HALIFAX, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2000
STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
Mr. James DeWolfe
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back from a busy summer. All the members were, unfortunately, not on vacation but they were working very diligently for their constituents all summer, I am sure. This is the first session of the Resources Committee for this fall season.
I am very pleased to welcome with us, in the centre stage, Sandy MacGregor. Sandy is the Manager of Timberlands for Kimberly-Clark Nova Scotia and the Canadian timberlands. To my left, and his right, is Steve Rutledge. Steve is the Forestry Manager for Kimberly-Clark. To my right is Jack Kyte, who is Public Affairs Manager for Kimberly-Clark. We are certainly delighted to have you three gentlemen here today. I know Sandy and I have discussed the possibility of coming here for some time. Certainly the forest industry is a very important aspect of this committee and a very important industry in our province.
Without further ado, I will turn things over to Jack Kyte who will do the introduction. Following that will be a presentation by Sandy MacGregor and certainly if there are any questions that Steve may be more familiar with to answer, Steve, please just jump in. We will have a fairly informal meeting. I must mention, though, please talk into the microphones because it is being recorded. Paul gets awfully cross in there if we don't do that. He jumps up and down, taps on the window and so on and we don't want to ruffle his feathers. (Laughter) No, that is not true. Paul is a very nice, quiet guy. So without further ado, Jack.
MR. JACK KYTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, good morning. I would like to say how much we appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning. As you know, our company is responsible for the management of about 1 million acres of land that we own in this province. We also manage roughly 200,000 acres of Crown land under long-term lease. Having said that, our purpose really this morning is to provide you with our perspective on current forest-related issues. I don't really want to say very much more than that to introduce things other than to say that Sandy, who is our Timberlands Manager, will be the primary spokesman this morning. He has a brief presentation to make, including a short video and some overheads, after which we would be more than happy to answer any questions you might have. So with that, I will turn it over to Sandy.
MR. SANDY MACGREGOR: We are pleased to have this opportunity to share this story of our forest with you. These are truly exciting and challenging times in Nova Scotia's dynamic forest industry. The forest industry is one with a very rich history and it does have the potential for a growing future. Today's forest and forestry practices can be best perceived as being part of a continuum and it is an ever-evolving mix of trees and of business and of human values.
The forest industries - which includes pulp, paper, lumber, panels, Christmas trees - have a few things in common. First, these industries are part of a commodity industry and the reality is that these businesses must be low-cost producers of quality products or they are simply out of business.
Unfortunately, as you know, in commodity businesses, prices go up and prices go down and it is a cyclical thing. For instance, the pulp business, which we are part of, is having its first good year in five years, whereas the lumber business is really struggling now. They are having their first bad one in five years. That is the way commodity businesses work.
Another common element to each of these forest industry players is that they can ensure their future by reinvesting in plant, technology and people, but also in silviculture to sustain future wood supplies.
Finally, each of these industries depend on a resource which many not directly involved feel a genuine attachment. This is the abstract aspect - call it the third dimension - that provides perhaps the greatest challenge to the future of the forestry-based businesses in Nova Scotia.
To help describe Kimberly-Clark's forest-based business, we prepared, about a year ago, a video called Embracing the Challenge. We are going to show you a portion of it now. We are going to cut out the beginning which is kind of a history lesson.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sandy, while we are getting that set up, I believe everyone is here now, so I think we will just go around the table for the benefit of you three gentlemen. I think you have met almost everyone, but starting with Frank Chipman.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have Darlene Henry at the table this morning. Thank you, if you want to proceed.
[9:10 a.m. Video presentation commenced.]
[9:20 a.m. Verbal presentation resumed.]
MR. KYTE: If anyone would like to see the video in total they are more than welcome to have a copy of it. We didn't want to spend too much time on that this morning.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, does that end your presentation?
MR. KYTE: No, it does not. Sandy is going to say a few words now and we have some overheads to go with that. So we are just going to set the overhead up.
MR. MACGREGOR: We are going to get into a little bit of a history lesson here and the purpose for that is history is something that is on the record and it is part of the record. Understanding history is very important for a couple of reasons: we have to agree on what happened in the past and then we can talk about the future. The video made reference to the fact there were increasing volumes of timber over time and I am sure that is a statistic many would find difficult to believe.
I am going to start by talking about Nova Scotia's first natural resources survey, which was commissioned by Governor John Wentworth and conducted by Titus Smith in 1801 and 1802. Mr. Smith is referred to as the father of natural sciences in Nova Scotia and a pioneer in plant ecology in North America. I think they called him the Dutch Village philosopher or something to that extent; he lived here in Halifax.
Titus Smith did not do an estimate of the standing volume of timber, he didn't say how many tons, or how many cords, or how many thousand board feet were there, but he did travel throughout the province and kept notes. I have a copy of them here if anyone is interested. You can have them and you may make copies of them. He described the forests that he saw while on a trek going down to Yarmouth; he walked to Yarmouth and back one summer taking notes on the way down and the way back. Then he walked to Port Hawkesbury or Mulgrave and back to Halifax and then up to Cumberland another summer; it is very interesting reading.
What do you suppose the forests that he described looked like? In a word it was not the forest primeval that I and many would have thought existed at that time. In fact, he described vast areas of the forest as being burned over and significant areas of it having been blown down in hurricanes. For example, in 1795 there was a very severe hurricane that did a lot of damage between Halifax and Liverpool.
Now I am going to jump ahead 110 years to a survey conducted in 1912, this time by B.E. Fernow who was the Dean of Forestry at the University of Toronto. He did an inventory at this time and what he did was prepare numbers and maps. Now they didn't have aerial photographs in those times and it wasn't that sophisticated, but nevertheless they did manage to come up with maps for the province. You have a portion of it that shows the central part of the province there. I think if you look at your copies, we can point out the main things to notice there.
One hundred years before, Titus Smith talked about huge fires in Nova Scotia and those are the yellow areas that you see here, those are old fires, and the red dots are new fires. Here is Pictou County and it is about 700,000 acres and here is about a 0.5 million acre fire and it is just one of many. So, a second feature of the map shows the large acreage of farmland. Here is Pictou County . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Can I just interrupt for a minute? The problem is we are not getting this recorded, so can we start that part again, for the sake of recording, please?
