Proceedings of the Subcommittee on the
Boreal Forest
Issue 7 - Evidence
TIMMINS, Friday, October 9, 1998
The Subcommittee on Boreal Forest of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:30 a.m. to continue its study on the present state and future of forestry in Canada as it relates to the boreal forest.
Senator Nicholas W. Taylor (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: The first witnesses today making presentations are Ms Brennain Lloyd from Northwatch, Mr. Ric Symmes from the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, and Mr. Jim Antler from the Northern Ontario Tourist Outfitters Association.
Ms Lloyd, the floor is yours.
Ms Brennain Lloyd, Coordinator, Northwatch: Honourable senators, I work with Northwatch, which is a coalition of community-based, environmental and social justice groups in north-eastern Ontario. We work on a variety of issues that affect and concern us regionally. Most of them relate to land use, land use planning in the area of forest management, the establishment of protected areas, energy generation and transmission, waste management, mineral development and mine abandonment. Those are the key areas we work in.
Our perspective is that of a regional organization. In essence, our view is that there is an environmental and a social requirement, an imperative, to integrate environmental considerations into all aspects of social and economic decision-making. We were created as a coalition to provide a regional representative voice a decade ago, and we continue to do that, working both as a regional coalition and in partnership with our local organizations.
With respect to the forest area, I think that we work almost equally on two tracks: one is with respect to the protected forest, advocating forest protection through the completion of our system of natural heritage areas; the other is with respect to the "production forest" -- in other words, working to assess and improve forest management through provincial policy initiatives, land use planning exercises, and through local timber- management planning as it is done on a district basis.
I want this morning to address three areas: First, I will provide for you an overview of what we see as some of the very current and pressing concerns with respect to forest management and forest sustainability; second, I will touch on a few key initiatives or developments that we think are of particular concern to us in Ontario and would be of concern to you in your work looking at the boreal forests of Canada; and, third, I will make some observations on Canada's position internationally.
The first area I wish to talk about is the challenges in the forest sector. I will try to be brief, but I think I could take not only ten minutes but ten hours or ten days on this topic alone. Perhaps the key issue here is timber supply shortages. The second important issue for us from a regional perspective is the employment levels and the fact that they are dropping.
With respect to timber supply shortages, I think it is clear that over the last decade wood supply shortages have been sporadic and relatively local. Some mills have reduced their work forces and the number of shifts. Some have closed and others have threatened to close. Over the coming decades, the wood supply problem will become a crisis, with the demand for timber climbing while the amount of available timber steadily drops.
I think this crisis comes as no surprise. We heard of it in the early 1970s, when government studies showed that supplies had been exaggerated. In the mid-1980s, we had an independent audit here in Northern Ontario that concluded that Ontario inventory was shaky at best and that it could provide only average estimates on parcels of thousands of hectares in size.
In 1994, we had an independent audit that showed that the economic floor was dropping out of the boreal forest; spruce, the key economic species, had dropped from 18 per cent to only 4 per cent in terms of its place in the forest composition. In response to that, the government of the day announced a 50 per cent increase in available supply, and new strand-oriented boards sprang up across the province to utilize the hardwoods that were now growing in the cutovers where the conifer forest had once stood.
Five years later, those hardwoods are now committed. The conifers are overcommitted. The mills are facing steady reductions in timber supply for the next 60 years. Over the next 20 years, demand is expected to increase by 50 per cent, while supply decreases. This trend is expected to continue through to the year 2060.
For conifers, some local and regional shortages will occur over the next 20 years, but overall shortages will hit by the year 2015.
While this supply crisis looms, and while government studies estimate that productivity could be increased by as much as 30 per cent on some sites with increased silvicultural work, such as thinning and tending, the investment in silviculture has actually dropped by 20 per cent since 1994. In other words, we have this threat of a supply problem that is growing and a potential response to that, but the mechanisms to respond to that are being reduced.
We have a corresponding concern with respect to employment trends. Although reduced employment is related to the reduced supply of timber, it is much more related to the increase in mechanization. I expect that you have probably heard evidence on this topic already, so I will just touch on it briefly.
Over the last several decades, the amount of forest cut has steadily increased, while the level of employment in the forest industry has steadily decreased. This ratio, while profitable for the major forest companies, is dissatisfying from any social or environmental perspective.
There are three outcomes from the trend towards mechanization, none of them particularly friendly to the forest or the forest workers. The machines replace workers at a rate of approximately 12 to 1. The machines are best suited to large block-cutting and serial clear-cutting, those harvest methods most damaging to forest diversity, particularly at a site level or a stand level. The machines are increasingly capital-intensive. The cost of a single machine and the business pressure to regain on the investment drives the pace of harvesting, in some cases, resulting in around-the-clock harvesting. A similar trend in mechanization and dropping employment has played out in the mills.
When we take these two factors and combine them and look at other uses, we see a number of pressures on the land base. I will just touch on three of those pressures or concerns.
One concern is with the road system, which comes as a direct result of our harvesting practices, our mechanized and year-round harvesting practices. The road system includes kilometres of roads criss-crossing most of Ontario's forested land. There are only four wilderness areas in the Boreal East planning area that are larger than 1,000 square kilometres outside the existing park system, and that is south of the 50th parallel.
The second concern is that, today, 94 per cent of the annual timber harvest in Ontario is done by clear-cutting. That is an increase from 70 per cent in 1970.
The third concern is that, owing to fire suppression and industrial logging, the mix of Ontario's forests is being artificially changed, including severe drops in key species such as white and red pine, yellow birch, hemlock and spruce. I think it is clear that all is not well in the woods. Moreover, the developments and initiatives in Ontario right now do not respond to those two or three key problems.
There may be room for debate about the role of government in respect of forest conversion and the trend towards mechanization, given that that is the purview of both bush and business, but, certainly, a number of government initiatives exist that will worsen the situation.
One initiative is the transfer of tenure. We are seeing a wholesale transfer of control of public lands to the private sector. We see that happening through the sustainable forest licences that are being signed, and we have indications that there will be an even greater level of tenure or quasi-ownership handed over to the industrial sector after the conclusion of the current land use planning exercise.
Another initiative of concern is the current land use planning exercise itself, Lands for Life. It is, in essence, a land use planning exercise gone awry. Before we began Lands for Life, there was broad agreement that we needed a sound, reasoned and informed land use planning exercise. However, there is some question now as to whether Lands for Life has met that test.
The third great concern, particularly for you looking at the boreal forest, is the initiative for economic development north of the 50th parallel. Under the Timber Management Environmental Assessment Approval, Condition 77 is a legal requirement to negotiate with First Nations to give them increased access to the resource. However, without a demonstrated ability, south of 50, for our forests to be managed sustainably -- and I do not think we have that demonstrated ability -- and without the government's having clearly met sustainability, without having met Condition 77, I do not think the government of Ontario has any mandate to negotiate on behalf of the people of Ontario to move forest management north of 50.
I want to close with some observations on Canada's position internationally. You may be familiar with the work that Canada has been doing since the Rio Summit in 1992. There has been a series of intergovernmental panels, with "forest" as the major issue. We are now developing a major international forum on forest issues. Indeed, I just took part in a debriefing following the meeting in Geneva in August-September of this year. The key message from the Canadian delegation on how Canada is positioning itself internationally is that we should continue to promote a Forest Convention, which is the position that the Canadian Forest Services and Foreign Affairs have promoted consistently, and we should continue to advocate a particular school of certification, namely, the Canadian Standards Association.
There are two difficulties with that, and I will deal with certification first. The Canadian delegation has consistently made statements and taken positions that favour the Canadian Standards Association certification system over the Forest Stewardship Council. I have trouble with that, because I do not think it is the Canadian government's role to be favouring or advocating or promoting a certification system. That is not the role of government. The Canadian Standards Association is a process-based certification system, whereas the Forest Stewardship Council is a performance-based certification system. Therefore, if the role of the Canadian government is really to see a change in forest management and a movement towards achieving forest sustainability, it will not do that through something like the CSA standard of certification, which is really just process-based; it will only achieve it through a performance-based system. It is about how many meetings you have; it is about meeting the targets and objectives a company sets for itself. If we are going to go down that road, and there is a question about the government's going down that road, it should be a performance-based system and performance-based target.
The second point is with respect to a Forest Convention. Canada consistently promotes that position. I do not think it has the support of the Canadian NGOs. It does not have the support of many of its international counterparts, such as the U.S. and Australia. The European Union is dropping out. Support is dropping for a Forest Convention there, yet Canada continues to promote it. The simple message that needs to be given to the Canadian government is that, until it can demonstrate that we are capable of national forest planning at home, until we have a protected-area system in place, until we are starting to deliver on sustainable forest management in Canada, we have no business promoting a Forest Convention as if the Canadian forests were not part of that global forest problem that the Canadian delegation speaks to.
Mr. Ric Symmes, Coordinator, Partnership for Public Lands, Federation of Ontario Naturalists: Mr. Chairman, I am here today representing essentially the Partnership for Public Lands, and I will explain who they are in just a moment, but first let me give you my background.
I am an industrial engineer by education. I spent 26 years in the corporate sector with Canada Packers in various management positions, finishing as group vice-president. At the same time, I was a volunteer policy analyst for many environment groups and chairman of the Sierra Club. Subsequent to 1990, I moved into that field as a consultant and have been working with a number of groups, including my clients here, the Partnership for Public Lands.
I will now introduce the partnership and speak to why Lands for Life is a really important opportunity for the boreal forest. I will outline the key points that the partnership has recommended under that scheme, and speak to how the Government of Canada could help. Then perhaps I will have an opportunity to cover some of the other items under questions.
The Partnership for Public Lands is a coalition of the World Wildlife Fund Canada, the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, and the Wildlands League. Combined, they represent about 52,000 members in Ontario who came together because they shared the same goals; this coalition was formed exclusively to work on Lands for Life.
Lands for Life, as you may have heard already, is an Ontario land use planning process. In their planning they are trying to figure out what to do with 40 million hectares of public land, an area about as big as the Yukon. They have a breakneck timetable, a matter of about 15 months in which to do that. I guess we are about 12 months into it now. We saw this as a huge and important undertaking.
As the three groups shared essentially the same goals, it was decided that they would work together and put some of their staff effort into it. In addition, with the support of a number of foundations, we have hired staff to work in the field with communities in order to do particular technical analyses, prepare maps and do other activities related to Lands for Life. We have been very deeply involved with it. I am the provincial coordinator, so my responsibility has been to keep all those pieces going and to keep the slightly different organizations working together.
Our goals are threefold. First of all, we want to achieve land protection. That means that we must complete the protected-area system, by which we mean truly protected areas that exclude industrial mining, logging and hydro dams. Within that system, there is a whole range of different things that can be done according to management plan and designation, but the key point is to comply with those IUCN categories for protected areas that exclude industrial activity.
Our second goal has to do with land stewardship. We are not just interested in the protected areas, although the core protected areas are very important. We also need a contribution to biodiversity, to healthy communities and economies in the intervening landscape. We are interested in how they are managed and handled sustainably.
Finally, we recognize, and I think the proof is around the world, that healthy environments do not exist in impoverished communities. You must have a healthy community or else, sooner or later, the things around it get damaged.
The three goals go together and are interrelated with respect to a healthy, diverse economy in the northern communities. We believe that Lands for Life is great opportunity to achieve those goals.
Up until now, many decisions have been made on an ad hoc basis, with what happens depending largely on what is decided locally and regionally. It is very difficult to see the big picture, when you are looking at a thousand hectares in your back yard, but it is necessary at some point, and this is the right point, to stand back and look at the big picture, because we still have a number of real choices that may not exist in the future. In fact, we are convinced they will not exist in the future. It used to be that we could always go over the next hill to find some more trees. Now that last hill is in sight, and the last of the wild original forest is in sight and will be cut in the next couple of decades.
