harder to maintain.
Senator Ogilvie: I found it very interesting when you said that along the shoreline you can see certain species retreating and others being enhanced. Could you give a couple of examples, please?
Mr. Benson: Where we have the mixed wood system, we have a mix of a boreal and deciduous forest right now. A lot of our hardwoods are being dispersed. You can even see it in aerial photography. What was previously filmed by fixed-wing aircraft is now drone footage, a modern technology. But it’s very clear that we are seeing natural forests give way to larger monocultures. It’s very noticeable in the fall when you can see the beautiful colours changing. We have a lot more evergreens. Softwoods are taking over. They are growing faster. They are being introduced more and, in a sense, they are out competing what traditionally are natural systems.
In Nova Scotia, we have the benefit of having beautiful mixed forests, which allows for a huge increase in our environmental capacity and our ecosystem diversity. However, we’re noticing that there are different shifts in different areas. It is not a clean-cut line across the province. But, generally speaking, there is less forest diversity.
Senator Ogilvie: And these are in non-managed forests, the general forests?
Mr. Benson: In both, yes.
Senator Ogilvie: It is very interesting because I live on the shore. I have noticed exactly the change you’ve indicated in that the white birches, the traditional maple, are not surviving as well. The big ones are starting to rot, collapse and so on. Different kinds of maples that are faster growing don’t grow to the same size. What we used to call rock maple, with the big leaves, are growing rapidly and taking over certain areas.
So you’re seeing that more widespread. Do you think it is more due to climate than particular insects or disease with regard to the traditional birch and maple?
Mr. Benson: That is an interesting question because I think it’s a combination of both. Insects and disease are by-products of the climate. However, with different shifts in moisture levels we are going to see different trees act more favourably. Black spruce, for example, thrives in wet, marshy areas. Other hardwoods prefer a drier one. An unpredictable and long-term shift in our weather patterns is going to lead to a shift in our climate patterns. That will either inundate the landscape in incredible amounts of water in a short period of time or dry it up.
Not having a balance will allow for a mixed forest system. A lot of it has to do with the moisture, which is a direct by-product of the climate, as well as the elimination of competition or shifting through invasive species or through a decline or an advance in different forest species through competition.
Senator Ogilvie: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: I’ll go back to your presentation. I was interested in your comments you attributed the thoughts to Albert J. Marshall. He believes in the importance of bringing both traditional knowledge and Western science together to conduct research. However, we have taken it further and also including local knowledge. Do you have an example of how you’ve done that, bringing local knowledge from the Aboriginal community and adding it to science and the positive outcome?
Ms. Gillis: Actually, I have a recent example. It is our work that my aquatics team is doing on the Shubenacadie River system. Any studies that were completed in the past showed that striped bass were not spawning in the Shubenacadie River. Any type of eggs found in the Shubenacadie River were actually the result of them moving upstream.
So what my group did is they brought our traditional fishermen from the community and they had relationships with the guys who are actually out on the banks — the farmers out on the banks, the locals. We asked them to join in as well. The line of communication was those guys who actually had a visual of the bubbling in the water when the spawning was taking place contacted our guys in the community, who contacted our scientists, and we all went out together in a collaborative effort to collect the eggs. We sent them over to Acadia University to be aged and determined that there is no way that those eggs, which were 12 hours old, could have spawned anywhere else except in the Shubenacadie River. That was a combination of Western science, traditional knowledge and local knowledge.
I am a farmer’s daughter who grew up outside the community of Eskasoni, and there is stuff I know about the lands I grew up on that no one else would know. I knew that we couldn’t just stop at “two-eyed.” We had to take the third-eye approach because to be there, to grow up on the lands, to know and see the differences in the systems would be something that would assist us.
Senator Ogilvie: I thought the Shubenacadie River has always been recognized as one of the great striped bass fishing rivers.
Ms. Gillis: Yes.
Senator Ogilvie: What you were saying is that the spawning of striped bass in the river system is no longer limited just to the lakes at the head of the river but is now occurring in the river itself?
Ms. Gillis: That’s correct.
Senator Ogilvie: And that that is a change?
Ms. Gillis: That is something we discovered with bringing our scientists, local knowledge and traditional knowledge holders together.
Senator Ogilvie: Is it possible they were always spawning?
Ms. Gillis: Absolutely. But nobody ever identified them as spawning there. All the studies we came up against showed that striped bass were not spawning in the Shubenacadie River. So we set out to prove that they were. We would not have known that if it wasn’t for the traditional and local knowledge holders who kept saying, despite these studies, “They are spawning in the Shubenacadie River.” So we took our scientists and proved that they are spawning in the Shubenacadie River.
Senator Ogilvie: I guess, from my life here, I would have assumed what you assumed, that they were.
Ms. Gillis: Right.
Senator Ogilvie: I’m surprised that it was assumed that they were not spawning in the river at all, although the river is a very fast-flowing river.
In any event, thank you very much.
Ms. Gillis: You’re welcome.
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Gillis and Mr. Benson, I would like to thank both you for your presentation today and for your time. Your testimony has been very helpful.
For our next panel of witnesses, from the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, we have Chris van den Heuvel, President, and Henry Vissers, Executive Director; from the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick, John Russell, Environmental Farm Plan Coordinator; and from the Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture, David Mol, President, and Robert Godfrey, Executive Director.
Thank you for accepting our invitation. I’d now like to invite you to make your presentations. In the question and answer session, I would ask the senators to be succinct and to the point in asking their questions and I would ask the witnesses to do the same when answering. There will be as many rounds as possible in the time allowed, so we should be able to get a few rounds in this afternoon.
We will begin with Mr. van den Heuvel.
Chris van den Heuvel, President, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Thank you for this opportunity to provide input on the concerns regarding the changing climate and the implications that the carbon pricing program imposed by the federal government will have on the agriculture industry in Nova Scotia.
The NSFA represents 2,400 farm families from 28 different commodity groups and 13 different counties and regional federations in Nova Scotia.
Our federation recognizes that the climate is changing and that appropriate measures must be taken to address the risks associated with this change. Storms and droughts to both extremes have increased in frequency and severity and have caused severe damage to crops through disease outbreak — for example, the fire blight that hit the apple industry in 2014 — infrastructure like road washouts that were experienced in Cape Breton in spring 2017, and the snow loads throughout the province in 2016.
To study these risks, the NSFA has taken the lead on a project funded by the AgriRisk stream of Growing Forward 2 to study the impacts that climate change will have on the agricultural industry with a focus on the grape and wine value chain. This project will focus heavily on GIS and dike land modelling. There is top-quality agricultural land protected by the dikes constructed by Acadian settlers and currently maintained by the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture. This land is below sea level and, as many climate change models indicate, is subject to be lost with rising waters if dikes aren’t appropriately sized to handle the more severe storms we will certainly face in the future. The loss of these lands will be detrimental to many farms in Nova Scotia. The AgriRisk project is a great first step in developing a model, but more research must be undertaken to better understand the full implications that climate change will have on all players in the agricultural industry in Nova Scotia.
Carbon release into the atmosphere has for a long time been said to be a large factor in climate change. As you know, to reduce carbon emissions being released into the environment, the federal government has imposed price and reduction targets on carbon for each individual province to administer through either a cap-and-trade program or carbon tax system.
Agriculture is in a unique position with regard to these suggested programs. Like any person or company, us farmers will feel the increased cost of inputs. However, most farms are in a position to offset carbon released into the atmosphere or are able to change farm practices in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Strong data is needed in order to assess how carbon pricing will negatively impact different economic sectors and where gains can be made with the least impact.
To date, the modelling that has been completed and presented profiling the economic impact to agricultural producers has been overly simplistic and at too high a level to adequately inform decision making. For example, it has not included any indirect costs related to transportation, service delivery or pressure from the value chain to cut costs and minimal impact to input costs. Without changes to the current policy direction, there will be significant impact to the cost of transportation of agricultural products to get them to market, especially in the greenhouse sector.
There is a clear need for Environment and Climate Change Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to collaborate on more robust modelling in order to fully assess the impacts of carbon pricing by region and by commodity. What modelling seems to have been completed has failed to take into account significant differences from key agricultural sectors in energy use and provincially distinct approaches to exemptions or rebates for on-farm fuel use. We have heard from our counterparts in provinces that have already implemented a price on carbon in some fashion that costs of production have risen significantly more than others and past changes to production practices have not been taken into account as reduction strategies.
Agriculture also remains unique compared to many sectors in that most of our emissions are biological in nature through nitrous oxide from crop production as part of the nitrogen cycle and methane from ruminant production. These are not so far covered under carbon pricing nor should they be. However, we do need an expansion of offsets and other approaches that cover these biological emissions so that producers have the right incentives and knowledge of how to reduce biological greenhouse gas emissions.
Programs and commodity associations have been successfully working on strategies to reduce carbon emissions. Fertilizer Canada’s 4R program and the research that has been taking place in the beef industry are some examples of how the industry has been reducing carbon emissions.
The NSFA also participated in a project that studied the carbon offset credits available by livestock farmers in the Maritimes. Considering the size of Nova Scotia, the potential for offsetting CO2 is abundant; however, based on the 2010 study and an average carbon offset of 48 tonnes per year, it would take 21 farms to participate in methane collection to create 1,000 tonnes CO2 per year. Logistically, to ensure that agriculture can effectively participate in an offset program, a model or a middle organization must be structured in order to effectively coordinate the sale of these offset credits.
Agriculture is a highly competitive industry in Canada, and the vast majority of producers have small margins and are price takers in the market. As a producer there is no control over the cost of inputs, or the price of their product in the domestic or global marketplace. In addition to the introduction and scheduled increase of a price of carbon on inputs and services that producers have and will have to begin to pay, there are many other factors impacting the costs of agricultural production in Canada. They include, but are not limited to, provincial minimum wage increases, cost recovery at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, a rising Canadian dollar, the scarcity of labour, increasing energy costs, new food safety regulations, and tax changes.
Currently, the differences in carbon pricing policy from province to province are creating an unequal situation with clear implications for the competitiveness of Canada’s agricultural producers and an inequity for rural Canada. Here in Nova Scotia, the Department of Environment has indicated that there will not be a capital fund to support industries looking to reduce carbon emissions. This puts Nova Scotia farmers at a cost disadvantage compared to farmers in other provinces who will have access to such capital funds for technologies that will reduce carbon emissions or consumption on their farms.
At the provincial level, the NSFA has been active on the cap-and-trade file. While there has been much work on both the government side and the stakeholder side, it is still unclear as to how a provincial cap-and-trade program will roll out, how much more consumers can expect to pay at the pumps, and the overall impact to the economy. Considering the federal government expects that carbon pricing regimes will roll out in 2018, these uncertainties are creating difficulties to plan for increased costs of goods and production.
In closing, the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture would like to make the following recommendations: a collaborative study to fully understand the implications of creating a price on carbon for the agricultural industry and the value chains that serve the industry; the Canadian Agricultural Partnership to continue with AgriRisk projects that will study the implications of climate change on a regional scale.
In addition, we would like to see the development of a “green technologies” capital fund for farms; the development of decision-making tools that will allow farms to make the right adaption decision for their operation; and find a way to address competitiveness issues across provinces as well as imported goods that will not necessarily be subjected to carbon pricing regimes.
With regard to the provincial program, ensure that farm exemption is in writing, much like the household exemption, and consult with the primary generators of offset credits when the offset credit mechanism is being designed.
With the right support programs and background research, agriculture will be in a good position to help further reduce emissions of both its own sector as well as offset the emissions that other sectors produce.
Once again, thank you for the invitation to speak today. I will be happy to entertain any questions as they arise.
The Deputy Chair: Next is Mr. Russell.
John Russell, Environmental Farm Plan Coordinator, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick: Good afternoon, honourable chair and committee members. Mike Bouma, our president, has not been able to attend. He has been babysitting his growbots for the last two nights, so sorry about that.
The Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick is the province’s largest farm organization with close to 800 members. We promote the interests of all farmers and the sustainability and growth of the agricultural industry in New Brunswick. We are pleased to have been invited to present to the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry to share our views on how climate change may affect farming in New Brunswick, including what adaptation may be required, the repercussions of carbon pricing and how the sector may contribute to greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Farmers are inherently adaptive. Though the future risks of climate change are great, New Brunswick sees opportunity for expansion of its agricultural production with a longer growing season in all areas of the province.
Climate change predictions of precipitation, while potentially putting New Brunswick at a relative advantage worldwide, will create challenges. Though the total water falling in New Brunswick may be sufficient, if it is not well distributed over time and area, crop requirements may not be met. Until now, investment in irrigation for the vast majority of our crops has been suspended in favor improving the soil to increase water holding capacity, while at the same time improving drainage of excess water.
However with an expected increase in severity of rainfall events but decreased frequency, New Brunswick farmers may need to beef up drainage and erosion control systems while contemplating the need to invest in water storage and irrigation systems. Crop insurance only goes so far if yield is reduced year after year. Many of the growing areas do not have sufficient base stream flow or groundwater extraction capability. Each big rainfall event may simply be a wasted opportunity due to the likely unfeasibility of investments required for its capture.
Land-in-waiting should be made environmentally productive. In many areas of New Brunswick, land is rented out to farmers at no cost but with no formal assurance that any investment the farmer makes can be recuperated, including harvesting of the crop for that year. This land is at risk at being taken out of agriculture; however, it may be essential for the future. Agricultural land is continually being usurped for residential development, which is creating the need to clear forest land. This rented land, and other idle cleared land, is often very low producing, thus providing very minimal carbon capture. An ecological goods and services program for climate services could give a monetary value for the wise maintenance of this soil. This would not involve reversion to forest; rather, planting with a productive perennial crop, returned to the soil for soil improvement and sequestering of carbon without distorting the market. The idea is to provide maximum environmental benefit, improve the soil and preserve the land in a production-ready state.
New pest problems due to a changing climate or other factors continue to require ongoing adaptation of strategies for crop management. Agricultural extension personnel, pest-related research and new crop protection products are essential to assist farmers.
Sustainable intensification is a key to producing food for the planet while protecting the biodiversity. Productivity improvements require research, in-field trials and demonstration to move adoption of proven varieties and better production methods by Canada’s farmers.
In New Brunswick, no carbon pricing program has been announced, so producers are uncertain what the impact may be. Agricultural producers are price takers and largely compete in an international marketplace. Even if carbon costs are not included in tractor fuel, there are other energy purchases such as electricity, heating oil or propane which could affect various farmers with additional costs. Plus, there are indirect cost increases due to increased manufacturing and transportation costs for inputs, and transportation of produce from the farm.
New Brunswick farmers are deeply concerned about lack of details from our province on their strategy for carbon pricing. There has been no recent consultation with producer groups, so it is unknown to what extent New Brunswick farmers may be exempt and whether or not some sort of rebate system may be implemented, as in other provinces. There is worry that beyond international competitiveness concerns, there may not be a level playing field interprovincially.
The Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick strongly believes that agricultural producers are part of the solution. Quality land and water are two fundamental resources for agricultural production, and because farmers are in close connection to the land, they do more to protect and preserve these resources than any other industry.
The Environmental Farm Plan encourages many aspects of energy conservation, better manure management, improved livestock feeding, fertilizer or nutrient management, and various carbon sequestering practices such as maintenance of natural windbreaks, reduced soil tillage practices, crop rotations to enhance organic matter in soil, and woodlot management. The majority of New Brunswick farmers have completed their plan and are keeping it up to date. Increased emphasis on carbon management strategies is expected to be incorporated in future updates of the Environmental Farm Plan document.
Generally, market opportunities for GHG reduction in agriculture are very expensive on a per-tonne basis. Due to farm size in New Brunswick, offset market opportunities for reduction of emissions are impractical; therefore, incentives for beneficial practices will be required.
There is assistance to fund capital projects through Growing Forward 2 via a suite of BMPs, but no funding for maintenance of environmentally beneficial structures, landscape or practices. Many times economics justify the maintenance of beneficial environmental practices, but this is not always the case. A farmer with no financial reason for adopting or continuing some practices is pushed to abandon them. For example, application of straw mulch to the soil after the potato harvest to counter the risk of water-induced soil erosion; using more expensive controlled-release nitrogen to reduce nitrous oxides in wet spring conditions; forage analysis of low-cost feed to more adequately meet the needs of beef animals, thus reducing methane production in the rumen.
Maintenance of windbreaks is another. Pruning, thinning, filling in gaps take from the farmer’s bottom line. Establishment of payments for the ecological goods and services supplied to society by agricultural producers could provide the financial incentive needed.
Agriculture is a strategic economic sector for New Brunswick, providing raw product for consumption and value-added processing. Strategic investment is required in order to achieve our full potential of providing low-carbon food and agricultural products to an expanding global population. Better managing the known risk, promoting research, innovation and measures for adaptation and resilience will permit New Brunswick producers to successfully prepare for our future.
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Mol?
David Mol, President, Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture: Good afternoon, chair and committee members. My name is David Mol, and I am the President of the Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture. I am a seed grain farmer and have been farming since 1972, roughly Eugene Whalen’s time.
The good news is my executive director’s sharp scissors have trimmed my 19-and-a-half minute speech down to six and a half minutes.
I’d like to take this moment to thank you for inviting the PEIFA to present. We are P.E.I.’s largest general farm organization, representing the interests of more than 85 per cent of the farmland on the Island. Our membership is diverse. We represent approximately 15 different commodity groups with an active membership of well over 500 members. That represents pretty well all of the different types of commodities grown on P.E.I. I think you’re having a presentation a little later from forestry, and Mr. Rowe is a member of our board.
Climate change is not fake news but a reality. According to the University of Prince Edward Island Climate Lab, the Island has experienced a change in annual temperature by 0.5 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years and will experience cumulative increases going forward. What is more disconcerting is the fact that the UPEI Climate Lab is also predicating drier conditions going forward, with a drop of 6 per cent of average precipitation by 2020. While precipitation decreases it will increase in severity. Extreme weather with P.E.I.’s sandy loam soil means increased incidents of runoff, inland flooding and erosion.
But what is being done as we adapt to these changing realities? Government has responded with legislation and regulation. In P.E.I. we have a buffer zone regulation. A crop grown close to water or a wetland must maintain a buffer zone of no less than 15 metres in order to prevent runoff.
Grass headlands, any row crop planted within 200 metres of water must end in either 10 metres of grass or end in the buffer zone to prevent soil runoff.
There is a minimum three-year rotation. This is to mitigate pests and disease and maintain the organic matter and density of the soil.
The most recent proposal has been our “Water Act,” which is being introduced in the legislature later this fall. This all-encompassing piece of legislation will strengthen rules around the usage of water in the name of climate change.
Industry has responded by raising the bar when it comes to sustainability and leading the way with initiatives of their own. We are focused on sustainable best management practices and evolving the way we farm.
The federation is working with several stakeholder groups and the province on what is known as the 4R Nutrient Stewardship. This sustainable fertilizer application program promotes the use of fertilizer at the right source, at the right time, at the right rate and in the right place. Its goal is to ensure that the most efficient use of nutrients is applied in areas that minimize losses to the environment. This includes the release of nitrous oxide, leaching and runoff. This is seen as a real opportunity for change, with local agri-retailers joining the efforts recently.
The Enhanced Environmental Farm Plan is another initiative. The federation is the administrator of this provincial program that helps farmers develop a practical management plan that is environmentally sustainable, socially acceptable and economically viable. The federation works one on one with our members to identify and address environmental risks and opportunities in their operation, and many of them deal with adaptations, water management, nutrient management, soil management and a host of others. The farm is given a set of recommendations and they become eligible for government funding to help implement the needed changes. These plans are good for five years upon which they need to be renewed. There are in excess of 450 environmental farm plans on P.E.I. representing almost 300,000 acres of production, or over half of the farmland in production on P.E.I.
As we adapt, we are also looking how to mitigate. Examining current trends, many farms are reducing tillage to improve organic soil content, to reduce carbon emissions and their environmental footprint. They’re utilizing one-pass equipment to lower fuel emissions and conducting energy audits to reduce energy consumption, to name only a few.
Some have invested in renewable energy by installing windmills and solar panels. The PEIFA did a study on renewable energy production in 2016. The opportunities that exist in wind and solar on P.E.I. are ripe but cost, government programming and local energy regulations stand in the way of making this a viable option for many.
There are several grower-led initiatives doing independent research. One group has hired Dr. David Burton to conduct greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and the PEIFA has been proud to support his work. Dr. Burton has done several studies in the past number of years looking at nitrous oxide and carbon emissions and how farming practices can adapt to mitigate the release of these harmful gases into the atmosphere.
The looming carbon pricing has the PEIFA anxious. Unlike many provincial jurisdictions you’ve heard from, the P.E.I. provincial government has yet to announce a plan. The government did present to the PEIFA last January, speaking about a carbon tax on all fuels, but has not committed to this or any other system to date.
The premier has said that if a carbon tax is introduced, vehicles burning marked fuel will be exempt. However, on the farm only tractors and combines are permitted to burn marked fuel, and any vehicle that utilizes the road on a regular basis cannot, even if that vehicle is transporting product from the field to storage. The PEIFA is currently lobbying the provincial government to extend marked fuel permits to all farm-plated vehicles.
Transportation is a large cost for Island farmers in getting product to market. Carbon pricing is going to make this harder. Inputs will be more expensive, as will many other products, as the carbon price is passed on to producers. Farmers are price takers — I think I’ve heard that term before — and there’s no way for them to pass on the cost of something like carbon to their customers. We fear Canadian farmers will be put at a competitive disadvantage in a global marketplace, especially in a province such as P.E.I. that must transport the vast majority of its goods great distances to reach the market. Furthermore, with different systems in place across Canada, there is a risk that there will be regional competitiveness issues. Some provinces are offering allowances or certain exemptions and rebates while others have not. We urge you to be mindful of this potential.
Federal and provincial governments must assist the farming community with continued research and innovation. This includes research around carbon sequestration, renewable energy and how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from equipment, crop inputs and livestock. Agriculture can play a large role in reducing carbon emissions: 575,000 acres in production on P.E.I. and a large acreage of forestry land with many of them owned by the farming community. The PEIFA would encourage the government both federally and at home to remember that agriculture has great potential to reduce carbon.
In closing, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity.
The Deputy Chair: And we’d like to thank all of you for your presentations. They have been terrific.
We will start with Senator Doyle.
Senator Doyle: You’ve practically answered every question I had, which goes to show how effective your presentations have been. But let me reference the feeding and manure management system. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture is saying that if it’s done effectively and efficiently, GHG emissions will go down. Are farmers willing to cooperate in doing that given the fact that it would involve a lessening of production levels, would it not? And that would mean a lessening of profit. So is that realistic for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture to be saying that?
Mr. van den Heuvel: Thank you very much for the question. I think there are lots of opportunities for farmers to be able to take advantage of those programs. I don’t think it necessarily means a reduction in production, in efficiency levels as an example. I have been particularly involved with this in the past number of years through the creation or the building of anaerobic bio-digesters on farms in order to take manure runoff from those animals and process it, capturing the methane and eliminating that from entering the atmosphere. We can capture a lot of those greenhouse gas emissions and methane. If you are not aware of it, I think methane is something like 23 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So there is some opportunity there for farmers to take advantage of it, and there is lots of research being done.
I think it was somebody in P.E.I. who noticed that a particular strain of seaweed contains an enzyme, or whatever it is. I’m speaking beyond my pay grade for sure with regards to that. Anyway, they noticed that it reduces the amount of methane that cattle release from their stomachs. So there is a lot of research and lots of opportunities. We have to be smart about whatever we do. But certainly things like bioresearch and R&D support would be very much appreciated.
Senator Doyle: Educate me a little bit here if you will. What is the federation talking about when they talk about the capital costs of clean tech in farming? They said it is supposed to be very high and that farmers will not necessarily be able to afford it. What do they refer to when they talk about the high costs of technology, the capital costs of technology?