MR. MACGREGOR: Okay, the first highlight of the inventory conducted in 1912 was that it did map the large acreage of fires that had continued obviously for the 100 years following Titus Smith's survey. On this map the older fires are showing up in yellow. The larger one is about 0.5 million acres in size - and you can kind of outline Pictou County if you would, Jack - and Pictou County is close to 700,000 acres. I just wanted to use Pictou County as an example to show the amount of farmland that was cleared at that time, which was typical along the northern half of Nova Scotia, and it shows up in red. There were about 300,000 acres cleared at that time; I am not sure how many acres are cleared now and actively farmed in Pictou County, but certainly, I doubt if there are 20,000 acres.
A third highlight is that it showed that practically all of the unburned forest that was there was in a category called severely culled. If you look at your map you will see a green x to show different categories of severely culled, which is a term meaning the forests were high-graded, they were cut through. They took out what they could sell which was the best, the largest and straightest and so on. So almost 100 years ago our forests were either completely cut over, burned, or cleared. I wanted to point out one area which is described as a virgin timber, that is it. So Nova Scotia has a long history.
I would also like to refer to Patterson's History of Pictou County. He highlighted in the 1870's that Pictou Shipyards were importing spruce because spruce had practically disappeared out of the county at that time.
Fernow also estimated the volume of softwood and hardwood timber and made recommendations. I will just read one line of one paragraph to point out something, " . . . this forest resource, which furnishes not less than four to five million dollars in value of product annually, is in danger of exhaustion within the next two decades." We are still hearing that type of comment today, of course; people have always been concerned with running out of timber.
The first detailed provincial forest inventory using aerial photography, in conjunction with field sampling, was completed in 1958 and it showed an increase in volume over the 1912 inventory. In 1996, forest inventory figures showed more wood than in 1958.
Fire control and reforestation of old fields might explain some of this, but since 1958 there have been two large pulp mills built and a lot of clear-cutting taking place that people have noticed and this has taken a lot of criticism. One would have thought that surely this practice would have led to a decline in forest standing timber, but it didn't. The question is, how can we explain that? The only thing I can say is let your mind wander back to Titus Smith's first survey where he found the forest wracked by fire and blow-down. Somehow these vast acreages that were essentially naturally clear-cut, if you will, regenerated by the millions of acres. Unlike these large fire-burned areas that had to regenerate from wind-blown seed, over huge areas, and if you remember the trek that Titus Smith took, it is difficult to imagine how large an area was actually burned, but roughly what it looks like on those maps there, it would appear to be 0.5 million acres in size, it was unusual. Somehow they did regenerate, but apparently there were pockets of trees throughout those big areas that had burned that the seed came from or it blew in and it grew up and we have a forest.
[9:30 a.m.]
What it is showing is a cut over, you can see the grey areas are the branches and debris and it shows the natural seedlings, these ones are primarily spruce, or it might be a balsam fir or two coming through there. What I wanted to point out is that on these clear-cuts typically what happens is that the regeneration, the young seedlings, are already established before the trees are cut. When you remove the trees at once in a clear-cut operation, while it looks like the end, it is really the beginning and, in fact, in 75 per cent of the cases we don't have to plant, they do regenerate naturally. It is because of our good climate that we have here. We get plenty of moisture and warmth. So we are very fortunate that way.
We have been harvesting 12,000 to 14,000 acres a year on the company's 1 million acres for the past 33 years. We now have a healthy young forest growing back.
Next slide, please, Jack. This particular stand of timber is one that is being commercially thinned. Now, this is much more aesthetically pleasing to the eye than the clear-cut. But I want you to know what you are looking at here. This particular area I walked over during my first year on the job as a young forester in 1968, it was a clear-cut then. I am going to show you a picture of the next slide - you might as well put it up there and we will come back to the other - it looked like that. I remember it only too well.
Okay, you can go back to the other one. That area was clear-cut in 1964, it is out in the Trafalgar area at Round Lake. About 20 years ago, we pre-commercially thinned it. That is, people went through with saws and they spaced it out like you would space out carrots in your garden. The trees grew very well. Things have happened in the meantime that have made it possible for us to go out and to thin this stand and to take out wood now that would otherwise fall naturally to the ground, and you can see some of the wood here.
Thanks to new technology, that little machine there is a very small logging machine, it costs about $400,000, and to put together an efficient operation you need two of those processors and a forwarder; in other words, about $1.4 million for one commercially-viable operation. We have our first one finally coming together this fall of that scale. We have been experimenting with it for the past couple of years. Now, those small logs go to sawmills, as you saw in the video, to make two-by-fours and small lumber out of it.
I am going to talk about some of the forestry harvesting practices that we have tried in my time in the past 30 years to get away from not bad forestry, but something that people don't want to look at. There are three large-scale operations that we have tried and we have tried them on the tens of thousands of acres, more perhaps than everybody else put together in this province.
We started out first doing strip cutting. Rather than clear-cutting large areas, we only had small strips cut out of the forest, about 5 to 10 acres in size. The trouble with this operation is that we would get terrible blow-down along the edges. Then we went into shelter-wood harvesting, where we selected small groups of trees. Again, this particular operation did work in some places but overall it didn't work very well. The other thing we tried was seed tree cutting, which was leaving scattered trees over cuts. In all cases, it has been fundamentally a failure. We have one slide here, just to kind of give you a picture, a mental image, maybe if you will. But the losses were just unacceptable.
I am going to go back and we will have a look at that thinned young stand with the machine in it again. We have had this operation on an experimental basis for two years and it appears that it can withstand the wind. Our trees, the spruce and the fir, which are our most important species, are shallow rooted, and you have all seen the picture that showed the trees flipped up, but these are young, healthy, vigorous and they have stood for a couple of years. We believe that with this operation, we finally have one that we can do and we are pretty excited about it. It is nice to be able to show people something they like to look at.
Although clear-cutting works and works well, from a forestry point of view, an economic point of view, it works well even from the wildlifes' point of view, if it is done properly, but people do not like to look at it and there is no amount of rhetoric to make them like it, unfortunately.
MRS. MURIEL BAILLIE: This is what you are doing now?
MR. MACGREGOR: We are just beginning this operation, and here is what I want you to remember. We have been harvesting now for 33 years, about 12,000 to 14,000 to 15,000 acres a year, and these young stands are just coming to an age class that we can do this in. It is not the old high-graded forest that we inherited. It is young and it is thrifty. This thinning operation, we can do them once, twice or even three times, but we don't know because with the technology we have it is possible that this can be expanded greatly. We see expanding it in the future. It is one operation that I was trying to get Mr. DeWolfe out to look at. Although these slides are the next best thing to being there, it is not like being there.