Because of neglect, we can no longer count on there being a wilderness area. There can only be a wilderness area left, if there is a plan. If any Crown land is to remain as wilderness and provide benefits to the public, we believe that planning now and making decisions now is essential, because the default position is that the wilderness will be gone. Basically, it is necessary to look at the big picture and make some choices.
Why should we make those choices? The future is not what it used to be and the present is not quite what it used to be either. In Northern Ontario, in the primary sectors, logging, mining, fishing and trapping, there were 60,000 direct employment jobs in 1961. By 1981, there were about 48,000 jobs. In 1996, the figure was down to 30,300. Between 1996 and 1997 that number dropped by a further 3,100 to 27,200. That is a huge drop. Clearly, there is a pattern there.
Brennain Lloyd spoke about automation as a factor. That is not to be critical of the industry. They are doing what they should do to become more productive and efficient. Supposedly, that is the rational thing for them to do, but the important implication is that northern communities need to find alternative employment. Job losses in the north were in the order of 12,700 jobs between 1996 and 1997, according to HRDC, of which 3,100 were in this sector. If you take the people who depend on this sector, the other jobs in transportation and so on that relate to that, probably a good part of that decline is directly related to what is happening in this sector. Not surprisingly, you will see that the share of northern employment is dropping.
In 1961, those primary sectors were responsible for 24 per cent of the direct employment. If you add the indirect jobs on to that, they were really totally dominant in the northern employment picture. In 1997, they are at 7.5 per cent.
I can recall when a strike at INCO was an absolute disaster; however, the last time that happened, Sudbury hardly blinked. Similarly, Elliot Lake is going on to different things with the closure of four out of its five mines. What we are saying is that we need some real difference here. Ms Lloyd mentioned that the cut is up but the jobs are down.
Another important factor is government cut-backs. There have been some federal cutbacks. In the Ministry of Natural Resources, which is responsible for managing this area, employment has dropped by 45 per cent and they can no longer do the things they used to do. A lot of the people there are working very hard but they cannot make up for the loss of 45 per cent of their person power.
We are seeing a big change towards self-regulation and self-management and self-supervision. There are not as many folks as there used to be out there watching out for the public interest in the forests that are being worked in by private operators. What is more, long-term commitments are now being discussed and there is an advocacy for perpetual tenure, and so on. In other words, for reasons that I think are rational for them, the industry is trying to get long-term, effective control of the lands they are working on.
The problem that presents us with is that we have to make some choices now, or we may get locked into long-term tenure arrangements from which it will be very expensive, probably impossible, to back out of. In other words, if we wanted some land to do something different with, we would have to buy it back. We would have to buy back control, whereas now we do not have to. We have that choice.
The owners of public land want some wild places protected. An overwhelming percentage wants them protected. In your package, you will find an Oracle poll taken in October of this year, which also includes some figures from a poll in 1997. The figures are very consistent. It says, "Oracle: The opinions of Ontario about the environment."
There are a couple of numbers I really want to point out to you. When asked whether protecting 20 per cent was just right, too much, or too little, 86 per cent of those polled said that it was just right or too little. If you look towards the back of that document, you will see that the figure is 78 per cent in Northern Ontario.
So it is very strong in the north as well, and it is simply a falsehood to suggest that everyone in the North wants all the trees cut or given over to the forest industry and that they do not want any parks. Northerners, in the privacy of their homes or in our office, when they respond, want to see protected areas, too. Not most, but some. That is important. The people who actually are the owners want to see this happen.
I will move quickly now to the "Partnership Recommendations." There are quite a few of them and they are based on our scientific analyses, on community meetings, and on careful examination. First, we believe that it is essential that 15 to 20 per cent of the land be protected in core areas that exclude industrial logging, mining and dams. Within that, there can be various categories. That represents approximately a 12 per cent increase in protected areas. We believe that about half of that can come from unproductive areas, that is bogs and lakes and areas that are not producing, or inoperative areas, ones that are not going to contribute to the production forest. About 6 per cent of that will have to come out of the production forest. Keeping in mind our community's goal and the importance of maintaining employment, we think we have to maintain the flow of wood to what it would have been otherwise; to do that, we need to find 6 per cent to replace that area.
There are many factors that determine how much wood is produced. Area is one factor, but not necessarily the most important. I believe you were quite startled last night to hear that one of the witnesses was expecting to double the production from his forest. That is being done by various silviculture techniques, multiple-entry management, and other techniques. We are talking about finding only 6 per cent more in order to make room for the expanded areas.
We think that can be done partly from enhanced forestry and partly from wood from private lands. There are quite a few private lands which are disused farm lands in different regions of Ontario, and bringing some of those back into productive use is important.
We want to add jobs and economic diversity. The key to that is growth in the service sector and tourism. On the rest of the landscape, there must be sustainable forestry and mining, and there must be respect for the other values. For instance some trees will be worth more vertical than they are horizontal.
May I suggest to you how the federal government can be of help? My first point is that it should be involved, despite the numerous suggestions that the federal government should stay out of this provincial matter. There have also been suggestions that southerners should stay out of it, and that southerners who have moved to the north should stay out of it. There have been a lot of invitations to stay out of it. The fact is that we are all owners in this and we all have a stake.
There are important federal scientists working in forestry. One thing the government can do is to ensure that they have the right, and are encouraged, to speak up and contribute their knowledge for the benefit of the forest. Do not let them be suppressed or discouraged from participating.
The government can also play a role in the application of various statutes. For instance, the province of Ontario is no longer going to enforce the Fisheries Act, if doing so will harm the forest, and there is also the matter of migratory species and the responsibility of the government there and the important role that the government, and only the government, can play there. Please do not back away from that.
Finally, the government can encourage the practical application of a number of national agreements, including the Canada Forest Accord, which was supposed to complete the protected-area zones, the Whitehorse Mining Agreement, and the Endangered Spaces Commitment.
It is not simply a matter of defining words and espousing theories. When it gets down to the practical question of how we are going to divide up the land, then this is a chance to do something practical about it, to remind the industry organizations and others that they made a commitment to complete the system and now is the time to do it, and there is no skating away from it.
That covers the main points that I wanted to make. I would be happy to respond to questions when the time comes.
The Chairman: Thank you. We will go to Jim Antler and then open it up to questions from the senators. Go ahead, Mr. Antler.
Mr. Jim Antler, Research Analyst, Northern Ontario Tourist Outfitters Association: Honourable senators, it is a pleasure for us to appear before you today to make a presentation on behalf of the resource-based tourism industry within Ontario's boreal forest.
I want to give you some brief background on NOTO, as we refer to the Northern Ontario Tourist Outfitters Association, before I go into my presentation. I think it might be of assistance, because in looking at the information from your hearings and your work through the Prairies in 1996 I saw no mention of tourism. I do not know if that is because you were not able to hear from certain groups out there or not, but I want to give you a bit of a snapshot of our industry. Therefore, I may focus more on tourism in the boreal forest than on the forest itself.
NOTO is a non-profit advocacy group that represents resource-based tourism interests in Northern Ontario. We do have some members in central Ontario, sort of south of Algonquin Park, but our history since 1929 has been predominantly in Northern Ontario. This industry is made up of a cross-section of small businesses that rely on Ontario's natural resources and/or Crown lands for their livelihood. Traditionally, the industry has been made up primarily of hunting and fishing camps and lodges. That still remains the bulk of the industry, but we are seeing some growth in some other sectors.
Other important sectors of the industry include what we call the housekeeping cottage resorts, outpost camps, air services, campgrounds, canoe and eco-tourism outfitters, trailer parks, and houseboat rental businesses. It is a very broad cross-section, as I said, and is comprised of small businesses for the most part. Many are just husband and wife, the classic "mom and pop" operation, utilizing the resources out there and relying on the management of the forest for their livelihood.
I think it is important also to categorize those businesses based on the method of access to the business, which is an important consideration when we look at managing the forest landscape in Ontario. There are three basic classes: remote tourism, semi-remote tourism, and road-accessible tourism. Our Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism defines remote tourism as a wilderness recreation opportunity or experience for tourists which is not accessible by road or trail. Access is gained only by air, water or rail. Important attributes of that experience include primary use of high quality natural resources, isolation from man-made visual or auditory influences, and limited access.
Semi-remote tourism is fairly similar to remote tourism except that road access may be by private roads, although that is not often common, or by trails. As well, very often access may be by water or portage.
Road-access tourism is defined, obviously, as unencumbered access for tourists, by public or private road, to wilderness opportunities.
You have heard a little bit from the first two speakers about Lands for Life. It is certainly something I want to touch on because of its importance here in the province. As you know, or as you will probably hear this morning from the chair of the Boreal East Round Table, the planning area that Lands for Life is looking at is divided into three areas based on their ecosystem characteristics: Great Lakes-St. Lawrence, Boreal East and Boreal West.
For the information I will provide, I will focus on Boreal East and Boreal West. I think you are probably aware that the planning area does not encompass the entire boreal forest. It goes roughly as far as, I believe, the 51st parallel. However, it is going to play a very important role in determining how the chunk of land that it does look after is managed and used for the next 20 years or so. I am not sure there is a set time frame for how long that period is going to be, but it is designed to be long-term.
I will give you some information on the industry within the Boreal East and Boreal West planning areas. The Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism, which has had licensing authority for businesses in the province, estimates that there are just over 1,500 fixed-roof, resource-based tourism properties and facilities located in that area. Properties classified as housekeeping would generally include resorts. The American plan is very similar, consisting of lodges with multiple cabins in a location. Outposts, which are basic, one-cabin operations on a lake, are generally remote.
In Boreal East, there are more than 400 of those properties. The numbers are in the remarks I have given you. Fifty-eight are American plan, 146 are housekeeping facilities and there are almost 200 outposts.
In Boreal West, which I believe, according to Lands for Life, is west of the Marathon area in Ontario, there are over 1,150 such properties: 219 American plan, 323 housekeeping facilities and 612 outpost camps. You see there is quite an extensive network of businesses out there.
The Ministry of Tourism also has done some recent estimations which have concluded that direct spending on resource-based tourism in Northern Ontario totals about $482 million a year. That includes the facilities that I mentioned to you. I should be clear that it also includes park opportunities and more general, water-based activities, such as swimming, which are certainly part of what we do.
Boreal East, the area that you are in now, captured about $60 million of that revenue and Boreal West captured about $190 million. I give those figures very quickly to outline for you the importance of tourism in Northern Ontario and to illustrate how important the management of the forest is to sustaining that industry.
Given the limited time that I have before you today, I want to focus on the topic of industrial employment. I am pleased to see that tourism is identified under the description of that topic in the background information, because it certainly is an important industry in the boreal forest. As I said earlier, I was a little concerned that I did not see tourism interests at least raised in the summary of issues in the background materials I got from your tour on the Prairies. I know the industry in Ontario is certainly larger than in provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but it is an important industry in those provinces. There are organizations similar to NOTO in the Prairies, including the Manitoba Lodges and Outfitters Association and the Saskatchewan Outfitters Association. I am sure they would be pleased to provide you with additional information on tourism in those provinces.
We believe that resource-based tourism is a sustainable industry. In fact, throughout this century it has proven itself to be so, since some of our lodges actually pre-date our organization in this province.
That being said, attitudes have certainly changed over the years regarding how much we want to manage and utilize the resources that our industry relies upon, whether fish, wildlife, or whatever. Folks in our industry have been working very hard with their guests to manage and reduce the harvest of fish and wildlife. Those of you from Ontario will know that we have what we call a conservation fishing licence, which gives you the opportunity to keep a lower limit of fish than a regular full-limit licence. Sales of that licence are very strong. Our industry is pushing our guests to utilize that kind of tool to reduce the harvest and to make sure that we have a good quality resource out there that our industry can rely on, because that is our bread and butter.
We are a value-added product. We take a natural resource and package it with accommodations and other services. As you can see, its utilization generates substantial dollars. In many cases, the resource itself is not even harvested.
