STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
Mr. Neil LeBlanc
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, we have the House sitting at 12:00 p.m. and some of our members, obviously, have some things to do before we sit, so I think we would like to proceed as quickly as possible. First of all, I will introduce myself. I am Neil LeBlanc, the Chairman of the Resources Committee. Perhaps our witnesses can introduce themselves to the members here and then, in turn, the members will introduce themselves so that you will know who all the members are. The usual procedure is we offer our witnesses an opportunity to make an opening statement and then we will have some questions. That is the way that we have always proceeded, so perhaps if you could introduce yourselves, first of all, that would be appreciated.
MR. KINGSLEY BROWN: My name is Kingsley Brown. I am a writer and a free-lance social development worker and editor of Forest Fibre Report, which is the newsletter of the Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association.
MR. JOHN SULLIVAN: My name is John Sullivan. I am the President of the Forest Council of Western Nova Scotia. I am here simply as an observer.
MS. WILMA STUBB: My name is Wilma Stubb and I am the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: The floor is yours.
MR. BROWN: Thank you. I asked Mrs. Henry, today, how do people get picked to come here, so she was kind enough to tell me and I am very appreciative to get this opportunity to come here today, although when I was driving down, I remembered - this is showing my age a bit - a limerick from comedian Flip Wilson, about 30 years ago. He said that there was once a lady from Kent, who said she knew what it meant, when men took her to dine and gave her candy and wine, she knew what it meant, but she went.
I don't have any illusions that anything we have to say here today is going to have much effect on legislators or on government because, never in this century - never, not a single exception - have legislators put the people ahead of the private sector when it came to forestry. Not once. If you're looking at it from a social science perspective, and this has been looked at very closely from a social science perspective, this being the subject for political science papers across Canada, the way that legislators have treated the rural people of Nova Scotia, particularly as it refers to their forests.
I know why it has happened this way, but to think that it is happening now, it still continues on at the last seconds of the 20th Century, that, you know, 150 years ago when Joe Howe brought responsible government and freedom of press to the British North American colonies, we have a situation where government still goes - and government meaning all those persons who are represented here - puts the mills, the big guys, the big transnational foreign companies ahead of the people of Nova Scotia when it comes to deciding how this most valuable natural resource that we have on earth is going to be used by its citizens.
The forests give the world and give Nova Scotia more environmental treasures, more recreational opportunities, more capital and more jobs than any other natural resource on earth. You can't go into the woods, you can't go hiking, canoeing, you can't do anything without the forests, they are just that important and always we've had in Nova Scotia an industrial policy that puts jobs before anything else. Nova Scotia's industrial policy has always been jobs, jobs, jobs.
This is the reason why when a mill, a big mill or the Old Forest Products Association of the mill owners and whatnot would come to government and say that this is the way the forests are going to be run and this is what we want, they always got what they wanted. In a peculiar reversal of Nova Scotia's patronage politics that we have today - and notoriously known across Canada - they would give us jobs and we would give them what they wanted, but now the corporations, the big companies are shaking out jobs. Jobs are now falling out of rural Nova Scotia - out of forestry, out of people being able to sell their wood - far faster than they are falling out of coal or steel or any other industry and you don't hear a moan or a cry from our legislators.
One of the questions is why. I have been involved with working with woodlot owners in Nova Scotia longer and more continuously than any other person; I started in 1967. I was organizing and going from door-to-door. We tried to set up a woodlot owners association.
We did that on a county basis and we got it set up on a provincial basis in 1969, and it was tough going. We have Nova Scotia's peculiar cultures where you have western Nova Scotia and eastern Nova Scotia and the black hole of central Nova Scotia, which are very hard to understand - the credit unions and co-ops and federations of agriculture, everyone else has noticed this - and the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators Association couldn't hold itself together because of the cultural differences that you would find in different parts of Nova Scotia.
So in eastern Nova Scotia, we broke away, because there was more interest there in collective bargaining with the Stora mill, and established the Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association, which has been extraordinarily successful. Its present contract gives all wood producers in the seven eastern counties of Nova Scotia $100 a cord. Outside of our geographical area of those seven counties, they get $58 a cord and $65 a cord from Irving and Bowater respectively. Also in eastern Nova Scotia, we have put in the finest forest management plan in Canada, and we did that in spite of government; we had to fight government. We had to threaten to go to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia on this issue. It has been a tough go; we have had to fight and slug the whole way.