MRS. BAILLIE: But the small person can't do that? They wouldn't have the machinery to do that? Can you do it without the machinery?
MR. MACGREGOR: They could not do that, no. It takes a lot of capital and in order to have that cost-effective, those machines have to work around the clock at least five days a week. It is still very expensive.
MR. FRANK CHIPMAN: . . . thinning, but what is your term for it?
MR. MACGREGOR: We call it merchantable or commercial thinning. That stand had been gone through when it was as big around as the top of that microphone. At that time there were probably 10,000 to 20,000 stems per acre and they spaced it down to 1,000 and they are taking it down to probably 600.
Taking out about 30 per cent of the volume, and that volume, if we don't get a tremendous hurricane and blow it down, if we can hold those trees standing, will be back again within 15 years. So what we have done is essentially taken out trees that would have thinned naturally, fell to the ground, rotted. So all we are doing now is going in and taking the stems and leaving the tops.
The point is, we have just now gotten to the time that we have found something that is working for us, but don't expect to go out and see it everywhere because we can do it with those acreages moving into those young age classes.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Then eventually that will be a clear-cut again?
MR. MACGREGOR: Eventually it will be what you would call - and I wish we could call it something other than a clear-cut - the final harvest, which I think is the term that they use for it in Sweden, for example.
We, along with other large players in the industry - and we have been talking a lot about clear-cuts here but ourselves and all the other large players - for many years now have been following the Nova Scotia Forestry and Wildlife Guidelines which set a maximum size on the clear-cut, the leaving of corridors for wildlife and greenbelts for streams. In fact, for the past two years, our contractor and our staff, virtually do an audit of every site and sign off on every site as to whether it met all the standards or whether it did not.
It is not a game of trying to hang people; it is one of trying to encourage them to follow good practice and we see tremendous improvements. We expect the Nova Scotia Forestry and Wildlife Guidelines to become regulations for everybody this year, and we are pleased with that. Many times, people point to harvesting and logging practices and we get blamed for it. We are pleased that these regulations are coming along and everybody has to live with the same ones.
I am going to talk about plantations. About 25 per cent to 30 per cent of our area we do plant. We have a 22 year old pine plantation at Six Mile Brook, West Pictou, planted 10 years after I started to work for the company; excellent soil, excellent growth.
You can see the stumps there. That small logging gear went through there and took out about 30 per cent of the volume. Again, a very healthy thrifty stand. It is pine, not spruce, so we are not worrying about it blowing over. It has a deep tap root.
There have been 35 cords to the acre grown there in 22 years. I want you to compare that with what we have averaged from harvesting for the past 30-some years on all our natural old growth stands that stand 60, 70 years and older. We have averaged 26 cords. That is 35 cords.
There is tremendous potential on our better sites in Nova Scotia to grow wood. We just have tremendous potential. It has gone far beyond what we expected. That is not to say we have not had a lot of failures. We have made a lot of mistakes; there have been a lot of trials and errors, but we have learned and we are now getting, I would say, very good at growing plantations. The plantations, bear in mind, are 25 per cent to 30 per cent of our land.
MR. FRANK CHIPMAN: What about the red pine? What do you use red pine for, not pulpwood, wood fibre lumber?
MR. MACGREGOR: That particular pine thinning went out of there, it went to a saw mill and it went to IKEA's plant down in the Valley, if anybody knows about that one.
MR. CHIPMAN: Yes, right.
MR. MACGREGOR: Yes. That is the kind of wood that they like to have in their cabinets.
MR. CHIPMAN: Why are the stumps cut so high?
MR. MACGREGOR: That is a good question. They are too high.(Interruptions)
Where are we here? Okay. We have the final slide there, Jack, on the growth. This is, actually, something, I believe, that is on the Internet. It is a Natural Resources slide showing where we are and where we are going, or where we can go with timber volumes in softwood, in the future.
The green line says, if we do not invest in our silviculture practices, it is going to drop off. If we stay where we are it is going to, more or less, stay flat, in terms of an allowable cut, if you like. If we invest the amount of monies proposed under the new Act, we can show a significant increase out in the future. I feel quite confident that that is reality, based on the growth that we are seeing on our good sites. So I guess that is the end of our presentation. (Interruption)
MR. CHIPMAN: The red line yes. Under the new Act if there is about $15 million per year spent by the industry in growing timber, spacing trees, planting trees and so on, then we can see an increase in the merchantable volume out in time, on an annual basis. We, ourselves, are spending just shy of $3 million per year.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I think we had better move right along with the second portion of our meeting. Who would like to start it off? John MacDonnell.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Thank you for your presentation. You mentioned in your slide there, my understanding of the other slides that go along with that is that there is somewhere in the range of 2.5 million acres of operable forests, am I right? Do you gentlemen remember if that is close?
MR. MACGREGOR: Yes.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Which makes me think that if you guys have 1 million acres, you would have a large chunk of that. Also I know that number for that plan to get to 2070 is that there can be no more than, I think, 5.8 million cubic metres cut per year. But there is nothing in any of those regulations or anything in the Act that would indicate by the government that they intend to set a limit on what is cut.
I spoke to the researcher who developed those numbers because I think Sproule Lumber actually is expanding their mill if I understand it right. They were milling 35 million board feet and I heard they were going to 70 million. I asked the researcher if that was factored into the numbers; in other words if somebody is doubling their production, what did that do to the figures? The researcher said the figures don't hold. If they don't stay at the 5 million cubic metres limit then they don't hit their target. In your plans it sounds as though you don't have a limit. Do you recognize one by the province that you can't cut beyond?
MR. MACGREGOR: We only control what we do on our own 1 million acres and also in conjunction with the piece we do with the Crown. Basically, about every 10 years we do a new inventory. We try to keep our maps upgraded each year to a point anyway but every 10 years we do an inventory and take stock of where we are. Last year and this year we have essentially had a large number of people on the payroll doing a new inventory, upgrading our data and our maps. Over the next 12 months we will re-evaluate, based on where we are and look at if we can harvest more or if we should cut back. It is about an every 10 year picture, snapshot if you like.
