Proceedings of the Subcommittee on the
Boreal Forest
Issue 14 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 18, 1998
The Subcommittee on the Boreal Forest of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 5:05 p.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: Honourable senators, I see a quorum.
Please proceed, Mr. McNamee.
Mr. Kevin McNamee, Director, Wildlands Program, Canadian Nature Federation: Honourable senators, by way of background, I have spent the last 15 years publicly advocating for the establishment and proper management of Canada's world-class national parks system. In that time, part of my work has been to act as a consultant to the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources on their protected areas report, which this committee may wish to review. Some of the issues addressed in the report are germane to the protection of the boreal forest. I have included a brief with a number of recommendations on the last page, and I will address those recommendations.
The Canadian Nature Federation's presentation focuses on national parks and the boreal forest. Both the previous and current national forest strategies talk about sustainable forest management being predicated on a number of things, including the establishment of protected areas representative of forest regions across Canada.
Within Canada's national parks system, there are 39 natural regions, of which 14 fall within the boreal forest. Therefore, I will speak today about the need to establish new national forests within the boreal forest zone and to better manage the existing parks. I think this committee could make some recommendations in that direction.
Nine national parks are located in Canada's boreal forests region, and there are plans to establish at least six more by the year 2000. Given this commitment to completing a protected areas network representative of forest ecosystems by the year 2000, a review of the nation's national parks system could provide the Senate with some insight into what the federal government can do to better protect the boreal forest.
There are two relevant issues: the need to establish six more national parks, and the need to better protect and manage existing ones.
The federal government's policy is to complete the representation of Canada's 39 natural regions within national parks.
This commitment has been formalized by governments that are represented on both sides of the Senate: the Progressive Conservatives in 1990 and the Liberals in 1994.
Under the National Parks Act, Parliament has decreed that national parks shall be passed on to future generations unimpaired, and this statutory requirement has guided the management of national parkland since 1930. In 1988, Parliament gave further meaning to the term "unimpaired" by directing the minister, in an amendment to the act, to make ecological integrity the priority in park management. This commitment was again confirmed in Bill C-29, currently before the Senate, creating the new Parks Canada agency.
In 1998, the federal government presented to Parliament the third State of the Parks report. I commend this document to the committee, because it contains some very useful information on the challenges that our national parks face in the boreal forest sector. The National Forest Strategy acknowledges the need for national parks and protected areas to act as benchmarks against which we can measure the impact of human activities on the landscape. Therefore, I urge you to review the health of Canada's national parks system in the boreal forest as reported in this State of the Parks report.
I would like to turn to the issue of proposed national parks in the boreal forest. When the federal government completes the national park system, there will be at least 15 national parks within the boreal forest scattered across Canada, ranging in size from Forillon National Park's 240 square kilometres to Wood Buffalo's 44,802 square kilometres. These national parks can and should fulfil a number of objectives: first, to protect representative examples of Canada's boreal forest; second, to maintain the health of wildlife populations and natural forest ecosystems; third, to promote the management of adjacent lands to sustain park and boreal ecosystems; fourth, to provide opportunities for Canadians to visit and experience the boreal forest; and fifth, to ensure that Canadians learn about the boreal forest through park interpretative programs.
Mr. Chairman, I wish to make it clear that we are not suggesting that we just draw some lines on a map, establish a number of national parks and protected areas in the boreal forest, and assume the rest of the landscape is protected. Indeed, my colleague Mr. David Neave, who is with Wildlife Habitat Canada, has long been an advocate of protection of the entire Canadian landscape, and we subscribe to that vision. However, we also believe that part of the conservation agenda in this country should be to preserve representative samples of the boreal forest from development.
Of the 14 defined boreal natural regions in Canada, six are still not represented in national parks. Six natural regions within the national park system still do not have national parks within the boreal forest. These unrepresented natural regions are found in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, where the federal government has a direct role in their establishment, and in the provinces of Manitoba, Quebec, Newfoundland, and Labrador, where Canada must negotiate.
On these six unrepresented natural regions requiring a new national park, I make the following observations. First, one natural region found in Quebec still does not have an identified candidate site, so if we are to reach our goal by the year 2000, we at least need to know where that site has been or currently is. There is only one active national park candidate currently being negotiated within the boreal forest, and this is the proposed Manitoba Lowlands national park. There are four national park candidates that have been identified, but for which currently there is no active feasibility study or negotiations underway. These are the Wolf Lake area in the southern Yukon, the east arm of Great Slave Lake in the central Northwest Territories, Lac Guillaume-Delisle in northern Quebec, and the Mealy Mountains in southern Labrador.
It is possible that we will learn something new from the Yukon government about Wolf Lake in the next couple of weeks, and indeed this committee is meeting with the Teslin First Nation next week and they will speak to you about this proposal.
The challenge that Parks Canada faces in each of its candidate national park sites includes: first, achieving the support of other governments and First Nations and local communities; second, establishing the national park before the site is lost to industrial development; third, and I think germane to this committee, the need to achieve a boundary that best represents the boreal ecosystem; and fourth, again germane to this committee, ensuring that other federal departments do not allocate the candidate site to development that could destroy the natural values before a decision is made.
In my brief -- and I am not going to go over this -- I illustrated that third point with the example of the proposed Manitoba Lowlands national park. Essentially, that design represents how we designed parks 30 years ago, in that most of the valuable timber was taken out of the proposed national park, and we were left with some still valuable but fragmented landscapes.
I tried to illustrate the challenges in designing a national park that will best represent a natural region and maintain its ecological integrity.
Last week, the federal and Manitoba governments did announce some changes to this park that will better represent the boreal forest in that area, but there is still a long way to go.
Perhaps more germane to this committee is the danger that federal actions can pose to candidate national parks. For example, the Department of Human Resources Development assisted in funding a snowmobile highway right through the heart of the proposed Mealy Mountain national park in southern Labrador. This money was allocated even though the federal government's environmental screening process acknowledged that it was a proposed park and that the snowmobile route would disturb a declining herd of woodland caribou. The Innu Nation achieved a re-routing of the snowmobile highway away from the sensitive areas and the park study habitat, but it is an indication of how other federal departments can undermine Parks Canada's goals.
In a more recent example, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development announced that it was considering releasing timber permits for an area in the southern Yukon that includes the proposed Wolf Lake national park study area. It is not the first time that DIAND has done this. After a similar incident in 1994, they promised to fix the system, but we are still faced with the prospect of one federal department undermining the efforts of another, and indeed, undermining a cabinet directive to complete the national park system by the year 2000.
I wish to speak about threats to existing national parks. If you think of national parks as benchmarks, or as the canary in the mine shaft, they can tell us something about how we are conducting timber activities in the boreal forest. I am not suggesting to this committee that we shut down logging activities, but I am suggesting that we need to manage them better. Nine of Canada's 38 national parks are located in the boreal forest zone, and these parks are special. Three of them are World Heritage Sites, one is an UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and one is within a model forest.