There has been strong growth in adventure and eco-tourism, which include, for example, canoeing, kayaking, bird watching and wildlife viewing. Unlike traditional hunting and fishing, these activities do not consume resources but still can generate substantial dollars. The key for all of these, though, is managing the landscape to ensure that the activities and the resources that they and we rely upon will be there in the future. That is often where we have run into difficulties here in Ontario.
Because of its need for a good, forested appearance, quality resources, and limited access in the remote areas, our industry often comes into conflict with other resource users, and most often with forest management. Our concerns include the construction of access roads for forestry in proximity to remote tourism areas and areas used by remote tourism businesses and the impact of new road access on previously remote lakes and other resources. More concerns are covered in our presentation.
We have worked through the provincial forest management planning process to try to deal with many of those issues but, unfortunately, it has not always been satisfactory. We end up with environmental assessments and other measures which are costly and time-consuming and which do not really deal with the fundamental conflicts of land use which exist on the land base. That is why Lands for Life certainly is important to us. I have given you submissions that we made to the Boreal East and Boreal West Round Tables because they go into much more detail that I can today.
We have had the Ontario government approve a provincial resource-based tourism policy to try to deal with our interests. I have provided you with a copy of that in the portfolio, which I left with the clerk, to give you a sense of how we are trying to deal with some of these concerns on a provincial level. As Ms Lloyd mentioned, the difficulty we have is that north of 51 we do not have a coordinated development strategy in this province. Our fixed-roof facilities cannot simply be picked up and moved when they are affected by other things. There are not a lot of opportunities north of there right now. We have to work very hard within the existing land base right now to try to deal with the issues and get the resources protected.
I know you were looking for policies and programs that can help increase forest-based employment. We are certainly part of that. Provincially, Lands for Life is a key one. Many of the resource issues that we deal with are at the provincial level; however, with respect to the federal government, the Fisheries Act and the problems between the federal government and Ontario regarding who will administer that act certainly affect us.
The bottom line, from our perspective, is that governments have to decide if they want our industry to continue and to thrive in the future. If they do, then we have to find ways to ensure that the resource values upon which resource-based tourism depends are protected. I refer you to the submissions I have attached which will give you more details and directions on that.
Senator Whelan: I will address this question to Mr. Antler. I remember going to speak to the International Wildlife Producers at Maniwaki. I said I would go if they gave me one day of fishing. I remember that the guide said, "I cannot take you to a lake where there is really good fishing but it will not be bad where we are going." He was flying his own airplane, a little Cessna 172, I think. We landed with the float plane on an isolated lake, 250 feet deep, about 120 hectares in size. We pulled a little boat with a three horsepower motor out of the bush and went trolling. The lake was full of little red crayfish. We caught all kinds of fish; we had to throw them back in. I caught the biggest fish I have ever caught, a lake trout about 20 pounds or 21 pounds. The guide said, looking at the scale, that the fish I caught would have been 50 years old. He said that if that lake had been near a road, there would be no fish in it in two years.
We have a little place down at Marten River on Red Cedar Lake. We used to be able to go out and catch maybe six fish, just as the sun was going down through the trees. Now if you go out, there are probably twelve boats at that same point. It would be lucky if all twelve boats caught six fish.
Do you not think that ice fishing also would be a viable business?
I know that skidooing is a big business. Even my nephews come up here in the wintertime when there is snow.
Do you have any reservations or any ideas about ice fishing and the like? How does clear-cutting affect the supply of water to your lakes?
Mr. Antler: Yes, I guess I have a few thoughts. You bring up some interesting points, including some of the things that we have talked about as an organization for many years. The experience you had on the small lake that you flew into is an example of the kinds of opportunities and the quality of the fishery that we still have available and that we are trying to maintain in the province. You can sell that kind of experience for many years. People will pay good money to come and do that. As you say, if you threw back all of your fish, you really did not have an impact on the fishery. That is one of the fundamental issues with which we try to deal.
Senator Whelan: I want to make it clear that we kept our quota.
Mr. Antler: We are working hard to maintain those opportunities in remote areas, and that is one reason that we have concerns regarding forestry. Red Cedar Lake, for example, certainly it is a much more road-accessible area now.
In those situations, you have to be really careful how you manage and regulate the use of the resources. Certainly, ice fishing and snowmobiling are tremendously important to the tourism industry right now.
I think you have to look at snowmobiling in two ways, because there are two types of snowmobiling opportunities. There are folks, I think primarily in Northern Ontario and probably some who come up from the south, who use the snowmobile as a way to go into lakes to fish or to do other similar activities. There are also folks who use snowmobiles for touring. The latter are not necessarily anglers. They may just be folks who want to take that run up from North Bay to Cochrane and back again.
We are always concerned when we have fisheries that seem to suffer an impact and then do not provide the same experience as before. Perhaps a decision should be made that we have to put some controls on the utilization of an area -- who can go into a lake, for instance. That approach has been used in some cases to try to deal with the more remote tourist areas. Perhaps there is a better approach to the management of the fishery itself, whether you consider a lower limit or something else. There are different opportunities that you can look at.
Clearly, for us, both are important. We want to make sure that in the future we still have lakes like the one you flew into; we do not want them all to become road-accessible lakes where the resource may not be the same as the one you had the opportunity to experience.
Senator Whelan: This next question is addressed to Ric Symmes, who comes from down south. He comes from Orillia, I think. In your presentation, you mentioned the federal government allowing civil servants to be freer to comment. Was that not in your brief?
Mr. Symmes: That is correct.
Senator Whelan: Do you have evidence that civil servants are not allowed to comment?
Mr. Symmes: Some federal civil servants did make presentations to the Round Table and, subsequently, they were told that their resources would be cut back. They were discouraged. They were actively discouraged. It was the group called the Concerned Scientists of Algoma. I do not think I want to go any further in terms of specific names and places, but I have some in mind. I do not think it will help the situation to name chapter and verse. I think what we need is a more positive encouragement to help their job.
Senator Whelan: I was hoping you would go farther.
Senator Spivak: I was struck with the figures on the jobs which are similar to what we heard out west. Certainly, that is the situation in British Columbia. It is now 27,000 jobs or a little more, based on how large a land mass and what kind of investment both by government and by industry. Do you have those figures? I wanted to compare that, if you could, with the number of jobs in tourism. Mr. Antler, I do not know if I caught the total number of jobs in tourism and that kind of investment.
Perhaps I am making a bit of a broad generalization, but it seems to me that the attitude is that the forest really belongs to the forest industry -- people do not say that, but that is what they really think -- and we will give a few little crumbs here to tourism or recreation. The reason is because we absolutely need that industry because we need the jobs.
There is some truth in that, but I do not know if it is as bald as that. I would appreciate some comments.
Mr. Symmes: Just to clarify, the numbers that I was talking about come from the home page of Human Resources Development Canada, which is the employment resource for the north.
Senator Spivak: Just the north?
Mr. Symmes: That is just Northern Ontario. I do not know exactly where the break-off is, French River or somewhere. Perhaps, Mr. Antler, you could help me with that. That is in the north. I noted the numbers for combined hospitality and tourism and, actually, they are just about the same, about 27,800 direct positions. This does not include indirect supporting positions.
Senator Spivak: Really, if you look at it in terms of jobs and investment, maybe we should divide the forest half and half, not 15 per cent or 20 per cent. We should have 50 per cent for tourism, recreation and family use, and 50 per cent for logging. The only thing about that is that then we have this other question, which I am sure my colleague will raise, about the gap. There is this tremendous pressure to fill that gap.
The question here is how should you deal with that? Is the allowable cut too high? Should we reduce the use or should we just try to do everything we can on the land mass to meet that gap? I would be interested in your opinion.
Mr. Symmes: We have tried to come up with a consistent answer to that question. First of all, to be clear, while 15 per cent to 20 per cent would be protected from industrial logging and mining, there are constraints on the remaining landscape. They are not allowed to cut every last tree. If there is an eagle's nest in it, they are not supposed to cut it. So there are constraints. There are leave-strips along the roadside so that people driving by do not necessarily have to look at the ugliness of a clear-cut area. There are requirements along streams. There are some constraints on the remaining lands. Not all of the remainder is available for actual production.
I guess our balance is to say we think that what is needed for biodiversity and for jobs is, first of all, some land that is fairly strictly protected, and then some which is managed and has some constraints but which still provides some biological values and which can also provide some recreational values. I do not think it is necessary or practical to talk in terms of going 50-50. I think 15 per cent to 20 per cent protected is the maximum.
I would like to take one moment to explain that we feel that to close the gap there must be some improved forest management and tending in order to improve the productivity of some of the remaining high-productivity sites, so that we do not end up knocking heck out of the remaining forest jobs, because they are still fine jobs, traditionally high-paying jobs in the north.
Senator Stratton: When you talk about wilderness areas, you are talking about 15 per cent to 20 per cent, as I understand it. That is untouched. You will not harvest in those areas. That is what you are advocating.
You talked about roads. We saw examples yesterday of them going in and doing a cut and building a road to get in and then doing the harvest. Do you advocate, when they pull out, that they put the soil back as it was, the terrain back as it was, remove the road, just for the sake of nature? Now they leave it and, over time, it goes back to nature. You talked about how it seems that the whole area is becoming nothing but a network of roads.
Mr. Symmes: Yes. First of all, just to clarify about the untouched area, we think that the area that we are talking about is going to have some impact. For example, we think that it is a very good resource for remote tourism, such as the fly-in camps. Many of those areas will provide multiple recreational and other uses, from mushroom gathering to a whole bunch of surprising industries that provide income. There are things that can happen there. It is just it keeps the industrial use out and, by and large -- although not entirely, because we know there are some roads in some parks -- it would keep roads out.
Roads are a key problem because they bring so much traffic and pressure. There just are not the conservation officers or people who can actually control this. Once people can get in, in large numbers and very easily, with motorized equipment, the resource gets trashed. The lake gets fished out in two years, as you say. There is just no practical way to manage that impact.
Roads are the biggest threat. In some ways, they are a bigger threat than mining. It is all the collateral damage that comes when you build the road. In some cases, it would be desirable to remove the roads, but history in Ontario has shown that once a road is open, it is very difficult to get it closed.
Senator Stratton: I am really quite surprised that no one this morning talked about herbicides. They do use herbicides when they plant. We are told that they are biodegradable, in other words, that they break down in very short order, but they break down into something and they alter the soil's composition. My concern is not for the present. My concern is for 20 and 30 years from now. Do you feel comfortable with the use of herbicides? Are the herbicides that they are using safe? We are talking not about today but about 20 and 30 years from now.
Ms Lloyd: I think that the use of herbicides are part of the whole clear-cut, spray, plant, spray, spray, spray, spray, spray, spray, clear-cut, plant, spray, spray, spray approach to forest management. I think that it is one part of the difficulty or the problems within that approach.
I cannot give you an assessment of the herbicides that are currently being used. I can tell you that I am generally concerned about their use, and particularly about their longer-term impact. Are they bio-accumulative, and is there persistence within them, and so on. I think that it is as much a concern about the approach that it supports as it is about their use. It is not just that there is a concern about the pesticides but there is also an overall concern about the approach that they are part of.
I would just like to add a comment to what Senator Spivak said when she touched on the question of investment. I would like to suggest to the senators a question for which I do not have the answer. What is the role of federal government investment, funding and subsidies, in industry in terms of their increased mechanization? I think that there is a federal role. Federal dollars are being used to that end. That is a question which we have not yet been able to pursue. I think you are better positioned to pursue that than we are.
The Chairman: We will think of that. Of course, the federal government is in at least one pocket now, maybe both pockets, taking taxes. I think you can expect that there will be recommendations along that line.
