Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 12 - Evidence - Friday, February 28, 2003 - Morning session
VANCOUVER, Friday, February 28, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:30 a.m. to examine and report on the impact of climate change on Canada's agriculture, forests and rural communities and the potential adaptation options focusing on primary production, practices, technologies, ecosystems and other related areas.
Senator Donald H. Oliver (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Our study began in Ottawa a few months ago and we have heard a number of government and other witnesses who have made presentations related to our study on the effects of climate change on agriculture, forestry and rural communities of Canada. We are asking what are some of the strategies being adopted to help people involved in these three sectors adapt to the inevitability of climate changes?
I must say that the western swing, particularly in Saskatchewan, has been very, very significant to us because we learned a lot about adaptation strategies. Today we will be hearing about strategies in the forest sector. We are looking forward to what everyone has to say because this is an incredibly important topic.
I would like to call upon our first presenters. Paul Addison, could you introduce your group, please?
Mr. Paul Addison, Director General, Pacific Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada: I am very pleased to be here. I have with me Gary Hogan, the Director of Forest Biology; Caroline Preston, a specialist in soil carbon decomposition and soil processes; and Ross Benton who will discuss modelling of climate and climate surfaces as well as impacts.
I do not want to leave the impression that we are doing a lot of work on our own. As a regional organization, we work with regional partners such as universities, provincial government agencies, other institutes. Although we are going to present the kind of work we are involved with as an arm of the Government of Canada in natural resources, I think it is important to make sure people know that this is largely the science community.
You have heard already from the Canadian Forest Service on two other occasions. In Ottawa, Gordon Miller outlined what the Canadian Forest Service is doing in a national sense. More recently, in Edmonton, you heard from Boyd Case. Mr. Case's presentation was important because the Northern Forestry Centre in our context actually is the lead for our impacts and adaptations part of our programs.
We are part of a network of regional offices across Canada. Each regional office takes responsibility for leading certain parts of our program. The Northern Forestry Centre focuses on impacts and adaptations and we contribute to that. Our focus has been typically focused on carbon balance and cycling and trying to bring the Canada science together in order to support our policy and our negotiations, such as Kyoto and the UN convention. A lot of our work occurs in a federal-provincial context.
Our work is largely focused on an international convention and understanding what carbon sequestration is, and how actions taken on the land base to the affect atmosphere and the atmosphere's terrestrial interface. A big part of that is carbon cycle modelling to generate projections. Measuring is one thing, but the reality is we need to act now to deal with our future and not try to dwell too much on what has happened. Much of our work has been focused on looking to the future.
In respect of climate change impacts and adaptation, I believe that Gordon Miller talked to you about our activities in this area, such as our contribution to the Feasibility Assessment of Afforestation for Carbon Sequestration, which is funded by the Government of Canada. We are also involved in Forest 2020, an initiative that includes a view on carbon and strategies for dealing with it in the context of climate change
By 2006, Canada will have to a make a decision on whether it is going to use forest management or not in the context of meeting our targets under Kyoto. A big question is who owns those carbon credits? There are limitations on those carbon credits. We have cooperative agreements with every province and territory to provide them with a science base so they can make wise decisions. One of our main roles is to bring the Canadian science team together to support Canadian policies and develop approaches to address forestry and carbon sequestering. We apply science to policy so that it is acceptable internationally with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By 2005, we expect to have completed the first report to provide a solid framework that can help the federal provincial governments, industry, and landowners make decisions about carbon trading.
The Federal Forest Service is also intimately involved with Fluxnet, a national research network bringing together university and government scientists to study the influence of climate and disturbance on carbon cycling. In addition to dealing with the university researchers who are doing most of the detailed work, our role is to find different ways of evaluating carbon sequestering. They are looking at how gas exchange in the atmosphere approaches the land. We use that data to look at the change with time.
We are also working with the university community at how we will self-verify because verification will be an important part of the international agreement.
We are also involved with CIDET, the Canadian Intersite Decomposition Experiment. This project involves tracking changes in carbon budgets of Canadian forests. In collaboration with partners across the Canada, we have conducted a series of standardized experiments in a number of ecosystems across the country so that we can pool our science knowledge in that area. This project is modelled on a U.S. program.
We are also involved in international soil carbon studies, which involves studying what is happening in other countries such as Russia, Sweden, the United States and elsewhere. Caroline Preston can provide more detail on that later.
With respect to the regional impacts of climate change, one of our challenges is to create regional climate models. In looking at impacts and adaptations, one of the key questions is ``What do you target?'' There is a lot of work on regional climate models, but in a province such as British Columbia it is on far too broad a scale for us to be able to deal with the impacts in the forest context. Therefore, one aspect of our work is determining how to move from a regional model to a detailed model with a goal to determining what would happen on a particular piece of land or how mountains systems would interact. We need to look at each individual interaction with the forest. If we cannot understand how things break down to the stand level, we will never be able to actually talk about the implications for the country in a broader context.
We are also looking at species distribution. The kind of work we are looking at is species distribution. We have a system of classifying the landscape, the moisture, the forest, and the land base in the bioenvironmental system to classify the forest for operational purposes. One of the concerns is that as the climate changes, there will be a shift in those ecosystems. How do you understand that? We want to know whether existing species will stay or whether they will change. We could have a very different forest in the future. We have an ecologist studying what kinds of changes we might see in the landscape and what kind of species we may see change over time.
The forest pest outbreak is an area in which we have a lot of background. Our work in this area balances nicely with the provincial government's work on forest productivity. Insects work very much like fire. Fire responds more to meteorology than climate. For example, while a specific environment might contain a moist climate over a 30-year average, a dry event, such as the one we had recently, will generate forest fires. The variability in climate drives fire variables. The same thing happens with insects. The Government of Canada has recently announced a $40-million program — half of which is R&D — to look at the mountain pine beetle simply because of the sheer impact that insect is having in British Columbia. About three times the entire annual allowable cut for the Province of British Columbia is already dead because of this one pest. There is no way that industry can harvest all the trees that are dying. There is a huge issue relating to how you gain economic value from those trees.
For nearly one hundred years, we have gathered information on forest insects and disease. We see mountain pine beetle in environments that they have never been. It is our working hypothesis, that this is an example of the effects that climate change has on the land base. Our scientists are currently writing papers for the international science community on that topic.
The insects are intimately tied with two other components: the forest and the environment. If the environment is changing, then you can expect that alterations in population cycles will also occur quickly.
One of the reasons for the expansion of the pine beetle epidemic is the loss of natural controls. We have not had the cold winters that would keep the population in check. We have also seen an expansion in the range of habitat for these beetles. There is a lot of pine, largely a result of the fact that the pine forests have been protected from fire for so many years.
Our big concern is that this beetle can get into the boreal forest. Pine is a very important species for the industry in the boreal forest. We are having the problem with lodgepole pine here in British Columbia in the central part of the province and it is showing all the signs of migrating into the northern parts. Without those cold winters to control the population, this insect has the potential of being distributed across the entire boreal forest. The pine beetle eats Jack pine. It is attracted to the biggest and the best trees — it likes what we want.
Some insects attack the weakened tress. The pine beetle is not one of them. It works quite effectively and consequently, British Columbia is facing the threat of significant loss of a resource. The province is spending between $45 million and $55 million annually to try to combat just one outbreak, which encompasses an area of approximately 7 million hectares. About 25 per cent of the wood products for British Columbia come from lodgepole pine. There will be a serious economic impact in the future those forests are no longer marketable and there is no wood supply for the industry. We have alerted officials at HRDC that a decade from now, we could be facing a serious issue for this province in a big part of its wood basket.
On the subject of adaptive responses, we are looking at a number of strategies. The first of which is to find a way to increase tolerance to drought. One of the problems we face in this whole climate change issue is that we do not know the moisture regime at the level that we really need to. People worry about drought, but some of the models are showing that places are going to become more moist. Because of the ocean-mountain land base, there are huge gradients in environment over a short distance. For example, we are in a very dry land area and 25 kilometres from here is a wet coastal forest. Therefore, is it important that the science community — particularly the modellers — develop a good understanding of atmosphere, terrestrial systems and ocean systems to determine what impacts are most likely
We have been trying to reduce the threats from forest fire and pests. One program provided us with some somewhat serendipitous results. We had been thinning some forest areas to see whether we could disrupt the way in which the pine beetle attacks the forest. In doing so, we used a four-metre spacing and discovered that that distribution of trees will drop a crown fire to a ground fire. Therefore, we have an opportunity to use a forest-management technique to create a ``fire-smart'' environment.
We have a basic problem. People like living in the forest. However, it is not wise to build a house in the forest because the area around it burns. The Canadian forest is particularly well known for its burning. Therefore, as scientists, we have to find ways of trying to adapt the way in which we deal with the forest that will enable humans to use the environment as they see fit.
Another focus in developing adaptive responses is management strategies. We need strategies for specific types of forests. You cannot make blanket statements about the whole forest. For example, we have to protect forest from fire as the climate warms and we endure dry spells. The central southern interior areas, Douglas fir is actually moving down into pine sites. When a fire comes through after the area has been protected for awhile, the younger fir trees will raise the fire and bring it into the canopy and kill the pine. Without the fir, the fire will stay at the grassland level and go through, and the trees will survive. This is a situation in which underplanting and species invasion have put the original forest, which has been there for more than one hundred years, at risk.
On the other hand, a lot of our research is looking at pine systems where we are actually underplanting. We are underplanting spruce and other species in order to break up the pine environment so we do not end up with a contiguous type of forest where fire can be carried through or insects can be carried through. We keep hearing about monocultures. In fact, humans do not make many monocultures, but nature sure does, and the boreal is an example.
Finally, I wanted to talk about the carbon credit and how it ties in with forest management. We expect that the idea of carbon trading will have people start valuing the forest in a very different way in the future. We have generally looked at timber as the value in a forest. With carbon as a non-timber forest product, we are expecting to have a different kind of valuation. I think, that is going to be valuable for the country is it will add another impetus for people to pay more attention to the forest and forest management.
The Chairman: I have a couple of questions about carbon credits. As you indicated in your remarks, this committee has heard an awful lot about this in Ottawa and on our way through Saskatchewan and Alberta. It is my opinion that this carbon measurement and modelling is a very new and inexact science. People who farm trees and farm the land have a lot of fear and concern about being stuck with the liabilities relating to the sequestration of carbon and how you account for it model it. You have stated that we do not know how carbon is moving and changing in the land. Let us use the example of a farmer who has gone into no-till; the carbon is remaining fairly stable and we do not know the effects of wind and other things that might be changing this. How does your model say it is to be measured? Is it to be measured every metre, every 10 metres? How often is it measured? Once a week, once a month, every six months? How do you possibly know what carbon is there and what credit the farmer or the forester is to get for it. If someone by inadvertence changes it, if that farmer has been paid for that carbon credit because of sequestration, is he going to become liable and assume a lot of legal and monetary liabilities as a result of that change over which he or she had no control?
That, I think, is a major concern, and this committee would like to have some of your guidance on that.
Mr. Addison: I am hardly an expert in agriculture. However, we have landowners who have forests and are very much in a parallel situation. It is important to realize at this point that there is a difference between the legal and the administrative systems around carbon and the science at this point.
There are many unanswered questions. For instance, there is a lot of uncertainty as to whether the Canadian forest is a sink or a source as a collective. The major landowner tends to be the province. The provinces have decisions to make regarding the framework that is to be uses. At this point, we cannot give any guarantees. It is too early to suggest that a farmer or a landowner should be growing trees for carbon credits. There is no international structure in place. There is no economy around that yet. There are bits and pieces. I know Saskatchewan has been doing some work. There are partnerships between utilities and forestry companies. There is some work in Australia. In the United States, Hancock is actually buying credits. However, it is still, as we call it, a bit of a pig in a poke because we do not yet have the framework.
We are looking at it in the case of forestry, and we are working with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to make sure that our models are compatible. Our models are still large-scale at this point. We will not have a comfortable level of science or be able to deal with the question at the stand level until 2004. I happen to be married to a soil ecologist. My wife reminds me that human beings tend to deal with things they see above ground. However, we have largely ignored what is below ground in a whole series of areas.
The Chairman: You have to continue to take samples even in the forest to determine whether it is a sink.
Mr. Addison: Yes.
The Chairman: Is there any model for paying people now for forest sinks?
Mr. Addison: In this country I am unaware of any private enterprise instance. There is partnering, as I mentioned, between utilities where resources are flowing to a few innovative forestry companies that are trying to market that. Canada has a number of companies that are interested in that, but there are some fundamental issues, particularly here in British Columbia, of who owns the carbon credit. With respect to forestry, the federal position is that the Government of Canada owns it. The provinces do not believe that.
The Chairman: The provinces and a lot of individuals and a lot of owners.
Mr. Addison: Yes.
Senator Hubley: I was interested in Forest 2020. I think it is very important that whatever changes we make or respond to have to be long term. That has been a consistent theme throughout our hearings this week. In British Columbia as an example, when you are dealing with the extreme events that we are seeing with climate change, are we gathering enough information so that we can then create a model that will tell us in the years to come — especially in forestry — what we should be planting, where we should be planting it, and how we should be planting it?
The other thing that I have gathered is that for many years, the population has been in charge and the environment has had to adapt. I think there is a swing now where the environment is going to be in charge for a while and it is going to be our adaptive abilities that are going to successfully make us able to live in that environment.
Mr. Addison: In response to your first question, I would defer to the Province of British Columbia, who owns 90 per cent of the land base, but I am not aware a system that is incorporating climate change as a specific variable in our silviculture practices. We are still working on the case of what comes off the land. Companies have a legal requirement to put back what they have taken — that tends to be the approach. There is a very strong, solid stewardship view and these companies are looking towards that. However, to my knowledge, we are not doing specific plantings that have climate change as a specific variable in that.
In regard to your second point, I would agree with you that the one thing about climate change is that the ecosystem does not really care. Ecosystems never care. They just are. Humans care. You are right; the issue is the change that will disrupt our human systems. The forest will always be there, or it will be grassland, or it will be desert — all legitimate ecosystems from an ecological point of view. They are just not as valuable in different ways to human beings, particularly when you put in infrastructure and there are lives and industries to support. It is very much a human issue and humans are going to have to respond. If we do not, we are going to be faced with some of these more catastrophic scenarios. It would be a missed opportunity to not act early.