However, the State of the Parks report indicates the following with respect to the nine national parks in the boreal forest: Six of the nine boreal forest national parks report that forestry outside park boundaries is having a significant ecological impact on park ecosystems, and the three not reporting such a threat are the most northerly national parks in the boreal forest, where human impact is less or not evident.
Only two of the nine national parks in the boreal forest report that their fire cycle is intact, while one reports that it is less than 50 per cent, one is less than 30 per cent, and four report it as less than 20 per cent. Given that fire is the dominant agent of change in the boreal forest, these national parks are clearly missing a major element in their ecological integrity status.
These are all issues related to management of lands outside the national parks. Indeed, in our entire national parks system, 19 of 36 national parks report that logging activities outside park boundaries are a significant threat. Clearly, change is required.
To summarize, I will make seven recommendations based on my testimony to this committee and on what is in our brief that I have not addressed.
First, we recommend that the federal government make every effort to accelerate the identification, interim protection, and establishment of six new national parks within the boreal forest zone.
Second, we recommend that the federal government ensure a coordinated approach amongst federal departments to prevent inappropriate development within national parks study areas.
Third, we recommend that the federal government make every effort to design new national parks in the boreal forests that are fully representative of forest types, protect critical wildlife habitats, and maintain the ecological integrity over the long term.
Fourth, we recommend that the federal government increase funding to Parks Canada so that it can more effectively identify, manage, and monitor the human activity related threats to the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks.
Fifth, we recommend that the federal government actively work to reintroduce fire as a management tool in the boreal national parks, and that it work closely with the provinces, industry, and communities to reduce the impact such programs and initiatives could have on their interests.
Sixth, we recommend that the federal government initiate discussions with the provinces toward the goal of negotiating a formal agreement that commits both levels of governments to managing national parks and adjacent lands on an ecosystem or landscape basis.
Seventh, we recommend that the federal government strengthen the interpretative programs in Canada's boreal national parks so as to communicate to Canadians the importance, the benefits, and the threats to the boreal forests and what can be done to sustain them.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I want to signal the fact that Parks Canada and the federal government are working to achieve a number of these objectives. I do not suggesting that nothing is being done in these areas. Much progress is being made. Unfortunately, we only hear about the bad things that are happening and in my brief I have tried to focus on those. However, I think we can build on tackling those threats, and on some of the successes that we have had in our national parks, in order to make a meaningful contribution to sustaining Canada's boreal forest ecosystem.
I would be glad to entertain questions or provide any further information required.
Mr. David Neave, Executive Director, Wildlife Habitat Canada: Honourable senators, I am both a forester and a biologist. Wildlife Habitat Canada is a very science-based organization, but I believe that the issues facing boreal forest management cannot be met with additional knowledge only.
Very simply, we cannot continue to depend on prescriptive management approaches that address the symptoms of enforced management in the boreal forest. We must deal with the root problems of implementing the many long-term policy commitments of the federal government and provincial governments to biodiversity, sustainable forestry, and so forth. We must implement them on the ground.
Unfortunately, the prescriptive approach that is so commonly found in the boreal forest will continue for some time, since we lack specific objectives for a whole range of forest values. We lack a sense of stewardship within the forest community, and the linkage between rights and responsibilities in the management of the boreal forest is unclear. Who is accountable? Finally, we fail to recognize Canada's competitive advantages internationally in maintaining the integrity of our natural forests.
These underlying issues are not restricted to the boreal forest, but are found in other Canadian forests. I sincerely believe that the current debate on the impact of forest management practices within the boreal forest, whether of an ecological, social or economic nature, must be replaced with a debate on the design of our future forests within the context of the four underlying issues that I mentioned. Only within this context will we be able to decide on the appropriate management practices for our forests.
I would like to tell a story of a woman who inherited a large forest and recognized that she needed a manager. She advertised extensively and interviewed three individuals with impeccable credentials.
The first candidate described how the lady would become very wealthy, as he would maximize the economic return from the forest. She listened to him and said, "Thanks, but no thanks. Good bye."
The second candidate proposed that the lady could become very famous and able to associate with the wealthy and with royalty by creating a wonderful game reserve. Again, she listened and said, "Thanks, but no thanks. Good bye."
The third candidate simply said, "You tell me what you want from the forest and I will manage it for those values." She said, "You are hired."
In Canada, we are very much like this lady. I suspect that many of the submissions you have heard in the last few months parallel the responses of the first two candidates. I say this without criticizing the extraordinary efforts of the Canadian forest community in the last few years to develop the National Forest Strategy and certification schemes, and the incredible research and work performed in trying to design the suite of forest values. However, I still feel that we are very much like this lady.
I shall return to the four issues I identified at the beginning and relate them to Wildlife Habitat Canada's experiences and programs.
Although there is a desperate need for information on the whole suite of values found within the boreal forest, it is fair to say that the wildlife community has failed to define habitat objectives either on a site or landscape basis. At the same time, timber objectives and plans have been submitted for approval.
We should have started defining those objectives long ago, and we can certainly start to define them now, even without further information.
Wildlife Habitat Canada has developed a fairly aggressive program with forest industry companies for defining habitat objectives on their land, and these objectives are fundamental to moving forward.
We have not supported the alternative, which is the prescriptive approach currently in use in the boreal forest, and the proliferation of general and restrictive guidelines that have limited creativity and response to the various boreal forest sites. There has been an incredible proliferation of restrictions without defining the objectives for which they are intended.
There is currently no balance between recognizing the need for positive action in forest management, and the regulatory responses to failure to meet these general guidelines or to do adequate reforestation.
Stewardship programs are essential in recognizing the forest operator who takes appropriate action on a site. Wildlife Habitat Canada has launched a forest stewardship recognition program, with government and industry, to ensure that commitments made in the boardrooms with respect to sustainable forestry are implemented and recognized at the operational forest level.
I believe this is the first stewardship program of this nature in Canada to recognize those people who are doing things well at the operational level.
Third, as industry has become more publicly accountable for the indirect impacts of logging on other forest values, it has moved ahead of governments in setting up targets to demonstrate sustainability. During this time period, an incredible effort is being made at certification, and at trying to actually implement the national forest strategy.
At the same time that there is this interest in looking at a slate of values and trying to manage sustainable forestry, the federal government no longer has the economic instruments to promote this concept. The provincial governments, with their ever-dwindling resources, also appear to be ineffective in carrying out their management responsibilities, or in providing the balance of extension and enforcement efforts to carry out their policies and regulations.
Perhaps a new tenure system is required in the boreal forest, one that more clearly aligns the rights, rules and responsibilities that will provide collective synergy in forest management. We do not have that now. If that is the case, should the forest industry be responsible, as well as accountable, for the protection of wildlife habitat? If so, should they pay? If not, who should pay? That is an interesting and important question.
Fourth, to retain biodiversity, we believe that the key principle of maintaining the ecological sustainability is fundamentally important to all forest interests. Although large areas of the boreal forest have been allocated to forest companies, we should not depend on single-use designations within our forests. As Mr. McNamee said, we agree on an approach that looks at 100 per cent of the forest landscape. We wish to maintain the natural integrity of the forest landscape.