Senator Mahovlich: I want to direct my question to Rick Symmes. My home town is Timmins. I grew up in Schumacher. A number of years ago, an Australian outfit came in and took my ballpark and our park out, dug a hole, and tried to find gold. The company was supposed to return that park and the ballpark to its normal state. Individuals had planted trees. They were not your normal, average trees in the area. These were individual and very important trees. The managers of the McIntyre mine had planted trees there. It was a park where, on a Sunday afternoon, you could go for a nice walk. There was a carousel. We had a beautiful time as young children. I come back now and I do not recognize the area. They have just left it. What you have now is bush growing back. This is not a place for the young boys of Schumacher.
They built a park on the back road somewhere and said that this will replace what was here. I think the issue is in the courts now, or so someone told me. I am just wondering if your federation here is up on that, or did you know anything about it?
Mr. Symmes: We do not know about that individual site, no. Perhaps Brennain would. She is closer to it. We are a little concerned about the broad principle of whether there should be a right to mine absolutely everywhere. Some places may be better left as they are.
Senator Mahovlich: I think this was waste. We took that waste and built a park over it, or my predecessors did, to beautify the area. They thought that there was probably a lot of gold left in the waste. As it turned out, I do not think that they got much.
Mr. Symmes: I think that rehabilitation is certainly an issue.
Ms Lloyd: I would add that there have been changes to the Mining Act in Ontario. There are now more requirements in terms of public notice and so on than in the past, but there are still not enough, particularly in terms of the initial development and exploration of sites. I do not know the particulars of your site, but I think that certainly one of the concerns of the boreal forest estate is with initial exploration and even advanced exploration. None of the requirements for any kind of public review kick in until we are past that exploration stage. Then there is a whole host of problems with abandoned mines, the failure of decommissioning, and so on.
The Chairman: I noted that long-term tenure was criticized. How do you propose the opposite -- a short-term tenure -- which means that you go in, cut everything and take it out? Is not long-term tenure, provided it is reviewed occasionally, about the only way that we can ensure that your objective and the log-cutting and fibre-cutting objectives turn out to be the same? In other words, they want to keep the forest; they want to renew it. What is the alternative if we do not have long-term tenure?
Mr. Symmes: I guess our comfort with tenure varies with whether all other interests are being adequately addressed. In other words, do not lock things in until you have addressed the other key interests, which include First Nations' interests and protected areas. The public wants protected areas, and so on.
The Chairman: The long-term tenure is all right, just as long as there is input from everybody.
Mr. Symmes: Long-term tenure over some of the area is maybe all right if the other interests are looked after first, including protected areas, First Nations, and so on.
Ms Lloyd: The key tension is between public versus private rather than short-term versus long-term. I think that there is a concern with long-term tenure. If we see increased control of the private sector over public lands and then we also see an increase in the length of that tenure, then I think that what that means to the public is a longer interval between the times when they have an opportunity to comment, influence, affect or change that tenure agreement. I think that we have had a certain tenure arrangement on certainly the Crown units in Northern Ontario, where the public agency was the key decision maker. As we move towards handing over the tenure to the private sector, then the public role -- public control, public influence, public access to information, decision making, et cetera -- decreases.
Senator Whelan: We have many dealings with the United States of America. There is one authority, which is the federal authority, for forestry, agriculture and fisheries. Do you not think that that would be better than what we have here, where there is an invisible provincial boundary? You can walk over it and not know it. You are into different legislation, different laws for fishing and cutting.
I was a minister for nearly 11 years. I always found it very confusing. When I dealt with the United States, I dealt with one person for the 51 states. I did not deal with 51 people. Here, you have a division and they want to divide it even more. We built a country with a fairly good federal system. I see this confusion that exists across our nation. Do you have any opinions?
Ms Lloyd: I do not think that all is exactly well in the woods in the U.S., so I think that we have to be careful about adopting their policy.
Senator Whelan: I did not say that it was. From your evidence here, I do not think it is very good here.
The Chairman: Let me close off before Senator Whelan takes over and wipes out all the provinces.
Mr. Antler: Very quickly, I wanted to respond to a couple of the earlier questions. In terms of the jobs in tourism, I think the number that Mr. Symmes put out was approximately 26,000 to 27,000. I believe that is total tourism, not necessarily resource-based tourism. The resource-based figure is probably closer to about 13,000. If you want more information, I can provide you with the study, but certainly it does interlink.
Senator Spivak: It is growing, not falling.
Mr. Antler: Yes. Unlike perhaps the more industrial forestry or mining, it is not really subject to mechanization. It is still customer service, person-to-person, so you are not going to have that same impact of mechanization.
In terms of Senator Stratton's roads question, certainly our organization supports the regeneration of roads and in some cases trying to either close them or do something with them. That causes difficulty with other users but that is a constant battle that we try to deal with here in Ontario in terms of the leftover impact. Usually, a forest company, when their activities are finished, does not mind regenerating a road. But there are other folks in the province who will want to utilize that road for other purposes. That is where the difficulty lies for the decision makers in terms of who they pay attention to and the decisions they make.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, panellists. It is our fault for squeezing you in so tight but, luckily, you have given us some written briefs. Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it.
Mr. William Thornton, Director, Forest Management Branch, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources: First of all, welcome on behalf of the Ontario government to Timmins. It is a pleasure to be here this morning. I will try to move briefly through the notes that I know you already have in order to allow time to address your questions and to address some of the points raised previously here.
I am the Director of the Forest Management Branch for the Province of Ontario. I work with the Ministry of Natural Resources. As you know, we have the responsibility for forest-related activities here in the province. I am going to say a few words just to set the context here and then pass through the various items that you have raised in terms of what you would like to see addressed with respect to your mandate on the boreal forest.
You will see behind you a map on the wall that shows the boreal forest. It is the dark green part. Just to set the context, Ontario is a big province of about 107 million hectares, of which 74 per cent is forested. We have about 17 per cent of Canada's forest and 1 per cent of the world's forest. Again, to give you some perspective, that is roughly the size of the land masses of the countries of France, Switzerland and Austria combined.
You can see on the map where the boreal forest exists. It stretches from the Manitoba border to the Quebec border, just south of the Hudson Bay-James Bay lowlands area. It is an area totalling about 42 million hectares. The northern range of the boreal forest extends to boreal barrens or tundra and is characterized by low site productivity and a subarctic climate.
A key feature about the boreal forest is the fact that it is disturbance-driven and dominated by species that are adapted to these environmental conditions. Fire, wind and insects often affect extensive areas, and species have adapted their regenerative capabilities to survive these disturbances.
Fire, in particular, has controlled the age and distribution of tree species in the boreal forests, favouring a preponderance of young stands. During the last 80 years, timber harvesting and forest-fire suppression have changed the tree species composition and the age-class structure of the forest. I will not bother going through the species. You were out in the bush yesterday and have seen the kinds of tree species that exist here in the boreal forest.
I want to speak a little bit about the harvesting practices and impress upon you how important it is to have harvesting practices that mimic natural disturbances. That is really the centrepiece of our silviculture thinking, particularly with respect to the boreal forest. That is why you do see clear-cutting, because it does, to a certain extent, mimic natural disturbances that take place out there in the boreal forest. Also, I thought that you should have some perspective in terms of these disturbances in the forest. Each year in Ontario, fire burns about 275,000 hectares, while harvesting occurs on about 200,000 hectares. In other words, more area is burned each year than is harvested in Ontario. Less than one-half of 1 per cent of our forested area is harvested annually.
Of the 42 million hectares in the boreal forest, about 95 per cent of it is owned by the Crown, 4.5 per cent of that is private land, and about one-half of 1 per cent is federal lands, primarily in Indian reserves.
I would like to speak now briefly about a couple of very important pieces of legislation in Ontario, that being the Crown Forest Sustainability Act and the Environmental Assessment Act. It is important to note that Ontario went through a four-year series of public hearings that in 1994 rendered a very important decision on something called the Class Environmental Assessment for Timber Management on Crown Lands in Ontario. We spent about $20 million over the course of four years bringing forward evidence from witnesses to describe a variety of activities that take place on the forest, including a forest management planning process, the use of herbicides in the forest, and the role that other people, stakeholders and individual members of the public, have in advising us on how to manage the forest.
At about the same time, we also brought forward an important piece of legislation. That was the Crown Forest Sustainability Act, which came into effect in 1995. It is the most current piece of forestry legislation in Canada and many other provinces have come to us to seek advice on it.
The Crown Forest Sustainability Act requires that anyone operating in a Crown forest in Ontario must do so in a manner that ensures the long-term health of the forest, so that all the benefits of the Crown forest are available for future generations. This act is binding on the Crown. Both the EA, the Environmental Assessment decision, and the Crown instituted changes affecting the responsibilities of the forest industry by creating new opportunities for the public to become involved in forest management planning. It is mandated by law that we have local citizens' committees, for example, that advise us on our forest management planning, a new system of licensing for the harvesting of timber, a revision of fees paid to harvest timber, establishing guaranteed funding for forest renewal, and trust funds that I will speak to, and a revised system of compliance, remedial action and penalties.
A very important point here is that in both the EA decision and the Crown Forest Sustainability Act, we talked about and are mandated to have independent forest audits of these companies' activities every five years. That is the basis upon which a licence is renewed. You have heard much discussion here about tenure. The tenure mechanism in Ontario is one of, by and large, 20-year licences. Every five years, the performance of that licensee is reviewed by an independent body to see if they have met the conditions of their licence. If they have, then that licence returns to its 20-year time-frame. Therefore, the province does retain control. This is not a hand-off to the forest industry. There are rigorous standards in effect for the auditing of their performance.
We have a number of reporting requirements. I will not go through them all. There are annual reports that we require companies to submit. There are five-year audits that I have spoken to. We have an obligation to provide information to the federal government for some of its state-of-the-forest reporting that takes place. That information is used in international and national fora to explain Canada's role in the forest. We take that responsibility very seriously. As well, we take our responsibility with respect to the National Forest Strategy very seriously. We are a signatory to that and a very active participant as a province.
You have heard a lot this morning about something called Lands for Life. I will not go into it in any great detail because other speakers will. This is a land-use planning process currently underway in Ontario. We have already had about 13 months of public discussions throughout the province, north and south. There are three regional round tables who have just recently submitted their recommendations to the government on alternate land uses for the Crown land in that part of Ontario affected by this planning initiative.
I should speak to the intent of that land-use planning exercise. First of all, it is to complete Ontario's system of parks and protected areas. We agree that there does need to be further protection and that it needs to be done on an ecological basis. We already have an area set aside in protection that is roughly equal to the size of Nova Scotia. We believe it should be enhanced, based on some ecological considerations.
We do not agree with an artificial target of this percentage or that percentage. We believe that the protection needs to be consistent with ecological units and that there is a need for representation in each of those units throughout the province.
The land-use planning process, Lands for Life, also recognizes the land-use needs of resource-based tourism, which is an important part of our economy. We want to provide assurances for that sector as well. It is also intended to address the needs of resource users, such as the forest and mineral industries, and give them some certainty for their investments in the province. It is to provide enhanced opportunities for public hunting and fishing as well.
You have asked for some evidence to be brought forward on biodiversity. I will speak briefly to this. As you know, general policy direction on matters of biodiversity come from both the national and the international frameworks. Again, we take that very seriously. Those directions are incorporated largely into our legislation, the Crown Forest Sustainability Act, and the Forest Management Planning Manual and guidelines that govern forest management in Ontario. The act requires that each management plan address objectives for biological diversity. These objectives are to consider ecosystem composition, structure and function over a number of different spatial scales.
Largely, our forest management planning influences stand composition and structure through silvicultural treatments. You have seen evidence of those treatments yesterday in your field visit and there are a number of ground rules and treatment packages that we can apply on different sites for different conditions. Again, you have seen evidence of that.
We speak in Ontario of a desired future forest condition. When a company is asked to prepare a forest management plan, they are to state what they expect to see from that site once it is harvested. They then set in motion a number of silvicultural activities to ensure that that stand is regenerated to that desired future forest condition. That future forest condition has to consider the interests of not just the timber aspect but the wildlife habitat that it provides, the recreational opportunities that can be encompassed in the forest, and so on.