What I want to talk about today is silviculture. The art, science and business of growing trees. To show you that there is no rhyme or reason to what is happening in Nova Scotia, as far as government is concerned there is no direction, there is no vision, and there is no leadership. If it is the job of MLAs to defend the interests of their constituencies, now is the time that we have to say very clearly that the legislators have abdicated their responsibility, they have abandoned their constituencies, and it is time now that we set up some sort of a directorate that is going to put, as first among equals, Nova Scotia landowners who are going to have a say on what is going to happen on their land.
Government, in the previous Throne Speech of 1997, said that it was going to bring in legislation to bring cutting in line with the forests' capacity to produce, sustainable forest management is going to be the law of the land. Well, we started on this road back in the early 1970's. Vince MacLean, in the early 1970's, his job as a minister would be to go to Ottawa and get money from Ottawa and come down to Nova Scotia and buy up lands from old widows and from wherever he could get it and give it to the mills for their use.
Our association decided that this was wasteful. We decided it wasn't the way that it should be done, and we negotiated with the federal government and said that we should enter into a forest management regime. From this, we brought forward the group venture idea that we would pay for the sins of our fathers and get on into doing the badly needed forest management. That project disappeared out of our hands, to use the words of Dick Lord of Bridgewater, who was our secretary-treasurer at that time.
The political Parties, the successive governments used the group ventures for patronage and as an instrument to break the two collective bargaining units in eastern Nova Scotia. I sat in their vice-regal suite of the Beaverbrook Hotel in Fredericton and heard Ken Streatch describe to the executive members of the New Brunswick Forest Products Association how the group ventures would squeeze out the other organizations in this province. I saw this patronage system perfected to the point that you could not set up a group venture association in Antigonish County - I am glad to see Hyland here today, my member - until they got rid of the Liberals who were on the board of a democratically elected association.
This is the kind of stuff that went on over a period of 18 years. An extraordinarily wasteful system was put into place and it was abandoned a few years ago. During this period that governments, and Liberals are as much to blame as anyone else, in the beginning the Liberals said they wouldn't even honour the vote of woodlot owners when they voted on whether they wanted to go for collective bargaining and have an association and the vote was 83 per cent or 87 per cent. It was more than any of them had held their seats, a margin greater than anything they had, but, no, this wouldn't even be honoured.
Benoit Comeau, the minister, brought in the Pulpwood Marketing Act holding his nose and the senior directors and deputy ministers in the Department of Lands and Forests would counsel and give advice to the mills organization, their trade lobby, the Forest Products Association on how to thwart the woodlot owners. Ken Streatch went out and subverted our own provincial legislation by trying to set up sweetheart deals for the group venture that was putting wood into Stora at $11 a cord.
This is the kind of stuff that has been going on for the 30-odd years that I have been involved. I am sure you've read this book, but it is now a source book for academic and college studies. Trouble in the Woods is put out by the Gorsebrook Research Institute of Atlantic Canada Studies, Acadiensis Press 1992 and on Page 166 you will read in here that, "Both in ideological outlook and practical intervention, it defended the interests of corporate forestry, consistent with the Forest Products Association. In this the Department of Lands and Forests served as an agent of subordination of small woodlot owners. At the point where departmental advocacy left off, the Voluntary Planning apparatus took up the representational role for industry interests.".
It is the same thing today, gentlemen, the same thing today, and what did we do? Well, in eastern Nova Scotia we had the group ventures suborned and subverted from its intentional purpose by the politicians and we went out and said, by God, we'll start again and we will put in a silviculture program. We went and set up our Forest Management Committee in eastern Nova Scotia. We came up with a plan that was vetted by top silviculture people in Canada, including the most respected forester in the Public Service of Nova Scotia - Dr. Ed Bailey and Dr. Gordon Baskerville, one of the five top forest ecologists in the world, who said that the program that Charlie Williams and Wilma had directed the formation of, that this
program would provide the best managed forests in North America but no, no, they would not listen to us, just as the Tories wanted to bring in draft seven, which was totally repudiated, the Liberals decided that they were going to bring in the coalition of forest interests which was nothing but a thinly disguised wood supply deal for the mills. It was totally repudiated in nine public hearings across this province. All the while we had our plan, and I went to Don Downe and I pleaded with him. I said, for God's sake, stop this nonsense. I said we can put something in, but it had to be that top down technocratic approach - we know how it is going to go and you know who was calling the shots. It was Stora, Bowater and the other big mills.