I can provide the committee information along these lines. We provided a report called, "Natural Forest Landscape Forest Management: A Strategy for Canada." That strategy would allow for the maintenance of the integrity of the entire forest in Canada.
Canadian forests have retained far more of their natural biodiversity than have forests in other nations such as those in Europe, where they have, perhaps, a plantation approach. Let us build on our strengths as a forest nation, rather than adopting solutions from those who envy our natural wealth. There are many people who would like us to get into plantation-type forestry. We should be marketing, and be proud of Canada's ability to retain biodiversity within the forests while still harvesting wood.
In conclusion, I should like to point out that you have the difficult but enviable task of moving the discussion on forest management away from a focus on the past, and towards the establishment of a framework to determine the mosaic of future forests in Canada. There have been other attempts to paint this picture. However, perhaps they have lacked both sufficient imagination and an operational context.
As we meet here this evening, many hectares of the boreal forest are being harvested, and the layout and the silviculture practices that are chosen for those areas already determine the future forest for your grandchildren's grandchildren. To put it another way, we, in Canada, are one of the few nations that can still manage and shape our future forests to accommodate a wide range of values. Wildlife Habitat Canada is committed to ensuring that today's forest management decisions will maintain the incredible array of wildlife and wildlife habitats found in Canada.
Senator Robichaud: You fifth recommendation says that the federal government worked to reintroduce fire as a management tool. Would you elaborate on that for me?
Mr. McNamee: I would refer you to the section on this in the report on the state of the parks. It contains a fairly good and thorough discussion of the role of fire in Canada's national parks, and what they are trying to do.
As I understand it, within the boreal forest fire is an agent of renewal. Some wildlife species require open habitats, and fire keeps some of those areas open. It regenerates the vegetation so that you do not get a forest that is only old stands. You get some stands that have been renewed, and you also have young growth.
Everyone heard about the devastation that fires had on Yellowstone National Park, but little attention has been paid to how those fires reinvigorated the health within the park. If you do not have fire, you have an incredible amount of buildup, and you do not have young growth. You start to lose habitat for wildlife.
In Prince Albert, before the federal government was suppressing fires it would have taken 25 to 75 years to burn the entire park -- that is, the area that has been allocated. Now, because of fire suppression, it would take 645 years on the current fire cycle. That is because we suppress them to reinvigorate the boreal forest within that area.
Certain tree species require fire. Mr. Neave used to work in the boreal forest in Alberta, so he may also wish to respond to your question.
What we have learned -- not only in the boreal forest, but also in the mountain parks -- is that by not having fire, the forest has grown in, and taken over some of the open pastures and areas that grizzly bears require to survive. It is a common problem in a number of areas. Parks Canada has started to reintroduce fire in some of our national parks, particularly in the mountain national parks, so that we have a more varied ecosystem to sustain life.
Senator Robichaud: Do you not see a problem for national parks -- or for any other authority for that matter -- in the provinces? The provinces have the authority on forest lands, and they will let some valuable fibre burn where there is a need for those fibres and where, in some cases, communities depend upon them. For example, sawmills, pulp mills, and aboriginal communities such as those in New Brunswick want to access Crown lands so that they can harvest some wood.
We always say, "We cannot harvest. There is a level that we cannot go beyond." However, we could then turn around and burn that area. The argument could be made that, in some cases, clear-cutting would do the same thing. It would not have the same effect as fire, but it would provide the open areas that you mentioned. As you said, some species need fire for the seed to start to grow, but that would be a difficult argument to sell in some places, would it not?
Mr. McNamee: There is no logging within national parks, so we do not face the issue of whether to burn or to log. That is clear. Under the National Parks Act, there is no logging.
Clearly, in some of the national parks, you want to ensure that you involve the community, and let them know that this is happening.
You may wish to ask someone from Parks Canada to testify about their fire management program. They can more fully address some of the points that you have raised, because there is an active fire program in a number of Canada's national parks, and they could inform you better. Therefore, I would suggest bringing someone forth to testify on those matters.
Clearly, when you talk about reintroducing fire into national parks, you are dealing with a whole range of issues. There are communities in some of the parks, and people worry about what it will do to the recreational area. I am not suggesting that we burn the entire national park within each one, but there are clearly some zones that do require that, and the federal government is doing that. We need a more active program. We need a program that educates people as to the role of fire in the boreal forest.
Mr. Neave: I worked in Alberta for many years, and we were very concerned about the winter ranges of bighorn sheep. As a result of fire control, the forests were moving up the slopes, and the grass for the sheep was slowly disappearing.
The forest was taking over, and the grassland areas that were fundamental for the survival of bighorn sheep was disappearing at a rate of about 10 per cent every eight years. Therefore, the population of sheep declined. The same issue can be found in the parks, where you have not had extensive fires for many years.
Mr. McNamee: For the committee's information, the report on the state of the parks gives a number of descriptions of the impact that a dramatic decrease in fire activity has on vegetation. I would urge the committee to review that.
Senator Robichaud: I would certainly want to take a look at that. We have been to different places, however. In New Brunswick, we met with the private woodlot owners, and they were quite concerned by subjects like biodiversity. They are making efforts to address these concerns.
Are you aware of how forest management is achieved in New Brunswick, where companies must submit a plan that is reviewed every five years, and which must take into account biodiversity and the mixed forest?
Mr. Neave: One of our programs can be seen in the Miramichi. It is unfortunate you did not meet the chief forester, Joe O'Neill. Apparently he was not there. He is a very strong advocate of trying to implement the various values in that forest. I am quite aware of the various operations in New Brunswick.
I believe you are leading up to the question of whether logging can replace forest fires.
Senator Robichaud: Yes, for the grass on the slopes.
Mr. Neave: From our point of view, logging does not mimic forest fires. You cannot replace what happens at the site level as far as the amount of ground cover that is burned, or the variability in fires. That is to say, if a fire sweeps through and does not burn everything uniformly, you end up with some areas that are severely scorched. Those areas might recover very slowly, whereas other areas would be lightly burned, and there would be a very rapid vegetative response.
You get an incredible diversity after the fire. In logging, however, we primarily log in a uniform, block area. It does not have the same degree of diversity.
In a fire you can have severe erosion, and soil loss. Land may be so scarred that it takes years to recover. You do not have that in logging. In logging you are trying to uniformly take off the trees and protect the soil. You also try to protect the streams. After logging, you do not have the variability in sites that you have after fire.
Having said that, I think logging can still be seen as a very important management tool in developing future forests. As I try to point out, you do not design a future forest very well. We are just now starting to talk about a hundred-year forest management plan, and New Brunswick is one of those areas. Wildlife Habitat Canada invested over $500,000 with the province, trying to come up with long-range habitat plans that were worked out with the companies. That was over a hundred-year period.
There is some opportunity for logging to replace fire in developing future stands.