Mr. Russell: Bio-digesters, for example, are a very good technique to reduce greenhouse gases. One farm in New Brunswick has put one in, but it’s basically because they were able to get enough costs from local industry to get their dumping charges to help pay for that. This, I think, is in the million dollars and basically a little bit of electricity out to feed into the grid, but it is very costly infrastructure.
Senator Doyle: Do the farmers have access to the funding to make these improvements?
Mr. van den Heuvel: There could be some funding through some BMP programs or technology programs, new technology. I’m not sure how much this farm would have received through those programs, but there would have been some funding for new technology.
Senator Doyle: Thank you.
Senator Ogilvie: I was struck by your comments on the way carbon will be handled in terms of the tax or cap-and-trade and, if I understood you correctly, the absence of a clear way in which the agriculture sector would be assisted to deal with the increasing costs that you will incur in dealing with this issue.
This morning I asked the ministers from Nova Scotia about a recent report I read. It argued very strongly and clearly that a cost on carbon is coming — I think we all know that’s the case — and that a carbon tax approach is the most transparent. The concept that has been argued for taxing carbon has been you tax those industries that are producing excess carbon and then you make the money available so that industry can adapt to it. If that’s the case, we know somebody is going to get taxed. We know where that tax is going. We can easily analyze in the annual audit how much comes in. And if money from that fund is spent in helping agriculture or some other sector adapt, we can easily follow that. A carbon tax with offsetting investments is a very easy one to follow.
Now it seems so far in Canada that the majority of provinces are going to cap-and-trade, which this report argued was a very easy approach to concealing the way in which the monies that are collected and as an actual tax, levy, would be used. In other words, first of all it has a more pleasant name, so politically it has an advantage that way. Secondly, if it’s very difficult for anyone to follow where the monies go, it’s not going to be possible to see how much money is collected on the one hand and how much is going back to the sectors that genuinely need it. I understand Nova Scotia is intending to go to cap-and-trade. We know that key sectors in Nova Scotia are going to have to adapt to this and are going to incur expenses, as you have outlined.
My question to all of you, because you have all touched on the issue of carbon pricing in some way, knowing that it is going to occur in some form or another, would you have preferred a carbon tax over cap-and-trade or do you prefer cap-and-trade?
Mr. van den Heuvel: Thank you very much, senator, for the question.
From the federation perspective we have been doing a lot of research into this issue. It’s a big, very complex issue. I am not sure of the particular report that you were referring to but would love to know the name of it so we can look into it a little more. But from our perspective and the research that we have been doing, the agricultural industry is unique in that we have an opportunity to help mitigate via a carbon sink through a lot of our farms. Our worry with the carbon tax system is that oftentimes with taxes the intentions are good in that government will collect the tax and then it will go into the industries that need it most. But we have seen time and time again that sometimes those taxes get diverted to different areas than their original, intended destination. So from our perspective, given the research that we have been doing, we feel that a cap-and-trade system would be most beneficial for our farmers. But we are a small province, so something like that would have to be done on a regional basis in order for us to take true advantage of that on a national and a global scale.
I think anything as complex as this requires further study and consultation. As we go down this road it is very worrisome for us. As we all mentioned, we are price takers in this. The largest parts of our organizations when we talk about operating expenses are fertilizer, fuel and electricity. When we get into that, we’re going to be the ones eating the costs because those industries are no doubt going to be taxed, and they’re going to be putting that increased burden on the farmers.
By the same token, we’re not able to pass that on, so we feel that having farmers being able to take advantage and sell carbon credits using their farms as a sink allows farmers to gain direct access to those funds and direct benefit.
In closing, when we look at B.C. and what has happened with their carbon tax, it has decimated the agricultural industry, especially the greenhouse industry. They have introduced a carbon tax, and they were hit and hit hard. They have seen a huge outflow of their greenhouse industry in that province.
Senator Ogilvie: Well, the issue that you mention is that you find the carbon tax system may be hard to follow. This article was in the Globe and Mail, and it indicated that tax-in and tax-out numbers are reported annually. You seem to think that cap-and-trade will be much more transparent. Can you explain to me your interpretation of how cap-and-trade will work in Nova Scotia?
By the way, at our meetings in Ottawa we had testimony from an expert on the greenhouse gas issue, and the implication we got from that meeting was that they had introduced means of subsidizing the greenhouse industry, which has a very big problem with it, as you indicate. Notwithstanding that, perhaps I misunderstand how Nova Scotia’s cap-and-trade is going to operate. You seem to think it will be much more transparent, so I would welcome your observations.
Mr. van den Heuvel: Again, I might be speaking above my pay grade on this because it is a large and complex issue, but I will just go back to a couple of points, and I think we have all made them.
Because Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Newfoundland are so small when you look at the rest of the provinces and the rest of the countries across the globe, anything that’s done has to be done on a regional basis. So we think that there are going to be efficiencies gained by us getting together and coordinating our efforts. The introduction of a middle-level organization that represents our interests while we can buy and sell our credits into that organization, which in turn can then take it out to the market, we feel that will be the best way to benefit our farmers.
I don’t know if anybody else has anything to add to that.
Mr. Mol: P.E.I. has been sitting on a fence, I guess, waiting to see what happened, but there was Friday’s announcement that cap-and-trade was being introduced in legislation.
On the way over, we talked with Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia. They’re all cap-and-trade that we can see. New Brunswick will likely have some benefits there as well. P.E.I., not having any large industry to target, is probably one of the reasons that they were perhaps looking at a carbon tax.
However, from a farmer’s point of view, I think the farmer’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions reduction would be more transparent both to ourselves and to the public in that you would have to do a number of things that to earn tax credits. I have hundreds of acres of woods at the back of my farm, and the value of the sequestration may be more than me selling some wood off, just leaving the wood there. That would be a decision I would make would. The push may be just the value of the carbon credits, depending on what it is.
Maybe I would trade in my regular till drill for a no-till drill because that would allow me to sequester additional carbon. That’s also a financial decision that could be pushed further along the road. But there would have to be specific things that you would do on your farm that would be easily measurable in order to qualify for that. So I’m thinking the actual amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that are reduced would be more easily calculated. I agree with you that tax-in and tax-out has some appeal, but the devil in the tax-out part is in the detail.
Robert Godfrey, Executive Director, Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture: I would add that I’m not sure it’s an issue of transparency. I think it’s an issue of releasing carbon. That’s the goal.
Change takes time. Under a cap-and-trade system, there are opportunities for agriculture to evolve over time. David mentioned no-till drill. In the 1970s they introduced the no-till drill in the Prairies and people thought certain people were crazy: “Why would you ever use that technology?” And now you go out there and pretty well everybody has got one. So change takes time.
And with the tax, it’s just a cost. That’s it. Yes, there is incentive to reduce your costs, but where is the opportunity in there? In a small province like P.E.I., you’re going to have a fund, maybe a green-type fund that you’d see in Alberta, but how big will that be? And how is that money divided in a research way versus the regional approach that we talked about and cap-and-trade, where we are all pulling together, researching and finding ways to move things forward?
Yes, tax-in, tax-out seems very transparent and easy to follow, but I’m not sure it achieves the goal of reducing carbon over time. That’s just my two cents.
The Deputy Chair: Perhaps for the benefit of my colleagues who aren’t from Atlantic Canada, when you talk about “regional” can we assume that regional is the Maritimes or Atlantic Provinces, and your suggestion that the three or four provinces would get together in this? Okay.
For analysts as well, as we write the report, we want to make sure that we understand the terminology. When you say “regional,” you mean Atlantic Canada.
Mr. Russell?
Mr. Russell: My concern with cap-and-trade is in the offsets. Due to the uncertainties of science and weather and all that, the numbers are usually lowballed, so it’s underestimated what agricultural land is actually providing. Under that system, is agriculture really getting as much as they’re giving?
Senator Tardif: Thank you for being here this afternoon. They were very interesting presentations.
Some of you spoke about environmental farm plans, and I would like to know more about them. Is this something that your agricultural federation has developed and farmers are to follow, or does each individual farmer develop their own plan and present it to you? So I would like to hear a bit more on the environmental farm plan. Depending on your answer, I’ll have a few more questions.
Mr. Godfrey: Well, I’ll talk about what it is in PEIFA. It’s actually a provincial program. It comes out of Growing Forward 2 funding that is administered by the federation on behalf of the province. It’s a voluntary program; it’s not mandatory. But the way that we get you is if you want to qualify for certain government funding, you have to get an environmental farm plan. Let’s say you look at your field and it’s quite soaked. You notice that there’s a lot of runoff. You want to put in a terrace or a berm to either control the flow of water or capture it in an irrigation pond. You’re eligible for government funding, so you come to us. We have two staff that will go out. You give them your property identification numbers. Those are put into a map, into a program. Then I go out and I’ll sit with you and talk about your practices on the farm, which will range from everything from your nutrient management plan or lack thereof. We’ll talk about your emergency response program. We’ll talk about your water management. We’ll give you a rating of one out of four, one being very poor and four being very good.
At the end of it all, we produce a set of recommendations for you to say, “If you want to improve your environmental sustainability on the farm, this is what you should do. By the way, here are programs offered by the government for you actually access funding to make those changes.”
You’re given those recommendations and the plan itself is good for five years. At the end of the five years, it’s no good anymore. In order to access the government funding you need to reapply and go through the process again.
It’s got a lot of traction at home because some of your major players like Cavendish Farms, which is the supplier of french fries to McDonalds, Wendy’s, they’re buying about 55,000 acres of the 85,000 acres of potatoes that are on Prince Edward Island. They are a massive buyer. They’ve gone out to their growers and said, “If you want to grow for us, you need to get yourself an environmental farm plan.
Amalgamated Dairies Limited, which is the largest processor of milk on Prince Edward Island, has said the same: “You want us to buy your milk? Go out and get yourself an environmental farm plan.” The process is very thorough, and it allows them to turn around to their buyers and say to McDonalds, “Our potato growers, our suppliers, are following some form of environmental sustainability.”
Every province has a different environmental farm plan system. I’m just explaining ours, but it’s similar across the board.
There are ongoing conversations at the national level. There is a meeting, I believe, on November 1 in Ottawa. There was one last year around the same time which was called the Environmental Farm Plan Summit. I am sending two of my staff to that. They have been having conference calls to discuss taking a national approach: “Let’s make this a national program with national standards.” We’re following that very closely because we don’t want to see a watered down version that isn’t what we need.
I hope that answers your question.
Senator Tardif: That was a comprehensive answer. I would only ask if there are comments from the other provinces.
Mr. Russell: This national environmental farm plan initiative was instigated by the EFP coordinator in Alberta, Paul Watson, but it is very similar in New Brunswick. In Nova Scotia and P.E.I. it tends to be more a directive given by the coordinators, whereas in my case I try to make the farmer do the planning and come up with their own answers. But it is very similar.
Senator Tardif: And in Nova Scotia?
Mr. van den Heuvel: Our program in Nova Scotia is virtually identical to the one just described. It’s very comprehensive. Five year renewals are required.
Both of these gentlemen have referred to the national level, and to toot our own horn, Atlantic Canada in general has been leading the charge on these environmental farm program profiles. For example, here in Nova Scotia, we have over a rate of 70 per cent rate of our farms. We are the highest in the country. Atlantic Canada as a region is much higher than the rest of the country as well, so we’re well in tune with the EFP program and what it can do to help our farms and our environments.
Mr. Russell: The program was started in Ontario in the early 1990s, so it’s been an ongoing program in Atlantic Canada for more than 20 years now. Across Canada, the last province to institute it was the Yukon in 2005, I think.
Senator Tardif: It certainly seems like it’s a way of putting forward best practices and of sharing best practices. I believe someone from New Brunswick said that it is important to have incentives for beneficial practices to be recognized. What might those incentives be?
Mr. Russell: There are a lot of things that farmers do that are not capital projects but they are beneficial practices to reduce greenhouse gases, like the way they’re managing manure. But there’s no incentive program out there to keep doing that. A lot of times it may be economically beneficial or a crop may grow better by doing these things, but sometimes it actually costs them more money for not much benefit for themselves.