I am not going to go through the various guidelines that govern forest management planning. They are listed there in the appendix. There are now 19 guidelines for wildlife that must be considered. In my presentation material, I did give you an example of the application of a guideline for marten habitat. This is particularly relevant to the boreal forest. This is a species that requires large expanses of mature and over-mature forest and is something that has been increasingly incorporated into our forest management plans to provide habitat for that species.
Our approach to wildlife management relies heavily on what is called "featured species," making sure that the forest habitat is available for these selected species. By doing that, the approach aims to provide suitable habitats for many other species with similar needs. Historically, we have looked at big-game species and those species whose long-term survival is of concern. These included, for example, moose and deer, as well as vulnerable, threatened and endangered species. However, in recent times, that has changed and we are looking more in terms of the ecosystem needs of the environment as opposed to the individual needs of individual species.
This perspective does not preclude management of habitat for individual species as long as it does not threaten the long-term well-being of other species or the functioning of the overall biological system. I just pause here, if I may, for a moment. It is interesting to note, if you look at that map, you see different forest regions of Ontario. If you look at the southern-most part of Ontario, you will see a yellow strip. That is the deciduous forest. We have the remnant of a forest there. Only about 10 per cent of that original forest is still there. It has been lost due to agricultural and urban development.
Senator Mahovlich: Has there been loss due to disease?
Mr. Thornton: No, not so much disease. Dutch elm disease has been a big part.
Senator Mahovlich: Do they ever come back?
Mr. Thornton: Dutch elms, following Dutch elm disease, do, but they are still very susceptible to the same disease.
Senator Mahovlich: That has not been conquered yet.
Mr. Thornton: No. My point here is that you will find about two-thirds of Ontario's vulnerable, threatened and endangered species in that section. It is simply because we only have about 10 per cent of the forest left there. Most people do not realize that. They tend to think of the problem existing in the boreal forest. That is not where it is.
A key consideration in the maintenance of ecological systems is the need to manage at a number of different spatial scales. Not only is it necessary to manage for particular habitat features at the forest stand level, but also at the landscape level, which is a very broad level. That point is often lost on both the public and many of our critics.
This multi-scaled perspective of habitat management requires that planning at the forest management unit level be closely linked to broader land use planning systems. I have talked about the application of pine marten habitat guidelines. I will not go into any greater detail, other than to say that that has been a particular challenge for us because, by setting aside a greater amount of old forest -- the kind of forest that would be harvested for timber -- we have had an effect on the available supply of timber. It has been reduced as a result of that.
I understand that you have asked some questions about climate change, so I will say a few words about that. As we develop the science and technical information to guide practices to conserve biodiversity in the forest, we are beginning to think about the expected impacts of climate change on our forests. The current approach in Ontario to climatic change is to manage for healthy forest ecosystems that are diverse and resilient. With increasing scientific evidence of global warming, we are beginning to think that we may need to manage for a different set of environmental conditions. Our research scientists have recently published an early thought-provoking paper, "The Impacts of Climate Change on Ontario's Forests." I believe that you have a copy of that.
The paper notes that fire and droughts may be more frequent in the northwestern boreal forest, which may be followed by an increase in insect and disease outbreaks. New plant associations may occur. Some ecosystems may not be sustainable and biodiversity objectives may need to change. We will be holding a workshop in November to bring our staff up to speed on this. We are also following the requirements of reporting on land use changes in forests, through the use of carbon sinks, as dictated by the Kyoto Protocol. We work closely with the federal government and participate in a number of panels that it sponsors. Again, it is an issue that we in the province of Ontario take very seriously.
Now I would like to say a few words about employment in the industry. Our policy clearly dictates that the long-term health of the forest must come first, but it recognizes the significant role the forest has for the people that live here and its contribution particularly to Northern Ontario, and to Canada's, economy. In general, communities in the boreal forest have less diverse economies than southern communities and dependence on the forest industry is significant. In Northern Ontario, almost two-thirds of the population live in a community where the forest industry is a factor of some importance in the economy. In nearly 50 Northern Ontario communities, there is no other basic industry.
Many residents of northern forest-based communities have a strong attachment to the communities in which they live and work. The loss of employment opportunities in the forest industry in these communities can have very significant social effects.
In Ontario each year, we harvest between 23 and 24 million cubic metres, worth about $15 billion in sales. We have 13 panel mills, 48 large lumber mills, 10 veneer mills, and 35 pulp and paper mills. Our pulp and paper mills are the largest in terms of converting timber into forest products. They represent roughly two-thirds of the value of all shipments from Ontario.
The forest sector employs some 87,000 people directly and 70,000 people indirectly, and enjoys a relatively high ratio of 3.7 employees per cubic metre of wood harvested.
I want to pause here because you have seen much lower numbers than that this morning. The numbers you were shown were incomplete and misleading because they only showed employment in logging. They did not show employment in manufacturing. All the people who work in the sawmills and the pulp mills were not included in those numbers. You need to take that into consideration when you look at these figures. That is why mine are more complete, showing 87,000 direct and 70,000 indirect jobs.
The other thing you should know is that many of the secondary manufacturing opportunities exist with respect to the forest industry. Those benefits are found in Southern Ontario. That is where the furniture plants are. That is where the paper packaging plants often are, and so on. That perspective needs to be considered when you are talking about employment in the forest industry.
I have mentioned our ratio of 3.7 employees per cubic metre of wood harvested. That is the highest in Canada. We have the greatest amount of value-added manufacturing in Ontario and, again, it is because of the spin-off effects, the secondary manufacturing opportunities that exist in the north and especially in Southern Ontario. There is a very direct link between Northern and Southern Ontario in terms of the benefits of the forest industry. That point is often lost on people.
I would also like to pause here and say a few points about the jobs argument. That, too, is subject to misrepresentation. I believe it has been misrepresented here this morning. You will notice that the critics of the forest industry are quick to bring up the argument of jobs and seldom bring forward the argument of wages and quality investment. Earlier this week, I was in Iroquois Falls. I met with a company up there, Abitibi Consolidated. The average wage in that mill is about $80,000 for a paper worker, and is probably another 20 per cent higher, let us say $100,000 in total, with wages and benefits. These are high-skilled, full-time, high-paying jobs.
Many of the critics will say that we should be converting our northern economy to a resource-based tourism economy. A recent study in northwestern Ontario showed that those jobs are seasonal in nature and pay much lower wages, roughly on a ratio of three to one. That is an important point when you get into the jobs-counting game.
The other important point to remember is capital investment. The forest industry is very capital intensive. That has a lot of spin-off effects for the northern economy. That same pulp and paper mill that I mentioned in Iroquois Falls spends about $40 million a year on capital investment. That far exceeds the kind of capital investments that you will find in resource-based tourism.
I do not want to be misquoted in my remarks to say that resource-based tourism is not valuable to Northern Ontario. It is. We need to ensure that that remains a vibrant part of our economy, but the notion of somehow taking away jobs from the forest industry and assuming that they will be more than compensated for in the resource-based tourism industry, for example, is very misleading. They need to work together. There is an opportunity for both of those to exist.
I have talked about our 3.7 employees per cubic metre of wood and the fact that it is the highest in Canada. We think it needs to go further. We want to promote further value-added manufacturing in this province. As you know, we have a strong competitive advantage in Canada because of our proximity to the U.S. market. That captures about 90 per cent of Ontario's exports.
I have a few words to say about Crown charges. Forest companies pay Crown charges, often called "stumpage fees," to the Crown for every cubic metre of timber harvested. The Crown stumpage fees include three parts. First, there is a forest renewal charge to provide dedicated funding for renewal. When that tree is harvested, there is money that goes into a trust fund and that area is going to be regenerated. Senator Mahovlich, the situation you described in the park would not happen in forestry. I am familiar with that park as well. That is where I had my wedding pictures taken.
Senator Mahovlich: Do not say that. If it is not monitored, it will happen.
Mr. Thornton: The mechanism in Ontario is that monies are set aside in a trust fund. They are not the property of the company. They are set aside in trust for the forest. If that company should go out of business, the monies would remain there. They have no claim to that money.
Senator Mahovlich: Maybe we could take that trust fund and make my park back into what it was.
Mr. Thornton: I do not think so.
Senator Mahovlich: They allowed that corporation from Australia to come in.
Mr. Thornton: That is a matter to bring up with our mining friends.
I want to say a few more words about the trust because I think this is a particularly good feature in Ontario that you do not find in other parts of the province. There is also a second trust fund. You have heard Dr. John Naysmith speak about it. That is the Forestry Futures Trust. It is spending roughly, when it is fully functioning, about $10 million a year to provide silvicultural incentives to deal with that gap that you heard about.
A third portion of our stumpage fee goes to the province's consolidated revenue fund. There are two parts to that fee. There is a fixed minimum and a residual value charge. That residual value charge is market-sensitive, so when the economy is strong and there are high prices being paid for forest products, we capture a greater amount through that charge than we do when times are tough. In total, these charges paid into the government -- not into the trust but paid into the government, into our consolidated revenue fund -- amounted to about $178 million last year.
The forest industry in Ontario is not subsidized. For example, if you look at last year's figures, the revenue we brought in was about 143 per cent of our revenue of our expenditures, so we bring in more money to the coffers of Ontario from the forest industry charges than we spend. There is no subsidy in that respect.
I have been asked to say a few words about Aboriginal peoples. Most, but not all, of the Ontario First Nations have entered into treaties and thereby have surrendered title to non-reserve lands. Ontario has accepted that there are treaty rights to hunting and fishing for personal consumption and, in most cases, a right to subsistence commercial fishing in a few cases. However, Ontario does not believe that there are aboriginal treaty rights to commercial timber harvesting. No Ontario First Nation has yet set out a clause to support the existence of such a right. Ontario's ongoing efforts to enhance aboriginal involvement in the forestry sector are therefore rooted in a commitment to aboriginal economic development rather than to any perceived need to fulfil constitutional or treaty obligations. That differs in other provinces. B.C., for example, does not have a complete network of treaties and, as you know, they are working very hard to remedy that.
In Canada, the existence of aboriginal title to areas of land would have strong implications for forest management. In instances in which aboriginal title exists, First Nations may want to play a very strong role in forest management planning, forest allocation and even harvesting. Although there are no known instances in Ontario where aboriginal title to land continues to exist, there is at least one Aboriginal people, the Algonquins of Golden Lake, that claims to have never surrendered its lands.
Therefore, with the possible exception of the Algonquins of Golden Lake land claim area, Ontario does not feel that the present system of allocating timber-harvesting privileges infringes on aboriginal or treaty rights. There is recognition that timber-harvesting practices may affect the exercise of other rights, such as trapping, hunting and fishing. The forest management planning system provides a forum and a process to consider these values and requirements.
Our planning process includes the identification of native values as part of it, as well as a specific Native Consultation Program for native communities that wish to become involved in forest management planning.
Nearly all of Ontario's Crown timber that is available for harvest is committed to existing forest companies. Any initiative that would include increasing the allocation of harvestable timber to First Nations would therefore also involve a corresponding reduction in the allocation to existing forest companies. Because forest companies have a significant invested interest in their tenure, they would almost certainly seek compensation for such reductions.
You have heard about condition 77. That is an obligation that we have to provide First Nations communities with a greater share in the economic benefits of forest management. We rely heavily on the forest industry to be the primary deliverers of economic development opportunities for aboriginal communities in Ontario. We also do a lot as a province, and the federal government does as well. The federal government's First Nation Forestry Program in Ontario amounts to about $1.5 million a year and has been helpful in contributing towards skills and business infrastructure developing in forestry. We also encourage investment by both the federal government and private sector. We have a number of initiatives with respect to fire-fighting programs with First Nations here, and we provide that service for First Nation communities and work through agreement with the federal government on fire-fighting in, and adjacent to, reserve lands.