Senator Tkachuk: I have a couple of questions on the international soil carbon studies. There is some reluctance developing countries in being involved in the Kyoto policy. Are people in, for example, India, China, or Russia doing lots of work on climate changes and their concerns or is it being ignored because of government policy? What is happening there?
Mr. Addison: Maybe I will pass that on to Caroline Preston, who has been in Russia and has worked with some of their people.
Ms. Caroline Preston, Senior Research Scientist, Pacific Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada: There is certainly a lot of work. I cannot speak very much for the tropics, but I know that there is a lot of work in China and Russia. There is a big sort of Euro-Siberian carbon flux project. It is a partnership. There is a lot of cooperation between Russians, Americans, and ourselves. I have been involved in some of that. I know, from the scientific literature that there is a lot of work going on internationally. For example, I just saw a paper on the carbon budget of India's forests.
Senator Tkachuk: Is the sharing of that work organized or does it just sort of happened by accident?
Ms. Preston: There are scientific journals, workshops, and initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC. In the scientific journals, there have also been a lot of big review papers involving up to 20 authors from many different countries who have put together a synthesis on our forests, a sink or a source kind of thing, trying to assess sinks in the northern or southern hemisphere. It is certainly happening on many scales from individuals phoning each other to big committees.
Senator Tkachuk: I would like to talk about the pine beetle briefly. Where does it have to get cold? It does not get cold here very often in this part of the country, but where does it have to get cold for the pine beetle to be eradicated?
Mr. Addison: We will not ever eradicate it. It is a natural part of the system.
Senator Tkachuk: Okay. Control it.
Mr. Addison: It would be nice to have fewer of them. The lodgepole pine is mainly central British Columbia and towards the North, so it is more of a sub-boreal climate normally. This year it has not been cold. In the middle of the winter if the temperature drops below minus 40 degrees for a week or so, the population will drop quite dramatically. An off-season cold can help. Last Halloween we had a temperature of minus 30 that stopped that last major infestation.
This may be one of those things where climate change, with the variability side, could help us we had an off-season cold spell, in the early part of the fall or the spring after the beetles have become acclimated to the warmer environment. The insect is very well designed; it has had a few million years to evolve. It lives within the tree most of the time, so there are not many opportunities to get it. Ultimately we need a cold winter or an off-season cold to stop this thing.
Senator Tkachuk: Could you give us an idea of where in the province the most serious problems are so that we can include this information in our report?
Mr. Addison: Our Web site indicates where the current outbreak is. There is also a video on the site that shows where the mountain pine beetle has been over the last 50 years leading up to the current outbreak. I would be pleased to make sure that that information is available so that you have it electronically and on paper.
In answer to your question, there has been infestation just south of Prince George down through Williams Lake. The main epicentre this time started on the edge of Tweedsmuir Park — not exclusively in the park and partly in the provincial forest near the park. This forest was non-industrial at that point; there were no roads into it. If you do not get to mountain pine beetle early it can take over. It is similar to a forest fire in that way: Early attack can stop it, but once it gets going humans do not have that capability.
Senator Carney: This is a learning experience for me, as I do not normally sit on this committee. This is an opportunity for me to hear British Columbians talk about problems in this province.
I have a very pragmatic question. What has happened to your budget over the last few years? Given the fact that you have these increasing and changing problems, has your budget been expanded or cut in these areas?
Mr. Addison: There was the announcement by Minister Dhaliwal on the $40 million, half of which is R&D, the other half is dealing with federal lands on the mountain pine beetle. However, since 1995 within government we have been on a fixed budget. The Government of Canada policy has been to add R&D. It has added $3 billion to R&D in Canada since 1995, working through universities and other institutes. The main investment has been in the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. Other strategic grants have been provided through the granting councils. Since 1995 there has been about a 60 per cent increase in R&D but it has not been within federal departments.
This fact has driven some of our current activities in partnering with universities and other agencies in order to carry the Canada agenda using all Canadians rather than just within government scientists.
Senator Carney: Do you think that is a good model. Is it a productive model?
Mr. Addison: As a representative of Natural Resources Canada, I take it as government policy that was set in 1995. We have been very successful. In my own centre, our resources have doubled since last year. A good portion of that is the beetle funding, but there is also money for national information programs. We have had to compete for these funds in a different way and that has been a bit of a challenge.
Senator Carney: I have some questions about the community impacts that you are starting to see in climate change. Obviously, if a thing like the mountain pine beetle is devastating three times the allowable cut, there is a loss of timber supply. Are there other effects on alternative land uses? For instance, you mentioned other use of the land for agriculture and cattle. Is there an impact on the management of cattle and range lands and the other uses that would have community impacts? What is happening? If ecosystems do not care, what about the land use systems?
Mr. Addison: We will see some changes there. Part of our beetle program is aimed at private landowners to ensure that they have the knowledge and the opportunity to go attack the mountain pine beetle when it starts hitting their land base.
On the social side, forestry is significant because landowners in the Williams Lake and Prince George area derive their benefits partly from forestry and partly from cattle — it is very much mixed farming. We do not have the large Saskatchewan farms.
Our farmers rely on parts of forest to complement other activities. Without that resource, those farms may not be viable. We are working with the landowner associations to try to help them deal with that issue.
If there is a major front of mountain pine beetle, we know that there is nothing we can do about that. It is like a major forest fire that requires clean up afterwards. In such cases, our softwood lumber issue become a problem because we do not have access to markets that enable us to ramp up the consumption of that timber into forest products.
Senator Carney: This is a fascinating subject and we could go on all morning. I will look at the Web site.
Mr. Addison: If you type ``mountain pine beetle'' into the Google search engine, we are first hit on the list. We are pleased with that because there are not many government sites that come up first. Our science is being used quite effectively. The Pacific Forestry Centre Web site has set out what we know about it. We have also distributed that information around the province and into Alberta as well.
Senator Day: I have a question with two parts. First, you commented that in B.C. there will be a serious wood supply issue a decade from now and that will obviously have some impact on the industry and the communities. Is that — to use Dickens' words — a future that must be or a future that may be?
Second, is there significant work going into reforestation and biotechnology strategies and so forth that will prevent the problem from occurring or is it already happening by virtue of the fact that three times the annual allowable cut of the forest is dead?
Are we putting too much time and energy into playing what I consider to be a somewhat artificial game of the carbon sinks and carbon trading and the Kyoto, rather than into the real human values and the things that really count?
Mr. Addison: In response to your first question, we have to understand that the beetle is expanding — it is doubling in area and impact every year. It is a hugely effective critter. We also know that there is a lot more pine out there and that the mountain pine beetle has not come anywhere near its limits. Therefore, all the prognoses we have — short of a major climate event — will be that the mountain pine beetle will not be stoppable by human means.
A lot of the strategies have focused on how to get economic value from that, which brings us to your key point. There are opportunities. Some companies are showing some very innovative approaches in using 10-year-old dead material. Typically, you want a green tree for harvest because it cuts well and your milling operation is more efficient. However, a company in Lignum, in central British Columbia, continues to harvest 10-year-old lodgepole pine and make money doing so. That is the kind of innovation that we need. If we can now use material that has been dead for 10 years, perhaps you can push that 20 years. You may also start looking at some other products as well.
Part and parcel of the mountain pine beetle project is looking at what that fibre be used for and for how long. The questions are: How do you get economic value from it? What is usable? How long will it stay standing? Can you chip it and use it in our pulp mills? Linked to shi are the socio-economic and economic studies to determine what the situation will be in places such as Prince George if the beetle continues to do what it is doing. The town of Prince George produces more forest products than the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, so a huge part of the main wood supply for British Columbia is not in the coast. It is in the area that is currently facing the mountain pine beetle issue.
Ultimately, is tremendously important to B.C. and it has implications on the social side. As an organization, we need to be looking at the international/national issues, but we also have to deal forest management issues in British Columbia and Yukon. I hope that helps.
Senator Day: Yes, it does. I would like to clarify that most of your resources deal with the issues of strategies, economic communities, socio-economic strategies. Your presentation has given the impression all your energies are into this Kyoto trading, verification, and so forth.
Mr. Addison: We have been able to expand our program because of the interest at the national level, our expertise in carbon modelling and some of the talent we had on information management. We are a $6 million program, which is over and above a $13 million to $14 million program that is more focused on the biology. I do not want to give you the impression that we are heavily into the socio-economic. I have four staff economists at the centre out of 130 staff that are indeterminate. That is an important aspect, but most of our work is dealing with the biological sciences, forest health.
Senator Day: Who is doing the socio-economic work?
Mr. Addison: John Innes is here from the University of British Columbia, which has an active program. The University of Northern British Columbia has a program. There is a lot of activity at the University of Alberta, and we have a very strong section in our northern lab in Edmonton. We do not do everything in one spot. We work in a networking context and use the expertise that is there.
The Chairman: Dr. Addison, I want to thank you very much for a most interesting and impressive presentation. Your presentation was important and it has been deeply appreciated.
Mr. Addison: If there you require any follow-up information, we would be pleased to provide whatever we can.
Mr. Steve Thomson, Executive Director, British Columbia Agriculture Council: Good morning and welcome to British Columbia. I would like to let you know that we are currently hosting the Canadian Federation of Agriculture annual meeting just up the street at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. We have farm leaders from all across the country here enjoying the B.C. weather. The B.C. Agriculture Council is the province's general farm organization. With me today Allan Patton, who is a director on our council and vice-president of the British Columbia Fruit Growers Association. Mr. Patton is also our representative on the national advisory committee that is helping develop the environment chapter under the agricultural policy framework that is currently being worked on by Agriculture Canada and the provinces.
I will give you a brief introduction and overview of the industry. Mr. Patton will go over the highlights of our submission and we hope to leave a lot of time for questions.
Agriculture is one of the major resource sectors in British Columbia. We produce more than 250 different commodities here, so it is a very varied and diverse industry. Our members farm in all regions of the province from the Peace River through the central Interior, the Okanagan and the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island and they are facing the whole range and diversity of farming in different climates and different regions.
Agriculture is a $2.3 billion industry in British Columbia, and it is growing. We are actually a growth sector in terms of resources in the province generating about $19 billion in economic activity totally, employing over 60,000 people directly in primary agriculture and the processing sector. It is a significant contributor to economic activity in the province. One in seven people in B.C. are employed one way or the other related to agriculture, therefore, we consider it a very positive part of the B.C. economy.
This sector faces challenges in the increasingly globalized market. Climate change is an area in which we do not have expertise and there is much work to be done and much science to be clarified. As a council and as an industry we are starting to get involved in this policy area. However, this is an early stage for us. We do not profess to be experts on how this is all going to work.
Mr. Allan Patton, Director, British Columbia Agriculture Council: Agriculture is one of the few industries that has a credit attached to it due to this carbon issue. We would like to see carbon credits allotted to farmers, especially down to the farm gate. Of course that is not entirely true with all of agriculture. There are some commodities of agriculture that are carbon emitters and some that are carbon sequesters, therefore, I do not speak for all of agriculture in saying that there is a major carbon credit here to be gained by agriculture. There is still a lot of work to be done. Even for those commodities that have carbon credits there is still room for improvement to gain credits and reduce their deficit.
The British Columbia Agriculture Council, BCAC supports mitigation and adaptation options that are based on sound science that takes into consideration the economic realities facing farm operations. We want to work with the research community to devise monitoring and data information with the research associated with that by using the agricultural research stations that are available to us. There is a fair bit of technology that can actually measure and monitor the amount of emissions. The amount of carbon sequestration might be a little more difficult, but the technology is available to begin work in that area. We will be implementing strategies and continuing to examine the whole issue of the Kyoto accord and what it means to our industry.
We do believe that agriculture will be a major contributor into Canada's targets for the Kyoto accord. However, we definitely want to see those credits being accrued back to the farm. We do not want Canada to say that they have a credit before paying us for those credits that farmers do create.
The Chairman: What about the liability aspect of it? Can you speak to that as well?
Mr. Patton: We think that one way we can get around the liability issue is by having lease arrangements as opposed to actual selling of our credits. This might not work in the Lower Mainland because they already have a fair amount of organic matter in the soils, but here in the Okanagan and on the Prairies, there is a low level of carbon or organic matter in the soil. This means there is a potential increase in the amount of carbon that can be sequestered in the soil quickly. There will be a point where it will start to level off — who knows, with some kind of weather means it could decrease giving us that liability you are talking about. However, we feel that a lease arrangement would be more appropriate for doing that instead of actual purchase and selling of the credits.
I would like to give you little bit on my experience as a farmer. I am an Okanagan farmer and I grow apples. We have a carbon credit situation in the Okanagan. However, many farmers, including myself, see hail as a big problem for us. Twenty or 30 years ago, hail events occurred maybe once every eight or ten years. My farm has been hailed seven times in the last 10 years. I have been hailed 7 years out of 10. That is fairly typical. It is quite substantial. I do not look at greenhouse gas emissions as global warming. All I see is that weather events are more intense, and the frequency of these weather events is increasing. This is coming at a time, unfortunately — for orchardists in particular — where our crop insurance premiums have just doubled. We have a big problem with this because with increased weather events that affect our crops and our ability to grow good quality crops, we want affordable crop insurance. We look at carbon credits as a potential offset to this increase in crop insurance costs.
Another concern in the Okanagan especially is the burning issue. Every orchardist has a wood-burning pile. We are in a valley with mountains on both sides. Burning particulates and carbon emissions have become a health issue. It is just not a real nice thing to do. Replanting is very important for the industry to stay on top of the economic fluctuations between different varieties. Because we do a lot of replanting there is a turnover of orchard land and there is burning going on.
As an association we do not want to increase the cost to farmers by forcing them to haul off their things. We are dealing with the price of a match, so we want to replace that price of a match with something that can prevent farmers or orchardists from burning. Therefore we look at carbon credits to maybe purchase a big chipper and turn those burn piles into chips, which can be turned into a soil enhancement. We see carbon credits as a built-in financial incentive to actually decrease the amount of deficit we have.
Of course, carbon deficits and greenhouse gas emissions is what is affecting our weather. We have always had tough weather at times, but if the frequency is increasing and the intensity is increasing, then greenhouse gas emissions are related to weather events. That is why relief on crop insurance is an issue.
The Chairman: I think that is extremely important. It is some of the most useful information we have heard in a long time.
Mr. Patton: Good.
Senator Carney: They grow apples in Nova Scotia, too.
Mr. Patton: That is right. It is not just the Okanagan or British Columbia. I was in P.E.I. at a time when the big rain events caused the fish kill. Such rain events never happened 20 or 30 years ago. Now they are happening almost every year. Like the hail in the Okanagan and the drought on the Prairies, that has a lot to do with these emissions. I think it is very appropriate we discuss them.