We had trials across Canada. In New Brunswick we use the environmental farm plan as a tool to try to calculate the ecological benefits to society. But in New Brunswick there has never been a program instituted to pay for those benefits to the farmers. There is no financial incentive given to the farmers.
In P.E.I. there is at least a partial program there. They call it ALUS, Alternative Land Use Services, which does pay for maintaining some of these practices. For example, cover cropping or putting mulch on the ground after harvest at one time was one of the practices included in that program. So there was an annual payout, not very much, maybe $25 an acre if the farm instituted practices to save the land for the future or to reduce greenhouse gases.
Mr. van den Heuvel: I would add that the Alternative Land Use System, ALUS, is national, and it’s fairly prominent on Prince Edward Island given our proximity to water and streams. There was a fairly large-scale problem in the 1990s where we were experiencing fish mortalities. We were having runoff that contained pesticide and nitrates. It was causing fish kills, so the government took a hard look at that and said, “Okay, certain land needs to come out of production altogether. You can’t plan a row crop, for example, in this field or that field.”
As a way to incentivize that change, they came out with a program in the form of ALUS. It pays the producer $185 an acre, maximum, annually to take that out of production. Over and above that, there are the regulations that David spoke to earlier — buffer zones, grassland waterways, things like this. It also incentivizes farmers to fence their cattle out of streams and build their own water systems, all in the name of environmental sustainability.
I think it’s a good program. It’s an example of what works. We all have very small margins at the end of the day. We talked an awful lot about price takers. Any time that you make a massive change – let’s say I need to take 30 acres or 40 acres out of my production. I might be growing 1,000 acres in total, so that’s a significant percentage that’s going to cost me money. If I am not going to reap any benefits from that, then I am going to have to go buy more land. I’m going to have to invest in certain things. That’s just an example.
Senator Tardif: Thank you.
Senator Gagné: Thank you for your presentations.
I believe it’s clear that farmers are already adapting to climate change. But we know that there will be losers and winners in this — I was going to say “game.” It’s not a game. It will depend on the regions. It’s going to depend on natural disasters. The tax regime will also have an effect on the capacity to adapt, so it does pose a problem for designing optimal policy.
We are going back to Ottawa, and how do we go about designing good public policy for your region and for Canada that will reduce the impact of climate change on agriculture?
Mr. van den Heuvel: That’s a big question. Without getting too far down in the weeds, I think whatever we do over the upcoming months and year, it has to be collaborative. We don’t, as an industry, want to be dictated to. We want to be listened to.
As you have pointed out in your opening statement, agriculture certainly is doing a lot already, and we want to be recognized for that. But oftentimes I think agriculture is given a bad rap as being a major contributor to climate change without really being given the credit for some of the things that we have been doing.
I know it’s a very generic answer, but we really want to be collaborative in our approach and work with the policy-makers and decision-makers who help decide the direction that this is going to take. We have got a big task in front of us over the next 40 or 50 years. In order to basically double or triple our food production – well, more than that. It is often said that in the next 40 years, we have to grow as much food as we have in the last 10,000 years combined. Now that’s a tall order and it’s going to have a huge impact on our climate and on our land. We have to be smart about how we go about doing.
As long as we work together, I think that we can achieve this. There are ways to do it. We have to take a clear, sound, scientific approach to agriculture. We can’t be allowed to be “fearmongered” into certain types of production systems that might not be beneficial or that might seem like they are beneficial for the environment but at the end of the day are not going to be able to feed our growing populations.
Mr. Mol: Well, I’m going to go in the weeds a little bit. I think we need to have a clear identification of the real impacts of agricultural practices, and they need to be quantified and qualified across the country. We all do things differently. I have friends in Alberta, and one guy farms 5,000 acres with his wife. Those two people farm 5,000 acres. That doesn’t happen here. Two people might be able to farm 500.
Once you have the impacts laid out, then it can lead to national guidelines or standards as a starting point. At that point, then dollars and cents can come into it. But how do you keep agriculture’s feet to the fire on these levels or standards that you have placed?
That brings you back to the question of whether you keep my feet to the fire through carbon pricing or cap-and-trade. I’m almost thinking the discussion of carbon pricing and cap-and-trade is about a few steps, and we have missed a few steps before we really gotten into it. We don’t really know, on a breakdown basis between the provinces, commodities or whatever, what my practices as a seed grain farmer are doing to the environment, and I’d like to know myself. So whether we develop the expertise or somebody comes to my farm and does an assessment, they compile some national numbers and say, “Well, this sector is really not pulling their weight, but this sector is a rising star.” How do we decide who we are going to put the finger on until we really know what impact they’re having?
Mr. Russell: I would just say that agriculture is a major player in this and agriculture can be the solution, so I think definitely it has to be involved in consultation.
Mr. Godfrey: I just want to echo the comments Chris made. If you want to have good public policy, you work with the industry. I think this industry does have enormous potential in terms of reducing carbon across Canada just because of our ability to sequester that carbon year over year.
The Deputy Chair: Mr. van Heuvel, you mentioned the dike maintenance issue in your presentation. It caught my attention right away because I’ve driven by it many times. Is there a commitment by the provincial government to continue to maintain the dikes, and if there is, do we know the cost of that maintenance?
Mr. van den Heuvel: Thank you very much for the question.
There is definitely a provincial program from our Department of Agriculture that looks after the dike lands. Over the past number of years they have invested in additional aboiteaux.
There are some local issues, for example, down in the Windsor area where they’re talking about taking out a causeway that was built probably 40 years ago or beyond. They’re talking about taking that causeway out. After that causeway was built, it stopped the water flow from going a little further upland. A lot of the dikes were removed because they take up a large amount of area, and that land was put back into production. So now, if that causeway is removed, we are going to see hundreds and probably thousands of acres go back under water, which is certainly going to be detrimental to the agriculture in that area.
So there are programs in place, but I think we need to, again, study these issues a little more to make sure we understand the full effects of what will happen when we start to remove some of these.
The Deputy Chair: Is that the causeway to the 101?
Mr. van den Heuvel: Yes, it is on the 101 going through Falmouth and the Windsor area.
The Deputy Chair: I know it well.
The collaborative study that everybody seems to want to talk about being together here, how do you envisage this happening? Is it the four federations of agriculture kind of coming together and jointly doing this? Is it the four Atlantic premiers sitting down at one of their regular meetings and saying they have got to talk about cap-and-trade or the cost of carbon? How do you see that unfolding? If it’s something everybody says is a good idea, how do we get it done?
Mr. van den Heuvel: I just got back from a meeting in Calgary a week and a half ago. It was put on by the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity. They had a panel there of self-described “foodies.” These are young folks, 20 to 30 years old, and the biggest thing that they want to see is transparency and collaboration in the food value chain. And that has implications. That is just not in the production but also with regard to environmental implications.
So I think to answer your question, it has to be all of the above. It’s not just industry. We would like it to be industry led, yes, and that was my point to you, senator, about ensuring that the needs of the industry are listened to.
These foodies, these young folks, have specifically said that it has to be government; it has to be the restaurants; it has to be the food processors; and it has to be the producers all at the table together, sitting down and talking and not dictating to one another, “Well, this is what’s going to benefit my particular sector or my part of the value chain the most, therefore that’s what I want to do.” We have to work in this together in order to make it successful and ultimately ensure that whatever we put on the plates of our consumers is the safest food product and the most environmental food product that we possibly can.
The Deputy Chair: But the consumers have to be at the table as well?
Mr. van den Heuvel: Absolutely.
Mr. Mol: I would add that in 10 days’ time this group and a few others, we will get together as the Atlantic Federation of Agriculture. We meet twice a year. We met in St. John’s, and then the ministers’ conference here in July. We will be meeting with the deputy ministers at that day-long meeting with them. This is the sort of thing we are doing to try to speak with one voice, to make sure that there is no redundancy, and to try to get policy developed that is not at odds with each other.
The Deputy Chair: That’s important. If you’re going to do this, I would urge that everybody has got to be on the same page.
Mr. van Heuvel, you also very kindly provided us with recommendations, and that’s appreciated. It gives us a place to begin, and the recommendations are worthy. You recommend the development of a green technologies capital fund for farmers. What would you envisage as that capital funding?
Mr. van den Heuvel: I think we have all mentioned incentives around change. Senator Doyle asked a question about really recognizing what farmers have already done and ensuring that they get recognition for that. But there’s lots of new technology, new ways of doing things out there and they are very expensive to implement. They are being done in other parts of the world, and they are perhaps a little bit ahead of us on the game, especially when you look at Europe and some of the things that they’ve been doing around wind, solar, biomass and biogas technology. So if we’re going to be forced to have increased input costs because of carbon pricing, we would hope that there would be some sort of funding in place to help us transition.
We’re not looking for a handout in perpetuity, but we are looking for help to implement some of these programs. You have to realize that this is not just a local economy anymore. We are truly fighting on a global scale. With the carbon pricing that’s coming in now, we are working against countries that do not have these types of taxes, whether it’s cap-and-trade or an actual tax. They simply don’t have it. So with the trade agreements that we have in place and might possibly be undertaking in coming years, we have to be careful that Canadian farmers are not put at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to global food trade in the sector.
The Deputy Chair: With respect to incentives to farmers to do something different to reduce greenhouse gases, the committee visited an egg farmer in Masstown, Nova Scotia. He is a relatively small operation, a couple of barns, but he has a windmill on his farm. In my discussion with him, I said, “This eventually will go directly to your bottom line when you’ve paid the capital costs.” So it’s a huge benefit to him, a huge benefit to the environment as well. In this province, that’s a huge benefit with the high cost of electricity.
Gentlemen, thank you very much. It has been very useful. Your recommendations and observations will be a part of our study. We’d like to thank you for that.
We will now welcome our last panel of the day. We have with us John Rowe, President, PEI Woodlot Owners Association; Susannah Banks, Executive Director, New Brunswick Federation of Woodlot Owners; and Stacie Carroll, Executive Director, Federation of Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners.
Please proceed.
Susannah Banks, Executive Director, New Brunswick Federation of Woodlot Owners: Thank you very much for this opportunity to present to the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry on the effects of climate change on the forestry sector.
The New Brunswick Federation of Woodlot Owners is comprised of seven regional woodlot owner associations. We represent the entire province, and we promote the economic and social interests of New Brunswick private woodlot owners by representing their views through a united provincial voice.
In New Brunswick we have over 42,000 private woodlot owners who have more than 70,000 parcels of land. In total they have more than 1.8 million hectares of forested land, and it is 30 per cent of the forested land in the province. Fifty per cent is Crown and the other 20 is industrial freehold, which is owned by big forestry companies.
Private woodlots are a major contributor to the economy of rural New Brunswick. The sale of round wood contributes more than $116 million annually to the New Brunswick economy.
Private woodlot owners tend to manage their forests in a way that works with nature rather than the clear-cut and plant method used by the industry. Managed forests contribute to fight climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it. A forest is considered a carbon sink if it absorbs more carbon than it releases.
Management practices such as selection harvesting improve the health of the forest and reduce the risk of pests, disease and fire. Selection harvesting allows the forest to regenerate naturally and preserves the biodiversity. Healthy forests are better able to withstand stress, are more resilient and adapt better to changing conditions. Forest management increases the growth of the forest and the absorption of carbon.
Careful forest management can reduce the incidence of fire, insect damage and disease by limiting tree mortality and the subsequent emission of carbon by harvesting at optimal levels.
Incentives to woodlot owners to implement beneficial management practices that increase the carbon sequestration in their woodlots would increase the rate of adoption of such practices and increase the rate at which greenhouse gas or carbon is removed from the atmosphere.
Investment in the forestation of old fields would also increase the total amount of carbon sequestration capacity. Forest management for carbon capture and storage provide both long-term and short-term economic benefits through jobs.
Harvesting wood processed into products used in house construction and other long-life wood products is a source of long-term carbon storage and is an important substitute for materials like steel, aluminum, concrete or plastics which require large amounts of energy to produce.