Looking at the graph though, it shows, if everybody does their thing, then we can each year maybe go up a little bit, providing we don't get hit with a severe storm, or an insect epidemic, or a large fire, that sort of thing. If you look at what is going on in Montana and out West this year you can see how the best laid plans of mice and men . . .
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Mr. Chairman, two more questions right now and then I will pass. The sustainability fund which you referred to, I think mill owners have to either pay into the fund or have stewardship agreements, one or the other. I am just wondering in your case where you would send your logs to mills and bring back the discard and do a lot of your cutting or maybe all of your cutting on your own lands, I am wondering if you would have to pay into that fund if you are not buying from a private woodlot owner, is that the case so you wouldn't have to contribute to the sustainability fund?
MR. MACGREGOR: We give sawmillers credits, that is the way it works. We are essentially doing more than our share and then some. We can give the sawmillers credit so the wood they buy from us or the chips that we buy from them, whichever way you want to look at it, they will not have to put any money out.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I just noticed in your videotape presentation, the gentleman talked about the tree and the value of it, and said woodlot owners have more opportunity to market wood than ever before and the future is bright for woodlot owners. I am surprised because wasn't it the Woodlot Owners & Operators Association that went to court against you about not wanting to buy or you didn't think you had to buy round wood? It would seem to me that for small, private woodlot owners, if they were going to do silviculture, which we try to encourage, they are going to have to have a way to make use of those small trees. Your technology indicates that you could take those trees and chip them
or whatever, so I would see you not buying round wood from small woodlot owners as not providing greater opportunity for them; as a matter of fact, I see this as stifling opportunity. I just wonder what your . . .
MR. MACGREGOR: You have to go back about 20 to 25 years ago when there were basically three large pulp mills in Nova Scotia and a large number of small sawmills. In the past five to seven years, the economy has switched almost from a pulpwood economy to a lumber economy. Truly, there are a great many places where people can sell their wood today.
If you are in central Nova Scotia and saw the small wood going into that mill at Ledwidge's there, that would really have come to a pulp mill. There was far more wood out there and far more people wanting to sell wood than there were markets. In the past few years, of course, the lumber business has boomed. Although right today it is down and struggling - the markets have dropped off over the last six months - for the past five years it has really come ahead. As a consequence, we have estimated that in central Nova Scotia a woodlot owner has a tremendous choice, maybe up to 30 places he can sell a load of wood. The lowest grade, the lowest of the low, is difficult but you can find places for it to go. This summer, we sent low-grade wood out of the province to other mills. There is a chip plant in Debert that buys low-grade wood to chip and sell to pulp mills in New Brunswick, so there is big opportunity.
In that time-frame, in the past five years, woodlot owners - and there are 30,000 of them in this province and when we typically say woodlot owner we think of somebody like the group that does their own logging but really most people who own woodlots do not, the logging is done by contractors or mill owners who buy the standing timber. The standing timber is called stumpage and the value of that stumpage is what shows what the true value of the wood is. Five or six years ago a good stand of timber would bring $500 per acre. Last year when business was booming, it would get up to $3,000 per acre. We don't buy much but we offered $1,700 per acre a month ago; a year ago we may have offered $2,500, but we didn't get it. So if you are one of those 30,000 people out there who own woodlots, it wouldn't matter what you do for your principal income, it is pretty good.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: You didn't really answer my question. It may be in the best interests of the seller, certainly the way it has been in the past few months - nobody knows how long this downturn will last for the lumber mills - but if I wanted to sell my stumpage to you, you would come in and clear-cut it, I am assuming, take that to the pulp mill and maybe send the logs out to Ledwidge, or whoever. So if you would do that - and you are going to correct me - then why is it that if I went in and wanted to selectively cut my lot, put the wood at roadside, you wouldn't buy it?
MR. MACGREGOR: We are not in the lumber business. Essentially, that is where the round wood goes today. A small amount will find its way to a chip plant, which finds its way to a pulp mill somewhere.
As a woodlot owner, if you want to have a fellow, like Mike Brown who was in that picture, come to your woodlot and do up a plan, he will say, this stand should be clear-cut, this one should be thinned, this one should have something else done to it, and he wants to put it on the market, you can get people bidding on that woodlot to do all those things, including the commercial thinning, the clear-cutting and whatever else, including planting, if you like, and you are in control. The woodlot owner, because the supply and demand that is going on here, is in control like he has never been in full control before. Individually or collectively, they can work as individuals or in groups, it doesn't matter.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: So you say you guys aren't buying round wood from anybody?
MR. MACGREGOR: No. We do trade land and for one reason or another, if we have properties that other people would like to have, and we have, we can carry out trades. That is what we were doing when we made that offer that I said we didn't get. We were trying to buy the wood and the land.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: So did you win the court case?
MR. MACGREGOR: No, we didn't win it and it is still being appealed.
MR. CHIPMAN: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sandy, I know one of the big issues for many of the smaller hardwood processors, like some of these operations that have value added in their product, is the availability of hardwood meeting their needs? They are trying to buy local hardwood and it is very difficult to buy decent hardwood for those types of operations. I was wondering if you have some comments on that.
MR. MACGREGOR: Well, we do sell hardwood saw logs to a lot of small mills. The major mill now, of course, is right in Westville. They get the bulk of what we sell but we also sell to a large number of small ones. It is always difficult to keep everybody happy, but I understand what you are saying; it is difficult from time to time for them to get enough to keep going.
MR. CHAIRMAN: You don't use some hardwood in your process now?
MR. MACGREGOR: Yes, we do. It is 85 per cent softwood and about 15 per cent hardwood. That portion, we are chipping in the woods, using flails.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
MR. CHIPMAN: I noticed in your video there, the stream and the beautiful trees around the stream. I live in Annapolis County. Kimberley-Clark purchased Scott Paper, is that correct?
MR. MACGREGOR: Yes.
MR. CHIPMAN: I can show you areas in my county where the forests have been cleared right to the shore of the lake and one lake, in particular, which I used to fish many years ago with my father, you can't catch anything there anymore. Do you practise good forestry stewardship? Do you have any guidelines set down? I know there is a Forests Act but they are just recommendations and guidelines. There is nothing to enforce anybody to do anything about it.
[10:00 a.m.]
I know in the situation right now with that particular area of land, you mentioned you do trade land, that your company is interested in trading that land for more Crown land. To me, that wouldn't be a good exchange for the taxpayers of the province to take a piece of cut-over land and trade it for a good piece of Crown land that is due to be cut. What type of conservation, what type of cutting practices do you have now that protect waterways and lakes in particular?