I would like to talk about environmental farm plans, EFPs. What we are currently doing environmental farm plans, which have been developed through a federal committee of which I am a member. The B.C. Agriculture Council has taken on the development, structure, funding, distribution, and the administration for environmental farm plans. I just completed my EFP workbook yesterday.
We are dealing with is the biodiversity, which is wilderness, wildlife, plant and animal species, and the air, soil and water to keep biodiversity healthy. The climate change issue has something to do with all those aspects. Those aspects are addressed in the EFP and the climate change issue has something to do with all of them. The workbook contains about 285 questions dealing with all aspects of farming. Many of those questions and issues raised by those questions dealt with reducing carbon emissions.
This plan is across the country. Ontario and P.E.I. have been doing environmental farm plans for a while. Many provinces are doing it now. We have reached the stage where farmers are doing it as well. That is because the Agriculture Policy Framework, APF, is coming up due at the end of March and some assistance will be available to farmers on a cost-share basis. There will be plenty of expenditures by farmers on EFPs.
We are doing something already to work towards improving the environment and the climate change issue. Weather stations are a part of that. We have just been approved some fund to help establish 27 weather stations in the Okanagan. We feel that that is very important in terms of data collection, and we might also be able to monitor carbon emissions from those stations. We have been asking meteorologists if that is the case — perhaps the Ministry of the Environment can help us with that. All of these programs are cost-shared with farmers. Farmers are developing and initiating these programs, and farmers drive the policy. That is important to note.
The Chairman: Mr. Thomson, did you want to sum up before we open for questions?
Mr. Thomson: I will simply reiterate the conclusion in our brief. We know that the climate change, as Mr. Patton indicated, is going to challenge our abilities to compete in a globalized marketplace. As an industry, we want to continue to work with government and the science community and all the agencies involved to ensure that we have the tools and programs that will not only help producers meet these challenges but also help contribute significantly towards Canada's objectives in meeting the targets. Agriculture can play a very important part working in cooperation with all the agencies and groups that are involved in this issue.
The Chairman: The lead farmer on the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is the former chairman, Len Gustafson. He will ask the first question.
Senator Gustafson: Thank you for a brief but complete report. You answered almost all my questions as I wrote them down. However, the scientific community that has appeared before us has indicated that climate change is extremely gradual and very hard to measure. There are various opinions on that. Are your farmers concerned about climate change?
Mr. Patton: Yes, you bet we are very concerned about it. I had no problems putting resolutions our convention to see what we could do about mitigating it and to see what we can do about receiving credits that would help us mitigate this problem. Most farmers realize that these weather events are becoming more frequent and intense. It seems obvious to us so it is difficult when the government comes back and tells us that you have lost the plus portion of the crop insurance program and our premiums will be doubled in one year. We are in a situation where weather events are increasing and now our insurance rates are increasing, and yet we are not receiving credit for carbon sequestering. We feel like we are getting a double whammy.
Senator Gustafson: Are the safety net programs that the government has in place adequate? I am aware that they vary quite a bit from B.C. to Saskatchewan, but are the safety nets adequate now? Are we moving fast enough to deal with it?
Mr. Patton: They would be adequate if the province put in their 40 per cent share. However, the province does not put in anything it does not absolutely have to. If the federal government states that their money does not have to be cost-shared with the provincial government, our provincial government will not put in the 40 per cent share. With the reduction in the provincial budget our companion programs and crop insurance rates are increasing. The government is saying that we have to be a part of that reduction. We have not screamed and yelled and jumped up at down too much yet. We want to work with them to find ways to solve the problems — both theirs and ours.
Senator Gustafson: My view is that the problem differs among provinces. For instance, Saskatchewan does not have the tax base to be able to match the federal government's matching programs. By comparison, the Alberta farmer, where they have got some oil money to match with, comes out way ahead of the game. Therefore, I see the need for a truly national program. However, we have not been able to accomplish that.
Your concern seems to be the same, except from the opposite approach: the provincial governments may not be putting in.
Mr. Thomson: Yes. That is a fair comment. There is a very significant level of debate and consultation currently going on now with the federal minister around the re-design of the safety-net programs and to whether the new model that they are proposing is adequate to meet producer needs and address all the other challenges. Producers generally feel that it is not adequate — particularly in the new design.
We indicated clearly to the minister at the CFA meeting, was that the amount of dollars there are adequate. This is not about the industry asking for more money. This is about making sure that the program design works to deliver those benefits that have already been committed by the Prime Minister and the minister to the industry.
With respect to a national program, I think you have to have national parameters and so on. Agriculture is different in every region of the province, and you have to allow for some regional flexibility. The one-size-fits-all approach does not work. You have to continue to allow for some companion programming and so forth in provinces as well.
Mr. Patton: There is the issue of competition. If the Ontario government puts in their 40 per cent and B.C. does not, we compete with Ontario apple growers; there would be a clear competitive disadvantage.
Senator Gustafson: I agree with what you had to say in regard to carbon credits. It has to go back to the farmer, to the land. I am fearful of the discussion that has been in the various provinces. It could become a bureaucratic nightmare as well. I do not know what to make of that except that these are uncharted waters.
Mr. Patton: Our association is trying to ignore the federal government because we do see a potential bureaucratic nightmare, as you say. We want to base it on the price of carbon. That is what is going to be the driving force. The closer we get to 1012, we presume the higher the price of carbon is going to be. That is another reason why we do not want to sell credits. We would prefer leasing from year to year. It is not a one-time-only payment.
The Chairman: Mr. Patton, you said that you are getting a series of new weather stations. Who is paying for that? What money is this? Is it provincial, is it municipal, federal? Where is the money coming from?
Mr. Patton: The seed money is ours. The B.C. Fruit Growers Association is putting in the seed money and then we go to Investment Agriculture, which is B.C.'s card funding.
Mr. Thomson: It is a partnered program. There is federal and provincial support in the program through the Canadian Adaptation and World Development Funding and through some provincial funding in what is called our agri-food futures trusts and cost shared with industry.
The Chairman: You will pay for it with that money?
Mr. Patton: That is right.
Senator Carney: I am a little confused about this issue. Your brief says — correctly, as far as I am concerned — that there have been cutbacks in Department of Environment weather reporting services and closure of manned stations. I do not know whether Kelowna still has one or not.
I do not understand what has been happening with the weather stations that concern you, and what exactly is this 27-station project — how does it work, and what does it contribute?
Mr. Thomson: Yes, I can understand the confusion we may have created. The broad picture, and our point in our brief, is we do have very serious concerns about the cutbacks to the weather reporting systems and stations. The project that Mr. Patton talked about is actually much more localized and intended to provide direct production and extension advice to individual producers.
Senator Carney: Does it replace the ones that have been cut back?
Mr. Thomson: No, it does not.
Mr. Patton: No.
Mr. Thomson: In fact, one of the things we are worried about is whether the cutbacks in the weather service will have an impact on the feasibility and the viability of the individual program that we were putting in place within the industry. That is a serious concern.
Senator Carney: I would like to get to the hail question. In the context of these weather events, what is the relationship between the weather service and the project you are doing? What is it going to do for you?
Mr. Patton: The weather stations are particular to farmers in terms of monitoring the needs of water. They also provide degree-days so we can understand the different phases the insects are in, and that is how definitive it is. It is not meant to replace the weather information services.
Senator Carney: You are talking about a little white box out in the valley?
Mr. Patton: That is right. Exactly.
Senator Carney: Vis-à-vis having a meteorologist tell you there is a hail storm.
Mr. Patton: Exactly. That is right.
Senator Carney: That is what I wanted to establish.
Mr. Patton: There are two specific things there.
Senator Carney: Is the Kelowna office still operating?
Mr. Patton: No, it is scheduled to close. We were talking to the meteorologist at the CFA meeting on Tuesday. His reasoning was that they are going into a more high-tech scenario comprising satellites and imagery and so forth. The Kelowna equipment was sort of a low tech and they were looking at replacing it for that reason. We have real problems with that because we need basic weather services and we are not going to get them.
Senator Carney: I have been told by people on the coast that the high tech weather reporting comes from U.S.- controlled satellites. If there is a war, some of that satellite space is diverted to military uses.
It is just something you know about, that a cutback of weather services does not necessarily have anything to replace it under some of those scenarios.
Senator Day: We are getting a little away from our subject.
Senator LaPierre: Mr. Patton, you said that weather events are more intense and they occur more frequently.
Mr. Patton: That is right.
Senator LaPierre: My learned colleagues will ask you the scientifically oriented questions. My concern in this committee is the impact on people. How does the increased frequency and intensity of these weather events affect the family life of the people in your community — your loved ones and particularly your children and your young people?
Mr. Patton: That is a very good question. I can easily answer that by telling you that when you work all year to raise your crops and get them to the marketplace, and in a matter of 90 seconds all your work is wiped out, it is very upsetting. You run into the house, you hold back the tears, and you close all the curtains. It is tough; it is very tough.
Crop insurance is a way to ameliorate that problem. However, the crop insurance did not help me this year when I was hailed because half the crop was harvested and half was not. Crop insurance is based on the whole crop. It is very upsetting. Then it happens again and again, and what can you do? How can I as a farmer protect myself against this thing?
It is a bizarre situation because the cloud above you is black, and you see blue sky there and blue sky there, so your neighbours are not getting hit when you are, and that is a problem too. It is not just hail. There are other events going on. There are bizarre windstorms, and sometimes greenhouses are just lifted off the ground and the house and greenhouse next door are not touched. It is very strange. Trees are knocked down, and you have grown and lived off them for 15 years. Your children see how you react to these kinds of things, and it is upsetting for them. Farming is a family-oriented business and they decided they do not want to farm if this is the kind of thing that can happen. We want the next generation to come up. It is very important.
I look at these new APF safety-net programs in terms of the next generation coming up. The average of farmers is in the high 50s and we have to do whatever we can to encourage the next generation to take over for us.
Senator LaPierre: Are the terms ``climate change'' or ``climate warming'' becoming dirty words that people wish to remove from language?
Mr. Patton: No, we look at it as a fact of life in the same way that we have to sit at the computer to do our accounting. Our machinery breaks down and we have to fix it. A climate change event is happening, so we must figure out the best methods to help us deal with it. We do not want to ignore it.
Senator LaPierre: Mr. Thomson, what would you like in your toolbox in order to achieve the ends of this?
Mr. Thomson: First, I think we need the appropriate technologies and production practices that should be used to assist in meeting the targets — particularly when we are looking at reducing emissions. We need an effective suite of business risk management programs to ensure that producers are protected when the events happen. We need sound science.
Senator LaPierre: Oh, yes.
Mr. Thomson: Furthermore, in response to Senator Gustafson's question, there is a healthy dose of scepticism out there. Although we know that these events are happening with more frequency, producers still question what it really is — they need to fully understand the science.
As we move forward we need to ensure that the trading systems and the type of mechanisms and processes that are going to be put in place are as simple as possible so that we do not get into the burdensome bureaucratic approaches. We need to ensure that clear benefits accrue back to the farm gate, to producers, to help them assist in meeting the objectives. The financial incentives have to be clearly targeted and simple to work with. We also need to address the liability issue in the longer term to make sure we do not have a system that puts producers at jeopardy in the longer run.
Senator LaPierre: Thank you for that. We will take note of it.
I am concerned about the $40 million transferred from the federal government that you said was removed. When the federal government makes a transfer of funds — for example, for agriculture or, prior to this year, health — it would go in the consolidated revenues of the province to be used as they saw fit. Whether they give it to health or to highways or to Heaven-knows-what is another matter. This has now changed through the health accord with the provinces. We are now talking about transparency and accountability of these funds, and we earmark them.
As part of our job, we will be making recommendations to the federal government. Would you find it useful if we recommended using the health solution as a model and that funds for agriculture and forestry be earmarked? The provinces would have to account for their use of those funds and the process would be transparent.
If that is a political question and you do not wish to answer it, that is also fine.
Mr. Patton: That is what we want. We want transparency, and we want accountability. I think it is mentioned in our brief.
Senator LaPierre: Yes.
Mr. Patton: Accountability is extremely important. We want to be able to account for our actions, and we want the province and the federal government to account for theirs. Then it is much easier to provide input to where those funds and how those funds are distributed. We can also rationalize those funds for the Canadian public. The Canadian public has to know that their money is being spent in a proper way. I have been on committees pertaining to the environmental farm plans and the environment component, who have worked hard to ensure that there are targets that make us accountable for spending that money in a way that really reduces the risk to the environment. Farmers want to accomplish that as much as the Canadian public does.
Senator Carney: I have a follow up to Senator LaPierre's question. Does your toolbox also include the basic issue of the provision of services such as weather information? I do not get a sense of priority here. This whole committee is about climate change. It is all about weather. Farming is all about weather.
I am asking for a clear statement. You talk about accountability and transparency and rationality. Do you need basic information on weather supplied by the Government of Canada?
Mr. Thomson: Yes.
Mr. Patton: Yes.
Mr. Thomson: Weather information is a key in assisting us to make appropriate decisions. We need to know what is coming.
Senator Carney: I just wanted it on the record.
Senator Hubley: Mr. Thomson, you had mentioned that there is a convention of farm leaders taking place in Vancouver right now. What is your sense of climate warming on their priority list? Has it been discussed? Is it something that you feel they are getting information on? I might also ask Mr. Patton to comment because he is obviously a farmer who has gathered a great deal of information and he is very well informed — he may be the exception to the rule or he may not, and I would like to know.
Mr. Thomson: It certainly has been discussed. It is one of the key agenda items at the convention. As Mr. Patton mentioned, we had the meteorological services make a presentation to the session. You did receive a submission from the Canadian Federation of Agriculture in Ottawa as well. It is on the minds of producer organizations across the country.
Mr. Patton: The science and environment committee that put in their report on environmental farm plans. Our council is doing work on climate change. Thank you.
The Chairman: Mr. Patton and Mr. Thomson, you can tell by the questions that you have stimulated our thought. We appreciate your presentations. Thanks very much.
Mr. Thomson: Thank you for your attention and for coming to British Columbia. I would make one final comment. Because of the confusion regarding the program with weather services, we will undertake to provide your committee with the details of that specific program so you understand it in context of the overall issue.
Senator Leonard J. Gustafson (Acting Chairman) in the Chair.