This is what has been going on. Finally when the coalition was repudiated totally by the people of Nova Scotia in meetings, they came from Meat Cove to Yarmouth, Wilma took our plan to Stora and said, okay, you had your run - sign it. It is coming in under the collective bargaining agreement and we put in place the finest forest management program in this country. Every tree that goes over in the eastern counties of Nova Scotia, money goes into silviculture, not for administration, not for mileage for executives or people to run around, directly into the ground and that's what we got there.
Then notice the chronology. Then we went to government and said do you want to participate in this. Oh, yes, oh, yes, fine. We are putting in $1.00. We have negotiated how this was going to be done. The mill is putting in $3.00. You are putting $2.00 and your role is going to be first and last inspections. That's a good job for you guys because you have the integrity of government. You have got a lot of honest foresters who will take a real responsibility in their careers and in their professions, computer modelling, satellite imagery, all those things that you're geared up to do, and we have got that in place.
Now, after we've got the joint management plan, we have started on ISO 14001, environmental management system, certification for all woodlot owners in eastern Nova Scotia who want it and you know how important sustainable forest management is and certification is because you're not going to be able to sell into markets unless you can prove, particularly to the Europeans, that the product is not coming from Brazil north. That's coming in now.
I got a call, yesterday, from Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation, a grant that we're getting from them of $50,000 to start a program that is going to cost us over $200,000, but this will put us in the forefront of North America, bottom up, designed by the people who own the land and moving forward and telling government this is your role. Prior to that $50,000 the work that we have done in forest management, putting the JMP in place has not taken one single black cent out of the public treasury, not one black cent.
Now, once we had put this in place, the Liberal Government said, look, they brought out their White Paper toward sustainable forestry and they said, my God, anyone else that can do what they're doing, we'll provide the same kind of financial and technical assistance to
them as long as they provide a framework that meets the need and respects traditional ownership rights. Then it set off into making deals with the mills that had little or no landowner participation outside of our geographical area. Deals down there entered in with Bowater and Ledwidge, MacTara, and whatnot, right against the grain of respecting traditional ownership rights, no, no, no, this was something that they were pushing in for the simple reason that it assumed that the people of western Nova Scotia didn't have the interest or intelligence to want to go and enter into a forest management system of their own. That's a fact and I can prove it. They made that assumption that they didn't have the interest.
At the time that this was coming out, the people of western Nova Scotia had already set up a little organization; they were organizing. John Sullivan, who is here with me today, the President of the Forest Council of Western Nova Scotia, they organized those eight counties - Lunenburg, Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth, Digby, Annapolis, Kings and Hants. I am so glad to see some of those members for those constituencies here today.
They have over 500, going on 600, people who have joined with the hope that they can get collective bargaining, that they can access the legislation that exists for collective bargaining for forest management that will give them an equal right with the mills and government to say what the silviculture treatments are going to be on their land and who is going to do it and how it is going to be done. I was talking to the board yesterday and they are having a meeting on June 24th to make some decisions on the application that the group in western Nova Scotia has presented.
What you have here are the people running so far ahead of government, showing so much more leadership and initiative, there is no reason to even think that we should allow government to have any responsibilities to dictate to us what any plan is going to be, we are running so far ahead. Once the people of western Nova Scotia get their collective bargaining registration for a forest management loan, for only their members - they are only applying for their members; it is voluntary and it doesn't affect people who don't sell wood - it is good for the buyers and it is good for the sellers.
Government is making the biggest intrusion on private property rights in history by going in and saying what you are going to do on your land. Fine, that is okay with us, but we are going to have an equal say in what that is. It is not going to be Bowater, going out and holding its kingship, in this case, of saying how it is going to be. The people who own the land of western Nova Scotia are going to have a say. If you look at their eight counties and the seven, that is 15 of the 18 that have taken this kind of initiative to bring in a forest management program.