MR. MACGREGOR: Do you want to handle that, Steve?
MR. STEVE RUTLEDGE: First of all, we abide by all the Nova Scotia Forestry and Wildlife Guidelines. Those are guidelines and regulations that we have for our contractors that they sign off on and they are required to operate according to those. In terms of trading land with the Crown, we do not have a formal program of trading with the Crown. We trade with individuals and it is on value. There may be a lot that has a good lake on it and that type of thing. It is value, it is not trading clear-cut land for timberland.
MR. CHIPMAN: Just to go back, you mentioned you have 200,000 acres of Crown land and you have 1 million acres of your own. How do you see sustainability right now, at the present time, as far as the annual allowable cut? Where are we as far as sustainability goes with our forest? Are we maintaining sustainability? Are we above? Are we below? Where do we stand right now?
MR. RUTLEDGE: In relation to our land, our 1 million acres . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: Your land and Crown land, say the total province, private versus public and large private.
MR. RUTLEDGE: First I will speak about Kimberly-Clark's 1 million acres of freehold. We have an allowable cut of approximately 700,000 metric tons of softwood and 230,000 tons of hardwood. We adhere to that every year. On Crown land, the allowable cut on that is 70,000 tons or 35,000 cords. Again, that is administered by the province and we stick to that. In terms of the provincial allowable cut, I can't speak on behalf of all the private woodlot owners on that, that is a provincial jurisdiction, but let's say that the regulations in place now require the industry to contribute to a fund, if that plan is adhered to. I think we are on the road to sustainability and, as the graph showed there, the allowable cut is going to double by the year 2070. If the investments are made, the harvest will be there.
MR. CHIPMAN: We met with senior DNR bureaucrats last week and I asked the same question to them; Crown land is at a bit of a break-even point right now. They have reached sustainability. In fact, they don't want to go beyond the allowable cut but on private lands, we have exceeded it, which is frightening in a way, because we are not maintaining, we are exceeding what we can reproduce. Your Crown leases, do you pay on a per acre basis per year? Do you pay on a stumpage rate? How do those . . .
MR. RUTLEDGE: Stumpage per cubic metre or per ton basis for whatever we cut.
MR. CHIPMAN: So if you lease 200,000 acres, you just pay for whatever you take off the Crown land?
MR. RUTLEDGE: Right.
MR. CHIPMAN: Can anybody else go in and remove wood from that Crown land while you have it under lease?
MR. RUTLEDGE: No.
MR. CHIPMAN: So you are just permitted to take a certain amount. What would you pay per cord or per 1,000 for softwood under the lease?
MR. RUTLEDGE: It is a formula that was derived by the government back in 1987 in the Reed Report and it is driven by the price of lumber and by the price of kraft pulp. So it is a formula that is determined every year. It goes up and down. Currently, we are paying, from April 1, 2000 to March 2001, $16.90 per ton for saw logs. For pulpwood, it is $4.43 per ton. There are roughly two tons to a cord.
MR. CHIPMAN: What were you paying prior to April 1st?
MR. RUTLEDGE: I don't have it right off. It was about $1.00 per ton less than that. It didn't increase very much this past year.
MR. CHIPMAN: So a ton of wood is roughly a cord of wood, approximately.
MR. RUTLEDGE: It takes two tons to make a cord.
MR. CHIPMAN: So you are actually paying $8.00 per cord per ton for saw logs, roughly in that range? (Interruption) Well, I don't know. I guess I am saying I read a book by Ralph S. Johnson, the Forests of Nova Scotia, and he always claimed it took 1.2 cords per ton. You are saying two cords. When you say $16.90 per ton for saw logs, could you relate that to per 1,000 board feet?
MR. RUTLEDGE: Around $80 per 1,000.
MR. CHIPMAN: But you are paying $4.43 per cord for softwood?
MR. RUTLEDGE: No, we are paying $4.40 per ton for pulpwood.
MR. CHIPMAN: So that is $8.00 per cord, if you say two cords per . . .
MR. RUTLEDGE: Yes.
MR. CHIPMAN: But it takes two cords per 1,000 . . .
MR. RUTLEDGE: It takes 2.5 cords per 1,000 . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: Right, it is a variable. Two cords per 1,000, so that is $16 per ton you are paying for 1,000 feet of saw logs. Is that correct?
MR. MACGREGOR: You multiply $16.93 per ton by 4.4 or 4.5 to get to 1,000 basis . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: About $4.43 per ton or whatever for pulpwood. You are saying it takes two cords of pulpwood or 2.5 per 1,000. So that works out to roughly $8.00 to $9.00 a cord for pulpwood but if you convert the pulpwood to saw logs, it takes two cords roughly. How much would you predict one ton of saw logs would weigh, or what is your estimation?
MR. RUTLEDGE: It takes roughly 4.4 tons of saw logs for 1,000 of lumber, roughly four tons per 1,000.
MR. CHIPMAN: Yet it takes two cords of pulpwood to make a ton, or 2.5. Anyway, there is a variance in the figures there. That is $64 or $65 per 1,000 then for saw logs on the stump but the going rate in the private sector is $122 per cord, $122 or $125. Isn't that a large variation?
MR. MACGREGOR: It appears on the surface to be, but remember it is formula-driven from a 10 year old formula. At the same time, you should always bear in mind that the Crown land, per se, is very costly to operate overall. There are some very good properties but the reason the Crown land was there is that it wasn't granted out 100 years or 200 years ago because it wasn't in demand for agriculture. So both the road building and harvesting are quite a bit more expensive. It is not as wide a discrepancy as you would think at first blush.
MR. CHIPMAN: I know that I am involved with some of that right now myself and I am just saying that the rates the province is selling our resource for is a lot less than what the private sector is paying right now.
MR. MACGREGOR: I think the difference in the logging and the road-building costs to be considered here is the fact that when we harvest we are making primarily saw logs, so it is a fourfold increase in stumpage. Had we stayed with the old scenario of producing pulpwood only, the province would be getting $4.00 per ton. As it is, we are cutting logs so they are getting $16.00. So it is a fourfold increase in that regard.
MR. CHIPMAN: But you are taking the softwood logs off the Crown land and not touching the pulpwood or the hardwood?
MR. MACGREGOR: The hardwood will either be sold as saw logs or as chips. It comes to our own mill.