The Acting Chairman: I welcome Mr. Petrus Rykes to the table. Please proceed.
Mr. Petrus Rykes, Vice-President, Land and Environment Portfolio, Council of Tourism Associations of British Columbia: Honourable senators, the Council of Tourism Associations, COTA, of British Columbia represents more than 17,000 businesses across the province. Most of them are small businesses. We have revenues of over $9 billion, $1 billion of which goes directly back to the provincial coffers. Tourism is the second largest resource industry in B.C. It is also the most diverse and fastest growing sector of the B.C. economy. Provincially tourism is growing 4 per cent to 5 per cent per year, while the nature-based sector is growing at 9 per cent to 10 per cent.
Tourism's diversity lends to its phenomenal growth as the world's largest industry yet, over $6.3 trillion. All industries are subject to change. Tourism has played a vital role in the sustainability and survival of the resource-based landscape. Overall tourism is one of the most sustainable, environmentally friendly industries around.
One of COTA's affiliates is the Wilderness Tourism Association WTA. I am vice-president of that organization, which was formed just a few years ago mainly because we realized tourism was more than just in the cities, especially in British Columbia, where you have the super-natural. That is why people come here. The WTA was set up as sort of clearing-house where industries that deal with water and land-based business opportunities have a united voice to come forward and speak. The WTA is addressing some of these issues by having a code of conduct that ties in with the world council on conduct and stewardship programs that deal with operators and how to deal with the land.
Because it is growing, tourism is coming under the gun of the environmental movement. There is a lot of concern. We do not want to be like the mining and forest industries, where you sell your wood, but you also sell your clear-cuts. The only thing is you are not marketing it; the enviros are marketing against it, so the more you clear-cut; the more you cut your own throat. It is in a changing world, and it is how we adapt to the environment.
I have an example here. With the dropping of beef prices, the ranches are getting into the guest ranch component to make ends meet. Imagine someone paying you to do the work you used to do and having a great experience at it. People pay for the unique authenticity factor. In other cases, First Nations, with their unique cultural heritage, are starting to realize the natural fit that tourism brings to their culture and the economic benefits that follow. This is where tourism differs. Tourism offers the economic return and educates the world about local culture. A definite win- win situation.
Tourism is impacted directly and indirectly by climate change. Government and people need to be able to grasp the solutions the tourism industry holds for the world and the global climate change. I am from Anahim Lake. I have a resort up there that is right in the heart of the pine beetle epidemic in the Chilcotin-Cariboo area. In the Quesnel area, the pine beetle has spread from 9,323 hectares in 1998 to over 369,000 hectares in 2002. That is in the red attack region alone. In the green attack region, there would be two and one-half times that.
Senator Tkachuk: What do you mean by red and green?
Mr. Rykes: The red attack is where the beetles have gone into the trees already and they are red and dead. The green attack is the trees are infested and they are still green. It takes usually about a year or a season, approximately.
I have got some total figures for green attack. If you take the total for the red attack in hectares for the Cariboo- Chilcotin area, it is 442,000. There are more than a million hectares in green attack alone, plus the red attack on top of that. That is just as of this past year.
With respect to the volume of wood, it is close to 15 million cubic metres. If you include the green attack, that is another 37 million cubic metres. That is a massive volume.
In our area in the West Chilcotin we do not get real winters anymore. When we did get winter, it was in late March. The beetles carry a glycol — antifreeze. The warm temperatures in January and February mimicked springtime and the beetles must have dumped their glycol. When we had the March freeze — a week of minus 30-degree temperatures — there was a 77.7 per cent mortality rate of beetles in our area. That was the good news. The bad news is for every beetle that is left there is a ratio of 1 to 4.8, so for every one that is left over you get five more beetles.
In the past year we have had beetles show up a half kilometre away from our lodge, the Eagle's Nest Resort. We have local meetings to voice concerns about this infestation. We decided to do winter harvesting with local teams of horses in the next month. Horse logging is tourism and nature friendly. These sensitive areas have been affected. Part of the Pacific Interior Fly-way through here has been affected. There is a lot of birding that happens there. We have trails, historic trails in there. The horse logging will log in an environmentally friendly manner create trails for tourism — for hiking and horseback riding, cross-country skiing and things like that. The only thing with horse logging is it is more expensive, especially if the runs for taking the wood out are longer. The local mill, which is a unique consortium of First Nations, local business and industry, has agreed to absorb the cost of horse logging. I am not saying this can be done in every case. In our case it can be because we have got a good working relationship with the mill and everything. The trails that are there are natural for horse logging methods and there are a lot of nesting sites for grey owls, eagles and ospreys and everything. This is where eco-tourism fits in.
Ski resorts are another sector of tourism that is affected by climate change. Operators in the Prince George area were unable to open this year for the lucrative Christmas season due to lack of snow. Jimmy Spencer, CEO of Canada West Ski Destinations, says, ``The best insurance policy for no snow is snowmaking systems.'' Unfortunately, these can be quite expensive for smaller resorts. Low-end systems can cost from $1 million to $3 million; a more advanced system costs $10 million. The Calgary Winter Olympics had a $20 million computer controlled state-of-the-art snowmaking system. If the winters out west continue at this rate for the next ten to fifteen years, the only skiing that will be done in some areas will be at resorts that have snowmaking equipment. This is a perfect example how technology can offset the impact of global climate change. We have started compiling data on snow levels and we will forward this to your committee.
Tourism has only begun to look at climate change in the past few years. We have started to realize that this is a resource industry that uses the land base and that we are impacted.
B.C. is one of Canada's largest marine playgrounds. In 2000, there were over 1,100 adventure tourism-related establishments in B.C. servicing over 27,000 streams and lakes. Sport fishing generates more than $660 million and employs almost 7,000 people. Tom Bird, CEO of Sports Fishing Institute, is also concerned about the low snow packs and the long-term threat to salmon spawning streams. Of all the salmonids, coho are the most sensitive as they spawn in the narrowest and smallest of streams. Chinook spend the first three months in freshwater while sockeye can spend up to a year in freshwater lakes.
Global warming means increased temperatures, which in turn means increased disease and fungal conditions.
There was a big tourism conference in Kamloops last week. On the way there, we passed the Thompson River. That river is low and so narrow. The concern with that in such an environment, the water is warm and the conditions can spread disease as they do in fish farms. There is a serious concern about the return of the 10 million sockeye that are coming back to the Fraser this year.
People in tourism have been very concerned with the dramatic and dry weather we have had in the past year. I guess the East Coast is getting what we would normally get. The impacts are going to be very interesting.
Fishing guides that I have talked to in the Chilcotin are also concerned about bull trout — Dolly Varden, which is a blue-listed species. They like the cold waters, which will be affected. Rainbow trout is another species in the Interior that is very sensitive to temperature. I do not know if we have any data for the remote little streams and the mountains and so forth. The data and the monitoring has to be done because we do not want to get to a state where suddenly we have a big problem and we do not know what is going on.
I would like to add some of my own observations. Where I live it has been eight straight years since we have experienced temperatures of minus 50, or minus 60. The whole winter was not like that — it was just a few days. Those temperatures are important for our area. Author Rich Hobson has written about our area quite a bit. His books, The Grass Beyond the Mountains and Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy, have made our area famous. Those temperatures control the beetle.
Another concern is fire. Because there are people living there now, fires are suppressed. Beetles also follow wind patterns. We have suggested that the logging companies try to mimic nature by following the wind patterns and mimicking the fire burns because those things control the beetles. If your logging patterns are designed like the fire burns, a natural disturbance pattern, and follow the wind patterns, you are likely to take the food source away for the beetle. I do not know if that suggestion has fallen on deaf ears.
Tweedsmuir Park is one of the largest parks in the province with over 2 million acres. Heckman Pass used to get 40 feet of snow about 20 years ago. I remember the locals telling me they used to have to stand on the big semis to measure the snowpack. It would be 20 to 22 feet deep there, which would mean at least 40 feet of snow in total. We have had less and less snow in the past 20 years. In that period, we have usually had between 10 and 20 feet. This year, as of a few weeks ago, we had less than 2 feet. It is nice not to have to shovel all the time. However, we measure it in inches now, which would have been unheard of.
We are also getting warmer. For the first few years it was great because temperatures of minus 50 are not good for tourism. However, there has also been this drying trend. I have talked to some of the old-time ranchers in the area and they remember back into the 1930s when they would have one dry winter. One year would be dry and then it would be back to normal for many years. They did not have eight dry years in a row. We have had eight straight years of warming. Every year I say I cannot believe it is going to be warmer, and the next year it is warmer.
The ranchers have concerns. In this past year it seems to have accelerated quite a bit. The meadows are starting to dry up and crack. People are noticing that their wells are low or starting to dry up. Low water levels in streams and lakes and sensitive riparian areas are adversely affecting bird habitat. Pelican Lake was once a major nesting site for the American White Pelican. It is a red-listed species. Native elders have told me that in 1960, there were more than 1,000 pelicans in the Dean River Corridor. Now there are fewer than one hundred. The dryness is also affecting our fishing. Everything is so interrelated.
In conclusion, global warming impacts tourism, and because of its diversity it overlaps with other resource industries. Solutions can be found with some assistance from governments. We need to act now to help the industry through these changing times.
We have tried to provide some food for thought from an industry that you would not normally associate with climate change. Tourism equals parks and a land base. It also equals carbon sinks. Tourism and weather are very interrelated. People like to go out in the sunshine.
I have one final comment to share. Our provincial government proposed to close down the avalanche centre, which is in Revelstoke, for monitoring. We fought hard to try to keep it. It is one of the tools that we have for tourists. As tourism operators, we contributed $40,000, and the government contributed $40,000. It saves lives. In Switzerland studies have shown that it pays for itself in the end.
The Acting Chairman: Thank you for a very excellent report.
When the beetles attack an area, do they take every tree or do they leave some?
Mr. Rykes: The natural predator of the beetle is the woodpecker. They have got a big smorgasbord now, and they just cannot keep up. The beetles attack the mature trees only, and they attack in little pockets here and there. It is an epidemic now because beetles are endemic. They are always there. We need about a week of at least minus 40 to 50 degrees or fire to control beetle, and global climate changes has really impacted on this.
One of the biggest infestations started in the park. Nothing was really done for the first few years, which is when you want to hit it. Then the global changes started happening and the weather patterns, and it has just mushroomed. In our area in the Chilcotin logging only started about 1985. That was because of the pine beetle infestation. They go in 20- year cycles. It was about 20 years ago that logging first started in our area. I have seen the impacts and the changes. I have flown over some of the area. It is huge — as far as the eye can see it is like a sea of red. Although they usually attack only the mature trees in pockets here and there, because the infestation is so big, they are taking the smaller trees too. I have never quite seen anything like it.
The Acting Chairman: One of the prime directions of this committee is adaptation. Are there any areas in tourism where the warmer trends are a benefit and you can capitalize on them?
Mr. Rykes: Well, in our area the warmer temperatures are great. For the first few years we had enough snow. This year we have not had much snow. I know we had a dump on Christmas Eve, and so that saved us through our busy part over the holidays. However, we have not had snow since and we have had no business. We all try and diversify and do other things.
Therefore, it is like a dual-sided sword. It has been getting warmer and that is okay. However, we are not getting the snow with the warmer temperatures and that raises concerns regarding the snowpack and the runoff for the fish streams and for cattle and just for everything. Fire is another concern with all this dead wood out there and the dryness.
Senator Tkachuk: What are the meteorologists telling you? It is cold and there is a lot of snow in the Prairies this year but winter started late. Our winters are starting later, at least over the last decade. Are they starting later here, too?
Mr. Rykes: Yes. I would say we are lopping off at least a month to a month and a half, which from my perspective is great, but, like I said, there is the other side too. There are pros and cons. It is how we adapt to the changes that will see us through this.
Senator Tkachuk: Do they have figures that show evidence of change over a long period. I am sceptical of annual figures because I live in Saskatchewan were there is some erratic weather. It has always been erratic so you never quite know what is going to happen. Are there records that can give you a time profile of what is happening? For example, the 1980s were like this; here is how much snow we had in the 1950s or the 1970s.
Mr. Rykes: I am originally from Pine Falls, Manitoba, which is prairie country, and the country I am in is very similar. We have mountains and in an hour I can be in the coastal climate. We have got the best of both worlds. Our area is so remote.
There may be some records kept. My information comes mainly from observations and talking to the locals. It has only been the last couple of months that tourism has started to look at the impacts of global climate change on our industry. There are definite trends and I suppose we could pursue formal records. It is not just the fluctuating winter or just one or two winters here and then we go back to normal, no. We joke about palm trees at the rate we are going.
Senator Tkachuk: Are the summers hotter?
Mr. Rykes: No. The winters used to be colder and the summers were a lot hotter. We actually would get up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit sometimes. Our summers are starting wet — June is our wettest month for some reason. It used to be one of the driest months. The best months are August and September. We have Indian summers up there. The bugs are gone, and the weather is usually quite nice.
Overall the start of the winter is warmer. We do not know when winter is going to hit. We really have not had winter yet. Last year winter did not show up until the end of March, which is very unusual. Normally December, January, and February are the coldest months. Then you get into the spring, which can be quite nice. When you get into summer, it can actually seem colder it than winter. It is miserable. We are in the elevation of 4,000 feet. We can get all the seasons any time of the year, any day of the year.
Senator Tkachuk: It is too bad we cannot push some of that prairie cold out West.
Senator Hubley: The theme of our study is going to be adaptability. Certainly tourism is going to have to change as well. I did like the idea horse logging, I thought that was just an excellent example of what people in the tourist industry are going to have to do. If the fish are going north and they are not going with them, they have to look at what other species are going to come in. How can we market that?
I think tourism is probably going to have to be very creative and innovative if they are going to continue. How do the people within your organization feel about this? Are they concerned? Do they sense they can change or along that line?
Mr. Rykes: A lot of these concerns have surfaced just in the past year. Because it has been sort of a gradual trend, there have been a few more observations each year. This past year has been very dramatic. I think people are starting to wake up. It has only been in the past few months we have really started to talk.
In this province, places such as Tumbler Ridge, Gold River, and Tahsis, which have historically been logging or mining, are starting to turn to tourism now because of the diversity. We need all those industries for survival and the more diverse we are, the better off we are and the better off we can adapt to changes.