Senator Robichaud: This was the point I was trying to make. As a matter of fact, we can have both. Fire can still run through when it is pretty dry. It would then brush right over, and you could probably control it more, as opposed to just letting it burn randomly, which might burn more than you want it to.
Mr. Neave: New Brunswick is becoming quite aggressive in looking at fire history over the last 100 to 300 years. They are trying to understand the fire patterns, and redesign the long-range forest management plans. At a landscape level, they hope to somewhat mimic the types of disturbances that have occurred randomly, but over a period of 300 years. That will provide the basis for maintaining the biodiversity in the forest.
The Chairman: As a supplementary argument, I have difficulty with the idea that disasters such as fires might be beneficial to forests, any more than any other natural hazard.
Senator Robichaud: If I may, before you answer that, you are certainly aware of the Christmas Mountains in New Brunswick, where there was quite a mature forest. They did not have a fire, but there was a time when the wind blew everything down. We rushed in with machines to save the fibre, because it was just lying on the ground. A significant amount of resource was just being wasted.
Rather than wait for a fire, we went and employed many people, and provided employment to mills in order to avoid setting a fire. This is where I have a problem with just letting it burn away. The public would be quite disturbed to hear the argument that you would like to just let the forests burn.
Mr. McNamee: I am not presenting -- and I do not think anyone is presenting -- the argument that it should be either/or. As ecologists have established, there is clearly a role for fire. I am suggesting that you should look at what is being done in national parks, and consider the need to do more.
This is not just related to the boreal forest. In Cape Breton Highlands National Park, where they have suppressed fire for decades, they now foresee that balsam fir and birch will take the place of Jack pine forests, which are natural to that area.
The Chairman: What is bad about that? It is not as good commercially, but what is it doing to the universe? What will it do to the ecology if we have balsam instead of Jack pine?
Mr. McNamee: I am now getting into an area that is not my expertise, and that is why I think you should consult the ecologists.
The Chairman: I can see the foresters licking their lips. They would love to have a Jack pine forest.
Mr. McNamee: I did not mean to ignite this controversy, but I think you have to look at the role of national parks. In part, they are trying to protect representative areas; they are trying to maintain a diversity of area, and they are trying to maintain forests that sustain wildlife. One has to admit that around Cape Breton Highlands National Park the landscape has been heavily impacted, so we do want to retain some of these examples.
In Banff National Park, aspen communities depend very strongly on fire. It has been suggested that aspen communities historically were burned on a 20-year cycle. Aspen forests are very critical to grizzly bears. In Banff National Park, which is where most grizzly bears are found because there has been so much development in the foothills, it is predicted that by the year 2045 those aspen communities will disappear. In places like Yellowstone, beavers go to the aspen community. That is what they use. There is a dependence on the aspen forest communities.
People predict that by suppressing fire, we will lose the aspen forest communities. In turn, this will unleash a string of events. I would be glad to provide this committee with more information.
You need to consider some of these aspects. I am not saying "just fire," and I am not saying "no fire." Clearly the national parks agency has determined that we are losing some of these communities because we have suppressed fire for so long.
The Chairman: Do you consider that to be a bad thing?
Mr. McNamee: In some cases, yes.
The Chairman: How do you know what is a good fire or a bad fire if you just say "in some cases"?
Mr. McNamee: In some cases it is clearly good.
Mr. Neave: I would like respond to your question about why we want to maintain what we have. Why do we want to maintain areas of fires or duplicate and mimic what has happened in the past?
With respect to all the international and national conventions, we have fallen into the trap of saying we will maintain our biodiversity and our national landscapes without really thinking about what that means. We all utilize language because we do not have alternatives, so we say that we will maintain biodiversity. However, we should be asking about our objectives for biodiversity. We should lay them out at the operational level, and allow industry or any other management agency to actually deliver those objectives. We do not do that. We say, "Maintain biodiversity," but we cannot maintain biodiversity. We do not state what we want.
I am sure you have heard from other witnesses that the debate about forest management focuses on what people do not want. Very little is said about what we do want.
The Chairman: Mr. Neave, is that not part of the problem? We, as human beings, do not have the knowledge to know what we want. However, we have a deep suspicion that if we only let doctors look after health care, only let generals look after armies, and only let foresters look after forestry, the results never turn out to be what they said they would be. In other words, we get into all kinds of problems.
Perhaps we can keep our hands off of it. We will not try to make fires, stop fires, or anything else. For example, we do not know what chemicals might be of value in a 200-year-old forest or a 10-year-old forest. We do not know whether balsam, which is considered a bad wood now, may be a beautiful wood down the road. Perhaps tamarack will turn out to be one of the great finds of the 20th century. If you are a naturalist, is there a feeling out there that you trust nature more than professors?
Mr. Neave: There is no question of that. We want to maintain our opportunities for future options. We must maintain all of our opportunities for what the forest represents, and for the values within it. That makes total sense.
The Chairman: I am not speaking about the entire forest, but we want to take some areas out and let fate go its own way.
I see two arguments here. One is how to take care of the forests outside of the parks, and the other relates to where we want to create an ecological freeze in time. That is, we want to leave this forest alone and see what happens.
Mr. Neave: To be effective, we need both of those. We need ecological benchmarks. We need parks and protected areas within a landscape that maintain that integrity. We cannot do with just one or the other; we need both. That is what we call 100 per cent of the landscape. We need to manage the whole landscape.
Mr. Garth Lenz: I also believe that, as human beings, we do not seem to have a very good idea about what we should be doing, and that we usually come to that realization long after the fact. I know that many ecologists and concerned individuals feel that Mother Nature was doing well before we came along. There is a certain wisdom there.
You are saying that if we have large protected areas, it might be best not to mess with them one way or another. If a fire starts naturally, we should let it go, but we would not necessarily go in and start fires.
Perhaps part of the problem is that our protected areas are relatively small compared to the whole landscape, and we do not have a large enough contiguous area to allow the natural model to replicate itself. In a significantly large area such as Wood Buffalo Natural Park -- had it not been logged to a degree -- this problem might have been circumvented. Are you saying that, in an area like that, perhaps we should take our hands off? That is, not stop the fires if they start, but not necessarily start them, either?
Mr. McNamee: The question Mr. Lenz just posed goes back to your earlier point about values. Our country has indicated that maintaining the grizzly bear population is an important value. Our country wants to perpetuate the grizzly bear. However, we have pushed it off the Prairies and into the mountain parks. That is its last refuge. Science is telling us that, in order to sustain the grizzly bear, we need these open patches and aspen forests, and they are regenerated by fire.
We spent decades suppressing fire within Banff National Park. That agent of change has been removed, so they are reintroducing it.
In 1983, a large, 1,500 square kilometre provincial park was established in northern Ontario. It was meant to protect caribou and maintain a representative portion of the boreal forest.
In the ten years that that park existed, they learned that the largest woodland caribou population in Ontario was at risk because of all the forestry activities going on around the park. The park was not big enough to represent the area, nor to sustain the woodland caribou, nor to maintain the fire regime which is required in that area. Aboriginal people, environmentalists, the government and the forest industry sat down and ended up negotiating, after ten years and $1.5 million, a park which is now ten times the original size. The forest company gladly gave up its permits to make that happen.