Finally, I would like to speak to federal-provincial issues that you have described. We have a very good working relationship with the Canadian Forestry Service here. We have recently, in March of 1998, signed a memorandum of agreement that covers many of our inter-relationships. A particularly positive aspect of that memorandum of understanding is the work that we have on a health-monitoring network in the forest, where we share resources, both fiscal and human, to monitor the health of the forest. We have had some great results there. The ice storm is evidence of some of the work that was done in Eastern Ontario.
I want to say briefly that we appreciate the work of the Canadian Forestry Service in coordinating national activities. Your work on the Lake Abitibi Model Forest, just not far from here, is a very good example of your commitment to good forest stewardship.
I know there are a number of questions, so I will stop there and be glad to take your questions.
Senator Whelan: Yesterday, Mr. Chairman, if you remember, I asked one of the representatives from Ontario about quitting the program for giving away trees. I should have stated that it was that area of southwestern Ontario where only 10 per cent of the area is forested. Hardwoods are mostly left in that area. You supported the program that the province decided to discontinue, supplying trees to replenish and add forest land?
Mr. Thornton: We have not discontinued in the sense that there are no longer any trees available. We have told landowners that they will have to purchase those from the private sector. We have closed our nurseries. We have sold them to private interests who now make those seedlings available to the public.
Senator Whelan: They have to purchase the trees now. You quit the give-away program.
Mr. Thornton: That is right.
Senator Whelan: Many visitors come to our cities, for instance, Toronto and the bigger cities. When they go up high in the CN tower or some place like that, they say, "Your city looks like a forest," and it does. In some places, you cannot see the houses for the trees. Have you ever taken into account how many square kilometres are covered by forestry that is in urban areas, trees exuding life-giving oxygen?
Mr. Thornton: I have not. We do not have jurisdiction there. It is the municipal government's responsibility. I know that it is considerable. If you speak to the City of Toronto, for example, they have a number of staff arborists who are very concerned about the health of that so-called "urban forest," which is the term used to describe it. They do a good job of providing tree cover in the city of Toronto.
Senator Whelan: I have one further comment on Dutch elm disease. I told somebody that one of the last things I did with a chainsaw was cut down a big part of a 35-acre forest on my farm that was inundated by free trade -- I mean Dutch elm disease. You know, we have a lot of things like that. I have strong reservations about some of the things, how they came to North America, and the damage they continue to do. We have trees that get about that big and then the disease overtakes them, and they will come again. They will last maybe 10 or 15 years and then they are destroyed again by disease. It is a terrible thing.
The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Whelan. I am sure that President Clinton is going to be interested in finding out that Dutch elm disease is an American disease.
Senator Whelan: It came from Holland, into the United States and then into Canada.
The Chairman: It sneaked in through the back door.
Senator Mahovlich: I was just saying that Toronto is a terrific area for forest and, in particular, our graveyards. They are just loaded with species. If you want to spend a Sunday afternoon, they have tours of Toronto graveyards. It is a beautiful way to spend a day.
The Chairman: Is there any evidence of the origin of the grave as to the type of tree that grows on that?
Senator Mahovlich: My parents are buried up in north Toronto, Highway 7 and Yonge Street. They have a beautiful crimson king maple just beside their grave. I often go and admire it. Every year, it gets larger and improves. It is quite nice.
I want to get back to the question of subsidizing our exports. We are really subsidizing them, as our dollar is at 60 cents. We have to be very careful that we get our dollar back to where it was. Our attitude in Canada was that it is good for our exports, but when you really analyze the whole picture, we are letting this timber just escape all over the world and we are not really getting what we deserve for it.
I want to make a comment, too, on what a great job Dr. Naysmith and some of his co-workers have done. I think it is great, and it has really enlightened me on the work that is being done. I am feeling more positive than before I came up here, because I heard so much negativism about our forestry in the last 10 or 20 years. I think I can go back to Toronto and to the government, really, with a good attitude about our forestry and the future of our country. We have more jobs in forestry than in any other industry, so I feel very good about coming up and spending the day in Timmins.
The Chairman: I do not think it is necessary to comment on that. You could hardly improve on it.
I notice the north boundary of the boreal forest. Is there any indication that climate warming is moving that north boundary into the lowlands at all?
Mr. Thornton: One of the impacts of climate warming that we foresee is the increased melting of the polar ice cap. Water levels will rise there, so you will see water move further inshore along Hudson and James bays, for example.
The Chairman: It will not help the forest move north.
Senator Spivak: There is an astounding comment in your written presentation. It suggests that if there was an increase in allocation for harvesting to First Nations, it would result in compensation to the forestry companies. What is the basis of your statement? There have been court cases that suggest the importance of traditional uses. In fact, the most recent one would make a very sound basis of evidence for usage of the land. I am just curious to know if you really are 100 per cent behind that statement.
Mr. Thornton: The point I tried to make in my presentation is that our obligations come from two points. They come from constitutional obligations with respect to First Nations and from treaty obligations. On the matter of treaty obligations, they are clear: there is no title. With respect to timber harvesting, if there are decisions made by the Supreme Court with respect to the constitutional rights of First Nations to timber harvesting, then we would have no other recourse but to follow the direction of the courts. That would mean, in our view, that we would essentially be taking wood away from companies who are already licensed to have it. In the process of doing that, we would expect to hear from forest companies that they would like to be compensated if they lose timber in that fashion.
To give this some perspective, a similar situation exists with respect to commercial fisheries on the Great Lakes, where courts have told us that there is an obligation to provide commercial fishing opportunities for First Nations and, as a result of that, we are buying back licences from non-aboriginal fishermen.
Senator Spivak: Have all effluents from pulp and paper mills ceased into the Great Lakes?
Mr. Thornton: Have they ceased? No. Have they been dramatically reduced and do they meet provincial standards? Yes. Where they are not meeting standards, of course, there are monitoring programs in place and companies are charged for those excesses.
Senator Spivak: The state of the Great Lakes requires that those effluents cease. Does the Government of Ontario foresee when that will occur?
Mr. Thornton: The discussion around effluent discharge is one of how much.
Senator Spivak: The International Joint Commission report on the Great Lakes has said quite clearly that they have to cease or that the health of the Great Lakes will not continue.
Mr. Thornton: Processed water may be discharged into the Great Lakes.
Senator Spivak: Absolutely, but I am talking about toxins going into the Great Lakes. That is what I am talking about.
Mr. Thornton: Yes. Those are monitored. There is a monitoring program in place, as you know, and any excesses have to be reported and acted upon, not only by the forest industry but also by municipalities with respect to their waste treatment.
Senator Mira Spivak (Deputy Chairman) in the Chair.
The Deputy Chairman: Dr. Quinney, welcome. I think we should begin because we are very pressed for time.
Mr. Terry Quinney, Provincial Coordinator, Fish and Wildlife Services, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters: I am a wildlife biologist and ecologist by training, and a former assistant professor of zoology, University of Guelph.
The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters is a non-government conservation organization dedicated to a healthy environment and healthy fish, wildlife and their habitats, and we are dedicated to the promotion of associated recreational and heritage activities such as fishing and hunting. I hope you are aware that the economic benefits of public fishing and hunting from public lands in the province of Ontario is worth over $4 billion annually and over 100,000 jobs.
Our organization has on the order of 80,000 dues-paying members and about 600 member clubs right across the province of Ontario. We have sister organizations in all of the provinces and territories.
On behalf of my organization, I thank you for the opportunity to address you this morning. I should also like to make a point of extending our continued thanks to Senator Whelan, who has been a friend of conservation and of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters for many, many years.
I should like also to take the opportunity to welcome the new senator from Ontario, Senator Mahovlich. We look forward as an organization to working closely with you.
The conservation of values and benefits provided by our public forests is extremely important to our members. Management of those public forests to supply optimal benefits for present and future generations is our overall goal. This morning, briefly, I should like to introduce you to practical approaches to the conservation of biological diversity in the boreal forests of Ontario and in the rest of Canada, for that matter.
By way of introduction, I have provided you with two handouts. One is a technical paper, "Practical Integration of Landscape Ecology Principles in an Operational Forest Management Plan," authored by Edward Hanna and Mike Martel. I noted from the backgrounder you provided that, a couple of years ago, you actually visited forest operations in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. We are very supportive of Mistik Management's approach in their forest management practices out there. We would like to see that type of model extended right across the country and, in fact, brought to the province of Ontario.
My point is that this technical paper provides the scientific rationale, if you like, for the approach that we are suggesting and advocating in the province of Ontario also. I will not, by any means, read that technical paper to you. I would ask you to do so in your deliberations. If your staff, as they prepare their report, would like any further assistance from us, we would be happy to provide that. We are only a phone call away.
The second handout I have titled "Practical Approaches to the Conservation of Biological Diversity." In the interests of time, I will not read it in its entirety but I should like to flip through some of the pages to provide the highlights.
Obviously, conservation of biological diversity is an extremely important public issue, not only in Ontario but right across Canada. I think it is safe to say that there is unanimous agreement among forest stakeholders that the conservation of biological diversity is extremely important for the future of our forests. On page three of my handout, we mention that, unfortunately, biodiversity conservation is being erroneously equated with setting aside exclusive-use protected areas. Biodiversity will not be conserved through a network of "representative protected areas," so-called RPAs, and there are sound ecological reasons for us making that statement.
On page four, we note that setting aside extensive representative protected areas for fear that they will be subject to loss of biodiversity at some undetermined point in the future, from some undefined activity yet to be proposed, carries with it a large opportunity cost in terms of foregone resource benefits. Representative protected areas provide a significant disincentive to develop more ecologically sensitive and compatible land uses. Instead, in fact, these representative protected areas provide a strong incentive to use the remaining land base more intensively and with less flexibility.
If one accepts the ecological reality that the cogs and wheels of ecosystems, the components of ecosystems, are in fact spread across the entire landscape, the entire forest, and that their position is constantly shifting in response to natural ecological forces, like succession and natural catastrophic disturbances such as forest fire or insects, then conserving biological diversity from an ecological perspective requires managing the entire landscape. That is probably the most important message we should like to communicate to you this morning.
Does this mean that the entire land base needs to be set aside in exclusive-use protected areas? No. The entire land base does not need to be preserved in exclusive-use protected areas. Instead, the entire land base needs to be better managed so that the fundamental ecological characteristics and dynamics are reasonably conserved.
In the Hanna and Martel technical paper, you see a practical strategy to manage the entire landscape to conserve biological diversity while simultaneously allowing multiple uses on that land base to continue. We are calling this a total landscape management approach or a "floating reserves" approach.
In order to conserve those ecological cogs and wheels, conserving biological diversity demands that particularly forestry and mining activities be designed and carried out within a landscape context. Proposals from forestry and mining need to show that comparable ecological areas exist on the landscape and will likely persist for the duration of the forestry or mining activity. These are the floating reserves to which we refer. They serve as the scientific control areas for the duration of forestry or mining products. In addition, post-disturbance plans, things like regeneration, closure plans, have to be designed. This is the very important point that Senator Mahovlich raised. They have to be designed. They have to be carried out to return that disturbed site back into the natural ecological cycle of the landscape. Those are the two essential components of this total landscape management approach.
We see this total landscape management strategy providing positive incentives to increase our ecological knowledge, to promote effective conservation and, in fact, to restore disturbed sites to their previous ecological conditions as soon as possible. Simultaneously, it allows our natural resources to be used wisely.
On page 11, we summarize the "whys" of this alternative to the conventional wisdom, to the status quo.
On page 12, we summarize the "hows." In order to implement this new approach, this new paradigm, first of all, the forest industry must make its primary requirement the conservation of biological diversity. That must be the dominant factor directing their management and activities. It would be dominant over, for example, the supply of wood to the mills. This is not to say that the supply of wood to those mills is not going to be an important consideration. It is; but the number one consideration should be the conservation of biological diversity.
There are exceptional, valuable, unique sites located across the landscape. Of course, these demand exceptional management. Fixed-boundary protected areas are often warranted for these sites due to their permanent location and sensitive nature. These exceptional sites, however, comprise a small portion of the total landscape, probably on the order of only about 1 per cent. These exceptional sites require special management with either representative protected areas or total landscape management/floating reserves.