The tourism industry has only really organized in the last 10 years. Before that we were fighting each other. People are starting to realize we have an industry here and it is our strength. However, it has also been our biggest weakness in the past to get a united voice out there. We are the new kids on the block. It is the up-and-coming industry. In B.C. we see the energy and gas industry and tourism as the two main drivers in the future for this province. We will have to fit in with all the other industries.
We have our conflicts with forestry. The WTA has done a mapping of the tourism resource for the whole province of British Columbia. We overlaid that with a diagram of the forest areas. Surprisingly, we found that there are very few places where the heartlands conflict because they are different. Tourism tends to be in higher and more rugged terrain where it is more scenic; the growing conditions are less favourable. We have some pilot projects on the go in the Chilcotin where we are trying to demonstrate that you can log for two industries and still be economically viable in the areas where we do conflict. I have been involved in land use planning for over 10 years, and we have some innovative things that will be coming out in the next year for the province.
Senator LaPierre: Good stuff.
Senator Hubley: I want to share with our witness one of the stories we have heard where people within the tourist industry had to buy or reserve water so that they could have their white water rafting. I was incredulous that we would go to that extent. You talked about your snow machines and so on, but I do not know how sustainable that would be. I think the future is going to be in those small tourist operators just grasping what is happening and then look for the opportunities.
Mr. Rykes: I agree.
Senator Carney: I was very interested in the positive information or examples you have given us here, like going back to horse logging — I actually am old enough to remember horse logging in the Skeena country — as being environmentally useful now and tourist friendly. It is wonderful that they are actually making these kinds of changes. A scientist told us earlier that the ecology does not really care. If systems change, the ecology system itself does not really care, but the humans do.
Do you see conflicts over water use emerging as a big problem in your area? Is Highway 16 the entry point to your area?
Mr. Rykes: Actually, it is Highway 20. Alexander Mackenzie went through the area. The Chilcotin War took place and it set everything back. The railway was going to go through. They chose Burrard, which became Vancouver now.
Senator Carney: Count your blessings.
Mr. Rykes: Yes, otherwise I would not be in wilderness. The highway was only paved to Anahim Lake about two years ago. The part I am still on is still gravel, and that is one of Canada's main highways.
Senator Carney: Do you see conflicts developing over water use in your area?
Mr. Rykes: If these trends continue, I could see that, yes. At the moment, no. We are surrounded by some of the most massive glaciers this far south in the world, so we do have a ready supply. However, the water table itself is drying up, and if the snowpack is not replenished there could be a problem. Land without water is a tough sell. You need both to survive and to have a business. If these trends continue, yes, we will have conflicts.
Senator LaPierre: Can I ask a supplementary question?
Senator Carney: Yes, certainly. Go ahead. Water licensing systems are still used in British Columbia in your area. Yes, go ahead.
Senator LaPierre: Are the glaciers not also receding?
Mr. Rykes: Oh, yes.
Senator LaPierre: Therefore that will affect your water?
Mr. Rykes: Yes, very much so.
Senator Carney: When you talk about the need for data collection, under the heading ``Fishing'' in your brief, you state, ``Research in the form of stream monitoring and data collection is essential and needs to be implemented immediately.'' On the last line of your brief, you say, ``We need to act now to help industry through these changing times.'' What specifically are you suggesting because there is the attitude that we cannot do much about the weather? If you do not tell the committee, they cannot put it in their report.
Mr. Rykes: Yes. All these things I have mentioned here, I have tried to focus on things that are possible. I could have raised a lot more things, which would involve lots of money, but they are not necessarily doable.
With respect to monitoring, let us take the example of the coho. They go into the narrowest parts of streams as high up as they can. When those stream beds dry up and because the streams are narrow and the water temperatures heat up, diseases begin to spread. Those are little things in the mountains that need to be monitored because that is where it all starts.
Senator Carney: What good will that do? It will just tell us that we are going to have a low return of coho.
Mr. Rykes: I am saying that we know there is global warming and we need to get a sense of how accurate it is. Is it really happening?
Senator Carney: That is a good point. You need to know what is happening so that you can adapt.
Mr. Rykes: Exactly. You do not want to have a knee-jerk reaction: ``Well, we have got an issue here, let us do this.'' You would like to have some scientific data to justify what you are doing.
The Acting Chairman: In the interests of time, and we want to accommodate all the presenters this morning, I will call to the table both Dan Smith from the University of Victoria and John Innes from British Columbia. I would ask you both to make your presentations and then we will find out how these universities get along and then move to questions.
Mr. John Innes, Professor, Department of Forest Resources Management, University of British Columbia: Thank you very much for inviting us here. Allow me to introduce my colleague, Ms. Zoe Harkin. She is a graduate student working on climate change and recently completed a master's thesis on carbon markets. Her expertise is relevant, and she is here to help me out should you ask me any awkward questions. I should also point out that neither of us are Canadians. However, we are Canadian taxpayers, and so we have a very strong interest in the decisions that you reach.
As I am sure you are aware, climate change is a long-term process. What we know from a variety of sources is that the recent changes have been rapid when we look at trees from the perspective of long-term dynamics. Many of the trees here live for 2,000 or 3,000 years. That places a very different perspective to, for example, a group that deals with agriculture, where you are concerned with one or two years.
We know that climate is changing. We have good evidence from places such as Fort St. James. My understanding is that the number of federally funded climate stations is currently decreasing. However, we do have good records from some. We can supplement those records with other sources of information. For example, we can look at glaciers.
This slide shows Peyto Lake in the Canadian Rockies. What we know from there is that glaciers have been receding. This graph shows the trends over the last 100 years. We can see here that some of these glaciers have retreated two kilometres. They will disappear fairly soon under current climate. On the land that is exposed, we can find buried stumps that tell us even more about climate change.
Tree cores are an important source of information. You will hear more from Dan Smith about this in his presentation. The Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, put together this curve, and it shows climate change reconstructed from tree rings over the last 2,000 years. I included this because tree rings are being used as a means to determine what has happened to the climate, which indicates that trees are actually very sensitive to climate and climate change. Foresters should be very concerned about this.
What do we know about climate? Well, we know that in the Pacific Northwest we have seen significant changes. Temperatures have risen in the Pacific Northwest. In Washington, Idaho and Montana the changes have been more or less equal in summer and winter. As we move north in British Columbia, we find that the balance shifts and we are seeing a warming of the winter temperatures. That is one of the reasons why we have the pine beetle infestation. Another reason for that particular infestation is land management practices. What we have not seen very clearly is a trend in precipitation, and we have heard about the importance of drought. Drought is also important to forestry as well as to agriculture, and future occurrences of drought are very uncertain.
In the future, we expect to see in the south of British Columbia a rise of temperature of between 1.7 and 2.8 degrees by the 2050s. That will occur within the next 50 years — less than one forest rotation. We expect those changes will actually be greater as we move northwards. One set of graphs that I saw recently suggested that the changes in the far North may be as great as 20 degrees. That is a huge change. Annual precipitation is much less certain. Some models suggest it will decrease; some suggest that it will increase. Overall I would expect to encounter warmer, wetter winters and warmer, dryer summers.
What does that mean for forests? Summer moisture stress in the forests is a major constraint, as far as we know. However, what we see in forests contradicts this. This picture actually shows encroachment of range lands in the Cariboo area of British Columbia. The trees are spreading into the grasslands. From climate change you would actually expect the reverse trend, and what we are seeing is because of the interaction between climate change and land management. We would normally have fires that would remove those trees. We are suppressing fires.
One of the big uncertainties that we have about projecting future forestry is how trees are going to respond to water stress. We know that trees interact with carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide can influence the susceptibility of the trees to drought. This slide shows a photo of a poplar in Cypress Park Provincial Park in West Vancouver suffering either from drought or from ozone. We are not quite sure which.
This major question is exercising scientists. We do not know how this downward curve — and I am pointing to the model of acclimation to increased carbon dioxide concentrations — will actually influence the growth of trees. We have done some work on this, but it is very uncertain. Some very complex signals are coming out of what we know. For example, winter temperatures could lead to increased growth of trees in the Interior. That might strike you as being good. We have more wood coming out. However, if we have faster growth, we are going to have more wood. If we have more wood, we could actually end up depressing prices making forestry less economically viable in the province.
Another issue is pulp. We have some of the highest quality pulp in the world growing around Prince George. If those trees start growing faster, the quality of that pulp will decrease and forestry will become less economic because of the lower prices in that area. We see major possible changes.
We are seeing that entire ecosystems may actually move in some cases. However, most of the current theories suggest that that is unlikely to occur. We will see individual species responding differently. That means that our ecosystem classification system, which is the basis of forest management in B.C., may have to change as new types emerge.
What are the risks that we are facing? Plantation failures may occur because trees that we are planting today are not adapted to the climate that they will experience as they grow. We are likely to see increased insect and disease problems. There is already evidence of that. We are likely to see increased frequency and severity of fires. We are likely to see unacceptable levels of mortality, a loss of productivity, and a loss of wood quality.
Those are all situations that we are likely to see. Have we actually seen anything so far? We have seen in some increases in the productivity of our boreal forests. We have also seen accelerated seasonal developments of some insect pests such as the mountain pine beetle. The distribution of those pests is changing. We are seeing changes in the behaviour of organisms such as squirrels that live in forests. We are finding that provenances from slightly warmer areas out-compete local provenances.
How fast is the forest going to change? Once a forest is established, it is fairly resistant to change. Those trees provide a microclimate that will enable that forest to continue. However, if that forest is disturbed in any way — by pine beetle or by fire, for example — the clock is reset and we could end up with a very different forest.
How is the forest industry responding to this? They have taken that evidence and stated that because stands are resilient, they do not need to worry about climate. That is a very mistaken assumption. They believe in some cases that timber rotations are such that they do not need to worry about long-term climate change. However, as I have indicated, within one rotation we are going to see some significant changes. They are not concerned particularly about climate change because it does not impact on current annual allowable cut. There is no provision in the cut for British Columbia about climate change. There is concern that if they do anything it may increase their costs, and with the current softwood lumber dispute they do not want to see costs going up. If anything, they would like to see costs going down. We are also experiencing quite a lot of institutional resistance to any form of change.
We need to think about a number of issues. We need to think about allowing longer seed transfers so that we can move trees from southern areas north. We need to adjust our long-term growth estimates. We do not know what the growth of forests in Western Canada will be like 100 years from now. We need to restore some of the forest structure and composition in areas where there has been intensive management. We need to reduce forest density in some cases to reduce the potential for drought stress. Finally, we need to use some new techniques like pre-commercial thinning, prescribed burning and other techniques that may help reduce the intensity of large-scale disturbances.
Here is an example of those provenance trials. This is lodgepole pine growing near Prince George. The photo on the left with the caption ``slightly south'' is an example of tree seed taken from 100 kilometres south and planted 100 kilometres north. You can see that those trees are growing the best.
What else can we do? The process of adaptation can be accelerated through a number of means. We can enhance the genetic diversity making populations more variable. We can select trees for particular adaptive traits. We can redistribute populations across the landscapes. We can do quite a lot, in fact.
What is research doing to actually solve some of these problems? Unfortunately, forestry research funding in B.C. is driven by industry's needs today. We do not have long-term research policies. Our policies are for one-year projects. Most of those one-year projects are actually approved halfway through the financial year, so we are dealing with less than one year. We have to produce results within the financial year. You cannot do that in climate change research. The result of this is that most research is reactive to specific problems and is often too late to actually solve those problems. We are getting very unrealistic expectations of what research can do, and in the drive for these short-term productivity gains we are actually losing out on long-term research.
In terms of management response, most surveys suggest that managers think there is a need for more scientific information. They believe that research needs to be adapted to the scales at which they are working. They believe that there needs to be improved mechanisms of transferring those risks and that forest managers need to be involved in determining the solutions. To a certain extent they are; largely they are not.
The climate is changing. It is definitely getting warmer. It does not matter what the cause is. The trees are not too concerned about that. What matters is that the climate is changing. Forests in the future will differ significantly. It is likely that we will see increases in productivity, that we may also see catastrophic declines in some situations. It is very likely that forest composition will change as will the rates and types of disturbances, such as fire.
In B.C. forest managers are only now beginning to think about this particular problem. They have a lot of other things on their radar screens. They are not concerned about climate change. Provincial government regulations at the current time can actually hinder our adaptation mechanisms: for example, over seed transfers. There are some very strict regulations, and these may actually serve to prevent us from adapting.
Finally, because of these, research has not actually been able to focus on some of the questions that are important. Other countries are moving ahead of Canada in this respect. I will close my presentation on that point.
Senator Donald H. Oliver (Chairman) in the Chair.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Innes.
Mr. Smith, please proceed.
Mr. Dan Smith, Professor, University of Victoria Tree-Ring Laboratory: Good morning. My topic deals with declining forest productivity. I must credit Colin Laroque, one of my Ph.D. students with having a lot to do with this work on Vancouver Island.
The first map you are about to see is the 1999 Sierra Club map that illustrates that there has been significant exploitation of the forest environment on Vancouver Island.
This second slide shows the forest on Vancouver Island when we first got there, and you can see the large dominance of green; that is the coastal western hemlock forest.
When we compare the Sierra Club map with the second map we see that most of the coastal western hemlock forest has been exploited. There has been substantial regeneration, and there are second and third generation cuts going on in some of those areas, but what that means for the Vancouver Island forest industry is that it is finding it necessary to move upward into the montane forest zone to find more of the hemlock. They are creeping upwards into a particularly climate-sensitive zone; they are getting into areas where mountain hemlock and yellow cedar trees survive.
As Mr. Innes mentioned earlier, the movement into the montane zone is very relevant to the forest industry. We need to think in very long terms to understand the length of time it takes to regrow a tree.
As the foresters move into the higher elevations the mountain hemlock and yellow cedar become part of the productive forest, and these particular trees grow above the 1,000-metre mark and take 500 years to mature.
The climate is changing in British Columbia. On Vancouver Island the changes have not been particularly substantial up to this point. This slide shows the provincial temperature diagram.
Here is an example of an infilling meadow on Vancouver Island where you see the trees advancing into the meadows.
The interesting thing about forestry in the Pacific Northwest is that temperature is not the sole factor at this at high elevation. Recent studies have been more concerned with precipitation. Although precipitation is indeed changing in British Columbia it has not been substantially changed on Vancouver Island. However, over time the changes in precipitation will affect the island.
The study that I am very briefly going to go through targeted high-elevation stands in Vancouver Island.