That is an example where we set values, we learned that the development around an existing park was not going to allow those values to be sustained, and so the park was made bigger. I am not saying that is the only way to do things, but I am saying that that is an example where values were set, where we did learn from science, and where some action was taken.
Senator Rossiter: I was also concerned about the fire cycle. In reviewing the so-called plantations, there are some, I presume, that have been growing for 40 years. What is happening in there? Is there any undergrowth? Do the trees seem to be packed so closely together that no undergrowth can thrive? Has there ever been a fire in one of those plantations, or are they still too green?
Mr. Neave: I can only answer very generally, because I am not a practising forester. Many things have happened over the last few years. Most of the early plantations -- and there are many scattered through Eastern Ontario -- were over-stocked. They had very low productivity as far as timber or pulp value, and they were of very limited value for wildlife.
Many of the stands were inappropriately planted with the wrong species of trees, and so many of them have just been left. If a fire comes along, who cares; they have very limited value. A few do show value, but not much work has been done in managing those plantations.
There has been a brief period of intensive plantation of so-called "super trees," where genes are taken from all the tallest and fastest-growing trees, and blended to create these super trees. I cannot speak in detail on that, but it would be interesting to have someone come and speak on that issue. The general perception is that this was not a wise approach from an ecological or a forestry point of view.
Senator Rossiter: About a week ago, I was driving home through Fredericton, and through many of the planted areas. I wondered what would happen if a fire occurred in those areas, and was left alone. Would the area it regenerate into a type of new beginning, or to something closer to the type of forest that is wanted?
Mr. Neave: Over time, it would definitely develop. In some cases, Jack pine, aspen or poplar will grow. Some other species require a species like willow or poplar to come in first, and then the spruce will come up under it. Yes, definitely, all those stands will eventually go back to what was there before.
Senator Rossiter: I often wondered if the wood in those plantations would ever be of value, or if it would re-grow.
The Chairman: Senator Rossiter asked a good question on the subject of plantations. Mr. McNamee may have heard this question before. I am referring now to the forests around marginal farmland, particularly in the West. A lot of level 4 and level 5 soil there was converted to grow crops, but you would be lucky to get anything to grow there. People are lining up for financial aid, just to stay alive. Our tax system does not work for people who want to raise plantations.
On that marginal land, the trees were cut down whether they were any good or not. We then had a shortage of natural forest trees to supply our export market and our demand for wood. Why not do what is done in Finland and Sweden, and have plantations placed on land that is already a plantation, except that it grows barley or something like that?
Mr. Neave: I spent many years in Alberta, and I watched many of those private woodlots being cut during B.C.'s economic boon.
The best answer to that is the description of private woodlot management in Canada. It is called "the forgotten forest." It is not agricultural, nor does the Department of Agriculture manage it an agricultural product under any of its extension programs. By the same token, the natural resources departments do not manage it as forestry. So it is called the forgotten forest.
The approximately 300 woodlot owners in Canada were nearly all in Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes. Woodlot owners do not get much assistance in extension programs. Some companies, particularly in the Maritimes, make arrangements with local companies to manage their wood lots as part of a management plan, but that is more the exception rather than the rule in Canada.
The encouragement to plant more private woodlots just is not there. Whether it is economically from government branches, or incentives, or extension activities, there is no commitment. Nobody wants to promote it. It is too long an investment to get a big return. Unless there are changes in the tax act -- which the private woodlot owners have been promoting for years -- and unless there are some basic changes from an economic perspective, I do not think that will happen.
The Chairman: Have any studies been done of the marginal land which is now in grain and pasture? If it were converted to forestry and produced in the same way as a Finnish or Swedish plantation, do we know how much volume of wood we could expect?
Mr. Neave: British Columbia and Quebec have some figures as far as growth and yield. Ontario has some figures in their government departments on good sites from a forestry perspective. They can tell you how quickly it would grow, and how quickly a harvest or an economic return could be realized.
The Chairman: That is certainly the forgotten forest.
Neither of the witnesses mentioned the aboriginal input. Over half of our aboriginal people live in cities, compared to the 80 per cent of non-aboriginal people who live in cities. Of those aboriginals who do live out in the country, approximately 75 per cent live in the boreal forest. They want treaty rights; they want to trap, fish and cut lumber. Yet the province has rights to the forest. The province will say, "aboriginals are a federal responsibility, but the trees belong to us."
New Brunswick has made an effort by going to all the permit holders and saying that 5 per cent of the cut must be reserved for aboriginal people. The other provinces have not done so. That will be interesting, because you recall how the aboriginals in New Brunswick got their 5 per cent. Have you done any thinking about that subject? You talk about tourism, fishing, and lumber. Have you thought at all about the aboriginal homeland treaty rights?
Mr. McNamee: I have deliberately focussed our presentation on national parks. You have been having these hearings for more than a year, so you have heard a lot about other issues. Therefore, I shall focus on the context of national parks.
When it comes to establishing national parks, federal policy is not to make a move unless the affected First Nations support the establishment of a new national park. When the First Nations do support it, they are part of the negotiating process. Within the boreal forest, the most recent national park was Wapusk National Park in northern Manitoba.
That park came about not only because of the federal and Manitoba governments, but also because of a provincial First Nation -- the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, or MKO -- and two local First Nation communities that were affected. They clearly saw the park and the protection of the boreal forest as contributing to their way of life. What they were doing was maintaining lands that they used to hunt wildlife. The park agreement guarantees their right to maintain a traditional subsistence hunt within the park.
They are also co-managers of the park, and the park management plan that is being devised is to protect this representative portion of the boreal forest. The park management board consists of a number of federal and provincial appointees, as well as First Nations representatives.
National parks are now being managed more often on a co-management basis. First Nations are working with Parks Canada to ensure that their traditional way of life is sustained within these parks, and within the boreal forest. They do derive more than logging benefits from these areas -- things such as caribou, et cetera.
I would suggest you may want to have someone from Parks Canada speak to you further on this subject.
Senator Robichaud (Saint-Louis-de-Kent): I appreciate what you are saying; you involve people, and together you sit down and set goals. The thrust of your presentation was that we set goals and then organize.
I am happy to hear that you are also taking human economic activity such as trapping and cutting trees into consideration, and that those activities must be done in a sustainable way. I like what I hear.
Mr. Neave: Wildlife management in Canada is not that old an organization. In the 1880s, wildlife was pretty well decimated by the early settlers. Conservation did not really become a word until the 1930s. The strategy in the 1930s period <#0107> and the one that still continues, to some degree -- is that all we are doing with the wildlife resources, fishing, hunting, trapping and so forth, is trying to spin out what we have for as long as possible. The idea of being able to maintain wildlife as a sustainable resource is relatively new in resource management.