MR. CHIPMAN: Are you doing any clear-cutting on this Crown land?
MR. MACGREGOR: Yes.
MR. CHIPMAN: I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Carey.
MR. JON CAREY: In our area people are saying that hemp will be replacing some of the forestry products. Is Kimberly-Clark interested in hemp in any manner, processing it or getting involved in that, or has that not been part of your . . .
MR. MACGREGOR: I don't believe at our mill, no. Certainly, in some mills, they would be able to use it, but we are set up to handle wood so it would be very difficult.
MR. CAREY: So you don't see that as part of the long term for Kimberly-Clark?
MR. MACGREGOR: No.
MR. CAREY: I understand, and you can correct me, but there are at least one or two contractors, I call them processors, who can do up to 40 acres in a 24 hour day. Does that sound right?
MR. MACGREGOR: At 15 tons an hour, it is possible. On an acre if you had 50 tons, you can do your calculations from there. I am not sure if that is any help with your figures.
MR. CAREY: It just seemed to me that if one contractor could do 40 acres a day, I guess I am having trouble with seeing that it is going to be sustainable.
MR. MACGREGOR: It is the total, I think, as we showed in our video, there have been a lot of changes in technology. There is the technology that can do the thinning. For the first time we now know how to do commercial thinning in a cost-effective way, with very expensive machinery. It is the total harvest that matters. We used to have almost double the number of people, number of contractors, perhaps more than we do today, in total they are still cutting the same acreage. On our land at least it doesn't affect the total numbers.
MR. CAREY: If my numbers are right, in your presentation you said that the harvest per acre in some areas now, you have up to 35 cords. If you are looking over a time-frame, roughly, of 22 years or something of that nature, what does that work out - I guess what I am trying to arrive at is a dollar value per acre per year - what is an economically viable acreage or return per acre?
MR. MACGREGOR: I can't give you a number right off the top other than to say that based on the stumpage values that are being used in the last couple of years, where we are talking $2,000 or $3,000 an acre, and these are on natural stands, that if you look at some of these well-managed plantations that are going to have much more wood on them at some point in time, then by extrapolation they should be worth $5,000 to $8,000 an acre and will pay for the cost of planting and tending for many years down the road. So it looks like a real good return, 10 per cent or better on your money at those kinds of rates.
MR. CAREY: It is better than farming. (Laughter)
MR. MACGREGOR: It may be.
MR. CAREY: In my area.
MR. MACGREGOR: Yes, it certainly wasn't until within the last five years. It is a value-driven game. If we can hold those values, if those values stay there it will be well worth it .
MR. CAREY: Natural Resources are going around the province at this time and they have worked out these categories of Crown land and put them in three different categories, how is that going to affect you people or is it or what is your opinion?
MR. MACGREGOR: We are very much involved in that process. Steve could tell you about it.
MR. RUTLEDGE: Our Crown licences are in Halifax County. We didn't participate directly in the IRM process because we are a lessee and as part as of these open houses that they are having we were asked to come and prepare, as an example, a long-term management plan. Basically, what the province has laid out under this IRM, we are embracing that process. That's a good process.
MR. CAREY: So you would as a good corporate citizen of the province, it is a good way for the public in general, we are getting protection out of it and it is going to be good for business and everyone?
MR. RUTLEDGE: Yes.
MR. CAREY: A final question I had was on the Crown land you said you harvested some hardwood logs. I understand the cost of harvesting on Crown land is more difficult but right now I think it is up to about $700 per 1,000 for good hardwood. Would your operation be cutting more hardwood now on Crown land? Do you have any limits?
MR. MACGREGOR: No, we are not, I believe our hardwood harvest is very low still.
MR. RUTLEDGE: Our plans that we submit on an annual basis to the province are basically driven toward softwood, and hardwood is sort of a by-product from those softwood operations. Any of the hardwood either goes to our pulp mill as chips or the saw logs go to the local sawmills.
MR. CAREY: I was just thinking that the demand now is great, there is a shortage and at $700 per 1,000, if that would kick you into gear to go into that direction?
MR. MACGREGOR: There just isn't a lot of hardwood on our lease really to take advantage of that situation you are describing.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Epstein.
MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: Mr. MacGregor, I had better tell you right away that when I heard you discussing clear-cutting, in terms of public reaction being directed to the aesthetics of it because you said, they didn't like how it looks, that that doesn't seem to me to tell the whole story about public concern about clear-cutting. There is a whole range of
other reasons that I think the public understands about clear-cutting and that activates them to be worried about it. One thing is when they look at clear-cutting they are worried about whether this indicates there is serious over-cutting taking place in the forestry resource. The other thing is they look at the range of what gets replanted, which is only relatively few species, instead of a full, mixed forest, so they worry that in fact what they are getting is the equivalent of a tree farm, rather than a whole new forest.
They are aware of loss of habitat for wildlife and they worry about the whole of a forest eco-system; they are aware of soil erosion and stream siltation that flow from clear-cutting which don't occur with other kinds of cutting methods. The public also worry about the use of herbicides and finally, they worry about mechanization because that is really what is involved in clear-cutting; it maximizes the use of these new machines you were talking about before. You get a feller-buncher in, I am sure that is a phrase you have heard before, that takes the place of a bunch of fellers and so you get fewer jobs.
That is a whole range of concerns that the public has and I guess I am surprised to hear you talk about it only in terms of the aesthetics. This probably isn't a debate that we have to have but I am sure you are aware of this range of concerns and I think the public is very worried about the forestry resource in Nova Scotia. They are worried about it on a whole range of fronts and the one that I want to take up with you now though is this last one, this whole question of the significance of the sector in the economy.
I am not sure if you are the right person to ask about this but I would like to know from you, what do you see as potential threats to the continued viability of the forest industry, particularly as an employer in Nova Scotia? Now we have touched on a couple of things, one is this question of how much cutting is being done, and in a way we have touched on mechanization a little bit but in your video, you talked as well about your commodity being an internationally competitive commodity. You talked about competition from fast-growing other species or from countries with lower costs, so I am wondering if there is a range of other factors that you see at play there? As you say with the fluctuations in prices for lumber and for pulp we have most recently seen the effect of international markets so I wonder if you could give us an assessment of what the economic factors are that are likely to affect the long-term viability of your industry here?