Let me summarize for you. The need to conserve biological diversity is not an issue. The issue is how best to do so on these public lands. So far, broad acceptance has been given to the need for representative protected areas to conserve biodiversity. In other words, you set aside 20 per cent or 30 per cent of the land base, do not allow forestry, do not allow mining, do not allow hydroelectricity. Then, on the remaining 70 per cent, all of these are done, leading, in fact, to an intensification of use on the remainder of the land base.
The bottom line, in our opinion, is that the conservation of biological diversity requires the entire land base to be wisely managed. We believe that practical tools have been developed, in fact, to do exactly that.
In conclusion, conventional wisdom advocates putting a fence around 20 per cent or 30 per cent of our public lands to protect them for, in essence, elitist recreation, and then letting industry intensify on the remaining 70 per cent of the land base. We are saying no to that conventional wisdom. We are asking for some creativity. There is more than one way to skin a cat here. It is not a question of either/or, black and white, when it comes to the management of public lands and public assets. In other words, in order to supply this multitude of benefits, creative approaches are required. We have additional choices that society can make. The solution, in our opinion, is not more parks, more parks, and more parks. The solution is a new approach and a new way of thinking.
Senator Nicholas W. Taylor (Chairman) in the Chair.
Mr. Chairman: Thank you very much. I invite Ms Thib-Jelly and Mr. Randy Pickering to give their presentation.
Ms Bettyanne Thib-Jelly, Chair, Boreal East Round Table, Lands for Life: I am a Northern Ontario gal. I was born in Haileybury, and have lived in Callander, Schumacher, and Englehart, where I have been on council for eighteen years. I have been the mayor for the last eight years. I was a teacher for 36 years. Economic development diversification and conservation are high on my agenda.
I am pleased to be here today to provide the members of your subcommittee with my perspective on the Lands for Life use planning initiative of the Government of Ontario. The recommendations of the three Lands for Life round tables are now before the Minister of Natural Resources, and public release is expected within the next few weeks. Therefore, my comments today will focus on the objectives of Lands for Life, on some observations on the issues identified by Ontario residents and on the process undertaken by the government and the round tables. A copy of the round table recommendations will be provided to you as soon as possible following their public release.
Crown land in Ontario includes forests, minerals, lakes and rivers. It contains the habitat for thousands of species of plants, animals and fish. This is the natural wealth we all share. Lands for Life is the Ontario government's commitment to the long-term protection and conservation of our natural resources. Through Lands for Life, people are having a say in what can and cannot take place on Crown land because they are involved in a planning process that will lead to these important decisions. Lands for Life will complete Ontario's system of parks and protected areas, provide new opportunities for resource-based tourism, provide greater certainty for resource users, and offer expanded opportunities for outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing.
Lands for Life covers an area of 46 million hectares, which is almost twice the combined area of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. A regional round table has been established for each of three planning regions, Boreal West, Boreal East and Great Lakes-St. Lawrence regions. Each round table is comprised of citizens living within the planning area who have been appointed by the Minister of Natural Resources to make land use planning recommendations. The three round tables began their work back in June, 1997 and submitted their draft recommendations to the minister on July 31, 1998.
The last comprehensive land use planning in Ontario was carried out in the early 1980s. Since that time, many changes have taken place within society. User needs have changed and so has our knowledge of the environment, our resources and our management practices. There is increasing competition for natural resources but no mechanism for the timely resolution of conflicts. Battles over land use decisions increasingly end up in the courts, resulting in costly delays and increased uncertainty about the future.
Land use issues are very complex and a new process was required to determine the best use to protect our lands for future generations.
Phase 1 of Lands for Life ultimately will result in the approval by the government of regional land use strategies which will include broad decisions about land use and allocation of resources over the three large planning regions. Because of the very large areas involved, Phase 2 of Lands for Life will focus on the development of sub-regional land use strategies which will provide detailed management and land use direction for some 12 to 15 ecologically-based planning units that cover all of Ontario.
I will use the example of the Boreal East planning region and the Boreal East round table, of which I have the privilege of being chair, to illustrate the scope of planning issues which we have faced and to provide some insights into how the process has evolved.
Getting input from the public was a very big part of developing the draft recommendations for land use planning in Boreal East. Letters, e-mail, faxes, voice mail, and presentations to the round table from members of the public were encouraged in the process from day one. Approximately 1,500 letters, faxes, and individual submissions have been received by the round table. They have also been reviewed.
In addition, close to 4,000 completed workbooks were submitted to the Boreal East round table. These workbooks asked members of the public specific questions regarding the draft objectives set out by the round table and the five preliminary land use options which were released on March 26, 1998. Analysis of the information involved a detailed review which identified constructive comments made by members of the public and noted references to specific sites in Boreal East. In addition, a summary of the overall workbook input was prepared. The results of this analysis were used by the round table members when developing their draft recommendations.
The round table also took proactive measures in order to meet face-to-face with members of the public to hear their views. Two series of public meetings were held in various communities in the Boreal East region. The first series of public meetings was held in the fall of 1997. We were hosted in the communities of Timmins, Kapuskasing, Cochrane, Hearst, Englehart, Manitouwadge, Chapleau, Marathon, and Wawa. The round table heard 199 presentations and a total of 766 people attended these meetings.
In addition, the Boreal East round table also participated in joint public meetings. Those were held in London, Ottawa, Toronto and Kingston. A second series of public meetings was held in the months of March and April, 1998. Those public meetings were also held in a variety of locations in the planning region including White River, Chapleau, Timmins, Iroquois Falls, Constance Lake First Nation, Smooth Rock Falls and Kirkland Lake. We visited pretty well all of the Boreal East region. We also made a second visit to Toronto, London, Kingston and Ottawa.
Approximately 850 people attended the sessions in Southern Ontario and about 3600 people attended the sessions in Boreal East.
The round table considered all spectrums of public input and tried to make the most efficient use of the many views. All of the public input provided a valuable knowledge base to assist with developing the draft recommendations when trying to balance both the protection and the use of the natural resources in Boreal East,
The following are some of the highlights of what people have been telling us. Among those who spoke about the environment, various groups want protection for wet lands, old growth forests, and areas where unique or limited types of vegetation occur. Common requests were to limit roads in any protected area and to make such areas large enough to contain representative natural processes.
Committed to economic and community stability, municipal councils, chambers of commerce and economic development corporations emphasized that the basic industries of Northern Ontario are mining and forestry, with tourism playing an important role. Any decisions that hinder their activities will have a direct, negative impact on the communities dependent upon them.
Cottagers and other Crown land recreation users pointed out that forestry activities often infringe upon their enjoyment when they are allowed too close to use areas. Most favour the multiple use concept but accept that there may be limitations on some uses and industries.
The forestry industry submitted that it has changed a great deal in the past two decades and has proven to be flexible and willing to manage the forest for a multitude of benefits. The industry today is restricted by the present land base and by many new rules and regulations. Any further reductions in it will lead to harmful economic effects.
Some aboriginal groups, organizations and individuals do not accept the premise that the Ontario government has the right to set land use policies. Some want government-to-government talks on land use issues, but only after their land claims are settled.
The exploration and mining industry is a strong advocate of multiple use, arguing that it can exist in harmony with other users. The actual amount of land used by a mine is very small. Mining is a temporary use of the land, and strict laws are now in place regarding reclamation.
Of those who want more parks and protected areas, many want a set percentage of Crown land set aside, ranging from 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the land base. Those advocating large wilderness areas would like them to operate under natural processes.
Anglers, hunters and trappers generally favour unrestricted access to all natural resources. Many feel that the monetary value of their activities is not properly calculated and, therefore, not appreciated in terms of economic contribution.
The tourism industry requests protection from road access to existing remote facilities and a larger role in determining land use which alters its facilities. All operations require protection from the intrusion of mining and forestry activities.
Those are a small sample of the public response to the Lands for Life planning process. I am sure that your subcommittee has heard many of the same issues voiced by the citizens of Ontario to the round tables and, like the round tables, you know that the solutions are not all simple ones.
In their recommendations to the Minister of Natural Resources, the round tables have attempted to reconcile many competing interests. The round tables have attempted to walk that fine line balancing the demands of land and resource users today with the needs of future generations. In doing so, the round tables have been particularly sensitive to the economic and social situations of our northern communities.
As a round table chair, I have been impressed by the time and energy that all round table members have committed to complete this difficult task. I would like to acknowledge the dedicated and professional staff from the Ministry of Natural Resources who supported the round table through this exciting and informative process. Their ideas and insights helped inform and expand thinking throughout the endeavour.
I have been equally impressed by the interest and involvement of countless individuals and organizations who have participated in the Lands for Life planning process. The challenge for the round tables has been enormous and the expectations from everyone involved have been high.
Lands for Life may well be the most extensive and comprehensive public dialogue about land use planning that has ever taken place in Ontario. Criticisms are surely there and, as with any process, some, in part, are justified. It has, and will continue to be, a learning process for all involved, but in the end I firmly believe that better land use decisions will result for all the people of Ontario.
That concludes my remarks. At this time, I would be pleased to answer any general questions that you may have about the Lands for Life planning process and the work of the round tables. If you have anything more specific, Mr. Pickering is the more intelligent person here.
The Chairman: Thank you. We will wait for the question period to come up.
Representing the Métis Nation of Ontario is Mr. Tony Belcourt. I gather these are members of the Métis Nation behind you. Make sure you read what they told you to.
Mr. Tony Belcourt, Member, Board of Governors, Métis National Council: Then I will have to have more than ten minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the opportunity to make a presentation here. I hope that you will agree that a presentation by the Métis National Council should be made and that we should be allowed more than ten minutes.
I want to refer to some words that you stated previously when Mr. Jacques Carette, Director General of Natural Resources Canada was here. I wanted to quote you, Senator Taylor:
You mentioned management of the forest but you do seem to be leaving out the aboriginal or First Nations people. We hear pious words about it whenever a presentation is made, but when it comes to concrete facts as to how they are knit into the development of concessions and forest, it does not seem to be anything except maybe a little advice as to where the deer or the moose are. There are no actual joint management efforts being made by either the federal or provincial governments to manage that which is essentially their home.
The Chairman: I said that?
Mr. Belcourt: You said that, sir.
The Chairman: That sounds pretty good.
Mr. Belcourt: It does. In the short period of time that I have, I hope to impress upon members of the committee the critical importance that your committee and what you are doing here has for the Métis Nation. Elsewhere, the chair of the committee reported on Thursday, March 13:
...we also heard from members of First Nations reserves far north of Edmonton that the Métis were left out of the Alberta forest conservation strategy.
I think, sir, and members of the committee, that if you look at the testimony and presentations to this committee that I have been able to get so far from the Internet, you will see that a great deal has been said about the First Nations, about the importance of forestry to the First Nations, and about the activity of the First Nations in forestry preservation and management. However, nothing has been said about the Métis. You are not going to hear anything unless we come forward and say something.
I want you to know about the Métis. You do, I know, Senator Taylor; but other members of the committee may not. There are references here to about 500 First Nations communities that live in the boreal forest. There is no reference whatsoever to Métis communities. When you go to the Ontario native affairs secretariat in downtown Toronto and ask for information about the aboriginal peoples of Ontario, you will find maps showing you the First Nations communities in Ontario. You will not find maps showing any Métis communities. In fact, you will not find the word "Métis" being used. We are involved in a court case, a hunting case, in Sault Ste. Marie. When you read the transcripts of that case, you will find that the Government of Ontario tabled, in its testimony between June and September, that the position of the Government of Ontario is that there are no Métis communities in Ontario and, if there are, the people who live in them who might call themselves Métis have no rights.
There is an absolute void of any mention of our people in the history books of this province. Also, there is no mention of the $5,000 bounty put on Riel's head by the legislature at Queen's Park.