Unfortunately, the aboriginal community is still trying to spin out the hunting, fishing and trapping opportunities as long as possible, rather than trying to put them on a solid base to maintain them for the long term. Therefore, hunting, fishing and trapping are allowed with other land use activities. However, there is no guarantee that the fur and the fish themselves are going to be there.
The national forest strategy was one of the major areas of contention in last year's debates over trying to include aboriginal interests at the land planning level, rather than just at the allocation level.
The Chairman: I would like to turn to the question of macromanagement. We have been across the country, and have sat in every province, with the exception of Nova Scotia, P.E.I., Newfoundland and the Yukon.
Someone must do these things that we have spoken about. There is the input of the tourism industry. We have the aboriginal uses, ecological uses. It seems that every province is dedicated to razing trees and cutting trees. They are not dedicated to tourism. We have a tourism department, we have the environment departments, and we have the departments of forestry, and everyone is going ahead with their own set-ups.
In Ontario, we have seen where an area of the forest was given to a lumber company. They were told "you give that plan, and we approve it, and then every five years an audit will be done by and independent group." This group will be independent of government and industry. It will be made up of foresters, ecologists, and aboriginals in order to ensure that the uses are made. That leaves the forestry company as the prime administrator, however. It is as though you turned over a private highway or ferry. The alternative is to leave it to government.
Many people are getting suspicious of leaving anything to government any more. You might see all your trees disappear.
Do you think macromanagement with an audit every five years is better than having the forestry departments run the forests?
Mr. Neave: The question of who is accountable and responsible in the forest has become very blurred in the last few years. The certification schemes have evolved in Canada. I was vice-chair during the organization of the Canadian Standards Association. I think the Canadian Standards Association and the tourism council certification schemes are very useful. Companies are embracing them. They want to be certified from a marketing point of view.
They will be certified eventually and take on responsibilities of habitat conservation and a whole spectrum of tasks other than just producing logs and making money.
There will then be an audit, which presumably will be given to the provincial government. Therefore, who is accountable? To me, it is one step in the process of making the forestry industry more accountable for the management of the suite of values. I am not saying that is either good or bad, but that certification approach has meant that industry is recognized as managing the land.
We still have to ask, when a certification is done on a piece of land, who is being certified? Is it the company for taking the trees, or the Crown manager, the provincial manager, for how that land was managed?
Senator Rossiter: If a farmer exhausts the land, he cannot grow a crop, and if the forestry company denudes a tract of land, it cannot harvest timber. The farmer has learned that over the years, but for a long time, there was a never-ending expanse of forest.
Mr. Neave: That is a perfect analogy. The farmer owns the land, and in many ways, he is a steward of that land. He feels responsible for lookilngl after it and sustaining an economic benefit.
Forestry companies have not developed a stewardship responsibility, and do not have any responsibilities or rights to the land. They merely have a right to cut trees.
Mr. McNamee: To return to the issue of fire, I want to commend to you an article that appeared in a recent book about the North. It contains an interesting history of how fire management progressed in the northern boreal forest over the last 70 years, and of the role of aboriginal people. I will provide that to the committee, as it is a fascinating overview.
Your question is an important one, Mr. Chairman, and the Canadian Nature Federation has yet to see a forestry company set aside a large tract of land, of its own accord, as a park or wilderness area in order to meet the objectives. One company in British Columbia gave up a rain forest, but only because the First Nation and the government petitioned them.
Government still has a role to play in ensuring that the 95 per cent of Canada that is Crown land, is dedicated to parks and protected areas.
As companies become more and more focused on the bottom line, shareholders, payouts, and international competition, I suggest there will be more pressure on them not to allocate protected areas, unless there are also threats of international boycotts and people going after international investors in forest companies.
On the question of audits, it depends on what is being audited. What values and objectives are being audited? The government still has a central, important, and critical role in identifying and negotiating for the establishment of protected areas and ensuring that those lands are not allocated to development.
I have difficulty accepting the notion that when Crown land rights are transferred to a timber company, they can comprehensively implement the National Forest Strategy. I do not think it has been demonstrated that they can do it.
The Chairman: Mr. Lenz, please proceed with your slide presentation.
Mr. Lenz: Honourable senators, I have been careful to delete any mention of fire from my slide presentation. I will start out by reminding you that Mr. Neave told you at the beginning of his presentation that he is a forester and a biologist. I am neither; I am a photographer. Therefore, I do not pretend to be an expert on the boreal forest, but I do wish to provide a visual documentation of some of the challenges that you are discussing. My presentation relates particularly to the western boreal of northern British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. It touches on the issues of the health of the rivers, the integrity of the forest, and the challenges and conflicts facing First Nations communities living there. Just as the non-aboriginal community has a diversity of opinion on these issues, so do the First Nations.
This fall, I spent approximately five weeks in the area of Fort Liard and the Liard River, and stayed with an extended Slavey family, a subgroup of the Dene, who are trying to maintain a traditional lifestyle. I want to tell part of their story in the context of some other experiences I have had in other parts of the boreal forest. I also want to thank the chairman, the senators, and other attendants for the opportunity to make this presentation.
The first slide depicts the Liard River, which begins at the north end of the Rockies, at its eastern slope near Watson Lake in the Yukon.
The next slide shows the river tracing a line just south of the 60th parallel, travelling towards the east.
The next slide shows the river passing through a number of diverse northern ecosystems, including the second-most significant hot-springs ecosystem in North America, the Liard Hot Springs, which is seen in the following slide. If any of you have travelled on the Alaska Highway, perhaps you have been fortunate enough to spend time in that unique area.
The next slide shows the river tracing a serpentine route just south of the border of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. It winds down to a large plain, and you can see its ever-changing course twisting back and forth on itself, creating an alluvial flood plain of very rich and fertile conditions that give rise to this extremely productive and still largely intact example of boreal forests.
The next slide shows the river bending towards the north and into the Northwest Territories. It meets the Mackenzie River at Fort Simpson, and that river then heads towards the Beaufort Sea.
This is an example of some of the range of forest types within the boreal forest. I am always amazed when people say it all looks the same. They do not really stop to look at the incredible diversity that is found within that forest, and Mr. Neave, as a biologist, could give us many examples.
This next slide shows the uniqueness of the northern rivers that flow into the Mackenzie, forming a northern rivers basin. Unlike the Peace, the Athabaska, the Mackenzie, and the Smoky rivers, these rivers have all had major industrial incursions along their banks and have been polluted by effluents. The Liard, which unlike the Peace is not dammed, has escaped that fate for now.
Turning to the next slide, I remember that when I first travelled to the North, I was shocked to find pulp mills dumping effluent into rivers. These rivers had taken on almost mythological proportions in my mind when I studied them in grade school and learned that they were routes for the discovery of the Northwest Passage. I was shocked that these rivers, which are part of our cultural identity, had been so badly damaged.
There was talk in the late 1980s of introducing the Alberta Pacific mill, projected at that time to be the largest single-line bleached craft mill in the world. The northern river study was undertaken to look at the integrity of this interlocking network of rivers and whether it could sustain the stress of another mill. The recommendations of that study were not implemented until long after the Alberta Pacific mill had been established.