MR. MACGREGOR: I started out by saying that we were a pulp business like Christmas trees, like lumber and paper and panel boards. We are part of a commodity business and it does have its ups and downs. It is a big industry in Nova Scotia, all of these industries are big, they are all important to Nova Scotia. The only guarantee, if there is one, is that we have wood available, and that we control our costs long term and that we make quality products long term. If you think about that price cycle that goes, it is like a sign curve, if the only time you can operate is at the top of the sign curve, then you are not a very good employer, if that is the only time you can make a profit; you have to be able to make it over the range. Today, the good news is that while the lumber businesses are truly struggling, if
we look at the statistics we received just yesterday, it shows that in eastern Canada the production is down 1 per cent and Nova Scotia's is up 14 per cent or 15 per cent or some number like that for the year and they seem to be competing.
Our mills in Nova Scotia have spent a tremendous amount of money, pulp mills and sawmills, for the past half-dozen years, in new technology and they really are able to compete. They have spent the money in the technology and now people are embarking on this new program of investment in the forests. In terms of where that money is going to be spent, there is talk about commercial and pre-commercial thinning of natural stands, which would be a significant investment; it is also an investment in tree planting.
You did reference herbicide being a big concern to many people. We do require the use of herbicide once in the lifetime of a tree, only when it is planted. After we plant our trees, the first or second year following the planting, we apply a herbicide, about half by ground application like you would use in an agricultural crop and half using a helicopter. Another six or seven years go by and we invest another couple of hundred dollars per acre with saws, people going through manually. It is a big job; we are spending $0.5 million this year and that will grow next year to around $700,000 for people working with saws cutting weeds out of plantations. You can't do that when the trees are very tiny, it is just a reality. That is one big concern we have, that we are able to hold onto that application. Does that answer your question?
MR. EPSTEIN: I am concerned about whether our product is going to get out-competed for in the market place. You pointed to perfectly logical things, you have to have a good product at a reasonable price and if so, then you can begin to compete in the market place. On the other hand, if a lot of other places in the world have good products and they are at a lower price, then it is going to be tough to compete.
You talked about fast-growing species elsewhere, I assume this is something like eucalyptus trees that can be cut after 10 years and they are perfectly mature and you don't have to wait 20 and 40 years, or 60 years before you cut them, compared with our trees. If that is the case then one of the things about plants in parts of the world where they can grow eucalyptus trees is that they will have a brand new plant, it is state of the art and they have their product every 10 years, and maybe the wages are a lot less than ours. Are we going to get out-competed by them?
MR. MACGREGOR: Well, they may make life difficult for us but the move that we have made, and others are making in Nova Scotia, is very interesting. We used to be cutting our trees and making pulpwood out of them; 75 per cent of our trees used to go to pulpwood. We now send them to sawmills where this money has been spent on the technology so that our sawmills are very competitive. We are surviving off a by-product so we are, as a province, adding value to the products.
Our northern softwood has unique characteristics. It is true that eucalyptus has many of them but they don't have all of them. If both our pulp and paper and sawmill industries are truly competitive, from a cost point of view, and are able to continue in silviculture and grow timber into the future, I think we can compete very successfully.
MR. EPSTEIN: I guess we will see. Okay, thanks.
MR. MACGREGOR: It is always a question of the glass being half full or half empty.
MR. EPSTEIN: Well, I think we are trying to figure out where we are going.
MR. MACGREGOR: It is true, we can compete. This year is a very good example of our sawmill industry competing in a very tough market at the present time.
MRS. BAILLIE: I am glad to hear you are still in the logs and sawmills. Also, you seem to be very happy or delighted in what you are doing. I hope that is right, for the province. When did you start selling logs to the sawmills? Was that just recently?
MR. MACGREGOR: We always sold logs to the sawmill industry. In fact, we had a sawmill, ourselves, one time. We decided, rather than investing any more in the lumber business ourselves, to sell our logs to the sawmill business. The history of our land goes back to the 1920's, when Hollingsworth and Whitney came here. It eventually became Scott Paper, then Kimberly-Clark. It always did sell saw logs.
MRS. BAILLIE: Oh, I didn't know that.
MR. MACGREGOR: We have gone from selling 20 per cent of our production 10 years ago, to practically all our production today.
MRS. BAILLIE: My concern is, say if I have a small woodlot, a couple of hundred acres, or something, I almost have to go to you people, am I right? The small contractor now, you don't buy round wood?
MR. MACGREGOR: No.
MRS. BAILLIE: So he couldn't do anything with the pulpwood. He doesn't have the technology to do the thinning out properly. I am concerned, are you people squeezing out the small contractor? Maybe that is not a good word to use.
MR. MACGREGOR: Contractors do all of our work on our lands. As a landowner, today, because of the markets that exist, you can have a management plan done up for your woodlot by a consultant. He can put that on the market for you to get the harvesting done,
whether it is thinning or clear-cutting, or even the replanting. He can take competitive bids for you or you can do it yourself, to have this work done.
People can afford to do it today because of the prices. It is a significant change. Up until five years ago, when prices went up, it really couldn't justify these expenditures, but you can get it done. Now, you wouldn't get as much for your woodlot as if you put the whole thing on the market and just take competitive bids to have it all clear-cut, but you will get the best price there is and you will get your planting done, your thinning done or anything else you need done. There are people out there who will bid against one another to do it. Then they will find a home for all the products.
The person who gets your woodlot, who does that, he has to find the best market for the veneer, hardwood, the hardwood saw logs, for the softwood saw logs; he has to find the best prices he can get. For the little bit that falls off the end that is low-grade pulpwood, he can sell that to a chip plant. Now the efficient guy who is well-skilled in marketing, harvesting and doing a good job for you is going to be able to keep on going. So it is a new era. The thinning that was done there, incidentally, was done by a contractor who worked primarily on small, private woodlots before he came to work with us.
[10:30 a.m.]
MRS. BAILLIE: You were saying about the lumber business now being down, and this may be a silly question, but is that mainly because they can't get the material, they can't get the logs?
MR. MACGREGOR: No, the lumber business is really a global business and here in North America some things have happened. In fact, if you go back and look at what happened a number of years ago, within the last 10 years, a lot of the West Coast United States' federal lands were taken out of production; 7 billion board feet were taken out of production. That didn't stop the demand, North Americans still wanted the lumber, primarily in the United States. So, where did they go to get it? Two billion board feet or so came from eastern Canada, Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces and the rest went down to the southern United States and that is where the supply is being fulfilled.