Before we understand climate we have to understand how these trees responded to climate change in the past, and so I turn to tree rings. Tree rings are wonderful little climate recorders. On Vancouver Island we have two examples of old trees: a 1,800-year old yellow cedar and a 1,700-year old Douglas fir. These trees are part of someone's home somewhere, but they indicate that trees that old likely still exist in many parts of the province. I am very protective of a 1,200-year old tree.
The tree rings show us that the trees have responded to mixed temperature-precipitation signals that have occurred over the last millennia or two. This particular study targeted 40 high-elevation stands on Vancouver Island. We have tree ring records from those stands. The diagrams indicate that there are relationships over the broad extent of Vancouver Island; there have been points of high growth and points of low growth.
We have variable chronologies for five high elevation species on Vancouver Island: the longest chronologies are for the yellow cedar and hemlock. The next longest chronology is for the mountain hemlock. A careful study of the tree rings can tell us what the temperature was like in the past.
This study has coupled our science with the global climate modeller's work. There is a GCM model that the group at the University of Victoria with Environment Canada has used. We have taken the GCM2 model grid, which looks at changes in the Pacific Northwest and most particularly over Vancouver Island, and looked at the projected climate records for that area. We have hindcasted those records back through our species to see the response and to see whether these projected climate records match the current climate story. The productive forest zone records for Vancouver Island are only 60-years long.
Unfortunately, there is not one high elevation climate station in this country. The highest station that we have is at Sulphur Mountain outside of Banff, and it is not relevant to our needs.
We have no idea what the climate is doing at high elevations. We are not recording it. We are so far behind the Europeans on this that it is embarrassing.
The Chairman: What are the Americans doing?
Mr. Smith: The Americans have some long-term records from Colorado that date back 100 or more years.
The Chairman: Your presentation is being interpreted as well as reported by our reporters. You are speaking a little too quickly for them. Please slow down a bit because we want to preserve your words for the record.
Mr. Smith: My students make the same complaint. My science excites me.
This last slide shows the five species that are growing at this high elevation. The projections are based on the GCM data that indicate the climate in the future. The darker line on the diagram illustrates the high elevation western hemlock tree growth over the last 100 years. Given what we know about the climate and the tree ring response to it we can see that there is going to be a decline in western hemlock growth in the next 100 years. That decline will be in the radial growth, which is a measure of biomass. That is not a particularly significant decline. Yellow cedar is going to do the same.
The most significant decline is going to be in the mountain hemlock. Mountain hemlock growth is going to crash and the species will no longer be viable on Vancouver Island. It may be replaced by an adaption of other trees, but I think the western hemlock will move up and cover the mountaintops creating a substantial change in the forest structure on the island.
These are by no means certain predictions, however, they are certain in the context of what the climate models are telling us. These predictions break new ground. The previous predictions tried to model how we see the trees respond. This model takes that a step further and marries its findings to another science.
Science is a building block, and we have to continue to fund science to make sure that all of the tiny pieces come together so that they we can put scenarios together. We want to see foresters take this research information and apply it to their work.
The Chairman: Communication is a theme that has come up through all of our hearings in Western Canada.
Scientists sit in an ivory tower and conduct their research using models. It would be helpful to the foresters and farmers to get this research information. The problem is getting it to them.
How do you think this information should be communicated? Should we develop some kind of a communication strategy?
Mr. Smith: The ivory tower is crumbling. I think many scientists try to make an effort to communicate their results. Our information can be found in scientific literature and we also present it in forums.
Mr. Innes: The Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Research Network has as one of its goals the objective of bringing our research to the practitioners. Recently, we had such a meeting the Prince George.
The Chairman: Are you referring to C-CIARN?
Mr. Innes: Yes. The forest industry was not well represented at that meeting; there were only three representatives out of 150 people in attendance. The industry does not consider it to be a major issue.
I chair a non-profit society that deals with forestry extension. It employs 26 extension practitioners. There are more extension practitioners in our society than there are in the entire country. Through the network that we have established, we are trying to get that information out to the practitioners. The network deals with today's problems, but we are trying to get the climate change message to the people who actually need to do something about it.
Senator Day: The Senate, under the leadership of Senator Wilfred Moore, and his relationship with St. Mary's University in Halifax, has been trying to get funds for the infrastructures at universities.
Mr. Smith: I appreciate that, however, my comment was directed toward my provincial government.
Senator Day: Our chairman asked you to slow down because our technology could not keep up with you. In truth, he was asking you to slow down in order to digest all that you were saying.
The slide deck that we have for Professor Smith is not as clear as yours. It probably has come through to us through the Internet and then hard copied. Would you please send us a clearer set of decks so we may study the slides?
Mr. Smith: Yes, and you have the PowerPoint presentation. I will leave it with you.
Senator Day: That would be very helpful.
Professor Innes I want to be clear about the slide that shows the northern hemisphere tree rings. Do the tree rings indicate that the temperature at the present time is roughly similar to the temperature 1000 years ago?
Mr. Innes: The graph shows tree growth rather than temperature.
Senator Day: Is that the same as Professor Smith's tree growth?
Mr. Innes: There are biological limits to the extent to which trees will respond. They become water limited or they become nutrient limited.
Senator Day: So in this slide you were not trying to show us what the temperature was but rather the tree growth?
Mr. Innes: Yes.
Senator Day: That is helpful because otherwise I would have left with a different conclusion.
Senator Tkachuk: What does the tree growth mean and how does it relate to temperature?
Mr. Innes: We have been able to relate tree growth to temperature because in the majority of cases trees in the northern part of the northern hemisphere are limited by temperature.
As we move south into places like southwest U.S.A., they become much more moisture limited. Professor Smith can probably give you even better information on that subject.
Mr. Smith: We match contemporary temperature records to the ring-width growth over let us say 100 years. We can see what the response has been and then hindcast over the length of the tree-ring record, which may be 900 years. We look at the contemporary response to temperature and then use that information to move backwards. We take the ring-width growth and assume that the same behaviour occurred in the past. This method allows us to arrive at a verifiable temperature record.
Senator Day: Is the current temperature rise similar to what took place 1,000 years ago?
Mr. Innes: There was a very definite temperature rise around about 1,000 years ago. That temperature rise enabled the Vikings to establish settlements in Canada. We are seeing a similar temperature rise today. It appears to be longer and greater than that temperature rise at the beginning of the Medieval Optimum.
Senator Day: Over the past 100 years the temperature in the northwest has risen by 0.6 degrees to 1.7 degrees Celsius.
How do we jump to the prediction that over the next 50 years the temperature is likely to continue to increase? How do we know that it is going to increase even more than it has in the last hundred years? Please lead us through that scientific jump.
Mr. Innes: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has all of the information on the predictions.
All of the seven general circulation models that have been developed worldwide predict temperature changes over time. Most of them are running to 100 years and are based on different scenarios of development. For example, some are greener than others. Four main scenarios have been adopted and each organization makes its predictions based on those scenarios.
On slide 3 in my evidence you will see that the temperature series for Fort St. James has a wobble in it. The wobble indicates that temperatures went up, down, and then up again. We believe the wobble reflects the superimposition of natural changes on anthropogenically-induced changes. Until quite recently our models have been unable to reproduce those changes.
Senator Carney: What does that mean?
Mr. Innes: ``Anthropogenically induced'' means induced by people. The models that we have now can successfully reproduce that fluctuation because they are able to incorporate the natural variation.
The IPCC, which represents a consensus of scientists from around the world, is reasonably certain that the temperature predictions for the future are correct. However, I should say there is a range in those predictions.
We sometimes have difficulty in applying that range to the local situation. The method called ``downscaling'' can be very difficult to apply and can make it difficult to say what is going to happen in Prince George or Vancouver Island in 100 years' time.
Senator Day: The more local you try to get with your modeling and prediction, the more difficult and inaccurate it becomes?
Mr. Innes: Yes.
Mr. Smith: We must remember that the past has the ability to tell us about the present. Over the last five years I have been at 50 glacier fronts in British Columbia. Forests that were covered up 4,000 years ago are now exposed at the front of those glaciers. The ice has retreated to the point where it was 4,000 years ago. In between then and now there have been other ice-front oscillations. What we are seeing now is something that simply has not happened within the Holocene period, the last 10,000 years. This is a significant event. However, 4,000 years ago there was a similar ice advance.
Senator Day: In your slide entitled ``Risks of Climate Change'' one of your items is loss of wood volume. The next slide shows an increase in boreal forest productivity. Are you trying to keep your options open? What do those slides tell us?
Mr. Innes: The key factor is where you are geographically. We expect to see a loss of productivity in southern British Columbia. In a temperature-limited area such as the northeast plains of British Columbia, we expect to see an increase in growth rates. It depends on whether the forests are limited by temperature or by moisture.
Mr. Smith: My final three diagrams show the loss in productivity. They show a decline in radial growth.
Senator Day: Are you referring to Vancouver Island?
Mr. Smith: Yes.
Senator Day: Are we at the stage in terms of science and predictability to suggest to the forest industry what they should be planting?
Mr. Innes: Yes, I believe that we are.
The Chairman: It seems that you are not sure about the hemlock.
Mr. Innes: No, we are not sure what to do about the hemlock. Our advice is to plant a mixture of provenances, a mixture of genetic stock, and to move away from using a single source of planted seed. We believe it is necessary to keep our options open.
The practising forester has to decide what to plant keeping in mind that today's climate might kill those trees. On the other hand, they could be killed by the climate in the future. We encourage the foresters to plant a range of different provenances of trees and different species.
Senator Day: The forest industry thinks from an annual point of view and deals with short-term quarterly reports. As a result we rely on governments and universities to help with the longer-term view.
Mr. Smith: It is unfair to represent the industry that way. On northern Vancouver Island they are planning for crop rotation cycles of 500 years. What they are not planning for is for the climate changes that are likely to occur. They assume erroneously that the same conditions will apply, but they recognize that they must have a long-term perspective.
Senator LaPierre: Professor Innes, you said that some levels of mortality are to be expected. Are we talking about the mortality of humans?
Mr. Innes: No, I am referring to trees.
Senator LaPierre: Oh, trees. What is happening to these bloody squirrels that are invading my roof and walls?
The Chairman: That is a good question.
Mr. Innes: I am afraid I cannot answer that. I do not know your particular situation, sir.
Senator LaPierre: Just tell me the squirrels will disappear, and I will save the trees.
Mr. Innes: If you had a gun, I think that would be the most effective way of getting rid of them.
The Chairman: Please explain the last series of slides that are concerned with the changes in behaviour of certain wildlife species.
Mr. Innes: Evidence from a recent study on the hibernation times of squirrels in northern Canadian latitudes shows that the squirrels are emerging from their winter dormant period earlier. The evidence points to a genetic change that has been induced by climate change.
Senator LaPierre: Well, they seem to be around my house all the time and they annoy my cat.
I sense an ``ostrich mentality'' and an anti-scientific feeling developing. Your credibility seems to be seriously affected.
How many people do not understand what all of this means? The federal government does not understand the subject and the provincial governments do not seem to give a damn.
Do you believe that this anti-scientific mentality will become a grave problem that we will have to address?
Mr. Innes: What you are suggesting could become a very grave problem indeed. I have not been made aware of any anti-scientific movement. I suppose that I am in an ivory tower. I have noticed that when we provide advice to industry it is generally not taken. Many of today's problems were problems that were predicted in the past, and actions were not taken.
Thirty years ago it was predicted that there was going to be trouble concerning the mountain pine beetle. The problem relating to that insect is not just the climate change but seral stage distribution, which is the age-class distribution of forests in central British Columbia. We have been suppressing fires for too long, and as a result, the forests have become older and have become more susceptible to beetle attack.
Senator LaPierre: And nothing was done?
Mr. Innes: We still suppress fires.
Mr. Innes: While the credibility of scientists is being questioned there is an issue regarding the advice of the forest scientists.
British Columbia is experiencing a decline in the enrolment in our forestry programs; three years ago we had 120 students in the fourth year program, this year we have 40 and next year we will have 20. The future of the program itself is being threatened. This trend is occurring at the University of New Brunswick and elsewhere. There is a loss of confidence in the ability of foresters and forest scientists to solve environmental problems.
Senator LaPierre: Professor Smith, it has been suggested that we create chairs across the country that will devote themselves to the effects of climate warming on agriculture, forestry and rural communities. It has been recommended that the chairs have a component of outreach and a communication plan. We must eliminate words and phrases that Professor Innes used a moment ago.
It has been recommended to us that an entire body of research and outreach must be developed, and paid for by the federal government through the Kyoto Protocol guidelines. In this way it will not interfere with the provincial structures of powers.
It seems to me that a research project financed by the federal government will be able to take the long-term view of the situation. Do you agree that the federal government should assume the responsibility of that research and outreach?
Mr. Smith: Yes. However, some of the research chairs have already been created and what they are lacking is the outreach component.
The Chairman: Are you referring to C-CIARN?
Senator Carney: Professor Innes, today's forester does not know what to plant because he does not know whether today's trees will be killed by the climate change. I think we should clarify that there is a difference between the natural rotation age of a forest and the commercial rotation of the forest. There is a significant difference between the natural rotation of 500 years and the commercial rotation of 90 years.
You have explained that you can change the genetic stock and you can mix the species. What species do you suggest that they plant and what is the correct mix of species?
Mr. Innes: They are very clear regulations as to what foresters should or should not plant laid down in the still extant Forest Practices Code. However, the code will change within the next few years under the Forest and Range Practices Act, which has moved to a results-based code. We are likely to see changes in the requirements for reforestation with particular species or particular species mixes, and it very much depends on what sort of silviculture prescription is agreed upon.
One of the huge difficulties under the current tenure system is that foresters are rewarded for planting species that will grow back to free-to-grow status, in other words, round about three to four metres, as quickly as possible, and after that responsibility reverts back to the province. The industry no longer has a responsibility for that particular area of forest unless it is one of the area-based tenures.
Senator Carney: That is of crucial importance right now when the B.C. government is changing its forest policy to suit the Americans. We must be clear that there has to be a connection between what they are doing for the market and what they are doing for the future of the forest.
Mr. Innes: We are trying to impress that upon them, and we are working together over the development of the new guidelines that will accompany the results based code.
Senator Carney: Is one of the reasons that we are not using fires or that fires are not being allowed to carry out their traditional natural role because we have cattle on the rangelands? What is your solution to that problem?
Mr. Innes: The use of fire would improve the quality of the forage on the rangelands. The best parallel is in the United States where fire has been reintroduced down much of the Western Cordillera. They see the lack of fire as a forest health issue and describe forests that have had fire suppression as unhealthy forests. There is a very large program now involved in reintroducing fire into those forests.