Three other studies were done, all indicating that the Alberta Pacific mill would be a health hazard, but the Alberta government chose not to listen, and of course the mill now exists.
There was a great buildup in the 1980s of mill infrastructure across the North, particularly in northern Alberta. This slide shows the Kimberly-Clark mill at Grande Prairie. The Procter & Gamble mill spews untreated effluents into the Smoky River. Originally, that pipe you see went directly into the river, but that created such bad PR that they redirected it into the de-foam pond, which drains into the river.
The health of these rivers is extremely critical, as they are a major source of food for northern First Nations communities. Indeed, some communities obtain an estimated 40 per cent to 50 per cent of their food supply from the rivers. The Smoky River drains into the Peace River, which in turn drains into the Mackenzie.
When I was travelling in this region, and in Wood Buffalo National Park in particular, a First Nations man from an isolated community lent me his boat so that I could travel down the Peace River. He warned me against drinking the water or eating the fish because they were known to be unhealthy. In fact the Alberta government had issued warnings on the amount of fish that should be eaten from those rivers. Yet I saw a number of very large fish from the river on his front porch. As the provider for a family of five, in a community with an unemployment rate of higher than 90 per cent and extremely high food prices, he did not have the luxury of not eating those fish.
I spent perhaps half an hour photographing this effluent pipe that drains into the Smoky River, and for the following 24 hours, my companion and I had severe headaches, burning noses, and running eyes.
Incidentally, that mill has been cited by the Alberta government for 212 water-quality violations, yet it continues to operate, dumping effluent into the river and into the food system of the First Nations people.
The buildup of the mill infrastructure has led to large scale clear-cutting. This picture is not the result of a long search for the worst clear-cut I could find, but was taken from the first logging spur road that I happened to turn onto as I entered northeastern British Columbia.
The large scale clear-cutting of the boreal forest has a twofold negative effect on global warming. First, it destroys the existing forest so that it can no longer minimize the effects of global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen. Second, according to David Suzuki, the cutting of the forest and the processing of the wood cause hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere each year.
Mr McNamee spoke about how we must do more to maintain the integrity of our parks in the boreal forest. This clear-cut is from Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada's largest national park, where logging took place from 1945 until, I believe, 1992. It is a good example of poor management within the borders of an incredible national legacy that should have been protected.
Logging in the boreal forest without the proper safeguards can cause severe soil erosion. The climate is dry and cold, and denuded of natural forest cover, soils can leach their nutrients very easily. This slide depicts the leaching and erosion that occurred after a light rainfall. Once that soil has been leached of its nutrients, it is much less fertile for reforestation.
In successful reforestation in northern Saskatchewan, the replacement crop does not necessarily mimic what was there before. This slide shows what used to be a natural stand of birch that has been replaced with coniferous trees, and in the foreground, you get a sense of the dried-out state of the soil after the clear-cutting.
While we are attempting to reforest in some manner and in some places, we are not attempting to replicate the preceding natural processes, and naturally that new ground cover does not fulfil the same biological and wildlife role that the original forest did.
This picture was taken while flying over Wood Buffalo Park, and is an example of what has happened within the park boundaries. While the patchwork logging results in smaller overall clear-cuts, it creates a problem known as the "edge effect." Put simply, certain species will not inhabit as much as a 100-metre-wide border of a clear-cut; other species will and benefit from it. The species that are unable to use that habitat become extremely constricted, and the resulting species imbalance can create problems within the ecosystem.
A recent study from the University of Alberta showed that clear-cutting in the boreal forest caused destruction of terrestrial lichen, which is a major winter food source for woodland caribou. In turn, of course, the woodland caribou are a traditional food source for the Cree of the region.
Large scale clear-cutting such as that shown in this slide can also present severe problems for moose, which are the major food source for many First Nations in the area.
These very large burrows running parallel to the waste-wood pile can be as deep as six feet, and can make the moose very vulnerable to their major predator, the wolf. Again, this can cause serious species imbalances in the wildlife on which the First Nations depend as a principal food source.
As I mentioned in the short preface to my remarks, there are substantial conflicts within First Nations communities. This slide shows the Millar Western mill near Meadow Lake in northern Saskatchewan. That mill is partially owned by the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, which shares in the profits, and the mill employs local people in a community where there is 80 per cent unemployment. Many of the elders were frustrated by the fact that logging in the area had gone on for a number of years with no environmental impact assessments. They saw the lands where they had traditionally hunted, trapped and gathered medicines being clear-cut.
Feeling that they had no recourse, they founded a group called The Protectors of Mother Earth. In the spring of 1992, they set up a blockade. That blockade lasted for over one year. It created deep divisions within the community. Cecilia Iron's nephew was the acting chief at the time. He felt the conflict, too, because he felt this was an opportunity to provide employment for his people. As I mentioned, that area had an 80 per cent unemployment rate, and there were few opportunities for employment in the North.
The elders were seeking to protect this area. I should make it clear that they were not saying that no logging should occur; they were concerned about specific sacred sites and productive areas that were key to their traditional lifestyles. They were also opposed to mechanical agriculture. They felt, quite correctly, that it did not provide the jobs that more labour intensive means of agriculture would, and that it was more damaging to the land.
The validity of their concerns is shown by these images. I am neither a forester nor a biologist, but I have been in this place and photographed and touched the soil, and those were some of the most severe conditions that I have ever scene. The soil was almost like a kind of powder. As you walked through these large clear-cut areas, you could see mile after mile of re-planted seedlings that were brown and had died.
This slide shows the areas that, several years earlier, had been healthy boreal forests.
It was with some relief and a great deal of optimistic anticipation that I embarked upon an exploration of the Liard River region. I had the good fortune of spending some time there with Shirley Bertrand and her extended family. This family has realized that the key to their identity and their healing process is to retain their connection with the land. Ms Bertrand's parents have never lived in the community of Fort Liard. They have lived all their lives on the banks of the Liard River. Up until approximately 15 years ago, the First Nations people of this region lived a bush existence, scattered along the Liard River in small family groups with a number of camps that they would frequent at different times for hunting and collecting food.
About 15 years ago, they were encouraged to settle in one community in Fort Liard. They were told that they would receive social assistance, that they could live in warm heated houses, and that life would not be so hard. The family community and the traditional lifestyle kept the traditional bonds within these communities tight. It protected them, even in the wake of the devastation of the mission schools and the introduction of alcohol. The communities and the people were still healthy and strong. However, I was told that, in the 15 years since people went to live in Fort Liard, social problems, alcoholism and forms of abuse have become much worse. It has been a fast slide to dependency and a lack of self-dignity.
The Bertrand family -- and its extended family, which is not an insignificant number of individuals -- has been diligent about retaining its connections, doing its regular hunts, and living off the land.