In the United States the demand has dropped off slightly and what is happening is with the lesser demand, at the same time there has been quite an increase in production. What is going on right now is mills are taking downtime throughout North America, primarily the biggest downtime is being taken in the United States, but here in Canada there is some downtime being taken as well. So it is just that balancing thing that is always going on in this global business.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Chipman and then Mr. MacDonell.
MR. CHIPMAN: I just have a couple of questions. When we were looking at the red pine plantation there with the high stumps, you mentioned Shaw Wood Products or IKEA, which is in Cornwallis Park, is that where the product is going?
MR. MACGREGOR: That in particular was a trial that went to them, yes.
MR. CHIPMAN: What do you know about that trial, what was the outcome as far as the wood product? Has there been any demand since then from IKEA for red pine?
MR. MACGREGOR: Yes, they would like more of that.
MR. CHIPMAN: I know the previous government gave money to Shaw's to set up here and it is a good company; it is in Cornwallis Park in Annapolis County, which is not my constituency. I understand the demand now is for red pine which is coming from out of the province, it is not going to be the white pine that was coming from Queens and Kings Counties originally. If that is the case, then there wasn't enough research done on the quality of the wood coming from those counties to go to this plant and it is unfortunate now that we have to buy that because there isn't enough red pine in this province to maintain that facility. Is that correct, do you hear any facts to those rumours?
MR. MACGREGOR: No, I don't know that. Incidentally, one time over in West Pictou, in the River John area, there were tremendous stands of red pine that were lost in the fires I described that occurred back in the 1800's. So red pine will grow but there hasn't been a lot of it planted.
MR. CHIPMAN: One thing that has always concerned me, I know when I brought this up at different meetings we have been at, I know in October 1998 the Western Valley Development Authority did a survey. There were 133 loads of round wood that left the Digby Ferry to go to Saint John, New Brunswick. These are jobs that are leaving the province. Why is that? I know there are no regulations in place to deter that but how can we ship this product out of the province cheaper in bulk form than we can to manufacture it here and keep those jobs in Nova Scotia?
MR. MACGREGOR: Again, it is just the supply and demand for logs and different types of wood and there is also wood coming into Nova Scotia from outside too, not in balance, but there is still wood coming into Nova Scotia from outside. It is really people taking advantage of a good market when it is there. What will happen this year as prices drop off, because of this lowering of lumber prices, is that people will be withholding wood. I would suspect that you will see that slow down but it ebbs and flows.
MR. CHIPMAN: Just one final question. I was talking to a gentleman yesterday who was cutting some wood and I haven't found the answer, maybe you could tell me, but the guy who hauled for him has a weigh scale or whatever set up in his truck somehow - I don't know
how he does that - but he can haul 14 cords on a regular load and that will give him 30 tons. He had 18.2 cords and he was still at 30 tons. Where is the variation there in the weight of the wood? It is old-growth black spruce.
MR. RUTLEDGE: It is just dry wood.
MR. CHIPMAN: Is that because it is in a stage of deterioration, decay?
MR. RUTLEDGE: It could have been dead wood or it could have been cut a year ago.
MR. CHIPMAN: No, it is live wood. It is just being cut but the growth rings are very close, you can't even count them they are so fine. Is there any reason for that? Would you say it is something like the sap is not in the wood now and is it because of the fact that perhaps the trees are in decline and trees that age of maturity should be cut?
MR. RUTLEDGE: It could have been dead wood.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Dr. Smith.
DR. JAMES SMITH: I just want to say thanks, I enjoyed the presentation. I am just sitting in for Ken MacAskill, who has some interest in these matters; he is from Victoria County. I guess I always envy people who I think take their hobbies and make jobs out of them. I was always going to become a forester and I got sidetracked into medicine and then I really got off the rails and got into politics. (Laughter) I have enjoyed it and I am very envious. I guess what disturbed me when I came back to the province was I went into deeper woods and saw some of this clear-cutting we spoke of today and the amount of hardwood that was lying there, large hardwood just lying there rotting. Am I led to believe from our discussions this morning that that is not happening now or that would be pretty unusual now?
MR. MACGREGOR: It would be happening and there is only one reason it is not in central Nova Scotia and that is that we have a market that is essentially Japan. There is a chip plant in Sheet Harbour and I know whenever this sort of thing comes up, it is selling wood that hasn't gone through a plant, maybe, but it is a market. That is exactly what happened to that wood before that plant came along. It has been a very good thing, it has allowed people to pick up this wood and market it and that is the biggest thing. In conjunction with that is the fact that a lot of that material you probably saw lying there, today would be saw logs and veneer logs which get huge prices now. So it is a good thing.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, gentlemen, for appearing here today. We certainly recognize the importance of your industry to Nova Scotia but at the same time, as you do, we recognize the importance of the sustainability of our forests. I am very interested in this commercial thinning operation that you are conducting. Perhaps the committee could
sometime go down and view that to learn a bit more about it. You certainly generated a lot of interest around the table, I think it was a very successful meeting. Please keep us informed of the work your company is doing in Nova Scotia. Thank you, again.
MR. KYTE: On behalf of our group I would like to say thank you for having us here. It is very good for us as a large player in the forest industry to be able to come in and talk to a cross-section of our elected officials, to find out what your concerns are, hear your questions and attempt to answer them as best we can. We are extremely proud of our business, we are very proud that we have been able to maintain a viable business in Nova Scotia for a long time. We are working very hard to ensure that that continues. We do touch the lives of thousands of Nova Scotians every day, not just our direct employees or our contractors, but many others. It is important for all of us that we do continue this endeavour but do it in a way that is environmentally sound and economically sound. This has been very helpful to us today and I thank you very much.
MR. CHAIRMAN: To the committee members, before we adjourn I would ask you if you would give some thought to future presenters and witnesses for this committee and perhaps bring them forward for our next meeting. If anyone has any thoughts on that right now, please let us know.
Also, the next meeting has been postponed until October 24th. That was so the presenter could - what was it? Aquaculture, I believe, was on our schedule. It has been some time since we had a meeting. It will be aquaculture.
MR. CHIPMAN: Is that at 9:00 a.m., Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: That would depend probably on whether we are in session at that time or not. We will determine that just a little later and we will make sure everyone is given plenty of notice.
We are adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 10:41 a.m.]