We are citizens who pay taxes of all kinds: provincial sales taxes, the GST, our income taxes, property taxes, whether we rent or we own. Yet, we cannot be represented. I cannot meet with ministers of the Ontario government because we are officially non-existent as a people. That is the desperate situation that we are in.
There are references in the testimony here to the importance of hunting rights, aboriginal and treaty rights, to the First Nations. Those interests are as important to the Métis as they are to the First Nations. Why are we recognized as one of the aboriginal peoples in the Constitution of Canada if we are to be totally ignored? I am asking this committee to take more interest in the interests of the Métis than the ten minutes that I have right now.
I wanted to mention a few things. You talk about the federal fiduciary obligations to aboriginal peoples. Yet, no reference is ever made to the fiduciary obligations to the Métis people. There are some. They beg to be identified and to be taken into consideration.
There is constant reference to support for development for the First Nations. There is a First Nations forestry program. There are funds available for economic development and for research, but there is nothing available for the Métis. There is reference to loss of trapping and what that will mean to the First Nations, but nothing about what that means to the Métis people.
I want this committee to take into consideration the fact that something insidious is going on at the federal level. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is perpetuating the myth that the aboriginal peoples in Canada are the First Nations. Other people are unwittingly taking up and being involved in this hoax. The Métis peoples of Canada are here. We existed in our communities before the regular communities were established, hundreds of years ago, in what would become the province of Ontario. This is a fact of history.
Another fact is that we happen to be alive and well here today. For the administrative convenience of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, our people were taken off the rolls, even though they were part of the treaties, for whatever spurious reasons they could invent. We now have a department that deals with a certain segment of the aboriginal population of Canada and leaves the rest out. We are landless in our own land, made out to be outlaws in our own land.
I wanted to leave you with a request that we have an opportunity to make a more formal presentation to your committee.
The Chairman: I was going to take a minute so you did not misunderstand the committee when I said you have ten minutes to make a presentation. We came to Timmins to get local input. National organizations, which are the Métis organizations and the aboriginal organizations and other ones, are being invited to Ottawa for a fuller exploration. This was to try to concentrate just on Timmins. I want to make it clear, we will be listening to a Métis presentation on the overall issue. In fact, the Senate will be listening in two committees. The Aboriginal Committee is also looking at the question of the Métis being in the Constitution but being ignored. I just want to make it clear to everybody here, we are not restricting you to ten minutes as far as the Senate is concerned. There are other times within the next couple of months where you will be able to make a full case. This was just to be Timmins and the problems in Northern Ontario.
Mr. Belcourt: It was through the good fortune of our local Timmins Métis Council that we became aware of your committee. I wanted to underscore something for this committee about the seriousness of what it is we are dealing with in the province of Ontario. As a member of the board of governors of the Métis National Council, I can speak as well to some degree about what happens to us nationally, but now I want to focus on what is going on here.
We have heard from the Subcommittee on Boreal Forest. There are also a couple of Lands for Life committees. I do not for one second believe that these committees take into consideration the fact that this land is our home. I do not for one second believe that the government of Ontario is in any way being as up front and honest about their intentions as I hoped they would be. We hear about the work of these committees but what we feel and what we see we are dealing with on the other hand by the regulations is something quite different.
In the court case that I mentioned to you, evidence was entered in 1998 as to why the Métis should not be recognized. This evidence drew on the history of the Robinson treaties of 1850 and the Borron Commission of 1885, 35 years later. The Robinson treaties were signed by 1,422 people. The lists of all of those people are in Sault Ste. Marie. Two hundred of the names on those treaties acknowledged by the Borron Commission were half-breeds.
In 1885, Borron wrote that the Métis should be struck from the treaty lists. He reasoned that, had Mr. Robinson known of the fecundity and longevity of the French Métis, surely a man of his sagacity would never have intended for them to be on the treaty lists. Therefore, they should be dismissed and taken off the lists. That was the beginning which led to the whole reason we had to have Bill C-31, because Indian women were then all taken off, and all of their children were taken off, and all of our people along the line for 150 years were dispossessed. That is a terrible tragedy, and it is one which we are getting better equipped to articulate.
In closing, I would like to remind the committee that we want to articulate those views here in Canada and we want a redress of the issues facing the Métis people. If we do not get it in Canada, we will get it elsewhere. The committee is fully aware that Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the clause requiring traditional knowledge to be taken into consideration in new developments, regarding natural resources. We have regulations in this country which we are forced to challenge in the courts, because governments ignore their own regulations.
I want to repeat your words. These people are here because this is our home and what is going on in our home is devastating to our lives. You have already heard testimony about what is happening in the forests to the animal and the plant life, about the damage to the ecosystem, and what that is doing to us. Who knows how devastating that damage to us will be? We must be part of what is going on in the future.
You are examining the state of the boreal forest and the future. We simply have to be taken into account. We would like the support of this committee in doing so.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. As I say, you will have an opportunity again on a national level when we hold those hearings in Ottawa. Nevertheless, we are glad to have your input.
Senator Mahovlich: I want to make a comment about the aboriginal people and the Métis. I am not familiar with all of your problems but I want to commend you on your work and tell you to keep going. I was born up here and our motto at Schumacher Public School was "together we can." That is how we are going to get everybody coordinated in our province, in Canada and throughout the world. We will have to do it together.
The Chairman: That was very well-spoken.
I address this to Her Worship. You were talking about the committee that you chair. Have you worked on any formal process to have the Métis and other native peoples included?
Ms Thib-Jelly: We had representation. Bentley Cheechoo represented the aboriginal group but they were at the end of the process, near the end of June or possibly the end of May. They withdrew. Wally McKay also represented the aboriginal groups on Boreal West, and they were withdrawn. However, the input and the insight that they gave us was excellent and Bentley Cheechoo became a very valuable member of our committee.
The Chairman: Is your committee aware, as Mr. Belcourt said, that the Constitution was, I would not say changed, but refined to make sure that the Métis people are part of our aboriginal peoples? This seems to be the hardest thing. It does not seem to filter down. They still think of them as out in Neverland.
Ms Thib-Jelly: I think from the beginning we made remarkable progress. When we went to Constance Lake, we had good input there. We were invited back to another area near Wawa but, at that point, Bentley Cheechoo was not there anymore so we were not able to go, but we did feel we were making good progress.
Mr. Belcourt: Just for the record, Mr. Chairman, if I might, the representatives of the First Nations are doing, I think, an excellent job of representing their people, but the Métis Nation is represented by the Métis Nation.
The Chairman: Yes. There are the aboriginal people which include the First Nations and the Métis and the Inuit. There is a need for education of the Canadian public in this area. Many people who maybe came from Australia think "aboriginal" is a derogatory name. But here we have aboriginal. Then underneath that, there are Inuit, Métis and First Nations. In this case, we do not have the Inuit making a presentation here in Timmins, but does your committee think it will be able to accommodate all aboriginal peoples?
Ms Thib-Jelly: Our timetable now is that Phase 1 is completed. Possibly, with the recommendations that we made in Phase 1, that would take place in Phase 2. There have been recommendations that it be looked into, yes.
Senator Stratton: If I could just ask a question of Dr. Quinney. If I read the paper "Practical Integration of Landscape Ecology Principles In An Operational Forest Management Plan," will I understand a practical application of exactly what you are talking about?
Mr. Quinney: Yes.
Senator Stratton: Is this possible without having to go up there?
Mr. Quinney: Yes, but you may need some additional technical assistance. Obviously, the practice of modern forestry, as you are all well aware, requires a great deal of technical expertise and competence. I am sure you will be able to understand the essence of it, even though these are technical people and it is a technical paper.
Senator Stratton: Is it a living example of what you are talking about?
Mr. Quinney: Yes, and it is right there in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan.
Senator Stratton: That is what I thought. Some senators have been up there. I was not, unfortunately.
Senator Whelan: I am sure that Mr. Tony Belcourt is aware of one of our latest Senate appointments. We have a Métis senator from Alberta.
The Chairman: Senator Chalifoux would have been here today except for timing.
Senator Whelan: We have two aboriginal senators, so the Senate probably has wider representation. The unfair treatment that the Métis have received has been brought to our attention. I am a little bit aware of it, being in public life for so long. I keep telling them that if they are successful in their claims, I will claim my status, too. There are Indian ancestors on both sides of the French part of our family who were old, old settlers in Essex county about 300 years ago.
Would it be improper to ask that the group with Mr. Belcourt identify themselves? Would I be out of order?
Mr. Pierre-Paul Dallaire, President of Métis Council, Timmins: Pierre-Paul Dallaire, local president of council, MNO.
Mr. Guy Lefebvre, Representative, Region Three, Métis Nation of Ontario: Guy Lefebvre, MNO representative, Number Three region.
Mr. Paul Rondeau, Member, Métis Nation of Ontario: Paul Rondeau, MNO, Timmins.
Mr. Ed Gervais, Vice-President, Region Three, Timmins, Métis Nation of Ontario: Ed Gervais, vice-president of Region Three, Timmins.
Mr. Emery Gervais, Representative, Niagara Falls Region, Métis Nation of Ontario: Emery Gervais, Niagara Falls Region representative.
Mr. Fern Rondeau, Member, Métis Nation of Ontario: Fern Rondeau, MNO, Timmins.
Ms France Picotte, Co-Chair, Métis Nation of Ontario: France Picotte, Métis Nation of Ontario co-chair.
Mr. Pierre Lefebvre, Member, Métis Nation of Ontario: Pierre Lefebvre, MNO, Timmins.
Mr. Gilbert Gervais, Member, Métis Nation of Ontario: Gilbert Gervais, member of the Métis Nation of Ontario.
Mr. Brian Gaza, Representative, Iroquois Falls, Métis Nation of Ontario: Brian Gaza, representing Iroquois Falls.
Ms Oline Sabourin, Member, Métis Nation of Ontario: Oline Sabourin, MNO, Iroquois Falls.
The Chairman: You have very good representation.
Senator Whelan: I think what the committee has to do now is follow up your presentation here today.
I have one question for Dr. Terry Quinney. When you sum up your work, you say "broad acceptance of the work." You heard me earlier today ask about the different status when we walk across the provincial border. We do not know it but we are in a different jurisdiction and there are different rules and regulations for hunting, fishing, tourist operations, logging, et cetera. I am a very strong federalist and I was raised to be a Canadian, not to be only an Ontarian or anything else, so I have strong feelings about this. I keep pointing out that the United States of America, which is our biggest trading partner, has one secretary in charge of forestry and agriculture for 51 states which you could liken to 51 provinces. There is a much bigger population there. California has a larger population than Canada. Have you any views on that?
Mr. Quinney: Just this: I think the history of our country has shown that, despite varying jurisdictions, we can come together in times of common purpose and that success through partnerships has a proven track record. I refer to partnerships between the federal and provincial governments as well as non-government agencies, the forest industry, all of the stakeholders. I am very comfortable in supporting and advocating more partnerships, regardless of who ultimately has jurisdiction.
Senator Whelan: Your Worship, do you care to comment?
Ms Thib-Jelly: On your question to Mr. Quinney?
Senator Whelan: Yes.
Ms Thib-Jelly: I think we have been so zeroed in on this Lands for Life for Ontario that I have to confess that we have not looked at it for all of Canada. However, if this process is successful, as we feel it was, then perhaps it is something we could consider for the whole of Canada.
Senator Whelan: Perhaps Mr. Belcourt would like to make a comment, because the Métis people may have a stronger feeling about it. You did mention the unfairness of both the federal system and the provincial system in treating the Métis people.
The Chairman: Do not forget their group did more to develop the provincial system than any other group. If it was not for Louis Riel, we would not have the independent provinces in the west. We would be part of the United States.
I should like to ask Mr. Quinney whether there is any area in the world that has tried something similar to his floating reserves.
Mr. Quinney: Yes, they are doing it right now in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan.
The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Quinney, and thank you to everybody for coming.
The committee adjourned.