If we look at the climate change opportunities, carbon offsets or carbon trading could be of real importance to small woodlot owners, but in order to do so, there needs to be provisions for aggregation because the woodlots are small. In order to achieve the economies of scale that would be required for the administration and the verification costs, it would be important that aggregation be allowed under any carbon offset program. You also need to be able to aggregate so that you can build in a mitigation factor in the event of a natural disaster, which would release carbon that would have otherwise been sold.
Support will be needed to establish a system to manage the aggregation of carbon management on private woodlots and for group certification. In New Brunswick we have a real lack of – well, non-existent — extension services to woodlot owners, so we’re very interested in having support to get that reestablished.
Climate change will also result in increased growth rates. We’ll see shifts in the composition of the forest and changes to the flora and fauna. The results of temperature changes and growing conditions may offer new opportunities, but we need to be ready to capture those.
Wood biomass has the potential to increase markets in New Brunswick. Currently we have an almost non-existent pulp market, and wood biomass is a renewable energy source that we could certainly make use of in the province. We are currently leaving a lot of pulp or biomass material in the woods, where it’s decomposing and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions rather than being used to replace other more high-carbon emitting fuels.
So private woodlots could play a very important role in mitigating climate change because forests also decrease erosion, decrease water runoff and they provide flood and temperature mitigation factors which are important side benefits to having forested land. They can also support biodiversity, and they filter air and water. So some sort of payment system that would pay forest owners for the ecological goods and services that are being provided by their woodlots would help to keep them in the industry and interested in managing their woodlots.
There are also, of course, risks with climate change, such as extreme weather events and fire damage. New pests and diseases will also be an issue as temperatures rise. And there are the repercussions of carbon pricing. We think that carbon pricing can be very beneficial depending on how it is laid out. If woodlot owners are paid for the beneficial management practices they employ, it will be good for small woodlot owners.
At the moment being a small woodlot owner is a very challenging position. The markets are not very viable. So if we had something that would encourage woodlot owners to continue to manage their land — currently there is a smaller number of people managing than there should be just because they can’t get an economic return on their woodlot. We are currently in the process where there will be an awful lot of turnover in woodlot owners in New Brunswick. The new owners really have limited if any forestry background, so it will be very important to provide that educational component and explain to them how they could manage their land to secure the most carbon.
We see that the role for government is really only in ensuring that the proper policies and procedures are in place to ensure that we can maximize our carbon sequestration in forested land. I don’t really see any way that Canada will be able to meet its targets without employing the forest sector. If we put policies in place that will allow for incentives for good management practices, that will be important.
Promotion of wood harvested under a management plan that mimics nature through the use of a partial harvest will be very beneficial. Support for “afforestation” – the planting of trees in “unforested” land — will increase Canada’s carbon sequestration potential.
The policies that have I talked about would allow small woodlot owners to actually participate in a carbon market, if we have a cap-and-trade system.
And support for forest extension services and education are going to be needed.
I think that the government and the Canadian Federation of Woodlot Owners, of which we’re all members, can work cooperatively to mobilize Canadian woodlot owners to fight climate change.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Susannah.
Next is Stacie.
Stacie Carroll, Executive Director, Federation of Nova Scotia Woodland Owners: Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to speak today. I am the Executive Director of the Federation of Nova Scotia Woodland Owners. We are a non-profit organization that was established in 1989. We offer woodland management extension services for certification and advocacy for private woodland owners in Nova Scotia.
Thirty thousand private woodland owners exist in Nova Scotia, giving us a land mass of 1.2 million hectares, and we are supplying 64 per cent of the round wood to the industry currently. We are a group of homeowners interested in the maintenance of forest health and economic sustainability. We maintain a world-class certified forest management system that covers 13,000 hectares currently in Nova Scotia.
Certification promotes responsible, long-term forest management that will protect soil and water resources along with rare ecosystems. We strive to be a leader in this initiative because Nova Scotia is unique, being 70 per cent privately owned, and we feel that private landowners hold the key to Nova Scotia climate change resilience contribution.
I, myself, am not only the executive director; I am also a professional silviculturist. I’ve been working in this industry for almost 20 years. These hands alone have pre-commercially thinned or weeded 1,500 hectares in Nova Scotia, and I’ve planted over 2 million trees to date. I have been working hand-in-hand with private landowners in Nova Scotia since 2011 regarding land management, the importance of silviculture, and youth leadership specifically on climate change and forest mitigation. I also am a small private woodland owner, and I manage my land for lumber, non-forest product resources, food forest farming, recreation and education.
Silviculture is the nurturing of a forest at integral stages of its growth for many resource uses. Forest ecosystems develop in succession from glaciation until old-growth forests. There are integral species that contribute to the health and establishment of forest ecosystems.
Through our past use of forests, we have stalled and interrupted these cycles to a very large degree. Silviculture and silviculturists are important because they have the knowledge to understand forest succession, understand forest health and have the ability to make decisions to grow healthy forests for future generations. This trade is the only way to develop healthy forest ecosystems.
In Nova Scotia, we actually have a forestry that’s shrinking in production. We’ve lost mills and other production facilities and continue to see a production decline. Researchers have already established in our province that our forests are adapting to climate change by altering their own species. For example, we are seeing a decline in balsam fir, which is the basis of our Christmas tree industry, as well as an internationally sought-after fibre that we depend greatly on in Nova Scotia, and it’s a very scary situation.
New bird and animal species have arrived — turkey vultures, cardinals, badgers, cougars and an extensive list of insects.
Warmer climates provide challenges for forest, fauna and flora. These species are forest dependent and, therefore, forested ecosystems must be highly regarded and considered into the future.
The opportunity to sell carbon credits through the carbon market structures would ensure forests are set aside for long-term growth to sequester carbon and promote high-value forest products, also increasing their ability to support the change in flora and fauna.
Certified woodlots, which we manage currently, already have an auditing chain for the best recorded view of species make-up, fibre and harvest plans, microclimates and inventory. These participants have also signed a document of compliance. They are easily adapted into the carbon training system, and we offer that key.
With regard to carbon pricing mechanisms for competitive stakeholders, just to comment on that, auditing monitor costs are very high. What can we do to mitigate that? We thought that we could utilize the resources and create links between the resources that already exist. Certified woodlots are an example of data collection. We have extensive LiDAR data that we’ve already utilized in Nova Scotia, and we utilize Canadian Forest Service resources and supports.
Repercussions: It must be that during this process we establish a trade system with carbon pricing that will entice participation. If the profits don’t outweigh the costs, no one will participate.
A role that government could play in meeting the target is to step up to the plate on forest investments. Forests offer a direct line to greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon sequestration. The forests across this country are our biggest asset. They are the ecosystems that reduce the most atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Tree planting and silviculture efforts need to be increased by at least 150 per cent to ensure we are nurturing disturbed forests into forests that sequester carbon and promote high-value products for buildings and other constructions to trap carbon from being released into the atmosphere.
Forest ecosystems also offer us the ability to get off fossil fuel dependency and utilize forest products which are carbon neutral. Forests, through over a century of industrialized forestry, have been left to regenerate on their own, and this has put us further from the optimum state of forest health.
We need immediate collaboration. This collaboration will ensure a strong, diverse, competitive economy, faster job creation, new technology and experts, and create a healthy environment for generations to come. Only together can we meet our pan-Canadian targets of 2030 to increase stored carbon in forests, wetlands and agricultural land; increase the use of wood construction, generating better energy and better products and advancing innovation.
We need the government of Canada to step up to the plate and help the provinces meet these targets immediately. Disturbed forest ecosystems do not regenerate healthily without silviculture intervention. If we wait for Mother Nature to sort herself out from her footprint, we will be waiting for centuries, and we don’t have centuries. Silviculture is a science and trade that will help us get there in less than 100 years, and the time is now. Thank you.
John Rowe, President, PEI Woodlot Association: Again, we appreciate the opportunity to make these presentations to you. The most important part is going to be in our discussion today, and the main things that Stacie and Susannah have mentioned of course directly apply to Prince Edward Island.
I’m Chairman of the Prince Edward Island Woodlot Owners Association. It’s sort of a fledgling organization. It’s been around for only five years. We have thousands of woodlot owners on Prince Edward Island, but unfortunately not many choose to join the association, even though it’s a non-profit organization. We work well with the department of forestry, but a very small and limited number of individuals are actually involved in the department of forests in Prince Edward Island. We don’t have the same infrastructure as they have in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
To give you a little background, Prince Edward Island is part of what we call Acadian forest region, and that makes up the Maritime provinces. As you already know, 6 per cent of the forested land across Canada is privately owned. In Prince Edward Island, 86 per cent is privately owned. We had at last count, I guess — I’m sure a few have died since — 16,000 woodlot owners. We have about 1.4 million acres on Prince Edward Island, of which 0.62 per cent is forested. I don’t consider land that’s been clear-cut. An awful lot of land that has been clear-cut in the last few years is still classified as forested land simply because it’s natural regeneration, but in my books that’s not necessarily what we call forested land.
Now the problem with Prince Edward Island is that the forest industry is so small that the market is the pits. There is a move afoot to develop biomass markets, but as the ladies have already mentioned, there are no markets for pulp wood and very little markets for biomass. The lumber that’s there is trucked off the Island, but all of you know the issues dealing with that.
Prince Edward Island had a gross national product in 2016 of something like $4.8 billion. The figure associated with the forest industry is a miniscule $6 million, and you know what the percentage is of that. The problem is that the ecological, the environmental and I suppose the social aspect of forestry is not measured in the GDP. So there’s very little there to be placed in the forest industry.
When the Irish settlers came to Prince Edward Island, it was totally covered with forest. It was cleared simply because of land clearing activities for agriculture. More recently, of course, with the increase in population and urban sprawl, a lot of good farm land and forest land has been turned into residential or commercial.
Now, of course, with the increase in water levels as a result of climate change, we’re going to be losing a lot more of our forested land, especially along the inland rivers, estuaries and streams. We have to do things to mitigate that.
In answer to one of the first questions, we recommend that the federal and the provincial governments cooperate. The provincial governments are not going to do it on their own, at least not ours. And we would recommend that they take marginal land out of production and reforest it. I think Susannah and Stacie have already mentioned that.
We have an excellent program on Prince Edward Island called the FEP, the Forest Enhancement Program. We work well with the government department, but the landowners and woodlot owners of P.E.I. will not get involved in that simply because all the contractors want to do is come in a clear-cut the forest land. That’s the easiest way and the only way they can make a buck, according to them. The FEP will not support clearcutting in Prince Edward Island.
So I suppose we’ll have to the marginal forest land or the marginal agricultural land and replant it. I’m sure you heard that from the agriculture representatives.
The other issue is that we know that actively managed woodlots, as they have already mentioned, sequester a lot more carbon than something that’s just left to nature. If you leave trees to grow to maturity, they’ll hit a peak and simply die and release the carbon. But if we actively manage the woodlots, which they’ve done in Finland and Sweden, the trees will grow taller and stouter and take a lot more carbon in than just simply letting the trees grown to maturity without the silviculture work that Stacie has mentioned. So there are other issues that we need to work on.
On Prince Edward Island there are a lot of wetlands. Unfortunately, a lot of those wetlands have been taken and turned into agriculture land or, in some cases, blueberry land. I heard a blueberry farmer tell me that by the definition of the vegetation on his blueberry plantation it was actually a wetland. What we need to do is restore those wetlands. If we restore the wetlands and plant more trees, then we have an opportunity to absorb the moisture that we’re getting in the wintertime. With climate change, we’re getting a lot more extreme rain events and extreme weather events. We’re getting rain in the wintertime instead of snow. The rain is hitting the frozen ground and it’s running off. It’s not being absorbed by the soil, and the aquifers are not being recharged. We lose our wet moisture in the wintertime. Fifty years ago or 100 years ago we had 10 feet of snow in the wintertime. You could expect a melt in the spring and all that water would go into the soil. Those are the kinds of issues that we have to deal with on Prince Edward Island specifically.