Senator Carney: You said that temperature changes in the next rotation period to 2050 could be as much as 20 degrees. That is what you said in your presentation.
Mr. Innes: Yes.
Senator Carney: People from the Arctic have written to me telling me that they are experiencing extended summers and that they have been occurring for the last 20 to 30 years.
What would a temperature increase of 20 degrees mean? Would it mean that the slow growth forests would increase their productivity, or would it mean that all that muskeg in the Mackenzie would turn into tropical plantations?
Mr. Innes: I do not have an answer to that based on scientific knowledge. My speculation is that we would see a massive reduction in the amount of permafrost and that would result in ground instability. In many cases it would result in major changes to the hydrology or the water relations on the surfaces. We would see changes in the distribution of forests and animals in response to those changes. We would see changes in the length of the growing season that could have all sorts of implications for the introduction of exotic species. We would likely see less sea ice during winter in the far north and certainly much shorter lengths of time when lakes were frozen. That would have major implications for transport.
The figure that I referred to was presented at a conference in Prince George. I cannot give you the exact reference, but I am sure that I can find it.
The Chairman: That information is in our records.
Senator Carney: For clarification would you read into the record the interpretation of those three slides on the mountain hemlock, the yellow cedar and the coastal hemlock? It is difficult for us to understand the graphs.
How will the change in species affect the communities and the forest managers when the coastal hemlock is replaced by montane hemlock? I can understand this species change being important to a scientist, but what does it have to do with the communities and forest management?
Mr. Smith: The first graph shows the overall decline in the growth rate and the annual growth rate of those three species at high elevations. When we refer to high elevations we a referring to species that grow at a 1000 metres or more. All of those species will become less productive over time.
Western hemlock can grow to sea level in many areas. However, the western hemlock growing at high elevation is stressed by temperature and moisture deficits.
Productivity at high elevation in the coastal mountains and most of the coastal mountains regions is affected by the snowpack. The snowpack plays an incredibly important role because it delays the melting and the soil moisture additions until later in the season. This is particularly true on Vancouver Island where a strong Mediterranean climate in the summer months can mean little or no rain for that period. A persistent snowpack that continues to add soil moisture through July provides a way for the tree to continue to produce, and the western hemlock takes advantage of that.
In all likelihood the snowpacks will cease to exist. Precipitation will fall as rain and it will shed very quickly.
Senator Carney: Ms. Harkin is there anything in your research that relates to this discussion?
Senator Tkachuk: I have a question for you, Ms Harkin.
Senator Carney: I will relinquish my question to my colleague from the Prairies. I want to point out to Senator LaPierre that on Saturna Island, where I live, there are no squirrels. Maybe some scientist can explain why there are no squirrels on the southernmost Gulf Island.
Senator Tkachuk: I am interested in that little blip in the warming period 1,000 years ago. Is this climate change a natural phenomenon, are we accelerating a natural phenomenon by our CO2 emissions, or are we creating the phenomenon by ourselves?
Mr. Innes: Climate changes naturally. We have had ice ages. When I first started as an academic, we were thinking that we were headed for the next ice age. That was 30 years ago. Today we know differently. The consensus of opinion is that the increase in temperatures that we have seen during the last 100 years is likely to have been induced by the activities of humans on the surface of this planet.
Senator Tkachuk: Are you saying that we have created this situation?
Mr. Innes: We are experiencing a natural warming trend. The little ice age ended approximately 250 years ago. During this century we have had natural warming, but we believe that there has been a human-induced warming superimposed on top of that of at least one-half a degree.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you want anything to add to that, Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith: The coastal B.C. glaciers persisted in advanced positions until this century and from about 1924 they have been racing backwards.
Senator Tkachuk: Ms. Harkin we have heard a lot about carbon sequestration. I always thought that forests were sinks, but we have been told that sometimes they are not. I am confused. I am not sure when a forest is a sink and when it is not. How do we measure them? How are carbon sinks created?
In Saskatchewan we had a discussion concerning the ownership of sinks. What is political climate concerning this argument?
Ms. Zoe Harkin, Graduate Student, University of British Columbia: At the moment the provincial government owns the rights to that carbon sequestration, but for any additional activities that might be undertaken under article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol, there is no legislation at this point. However, there is a proposal that the forestry companies could claim incremental activities, above those that are required.
Before GEMCo, which is the single biggest buyer of offsets in the world, buys anything they get all the stakeholders in a room, and anyone who argues that they have right to the forest offsets all say their piece. The outcome, in the absence of legislation is decided on a contract-by-contract basis.
You asked when are forests are considered sinks and when they are considered sources. It is important to distinguish between mature and old growth forests. If an old growth forest is harvested there is a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere, and so it becomes a source. If a younger forest replaces the forest, the younger forest takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and it becomes a sink. If you replace a young forest with an old forest, then there is a net release of CO2 into the atmosphere that cannot be made up for 200 or 300 years.
Senator Tkachuk: If you grow a forest where there were no trees before, does that become a net gain or a net loss? Help me out here.
Senator Day: It is just net.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you understand my question?
Ms. Harkin: The Kyoto Protocol says that if you are planting a forest where one did not exist you are afforesting or reforesting and it becomes a net sink. The new forest is taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, and you can claim offsets for that reason.
By the definition of forests, Kyoto says that if you harvest a forest and then immediately replace it that does not constitute deforestation. It is not a Kyoto forest unless you are trying to claim offsets under article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol as additional activities, in which case it does become a Kyoto forest, and you have to account for that change in carbon as a net loss in carbon, because it is seen as a source.
Senator Tkachuk: How do people expect to keep track of all of this?
Ms. Harkin: Forest inventory is taken every five years in order to assess the amount of volume in the forest. Once that volume has been established certain equations are applied that calculate the amount of carbon. A forest owner is expected to conduct his own inventory and for the purposes of Kyoto that would be conducted every five years.
Senator Tkachuk: Have you written a paper on this subject Ms. Harkin?
Ms. Harkin: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Please inform the clerk where we may obtain a copy or copies of the papers.
Ms. Harkin: The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis has my papers on its website.
Senator Gustafson: Unless I misunderstand what you are saying, you scare the devil out of me. I do not usually use that language, but we have had continuous cropping for about 20 years. We have farmers who have been doing the right things, and we have farmers who have been doing the wrong things. The farmer who has been doing the wrong things is going to be rewarded, and the farmer that has been doing the right things is going to be penalized.
Senator Carney: That is the way confederation works.
Senator Gustafson: We have exempted the automobile industry in the east, yet the oil fields are going to be penalized. I live on an oil field. We have enough east-west problems, and I predict that this will be a subject that will be a terrible challenge for Canada if it is not handled in fairness.
I am a Saskatchewan farmer. We have less than one million people in our province. We have 40 some per cent of the arable land, yet we are seen as the biggest losers in Canada. Why? The answer is because we do not have a large population. We must arrive at a fair legislation that takes care of the small as well as the large populations. It bothers me that we are moving into something and that other countries are not going along with, and that relates to the Crow debate. You know we gave up the Crow.
Senator Carney: Please, let us not discuss the Crow debate.
Senator Gustafson: We gave up the Crow and it cost the farmers a dollar a bushel. The other countries did not do it, and they are still subsidizing, and I predict it will go on for 20 years.
The Chairman: Ms. Harkin, do you want to reply?
Senator Tkachuk: Just blowing off a little CO2 here.
Senator Day: Now, there is a source of carbon for you.
The Chairman: Ms. Harkin, you have the last word on this issue.
Ms. Harkin: BP or Shell met the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol five years ahead of schedule and made money doing so.
Senator Day: That is the oil industry.
Ms. Harkin: Yes. There was a program in Saskatchewan called the Prairie Forest Cover Program. A one-time payment for a 10-year contract was given to the farmers for them to convert their pastures to permanent cover. The program was highly popular, and the number of people that applied outweighed the amount of funding that was available. There is a lot of potential for landholders in the Prairies to benefit from either planting trees or permanent pastures or switching to no-till agriculture.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Senator Hubley: Mr. Innes, in your conclusions you said:
Government regulations currently hinder some adaptation responses.
Please elaborate on that statement. Are there any recommendations that you can make to assist government in establishing the adaptation responses?
In your last recommendation you said:
Research has not been able to focus on some of the important questions.
Please give us some examples of those important questions. I am interested in the high elevation weather forecasting and how you feel that is going to be important to the future of weather forecasting.
Mr. Innes: Forestry is the jurisdiction of the provinces rather than the federal government. The reason that regulations currently hinder some adaptation responses is that there are regulations on, for example, seed transfer.
You must plant seed from within a certain area in a particular point. If I plant near Prince George the seed must originate from near Prince George. It cannot originate from much further south. There are regulations on that, and they are quite strict. The regulations have been relaxed a little in recognition of the climate change issue, but I believe they need to be relaxed even further.
The tenure system hinders individual companies from exploring the various different options that they have, and from taking a longer-term approach to forestry.
We are waiting for the details of the new act that is going to bring about more changes. The provincial government is introducing new forest legislation. We are in a period of fairly rapid change, in fact, some journalists have described it as being the biggest change in forestry policy on record in B.C.
Whether or not they will be able to introduce as many changes as possible to enable adaptation towards future climate I think is uncertain. I am not convinced that the people who are designing these policies are aware of many of the climate change issues. I will be working very hard to make them aware over the next few months, but there is only a certain extent to which a university academic can influence government policy.
Senator Tkachuk: That is our job.
Mr. Innes: You asked about the research issues. Ms. Harkin is the only person in our faculty, which is one of the biggest faculties of forestry in the world, who is working on climate change. We have 280 graduate students and 60 faculty members and only one person working on climate change.
The Chairman: That is shocking.
Senator LaPierre: That is unbelievable.
Senator Day: Is that because the forestry people do not get into that field of study?
Mr. Innes: No, I think there are several issues involved, many of them surrounding funding and obtaining the funding either from provincial or federal sources. As I indicated before, the provincial funding mechanisms are oriented towards short-term research, not towards long-term research, not towards the employment, for example, of graduate students.
Senator Day: Ms Harkin has an undergraduate degree in forestry?
Ms. Harkin: I have a bachelor's degree in forest science and a master's degree in forest science.
The Chairman: Senator Hubley, have your questions been answered to your satisfaction?
Senator Hubley: The questions regarding research are very important because our recommendations might be able to identify some of the holes in the system.
Mr. Innes: In terms of some of the research gaps, we need to be looking more carefully at how forests will develop in specific areas of Canada and British Columbia is probably the most complex place to be working in right now. With all due respect, the Prairies do not have the mountain influence on the weather systems that make the downscaling of the global climate models much more difficult.
We have absolutely no idea whether a whole ecosystem is going to move as a unit, which we suspect they will not, or whether individual species of trees will move, and how that will affect the future ecosystem composition. We have the tools to do that to a certain extent, but it is simply not being done at the moment. That is one example. I think there are many more.
We have been doing a lot of research on mountain pine beetle, but we have done much less on a number of other insects. There are certain fungi and diseases that we need to study.
We do not really understand the water relations of trees and how trees will respond to changed water relations. We need to answer many questions on how forests are going to respond to climate change.
We are doing very little, if anything, on the socio-economic impacts of climate change. There have been some studies for the province as a whole, but not on forest-dependent communities.
The Chairman: The effects of climate warming on agriculture, forestry and rural communities makes up the third part of our study. We have not heard much evidence because there has been little research done on the subject.
Mr. Innes: That is correct.
Senator Tkachuk: I believe the only person who is conducting research on the effects on rural communities is from Saskatchewan.
The Chairman: Yes, that is correct. I would like to ask a question.
Senator Carney: Sorry, Senator Hubley has an outstanding question regarding the weather stations.
Mr. Innes: Before I moved to British Columbia I worked in Switzerland where we had a weather station at 4,000 metres altitude that provided a huge amount of information on the climate at very high altitudes. There are other weather stations located up between 1,500 and 2,000 metres altitude that enable much better forecasting of climate and weather at high altitudes. That sort of network is simply not available in Western Canada. Perhaps Dr. Smith would like to elaborate on that subject.
Mr. Smith: The only thing I would add is the obvious relevance to the snow avalanche events that have been occurring in British Columbia. It is difficult to predict an avalanche when information on the weather and snowfall is not being gathered.
Senator Tkachuk: How many weather stations would it take to gather that type of information?
Mr. Innes: The number would depend on the objectives.
Senator Tkachuk: Suppose the objectives were to study climate and temperature in relation to avalanches.
Mr. Innes: Then there would need to be a concentration of weather stations in the recreational areas. The Swiss system is very closely related to an avalanche warning system. The institute that I worked at was the Federal Institute of Forest, Snow and Avalanche Research, and we were responsible for many of the climate stations. It will be difficult to have the same network that the Swiss have; their country is roughly the size of the Fraser Valley, and has a population of 7 million. Canada is huge by comparison. From a practical point of view, it is not possible to establish weather stations throughout the province, but they may be established in high tourism areas.
The Chairman: My question concerns controlled burns. If you had 5,000 acres of prime forest, what steps could be taken to make sure the whole thing did not burn if there were a lightning strike?
I ask about controlled burns, because they have and use them in the United States, and we were told that the only place where there are controlled burns anywhere in Canada is in some national parks. Why is that?
Do you believe that foresters should have the right to have controlled burns?
Please tell us about the various silviculture techniques such as the use of roads, controlled cutting, zagged cutting of certain acreage and so on that are employed as ways of trying to control the forest fires once they begin.
Mr. Innes: That is quite a challenge. In terms of designing forested landscapes, there is a move, and I believe it originated in Ontario, to develop fire-smart landscapes. Fire-smart landscapes are grown in such a way that the pattern of the trees creates a natural firebreak that makes them resistant to large-scale fires. I do not know if that policy has been implemented in British Columbia. It may be, it may not be. I am afraid I simply do not know the answer.
The Chairman: Do you recommend that we study this subject further?
Mr. Innes: Yes. Controlled burns have been done in Banff National Park where they are used to try and maintain forest health. However, there are several issues concerning controlled burns.
There is the issue of air quality when controlled burns are performed. If you burn a forest you create smoke and the smoke is very toxic and dangerous. The smoke contains a lot of carcinogens, so people generally try and avoid burning. Slash burning occurs where piles of debris from logging exercises are burned.