Until relatively recently, this region has been left intact in the biological and cultural integrity of the land and its people. In these regions, I find it difficult to talk about the land, the boreal forest and the ecosystem and not talk about the First Nations people. They are an important part of the land. However, with the development of two large mills and the protection to the south of a large area in the northern Rockies, this area is coming under increasing pressure, as can be seen by this slide that shows a logging camp on the banks of the Liard River. You can see some of the logging in the background.
I spent a week with the Bertrand family on their fall moose hunt. They also wanted to take some time to explore the area around their trap line. This trap line has been handed down from father to son for as long as anyone can remember. They had not checked this portion of the trap line since the preceding year. They wanted to see the logging that had gone on in the previous winter. We did not have to travel very far before we came across these large, fresh clear-cuts made within the last year on their traditional trap line.
To give an example of the size of some of these clear-cuts, this photograph looks toward the Liard River, and down a slight hill. This next photograph simply turns the camera around 180 degrees. This shot is taken from the opposite direction. It is hard to get a complete sense of the size, because even using a wide-angle lens will not encompass the degree of that opening. We are talking about a substantial opening in an area that this family has relied on for sustenance for thousands of years.
The Bertrand family has been telling Slocan Forest Products about the areas that are of particular importance to them. Slocan Forest Products asked them about that, and the family told them that in this particular area they were concerned about a beaver dam and a beaver lodge. To their extreme frustration, they found out that that area had been destroyed in the last year.
This slide shows the two brothers. It was an extremely difficult day for them when they saw what had happened to their land.
I spoke earlier about the importance that traditional food has for these northern communities. Part of that is a monetary concern, because these people have little monetary wealth. It is hard to think of them as poor when you know them, because they are extremely happy and strong people with good family relations. Monetarily, however they have very little.
If you were to put a dollar value on the wild food in the area inhabited by the Slavey people of this region, it would perhaps amount to the equivalent of $10,000. That is, if they were to replace that food at a supermarket, it would cost them $10,000 which. As I said, you are looking at 80 to 90 per cent unemployment in these areas, and it is simply not an option to spend that amount of money on food.
These foods are also extremely healthy. Moose and caribou traditionally have about 1 per cent to 2 per cent fat. Equivalent store-bought food has between 12 per cent and 20 per cent fat. When people switch from a traditional diet and try to replicate that with store bought foods, it creates problematic dietary concerns, because the fat content can be as much as 20 times what they were used to eating. Also, iron levels in caribou and moose are about six times what they are in lean pork, and the level of zinc is about three times higher. These foods are very rich in nutrients.
Gathering this food is a very important part of the tradition of these people. When you live with the Slavey people for even a short period of time, you realize that to not hunt and eat moose, or not to live your life to the patterns of the moose, is almost to cease to be Slavey. One begins to understand how the social problems can be so rampant in these communities where people have been divorced from the land. It is because they do not have anything to replace that central role of the gathering and the preparing of food.
Eventually, the Slavey did manage to get a moose. The whole family then joined in a considerable amount of work. As a southern, urban-based person, I had no idea what was involved after the actual taking of the animal. The family all works together to load the moose into the boat. They take the moose back to one of their traditional camps and, as a family, they butcher it. They "de-flesh" the hide. The hide is used for the making sinew for snowshoes, and for making moccasins that they sell as crafts.
Every part of the moose is used. I cannot stress that enough. Everything is eaten. The hoofs are boiled and eaten. The marrow from the hoofs can be used to make a gel, and the two small bones in the hoof are used for skinning beef. The tools used for de-fleshing the moose are made from the moose. The spine is broken open and the marrow from that is used for tanning the hide. It is absolutely incredible how everything is used, and how everyone works together to use it.
This next slide shows a few of the crafts and working tools produced from the natural resources around the area. In this area, the Slavey people eat a variety of 50 different plants and animals that they depend on for their traditional diet. As I said, the teaching of these skills, which are handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter, is linked to the sense and identity of these people.
I cannot help but compare the way the Slavey people use every bit of the moose to the kind of waste that you see in modern industrial logging.
This slide shows a traditional camp. Along the river, the children all learned their traditional hunting, trapping and food-gathering skills. It is a kind of an outdoor schoolhouse for them. You can imagine their horror upon finding out that this area had been clear-cut.
When you get up in the air, you get a sense of the beauty of the area and also the fact that some large areas are still intact. I have flown a fair amount in British Columbia in particular, but in other parts of Canada as well. It is rare that you get a glimpse of a productive forest where you do not see some kind of clear-cutting over the expanse of land.
You also start to see the degree of incursions that are taking place on this land. With the modern technology of industrial logging, and using mechanized harvesters such as feller-bunchers, the land can be changed radically in a short period of time. It can be done much faster, even then it can where I come from on the coast, where all the trees are initially felled by hand.
You can get an idea of how they are logging to the Liard River and its estuaries. The people have asked for a 500-metre buffer strip, because these areas bordering on the rivers are particularly significant in terms of habitat and ecological value. In hard winters, the moose come down to these areas because they are at a lower elevation, and therefore the snow is softer. You can also see examples of logging right to the river.
The boreal forest is much more than the concern of one extended family. The boreal forest is the world's largest ecosystem. It represents 80 per cent of Canada's forest land, and 67 per cent of it is in long-term tenure for clear-cutting. It plays a major role in counteracting global warming and climate change. This image shows you the extent of the global boreal forest.
As a photographer and someone who loves his country, I believe that the North, the northern wilderness, and by extension, the boreal forest, are integral to the concept of Canada.
In the non-aboriginal culture, we do not have the culture of painting, music and architecture that other countries do. We have an incredible natural heritage and an abundance of natural resources. I mean that in the best sense of the word, not just for exploitation.
We have an incredible wilderness legacy. When I have given slide shows in places like Europe, they have not been able to understand that in certain areas we have conflicts over land. During a slide presentation I gave in southern Germany, one person actually said, "What you are doing is like destroying stain glass windows to make recycled pop bottles."
When people started throwing around the nickname "Brazil of the north" to describe British Columbia and Canada, the people of Brazil were openly offended that a fully industrialized country such as Canada would have levels of logging comparable to Brazil's. In fact, our rate of logging rivals countries such as Malaysia and Brazil.
Canada has a small population compared with its land mass. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and we have one of the best qualities of life. We have one of the best health care systems, and one of the highest rates of literacy. If we cannot step back and protect some of these significant areas, if we cannot start living sustainably and if we cannot provide a better example, then I think we are very hard put to expect anyone else to do so. A vast amount of what we log is exported. What we log does not maintain our actual material needs within the country. We are certainly hard put to criticize anyone else.
Canada has a unique responsibility and opportunity to live up to the reputation of which I think we have become justifiably proud. We have been a little bit remiss in being vigilant as to just how strongly we keep up with that responsibility and that image that we have had abroad.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Lenz. You are a very good photographer, there is no question about it.
Senator Robichaud: The slide presentation followed extremely well on the presentations of the previous witnesses, who pointed out that we should determine some goals, and manage so as to ensure that the things we have seen in your presentation do not happen.
The Chairman: Very well said, senator.
The committee adjourned.