On carbon pricing, I said this is for the government to decide. The governments in the Maritime provinces can’t even seem to come to a decision on it, so it’s not for me to decide. Essentially it would be a logistical nightmare to try and reward each landowner who owns a few acres of woodland on Prince Edward Island and decides not to cut it down. How would you actually reward them?
More actually feel that woodlot owners who have management plans and more actively work on those woodlots and manage those woodlots are the ones who should be rewarded for that. On Prince Edward Island, as I said, there are thousands of woodlot owners. I bet only 500 have management plans and do anything on their woodlots.
It’s up to the governments, of course, to develop the value for those woodlots and make them sustainable. The markets are always changing, so we have to roll with the punches, as it were, and make sure that we do something to restore those woodlots.
I feel that all governments — municipal, provincial and federal — have a role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but a very important role in educating the general public and the general populous about building the value of woodlots and what we need to do. We must remember that forests are the lungs of the earth. All over the world the amount of forest land has decreased over the centuries. Some countries have made an effort to restore and increase their forest lands. We use Finland and Sweden as examples, but I read in a recent article that they have not even reached the maximum. They have been working at it diligently since the Second World War and have come nowhere near maximizing the value of their woodlots.
We know that if forests are managed, it will increase their ability to sequester carbon and produce oxygen. We need to develop carbon credits for landowners, not carbon taxes. We need to develop industries to use more wood for construction and value-added products because that will hold the sequestered carbon in place for maybe decades, a hundred years.
We must see greater cooperation between all levels of government, and we need them to do all in their power to bring about the changes. As you probably know — and we’ve been celebrating it this year — for the last 150 years Prince Edward Island has been leading the country and they’re doing that now in alternate energy. Over 30 per cent of our electricity is now produced by wind energy, and we’re also moving towards biomass. The provincial government has worked diligently in the last five years to develop biomass energy and to try and take people away from electrical generation.
When we talk about the changes that are coming about because of climate change, I saw a map recently. We have a state-of-the-art climate lab in Prince Edward Island, and some of their predictions are such that the climate could change so dramatically in the next 50 years that we would not be growing white spruce in the Maritime provinces. White spruce is a major wood product on Prince Edward Island right now and in the Maritime provinces.
To wrap it up, I’m really looking forward to the discussion and your questions, because when we talk about clear-cutting in any of the Maritime provinces, invasive species come in and take their place. We’ve got things like Japanese knotwood and glossy buckthorn and the Norway maple. They’re taking over our environments, which is changing the whole biodiversity of the forests and the environment. Those are the kinds of things that we need to compete with in order to restore what was there and also to adapt what is currently there.
Those are my comments. I hope I haven’t talked too fast, but we do that in the Maritimes region. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Following this session of questions and answers, we will have a brief meeting to conduct a little committee housekeeping business. I’ll ask senators not to run off when we finish.
I do want to thank all of you for being here. The first question will be from Senator Ogilvie.
Senator Ogilvie: During these discussions, we’ve been hearing a lot about impacts on the individuals who are operating businesses in the agriculture and forestry sectors. I would guess that of the roughly 70,000 woodlot owners in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, many of them are operating as small businesses; that is, they are either incorporated or registered as small businesses. If that’s the case, there is an imminent tax that is going to affect small business. Based on what we hear, the figures will be far more substantial than anything we’ve heard about affecting individual businesses from a carbon tax or cap-and-trade. I would like to first address Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in that regard.
Ms. Banks: Yes, the imminent tax changes are going to be quite difficult for the bigger woodlots, especially when they want to do an inheritance and transfer those over. In New Brunswick, the average age of a woodlot owner is in the range of 55 to 60, so there is significant generational change. It is going to be an extremely difficult tax burden for them.
Ms. Carroll: That’s similar in Nova Scotia as well. I was just at one of our meetings for Forest Nova Scotia. There was a large discussion that business owners are very afraid about leaving their businesses to their children and not really knowing what to do next. There are not a lot of answers out there for them, and there is a lot of fear. That’s all I really can comment on.
Senator Ogilvie: I live on the edge of the Bay of Fundy, but it’s down the other side of North Mountain. There are a lot of woodlot owners in that area.
Ms. Carroll: Yes.
Senator Ogilvie: Some of them have operated small family mills generationally over a very long period of time. They have spoken to me over the past decade in particular about a number of issues that affect them. One that is of real concern is the marketing of wood products. There have been fairly significant changes in terms of what a small mill has to deal with just in terms of making the wood in a form that is legally marketable.
Secondly, the market is a significant issue for all the woodlot owners. When you put on top of that the tax change for small businesses, I would have thought this would have been a very significant concern for woodlot owners from small to medium size. When you get into a very large corporation, you’ve got other issues to deal with, but most of them in Nova Scotia are medium-sized to small woodlots, is my understanding.
Ms. Carroll: It is a significant fear for all business owners in Nova Scotia, but the nature of the woodland or the forestry business in Nova Scotia is such that it is family-based. So the fear is there. I perhaps would have prepared myself better for it, but I really just prepared to talk about climate change.
Senator Ogilvie: I totally understand.
Ms. Carroll: But it is something that we’ve been discussing quite heavily recently, and we’re trying to be proactive in the amount of literature or letters that we send out. We are starting to talk to our MLA’s, and there’s a plan of action to try to do what we can to get our voices out there. Of course we’ve got to come out of the trees to do that, so some of us are little fearful, but here we are.
Senator Ogilvie: Yes, I appreciate the issue, but it has been brought to my attention as a real problem in my area.
Ms. Carroll: Thank you for bringing that up.
Senator Ogilvie: Mr. Rowe, you mentioned the importance of wetlands for forests and their positive impact with regard to the growth of biomass. Now in my region, where I am in Nova Scotia, the major tree species I wouldn’t have thought are really beneficiaries of a wetland. They certainly benefit from moisture. There’s no question; every plant obviously does. But in my own woods I find that particularly the hardwoods that are around a wet area seem to have more difficulty as mature trees than do some of the softwoods. I’m not a professional as you are, and so I was hoping you would give me a little better understanding.
Mr. Rowe: I’m not really a professional either, but I was a teacher in my past life.
If you’ve ever been to Prince Edward Island, you probably know there are no rocks on P.E.I. We’ve got pretty poor soil on P.E.I. As a matter of fact, it’s mostly sand. What happens is that when the water comes down, it goes right through to the aquifer.
There are, of course, hardwoods in the hillier areas, but the main species are generally softwoods. Natural regeneration is more softwood than hardwood. So you have species like white spruce, black spruce, juniper, hemlock or what have you — more evergreen species. We do have good stands of birch and maple and all of those, but as the climate changes, what’s going to happen is those species will change also because they need a certain amount of growing days, moisture and all of the other factors.
But we need our woods, whether hardwood or softwood, for retaining moisture in the soil. They also help with erosion, because if you get these extreme wind and rain events and they hit bare ground, you have tremendous erosion plus you lose all that moisture. That’s why we promote planting more trees and encourage people to stop clear-cutting, because they are only increasing and exacerbating the problems that we have.
What we’re looking for is mitigation and adaptation. That’s the reason why. We feel that with our efforts in biomass, wind and solar, we are doing something that will actually be significant in terms of climate change and reducing the carbon.
We want to take people off the electric grid and off the oil, and we can do that. We have it within our wherewithal to be able to do that right now. We just have to educate people to do that.
Senator Ogilvie: I think I now understand the way you were using the term “wetlands.” The issue you have is holding moisture with regard to the vegetation in that particular area. I certainly appreciate that because where we have other kinds of terrain, we do get a lot of water held in the soil through the springs that are naturally fed.
Mr. Rowe: It doesn’t go through rock as fast as it goes through sand.
Senator Ogilvie: That’s right.
I do recall seeing a few of the old traditional rock fences in P.E.I. There have historically been a few rocks in Prince Edward Island.
Thank you.
Mr. Rowe: Sandstone rocks.
Senator Doyle: Could you tell me how the woodlot industry in Canada differs from the woodlot industry in the United States? Is it better? Do we have a better and more efficient management of our forestry than the U.S.? And is wood from the woodlot industry in Canada comparable in the marketplace to the price of wood in the United States?
Mr. Rowe: Susannah is in the marketing business, so we’ll let her tackle that one first.
Ms. Banks: I’m not sure I’m in the marketing business, but the way private woodlot owners in New Brunswick and I’ll assume across Canada manage their woodlots and their values is very comparable to everything in the United States. That part is very comparable. When it gets to the pricing mechanism, I’m not that familiar with the prices in the United States.
Senator Doyle: Do they go in for private woodlots as readily as we do here in Canada? Do woodlots have a big presence in the United States when compared to Canada?
Ms. Banks: My understanding is that it’s fairly similar. In certain regions in the United States they have large parcelled up tracts of private land.
Senator Doyle: How is your industry regulated? Are you free from government decisions? Can you harvest or not harvest based on your own assessment? Do you have government coming to tell you when to harvest and when not to harvest, or is it totally your decision?
Mr. Rowe: Well, in Prince Edward Island it’s pretty simple. The government is hands-off. If I want to cut down 100 acres of woodland, I just –
Senator Doyle: You can do it.
Mr. Rowe: — have a contractor come in and do it.
Unfortunately, we don’t recommend that as an association, but that’s essentially what’s happening. We recommend small patch cuts, strip cuts and select cuts, and that way we would develop a sustainable industry. But as long as the markets stay as bad as they are – like back in the 1980s and 1990s in Prince Edward Island, which is a small place, I could probably name 50 contractors that were in the business of harvesting wood. Today I can name five. I’m fairly knowledgeable about Prince Edward Island, and some guys are out there cutting firewood and that’s about the only place they say they can make any money. There are other big contractors. They’re just out there with debt, and they have to keep turning the wheels. They’re not making any money. They’re making payments. They’ve got a few people working, but it’s decimating the industry.
Senator Doyle: Yes.
Mr. Rowe: Now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are much larger and there’s a lot of Crown land. That’s a big issue, with the Crown land being turned over to the big corporations. That’s not an issue on P.E.I., of course.
Senator Doyle: Does the government involve itself in silviculture and planting, that kind of a program?
Mr. Rowe: The FEP program in Prince Edward Island I think is an excellent program, but it’s driven by the woodlot owners and it’s going to cost the woodlot owners a certain amount. And as long as the markets are not there, they’re not doing the silviculture work that Stacie spoke about earlier that needs to be done so that these trees become taller and stouter and are more valuable down the road. They just go in there and they’re clear-cutting. They’re clear-cutting actively growing hardwoods that are four inches in diameter, which is an absolute waste.
The Deputy Chair: Stacie told us that she has planted 2 million trees so far. First of all, thank you for that. Second, perhaps you want to comment on this question.
Ms. Carroll: In Nova Scotia we have a unique program in place called the Registry of Buyers. If I was to comment on how government gets involved in that, anyone who harvests over 5,000 metres cubed in Nova Scotia is obligated — it’s still voluntary — to register as a buyer. It keeps track of who is cutting where, whether they’re cutting on Crown land, their own industrial land or private land.
From there, silviculture money is generated for every – now, if it’s fibre, it’s measured in tonnes, and if it’s stud wood, it’s measured in board feet. And there’s a value put on those that this money goes back into reforestation and silviculture.
To give you an example, 10 years ago we planted 6 million trees and today we’re planting about 2.5 million trees. There has been a huge reduction. We lost a mill and we have lost other production. There was a lot of input going back into the reforestation side that is no longer there and no one is picking up the slack.
We definitely have to revisit the Registry of Buyers program, but it’s very hard to do that as small woodland owners because we are so fragmented. There are 30,000 of us, but we still don’t have a lot of clout at this point.
Ms. Banks: In New Brunswick we do have a silviculture program, but that would be the only point of contact that private woodlot owners have with our government. They deal mainly with Crown land in New Brunswick.
We have a significant silviculture budget, although we used to have a bigger one and we can certainly spend more.