The Americans have developed very sophisticated software to manage the smoke from a controlled burn. They can predict what the weather is going to do in a particular valley system, and they try and work out what is going to happen to the smoke. They try to avoid the smoke passing over residential areas.
When you perform a controlled burn you release carbon. We have to ask whether we want to release carbon into the atmosphere at this time.
As far as I am aware, controlled fire is not used in B.C. except in the national parks. I do not think it is used in provincial parks either, but I am not 100 per cent certain on that.
As to the silviculture techniques, I am afraid I cannot answer that question. I do not know the answer.
The Chairman: The next presenter is Sue Clark from the North Central Municipal Association. Please proceed.
Ms. Sue Clark, Executive Coordinator, North Central Municipal Association: I am the executive coordinator/staff person for the North Central Municipal Association. My president, Ted Armstrong, is unable to attend today, and he sends his apologies.
Our association covers a vast and varied land of geography, population and economic drivers. The NCMA focuses on issues of common interest to the people across north central British Columbia. We use caution when looking at local issues, as often the solution to one community's problem can cause concerns for another.
Many of our member communities are small and rural with populations of less than 5,000 residents. Small rural communities have limited human and financial resources and as a result long-term planning for critical issues such as climate change are often left unaddressed.
Various studies and reports have been released that point to the considerable economic contribution that rural areas bring to urban British Columbians. I have taken the liberty of distributing one such report to you.
Senior levels of government must take adequate steps to ensure the health of rural areas and ultimately the long- term sustainability of Canadian society.
This graph illustrates how climate change is already affecting northern British Columbia, with warming trends exceeding the global average by approximately one-half a degree.
The purpose of our presentation is to provide anecdotal information on the effects of changing weather patterns on our member communities. We will leave the technical reasons behind this phenomenon to the scientists and researchers. We intend only to present some examples of experiences and observations of those involved in the forestry and agriculture industries of northern British Columbia.
Most of our communities are single resource economies, and please bear in mind that the weather phenomena we are addressing does not just affect the forest and agriculture sectors. Our communities are resource based and any natural resource based industry will face challenges similar to ours.
There is a lot of emphasis placed on the need for these communities to diversify their economies. It is important to note that tourism, hunting, fishing, winter sports, and aboriginal culture are all affected by changing weather patterns.
One of the most significant impacts of climate change on forestry is the reduced access to timber in northern climes. Areas of permafrost have marketable timber that can only be utilized by frozen winter roads. Industry also makes use of frozen roads, lakes, and rivers to access timber. Spring break-up is now coming earlier and lasting longer reducing the window of opportunity to access the working forest.
This trend leads to a transient work force and threatens the health of rural communities. Most communities are funded on a per capita basis, and when the work force does not live in the community in which it works, property values decrease, taxes are not collected, and schools and medical facilities suffer because of inadequate funding.
I am sure you have heard about our pine beetle problem, and future forestry plantings may include different species now not common to the area. This is not a negative impact, but solid research must support future reforestation efforts.
We have seen the havoc that insect infestation can cause. The beetle kill areas of northern B.C are a direct consequence of warmer northern winters. Two weeks of 30 below zero weather is required to stop the spread of the pine beetle, and we have not seen those temperatures for nearly 10 years.
It is predicted that we will experience longer and more intense fire seasons in future years. Mature forests and those already suffering from insect infestation are now more susceptible to fire, and the threat is multiplied by reduced snowpacks and precipitation.
These factors bring significant social, economic and ecological costs to northern communities. Often marketable timber is lost to fire. There is the cost of fighting the fire and a direct threat to wildlife. The communities themselves, First Nations lands, and tourism are also affected.
There are both positive and negative impacts of climate change on the agriculture industry. While the growing season may lengthen, farmers in the region are not finding the same heat intensity in the summer months. The Prince George farmer can no longer grow corn because of less sun and more rain. Another farmer tells us that he is able to plant crops he had previously been unable to grow due to the short growing season. In the Dunster area one farmer is now growing greens all year round by utilizing a cold frame inside a greenhouse. That procedure would have been unheard of not long ago.
While anecdotal evidence tells us that the agriculture industry is coping well with changing weather patterns in our area farmers will be challenged to find new crops and new systems of planting and harvesting to overcome the challenges that lie ahead.
The Chairman: We know where Prince George is, but some of us do not know where Dunster is.
Ms. Clark: Dunster is in the Bulkley Valley halfway between Prince George and the coast.
We are experiencing more rain and less snow in northern British Columbia. While this phenomenon has caused spring flooding, we are experiencing record low river levels later in the year. Many farmers refer to the ``severe weather patterns'' of extremes in wet and dry that they have experienced in recent years.
Melting glaciers are causing an increased amount of spring run-off. If glaciers continue to recede, we will see a decline in the amount of available water.
One Prince George farmer that we interviewed used to water outside every second week; last year she needed to water only once during the whole year. In the Bulkley Valley another farmer reported that although there was a lot of rain last summer he still had to irrigate the soil because the soil did not maintain its moisture level.
If these patterns continue, multiple users will be competing for the same resource, and there is a real danger that water quality will be compromised. An adequate supply of good quality water is essential for livestock, irrigation, fish habitat, human consumption, and other industries. It is crucial that all stakeholders work together to ensure long-term quality water supply across the country.
Rural communities have limited resources and are going to need assistance with long-term planning concerning the changing weather. Certain areas will require transitional funding and adjusting programs to ensure that their economic base and quality of life is maintained. They will have to deal with the threat of fire and air quality hampered by dust and particulate matter. Wildlife patterns may change which in turn will affect hunting, fishing, and traditional land uses. Water systems will have to be updated to ensure a safe and adequate water supply.
Publicly funded research must continue and increase. It seems appropriate that research being done by industry and other stakeholder groups becomes easily accessible to practitioners. Research must be conducted both locally and regionally. The effects of changing weather patterns are different throughout northern British Columbia; throughout Canada the differences are extreme, and we cannot make one-size-fits-all assumptions.
Climate data-collection stations and sites must be funded and maintained. Accurate data is crucial in research and in public policy decision-making.
Resources must be dedicated to research and implementation programs. Public policy makers must build flexibility into land use plans and include community stakeholders in this process. There must be cooperation between all levels of government.
Federal and provincial parks must have a management plan to deal with drought, insect infestation, disease and other natural disasters. Policies regarding resource extraction must be reviewed to ensure that they are consistent with the realities of the land. An example of this might be forest policy regarding salvage wood or the harvesting of small logs.
These last two slides show the glacier just outside of Smithers. You can see the comparison between the glacier that existed seven years ago and how it looks today. The photographs show a phenomenal comparison.
Thank you for the opportunity to address you here today.
Senator LaPierre: Where do you live?
Ms. Clark: I live in Prince George.
Senator LaPierre: Prince George is a community of how many thousand people?
Ms. Clark: There is a population of 80,000 in Prince George.
Senator LaPierre: Is it a large urban centre?
Ms. Clark: Yes. I am the coordinator for all of the communities from 100 Mile House and north to the Yukon border.
Senator LaPierre: And do you travel the area that you are responsible for?
Ms. Clark: Yes.
Senator LaPierre: Are people discouraged?
Ms. Clark: Yes, they are discouraged, but they do not link any of these changes to climate change.
Senator LaPierre: What do they link the changes to?
Ms. Clark: In our area we are involved in crisis management and we worry about the forests because of softwood lumber and the changes to forest tenure reform. As I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, our communities have limited human resources, so we tend to manage by knee-jerk reaction. We do not have time to look at what might happen in the future.
Senator LaPierre: How can you plan the lives of your children or do you expect them to leave the north and move to Vancouver and Victoria?
Ms. Clark: That is one of the reasons why I am here today. My research has taught me that climate change is not important to the residents in my area. People refuse to believe that the severe weather patterns are due to climate change. They tend to believe that it is a natural phenomenon.
The Chairman: That is what we heard from the people from Alberta.
Ms. Clark: My constituent's feel that they have enough problems without having to deal with the future consequences of climate change. When I inquired about water quality one resident was surprised that I made the connection to climate change.
Senator LaPierre: It seems to me that the people must galvanize and become aware of their environment. They must bring passion and emotion to this subject. People cause climate change and they must become aware of this fact.
How can we assist you to bring this awareness to your constituents?
Ms. Clark: We have to talk about what has happened in this community and link those changes to climate change. The people are not making the connection right now. They feel that what occurs in the city has nothing to do with them.
Senator Tkachuk: And they are right in a way.
Senator LaPierre: In a way they are right, yes, but that means that research must be conducted concerning communication and social trends.
Ms. Clark: COFI offers a forest education program to teach youngsters the importance of forest industry to our communities. We need to offer similar courses on climate change. We must teach the youngsters. We need to draw the connection between the actual phenomena and how it relates to climate change.
Senator LaPierre: Do you think that your children will remain in the area or just say the hell with it and move on?
Ms. Clark: I am from Victoria and my son and grandchildren live there. They would love to stay. We are fortunate that my son works for a very modern mill, so I am cautiously optimistic that he will stay in Victoria. However, many of the communities are struggling and many people have moved out.
Senator Carney: Your research is very good.
The depopulation of the hinterland is one of the problems in British Columbia. I believe that 16 census districts have lost population. The last census show that the population has moved to three centres: the Okanagan Valley, the Lower Mainland, and the lower Victoria area. Climate change is going to make the depopulation crisis worse.
Transportation cuts, school, hospital and mill closures all result in the pensioners and young families moving out of the area. Once the economic base is damaged the tourism industry is also affected. This results in a surge of population moving into the urban areas.
Do you see the result of climate change worsening the situation in the urban centres? Do you see pollution as a problem?
Ms. Clark: Yes. However I am hopeful that we will get on with making the necessary changes to make these communities healthy again. The urban centres must be made aware that there is a value to restoring the health of the rural communities. The urban centres need to realize that the rural communities provide economic growth and must support them in keeping their small communities attractive to their residents. Rural residents must have access to health care and schools. While fundamental services lessen it becomes increasingly difficult to attract educated professionals into the communities. Doctors, teachers, forest industry experts need to know that they can move into these areas and at the same time be assured that schools and hospitals are available for their children's well being.
Senator Carney: You work in an area that covers nearly one-half of the province. How do you communicate this material to your constituents?
What can we recommend to assist you in this endeavour? How can we help you to get this information out to you constituents?
We understand that these communities have to learn to adapt to some of the realities of climate change. What communication tools do you use and what do you need?
Ms. Clark: Associations such as ours have the tools to do the work. We are a grass roots organization that works in the communities. We need to encourage both the municipal and local governments to participate. Institutions such as the University of Northern British Columbia and the associated colleges do a lot of work out in the communities.
Senator Carney: What about the Internet? On my island we get a lot of information on the Internet.
Ms. Clark: I am starting to use the Internet more and more, and we do have a website, which is quite well used by our members. However, we do not have the telecommunications infrastructure that we need, and as a result we use the broadband.
Senator Carney: Please tell us what you need in terms of broadband.
Ms. Clark: Broadband in essential to each community. The federal and provincial governments are pulling back services. The small communities must be able to communicate in a two-way information flow.
The Chairman: How poorly or well serviced are you in terms of telecommunications?
Ms. Clark: It depends where you are. In Burns Lake residents have to deal with a party line, while I have access to Internet, but only by phone line. There are a number of our communities that are waiting for high-speed Internet access, but the telecommunications companies do not seem to have the same incentive that they did when they had a monopoly.
Senator Carney: What can we do to get better telecommunications and better Internet service to communities?
The Chairman: Let me answer that question. This committee just recently completed a major study called Farmers at Risk, and we made several recommendations to the Government of Canada. Recommendation No. 18 reads as follows:
The government partners with private companies to ensure that 100 per cent of Canadians have access to high- speed Internet services by following a plan like Supernet in Alberta and connecting all public institutions.
These recommendations went to the various government departments from the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Ms. Clark: That is wonderful to hear.
Senator Carney: I would like to congratulate you for the work that you do as a one-person band for your association.
Ms. Clark: Thank you.
Senator Carney: I know you do an awful lot of work, and if you need a letter of recommendation from us to increase your staff, I will personally send one to you.
Senator Day: What she needs is more money.
Senator Gustafson: We are in lumber country, and whether it is lumber, oil and gas, agriculture, livestock, mining, it all comes from rural Canada.
I have said for a long time that it is high time that we left some of the wealth that comes from rural Canada in rural Canada. How do we get that to happen? This committee has been hammering at this issue for the last 10 years.
Ms. Clark: I do not know. I have given you a copy of David Baxter's report. There is another very good report that came out of the B.C. Progress Board called the Area Code 250 report, and one of the recommendations was that a fund be established and used to support northern communities. I would be glad to get you a copy of that report.
Senator Carney: Yes. I am glad you have brought attention to the David Baxter report. The report indicates that 70 per cent of the export market is produced in the 250 area code district. That means that the majority of our domestic product is produced there but not returned to that area.
Senator Gustafson: It seems that it becomes the natural direction of governments to serve the urban areas because that is where the votes are.
Ms. Clark: The federal government is threatening to lose another seat in the north. We would like to ask for your support in keeping our boundaries they way that they are.
Senator Carney: Depopulation has been so great that in the next distribution of seats, Penticton will be included in the West Kootenays. That is impossible. The Okanagan is a whole separate valley system and is a completely separate economic area than the West Kootenays. However, that is going to happen as a result of depopulation.
The cities themselves are going to experience changes in the electoral districts that are going to deny people the right to have representation by their MPs. In my old riding of Vancouver Centre Vancouver East is going to be extended into the Kitsilano area of Vancouver Centre. That extension means that people are denied the right to be represented on their issues.
Perhaps we should have the commissioner come and talk to the committee regarding the electoral impacts of the redistribution of population in these areas. Many Canadians are being deprived of their opportunity to be democratically represented.
How can you possibly lose an electoral district? You have the largest electoral district in Canada.
Ms. Clark: You lose an electoral district when there is a reduction in the population.
Senator Carney: I understand that, but how can you get anything bigger than the district you already have in Prince George?
Ms. Clark: I am not really up on this, but I know that they are really concerned about where Prince Rupert comes all the way down past Bella Bella and then does a bit of a scoop and includes the Williams Lake, and 100 Mile House. There is no way in the world that a federal representative can cover that territory.
The Chairman: Ms. Clark, you have just had the last word. We will adjourn until 1:30. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you sincerely for a most excellent report. It has been of great help to us particularly in relation to the rural communities aspect of our study.
The committee adjourned.