One of the challenges that we’re currently having under the silviculture program is if you want to do pre-commercial thinning, which is one of the allowable treatments, there’s nowhere to do with your wood. So it’s not really economically viable. You just cut the wood and leave it because there’s no market.
The other challenge that I see looming on the horizon is the anti-spray groups. We have been planting, but depending on how vocal or how much traction that group gets, a lot of woodlot owners are going to be very reticent to plant. If you’re going to plant you need to tend, which usually, means spraying. So I think a percentage of private woodlot owners, who generally they live close to towns and villages, their neighbors, are going to be much more reluctant to actually plant trees. We’re going to have to either look at an alternative to the spraying or at some other method be it natural regeneration or some combination.
Senator Tardif: Thank you for being here and for your most interesting presentations.
Susannah, you indicated in your presentation something that I’m going to pick up on. Others have mentioned or have alluded to it but in different ways. You indicate that the private forest industry would benefit from education and training in ways to reduce their GHG emissions, how to manage their woodlot for carbon storage, and how to prepare for certification of their carbon storage. I note the important role of education, and you can speak to that as well, but how do private woodlot owners measure and audit the carbon that they have on their woodlot?
Ms. Banks: Currently there is no approved system for the measuring, monitoring or verification of your carbon here. There has been nothing approved within Canada. There are some voluntary markets or there’s a western carbon market. The western carbon market does have some of its own principles.
There is a group called Community Forests International. They are in Sackville, New Brunswick, and have sold carbon in New Brunswick on a voluntary program. They are actively working to develop ways to measure and monitor carbon on private woodlots for sale in the market. But nothing has actually been approved by the federal government for that program.
One of the concerns we have as private woodlot owners is this: What will be the baseline? Does it have to be additional, and how are we going to measure this?
The method that Community Forests International is using is very labour intensive. It takes a long time to do that. If you only have a small parcel of land, the monitoring and the verification could in effect negate all the benefits you might get from the sale of your carbon. Part of the way that they have participated in the voluntary program is they’ve put an easement on their land which says that it can’t be clear-cut and it can’t be parcelled out. It’s an actual easement on the land that goes with the title itself.
Those are some of the challenges. We’re not quite sure where all that goes.
We have woodlot owners that are very keen to be in the carbon market, but they’re not quite sure if it is 100 years. Is that the minimum that you can put your carbon in for? Is there going to potential due to a 50-year or 20-year minimum? If you’re looking at 100 years, you almost have to put the easement on because your land is going to change hands several times in 100 years. That becomes a challenge. Who’s responsible for the carbon if you change titles?
So a lot of questions still need to be answered, and this is the kind of information that woodlot owners are going to need. They’re going to have to be shown or someone’s going to have to be available to do this sort of measurement, verification and auditing for them.
I think the verification and the education would be something that groups like ours could do. I know New Brunswick would do very well at that. We have a number of foresters that work under our organization and would be very keen to do that. They have an intimate knowledge of the private woodlots, what’s there and who the owners are.
I think it probably will end up being the government that’s going to have to determine that baseline. If we’d only talk “additionality,” it doesn’t already credit woodlot owners for the benefits that are currently there, or the carbon that’s currently there. So it would be good if the baseline somehow gives them credit for what they’ve already done.
Senator Tardif: Yes.
Ms. Banks: For the good management they’ve already provided.
So I think the broad baseline is going to have to be determined federally, probably better than a piecemeal province to province account. In New Brunswick we still don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know if we’ve got cap-and-trade or if we’ll be taxed.
Senator Tardif: Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island, would you care to comment?
Ms. Carroll: In Nova Scotia, we’ve been very proactive in gathering data. Some of these data mechanisms that need to be put in place are based on forest inventories. Because our forests are so diverse, we need some baseline models of how to figure out what carbon could be sequestered at all, and none of that has really been done across the country anywhere or to any great length.
Some great work has been done in Vermont and Maine towards developing these types of figures, and we are looking to those because our forest structure is similar. But we really need to have the federal government step up and be a leader so that they can guide the provincial governments in this structure.
Through the Canadian Forest Service and the Canadian carbon forest model, there is a modelling system. In Cape Breton we have a group of folks, myself and Dale Prest from the Community Forests International, that are working on prototype models to figure out which trees sequester the best carbon. How do we measure the depth of debris that’s still sinking carbon into the ground?
We also have a provincial reporting system. So every time a forest treatment is done depending on whether we’re planting, whether we’re treating it as a plantation or a natural re-establishment, there is recording that the provincial government is responsible for already. So this would be an easy add to their GIS data.
The silviculture protocols that are put in place by the government and a place called the Association for Sustainable Forestry, which are communicated to small private woodland owners, would need some tweaking as well. So when we are treating the land in a silviculture way, we need to think about that. Then once the baseline is established, how do we implement those on small private woodland? Again, more extension services. Maybe a big conference to get people enticed. Make it lots of fun.
Senator Tardif: Okay.
Mr. Rowe: I have to agree with what Stacie is staying. We need to get the woodlot owners involved in this program. If they know that they have valuable woodlots and they become involved, then they’re not going to cut down those trees. There are all kinds of mathematical models out there which will tell me that if I have an acre of actively growing white spruce or red maple, how much carbon is going to be absorbed and how long it’s going to be absorbed.
Senator Tardif: That data is available?
Mr. Rowe: That data is available, yes, because they certainly use it in other areas. We’re just beginning to do that here in the Atlantic provinces.
We talked earlier about the amount of trees. I know back 15 years ago, even in Prince Edward Island we were planting 3 million trees a year. Today, they grow and plant about 750,000. That is what has happened to the industry and to the environment as a result of the loss of biodiversity.
Senator Tardif: Okay, thank you.
Senator Ogilvie: I would like to follow up on Mr. Rowe’s last comment. You’re talking about if you’ve got an acre of a particular maple or white spruce, you can easily calculate what it is. I’m not familiar, except on the very large plantations, of anybody that has that kind of forest in Atlantic Canada. The forests I’m familiar with are mixed, and even the well managed ones are still very mixed forests. So, that’s not quite –unless I’ve misunderstood how they’re calculated.
Mr. Rowe: You probably have, because it’s not an exact science. But if you’re taking a mixed forest or an evergreen forest or a deciduous forest, then it’s going to be an average. But we do know, for example, that if those trees are mature – let’s say it’s a hardwood forest and they’re 75 to 100 years old. They’re not going to be absorbing as much carbon as an actively growing forest that’s 20 to 30 years old. We know that. Keep it in the woodland for 100 years and manage it, and for every tree that you cut down, plant another one or two.
Senator Ogilvie: But when I look at a forest that’s regenerating – let’s say it’s largely clear-cut but as opposed to totally machine cut. When it starts to regenerate, it’s the most dynamic plant system that I see in a forest. There is far more wildlife than in any mature forest. It would seem to me that in actual fact the rapidly regenerating forest is absorbing far more carbon dioxide than a mature forest, as you’ve talked about. As I see them go through the stages — and I live in them, so I’ve seen them up close and personal — that rapidly generating forest is just teeming with wildlife. There are more hawks and other kinds of things in there than any other part of the forest that I travel in. I don’t harvest mine professionally. I play with my forest, so I’m the kind of person you probably don’t like in that regard, but it’s a nice forest. I really enjoy it, and I watch the differences throughout that forest very closely.
Going back to the earlier comment you made with regard to the difficulty in understanding how to calculate the carbon, I would have thought that there’s a lot more in it than just the trees. There’s the stage of the tree development. There’s the density of the trees and forests as they grow up. They take care of themselves over time, with the dominant species ultimately surviving.
I think the part of what you’ve said that I really agree with is that there must be some kind of modelling, which is what you’re looking for, such that you can take a snapshot of that forest fairly easily. I don’t mean literally. But you are wood people. You know pretty much what is going on in that forest, and there should be a range of reference points that will allow you to determine the state of the forest and what could be calculated. But I certainly agree with your comment that if there isn’t, then how do you as an individual woodlot operator go about even getting an estimate as to whether participating in a program is going to benefit you as opposed to your costs?
Mr. Rowe: You know what climax vegetation is. It takes 300 years for climax vegetation to develop on Prince Edward Island. If I clear-cut a forest, I get raspberry vines, willows and poplars. For every maple tree that was cut, I get 15 others come up in its place.
Senator Ogilvie: Absolutely.
Mr. Rowe: And if no work is done there, it takes 300 years, from my geography point of view anyway, before that forest is back to what we call our native forests.
Unless we have that kind of rapidly growing forests, then we’re not going to achieve our goal of mitigating carbon. We need to plant the trees so that they’re growing in areas, and they will benefit from a change in climate because we’ve got longer days and warmer climates. We’re taking more carbon out of the air.
Raspberry vines are fine. But we do know that all kinds of different vegetation support different things, and we say that to our woodlot owners. Lots of woodlot owners want to be able to walk through their woodlot and look at their trees, and they don’t want to cut anything. That’s fine.
Senator Ogilvie: My point is that over that 300 years, I would suggest that it’s the first 100 years in which the greatest degree of carbon dioxide is absorbed by those trees. In my area, when it’s significantly cut, almost clear-cut, the growth of plants and trees is just phenomenal in the first 10 to 15 years. It just explodes. And the density of the foliage is incredible.
Now over that 300 years – and I’ll agree with you — I think you were implying that there will be periods where a maximum amount of carbon dioxide is absorbed, depending on the age of the trees. But I just can’t believe that in those early decades of a forest that they’re not really doing tremendous absorption of carbon dioxide.
I’m not going to say more, Mr. Rowe, because you know far more about this than I do.
Mr. Rowe: I doubt it.
Ms. Carroll: Some of the challenge that exists with that is figuring out across the provinces how to manage those woodlots, because our woodlots are so diverse. So even though we do know some established species data, it’s very hard to get a general average of what those woodlots are made up of and how to implement that.
We would do plotting. We already have actively managed woodlots with certification and we can access those plots points.
You are correct that younger forests do sequester the most carbon. They have already established a baseline number of age. An age for the forest, to be an Acadian species, is around 40 years old. That is when we’re sequestering the most carbon. So around 40, that is before it starts going the other way.
I also want to say that in growing new vegetation all the time, there’s a lot of leaf litter. You have to take into account that the breakdown of that leaf litter is also excreting carbon as well. That’s an ongoing thing. But if we can keep our inner woodland at the maximum management cycle for sequestering carbon through a management plan, that is the best way to tackle that.
Senator Ogilvie: Thank you very much.
Senator Gagné: Ms. Carroll, you mentioned in your presentation that silviculture intervention from the government is important. I have one question. In which area shouldn’t they be intervening?
Ms. Carroll: Should they not be intervening?
Senator Gagné: Should they not be intervening.
Ms. Carroll: At a forest stage, do you mean?
Senator Gagné: It’s a very open question. We often hear a criticism from business owners that the government is intervening in all areas, and I was wondering if there are any areas in which they should not be intervening.
Ms. Carroll: When I said in my presentation there were interventions, I meant more that we need silviculture intervention. We need to tackle the forest with silviculture treatments at different stages.
As far as where I think the government should not be intervening, I’d have to think about that for a second.
Mr. Rowe: I don’t think it is actually intervening. I don’t think the governments in the Atlantic provinces are actually intervening in the management of woodlots in a negative way.
I can see one area where government intervention allows large corporations to go in and harvest more wood than we might like them to harvest. We might like to see the companies buying wood from private woodlot owners and supporting that industry instead of turning it all over to the big corporations, whether it’s a lumber mill or a pulp producer. But I don’t see that the government is negatively involved in the woodlot industry in the Maritime provinces.
Ms. Banks: In New Brunswick, I would concur that the government intervention is probably more on Crown land. We also have the same issue where they have given more Crown wood to the forestry companies than the citizens of the province would like, which has resulted in difficulties for us in marketing our private wood.
As a private woodlot owner, it’s like John says: It’s not the same as if you are a company and if you have a Crown allocation, at least in New Brunswick. Our government is always in a push between what industry wants to do and what the public wants to do. They’re usually at odds because industry wants to clear-cut large tracts.
Senator Gagné: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: The complication is, of course, that forestry is a joint responsibility of the federal and provincial governments. People keep talking about the federal government being involved in this. As soon as they start doing that in what some provincial governments may think is their jurisdiction — I can think of one province in particular where that would be a difficult task.
Senator Ogilvie: Mr. Chairman, on that point, the question about intervention, and in Nova Scotia there are significant regulations governing the harvesting of wood on woodlots, such as distance to a highway, around waterways, wetlands and so on.
Ms. Carroll, if I’m not mistaken, a few years ago there was a government proposal that would have a very substantial impact on how you could actually operate equipment on your own private woodlot. I would assume those would be considered government interventions as well, would they not? Some of them may be ones you agree with. I’m not suggesting that you’re opposed to all of them, but in Nova Scotia there are very significant regulations around woodlot operations, are there not?
Ms. Carroll: There are significant regulations around harvesting around waterways. Again, I want to say that the silviculture intervention was not from a government perspective. I was saying that we need to intervene at certain stages for succession. I just want to clarify that as well.
It jumps to my mind right now that I have seen challenges amongst buyers and millers in the area. If someone has a small portable mill, that could be put in a directory. We could start a directory of portable mills in Nova Scotia. Some areas prevent those people from selling that wood legally and building legally with it. That perhaps would be up to the discretion of the buyer themselves, but because the lumber has to be stamped and kiln dried and there are different – I can’t comment on all the restrictions. But if we’re going to try to go with a “support local” campaign, that is definitely a roadblock. We could be supporting local businesses with local buyers and reduce the transportation and greenhouse emissions. That is something that jumps to my mind that could be altered.
Of course, Wood Works! Canada has made leaps and bounds with our building code and has allowed us to build taller buildings, which is phenomenal. We’re very proud of them for that and applaud them. We’re hoping to increase that.
We’ve also learned that wood construction is very fire retardant, which is contrary to the misconception of a lot of people. It’s also structurally sound. It doesn’t buckle. It’s very pliable and it is actually a superior building product.
Those are a couple of extra things I wanted to comment on.
Senator Gagné: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: I’m going to switch topics a bit. We’ll stick with your sector but switch away from carbon taxes or cap-and-trade to the supply. I’m going to admit my conflict here. I’m asking this question in a selfish manner because I’m a consumer of firewood. I supplement heating my home in Mount Uniacke with a very efficient wood stove. I have electric heat, and everybody knows that Nova Scotians pay the highest power rates in the country. So I’m always anxious to buy firewood late every summer.
It has become more and more difficult for me to find firewood. There’s a gentleman in the next community who was supplying me, and he kept telling me about the difficulty he was having in getting a supply of wood. He has now gone out of business. He was an older man and probably just gave up. He turned off his phone and you can’t get hold of him anymore.
I found another supplier, but it was interesting that the supplier I found is coming from as far away as Yarmouth to deliver wood to me in Hants East. That’s a hell of a haul.
Anyway, is this a universal problem across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and what’s causing the shortage of firewood?
Ms. Banks: We don’t have a shortage in New Brunswick. It’s very easy to acquire firewood.
The Deputy Chair: Maybe it’s only in Hants East.
Mr. Rowe: Firewood was always a tradition as a by-product to the harvesting industry. So if a contractor is in harvesting wood, he took the cream of the crop, which was the high timber, then the stud wood and then the pulp wood. And then he had all this hardwood left over. Now, we don’t have the harvest to do that as Stacie and Susannah mentioned. They’re leaving all the small stuff in the woods and the harvest is not there.
But on Prince Edward Island, a few people, all they’re doing is harvesting. They’re going into what I would say are virgin hardwood forests, much to our chagrin, and cutting them down for firewood.
I mean we could take a very valuable curly maple or a wood like that which could be used in the furniture industry and cut it up for firewood. That’s essentially what’s happened. Bird’s-eye maple, curly maple, striped maple — for all those you could get $1,000 for one log, and now a lot of times it ends up in firewood. I don’t know if it has happened in Nova Scotia, but I know that there are not a lot of markets in Nova Scotia either, so there’s a good chance.
Ms. Carroll: I’m actually here from East Hants as well. I live in beautiful downtown Walton.
The Deputy Chair: I’ve been to downtown Walton; it’s beautiful.
Ms. Carroll: It is a beautiful spot, the best bass fishing in the world.
A couple years ago some local people were having a hard time sourcing firewood. I would be happy to help you with that after the meeting. There are quite a few producers coming out of Northfield and down towards Sackville.
I notice a lack of resource output. What I mean is there are not a lot of connections between producers and buyers. There’s no directory. There isn’t anywhere you can just look up “firewood, East Hants.” There has never been a push to develop support for a local market so that if your producer is gone you can just call up and find someone who lives close by.
The Deputy Chair: Perhaps before we leave today, you and I will have an offline chat.
Senator Tardif.
Senator Tardif: As we’ve heard so often today, climate change does provide many challenges, but it does also provide opportunities. Are there opportunities for you to be innovative in regards to some of the lumber products that you can sell as a result of climate change and changing species?
Ms. Carroll: Specifically to do with climate change, I’m not sure.
Senator Tardif: I was thinking, perhaps, of biomass. Can you do wood pellets? Is than an opportunity that perhaps was not there before?
Ms. Carroll: It definitely is an opportunity. I think the challenge around biomass in Nova Scotia is that it gets a lot of bad press, and the bad press gets the biggest voice in our province currently — another place that I think that government intervention should happen.
Senator Tardif: Why does it get bad press?
Ms. Carroll: The most vocal people get the most media. I can’t really answer that. They seem to be the people who are against biomass. They have promoted biomass as a “clear-cutting only” operation.
One thing I’d like to mention about Nova Scotia forests is that they are about 70 per cent fibre available. We actually don’t have that great of a species mix to only produce saw logs. So we have a lot of — I hate to use the phrase “lower grade,” but that’s how it is classified — lower grade wood that is only good for fibre products or for tree products. So we’re looking at fibre; we’re looking at chips; we’re looking at pulp. We lost a major mill in Nova Scotia.
It’s not official yet, but a new pellet mill is being developed in Musquodoboit.
Senator Tardif: Okay.
Ms. Carroll: There have been a lot of problems in western Nova Scotia with a lack of marketing there.
There definitely is a lot of opportunity, but given how forestry is viewed currently in popular culture, we’re having a very difficult time pushing those things through even though they could support local trade. We could remove ourselves from international markets if we are just even trading locally. If the government was to step in and try to get big businesses and hospitals and schools off the dependency of fossil fuels and get them onto a pellet model — Wilson Fuels has even been approached about the transportation of pellets, to create the large hopper systems to support the heating of large buildings.
There are a lot of things. I don’t know if they are climate change specific, but –
Senator Tardif: I think they would be because they could be used for heating and take you off fossil fuels.
Ms. Carroll: Right, and in turn save us from greenhouse emissions, as wood products are carbon neutral.
Senator Tardif: That’s right.
Mr. Rowe: I think the problem with climate change is that it’s gradual and sneaks up on people. We’re talking about mitigation and adaptation, and I think that’s a good move forward, but people haven’t been paying attention for the last 50 years or 75 years. We know that in North America we’ve gone up one degree and we can’t control going up the next degree, but we’re hoping that by 2100 we can have some impact on going up two degrees.
We have a problem developing markets, as you have heard all day today. Markets like the biomass market, the chip market, the pellet market, they’re not paying the woodlot owner enough. Unless we have electric transport trucks powered by wind or solar that are a lot cheaper than oil or diesel, it’s going to cost too much money to get from point A to point B to make that particular product worthwhile to be sold.
On Prince Edward Island I was involved in a study seven or eight years ago, and we recommended that we have biomass units set up in every small community and every little hospital, school and government building. We have an area 25 miles around, and the chips are supplied to feed the biomass furnace. They’re starting to do that now. But have it locally. It doesn’t cost a whole lot of money to go 25 kilometres.
Senator Tardif: That’s right.
Mr. Rowe: So if you’ve got 20 kilometres on either side you can easily supply it locally. That way you would kill two birds with one stone. You’re saving the transportation costs and you’re providing a lot cheaper heat. You’re putting local people to work, and you have money turned over in the local economy instead of piping oil or gas from Texas to Charlottetown.
Senator Tardif: That was one of the opportunities I was trying to get at.
Senator Ogilvie: Far too logical.
Ms. Banks: One of the other challenges is it’s not like you can just bring your biomass and put it in a boiler. It has to be chipped or it has to be pelletized, and so there’s a process before that. There’s always somebody between the woodlot owners and end user. The challenge is still the same to make sure that the woodlot owner actually gets something for his product as opposed to it all being lost in that middle processing.
Senator Tardif: Yes. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Your presentations have been very useful.
Mr. Rowe.
Mr. Rowe: Can I just make one final point? The government is starting toward a low carbon economy fund, and I think that would be an opportunity for the federal and the provincial governments to be cooperative. For example, we talked about an “afforestation” forestation industry and participating in that particular way. We could do that all across Canada. We could go back to 3 million trees in Prince Edward Island. It won’t happen if you don’t have federal money involved like it was in the 1980s.
The Deputy Chair: Federal-provincial cooperation. I want what he’s smoking.
Mr. Rowe: Well, we can get it on Prince Edward Island, I’ll guarantee it.
The Deputy Chair: I’m sure you can pretty well it anywhere these days. Mr. Rowe, thank you for that intervention.
I do want to thank all three of you. It has been a very useful discussion. I don’t know about my colleagues, but I’ve certainly learned a lot from you and I appreciate that.
Stacie, keep planting those trees. We do appreciate that.
Colleagues, we’re not going to adjourn. I’m going to now switch to another agenda.
Honourable senators, for tomorrow’s meeting I need to inform you of the unavoidable absence of the chair and the deputy chair, and I’m to preside over the election of an acting chair. I am ready to receive a motion to that effect.
Senator Gagné: I move that Senator Tardif be the acting chair.
The Deputy Chair: Are there any other nominations?
It is moved by Senator Gagné that Senator Tardif do take the chair of this committee tomorrow. Is it agreed?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Deputy Chair: Notwithstanding the motion adopted at the organizational meeting on December 11, 2015, it is agreed that for the meeting of the committee on Tuesday, October 3, the acting chair be authorized to hold the meeting and to receive and authorize the publication of evidence when a quorum is not present, provided that a member of the committee from both the opposition and the Senate Liberals be present.
Is it agreed?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Doyle: I was saying to our clerk that our second panel not meet until 10:40 tomorrow. He has already said that the first panel is not going to come in until 9:30. But in view of the fact that we only have two at the table, along with the chair, could we not have our meeting at 10 o’clock?
We’re expecting Senator Oh to be here and he may not get here before 10:00. It looks bad that we have so many people up there at the front table and there are only two of us down here.
Senator Gagné: That’s a good idea.
The Deputy Chair: There is a chance that Senator Bernard could be here. I’ve asked the clerk to call her office when we adjourn to get a status report on that.
Is Senator Oh coming from Ottawa or Toronto?
Senator Ogilvie: He arrives in Halifax at 9:35.
The Deputy Chair: He will not be downtown until 10:30.
Senator Tardif: Exactly.
Senator Doyle: So will 10 o’clock be okay?
The Deputy Chair: Well, we would still be operating for half an hour without Senator Oh. If you make it dependent on Senator Oh’s participation, you’re going to move the whole thing by an hour. Remember where the Halifax airport is. If Senator Oh has checked bags, and I don’t know how he travels —
Senator Doyle: But my point is that our second panel is not until 10:40.
The Deputy Chair: It’s in the committee’s hands. We can do whatever we want.
Senator Tardif: So are you suggesting that we ask the witnesses to come later, Senator Ogilvie?
The Deputy Chair: You’re going to have witnesses here.
Kevin Pittman, Clerk of the Committee: The one thing I would point out, senator, is that it’s now 4:20, and will I be able to confirm with them?
Senator Doyle: I understand your point. I forgot about that.
The Deputy Chair: It’s not a bad suggestion and we appreciate your input on that, Senator Doyle.
(The committee adjourned.)