Now, if you want to hear the denouement. These companies that the legislators have always prostrated themselves before, the technology and the new corporate order has resulted in the woodlot owner now being cut out, almost entirely, of getting any benefits from their forest. Ask Charlie Parker and ask Jim DeWolfe. Kimberly-Clark, the big American outfit
distributes the benefits now of the forests of central Nova Scotia from its headquarters in Dallas. When that mill moved from eight foot wood to tree length wood to chips, it knocked out the woodlot owner who did not have the equipment to do this. It knocked out the contractors and it even knocked out some of the chippers who thought they were going to go in and be able to make money turning these trees into chips.
We are in a situation where you have the dividends of our forests and all of this lovely talk about sustainability and everything else, and the importance of the forest and all this flimflam that you are getting. What are we getting out of it? When Stora put in a $750 million mill, knowing it was going to be able to get its profits back from that in 30 years, it knew what it was doing. The Kimberly-Clark mill is probably the lowest cost mill of its type in North America, so the profits are doing just fine. That company, like the other companies, has set up interlocking relationships. Kimberly-Clark has 1 million acres of its own land. It sells logs at an artificially low price to MacTara. MacTara gives its chips to Kimberly-Clark at an artificially low price.
With Irving down in Truro moving up with its new system there, and you have MacTara working with Stora and you have us with a contract that gives us $100 a cord for our wood, now all of a sudden, because of what Stora is going to do when it gets its machines in order, it is having difficulty there and it will be going to the chips like everyone else. That means that the trees we have now that are worth $100 a cord are going to be worth around $35 or $40 a cord, just because of what they are going to do with it. So you can see where the dividends are going.
While we have a government, while we have a province that goes out and dumps wood into their mill yards from Crown, at $10, $15 a cord dumping - dumping is when you give wood, sell wood, under its value or cost of production. That is dumping, particularly when it has an adverse effect on your industry, which is us. You dump that on, you give that to them, too. I am speaking personally, I know that we have annual meetings coming up with both of our associations within the next month. We will be going over approaches to come at this issue. I think on that point I will stop and give you a crack at it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your comments. We don't have a formal time limit per caucus; we go by people wishing to ask questions, so if members are interested in asking questions, just wave to me or give notification and we will start. I think you have a question, Charlie, that you want to start off with?
MR. CHARLES PARKER: I may as well start as anybody. Kingsley, I want to ask you about what you call your standing tree policy. I have a pretty good idea what it is but you are saying that the value of the standing tree is where the silviculture dollars should be going? I think what you mean by that is that all the dollars would go to the woodlot, instead of for administration or to companies. Can you explain it a little further?
MR. BROWN: No, what has happened, as a result of the new technology that we have today of the mills going to chips, you can't bargain with a mill for something you don't produce. The woodlot owners can't produce chips; they haven't got a machine that will go out and do it, so you can't get into collective bargaining on chips.
The woodlot owners of central Nova Scotia have taken this to the Primary Forest Products Marketing Board. The Primary Forest Products Marketing Board has ruled that chips are pulpwood and pulpwood are chips. Now Kimberly-Clark is dragging them through a second level of court, up there to break - they have already broken the collective bargaining unit in central Nova Scotia that was selling into that mill. They are just completely cut out over there, there are no dividends coming to anyone, except to the shareholders of that company.
What we have to do is come up with an idea, a strategy of how we continue to get the value of our trees. So, Wilma and a few others in our association and on the committee are looking at what we call the standing tree approach. We have got to look at something we can negotiate for, which is the tree that is growing on your property.
Now where you run into the problem on this and where you are going to have to give us some help here is that you will have a stand of trees but there is going to be junk in it and you are going to have logs in it and veneer in it and pulp in it. So you are going to have to come up with a system that is going to be able to accommodate that. I think we can. It is possible that our association in the East - and the western association doesn't have any connection with this because they are just looking at silviculture - we may become a marketing association. We may have to get into collective bargaining with other mills. You might be in collective bargaining with Laurie Ledwidge and Hugh Erskine and these people and with the Turkish pit prop company and whatnot, to make sure that the value of the tree is going to continue to come to the woodlot owner. As long as you have this chipping arrangement, you are out.
What makes this so important that we apply ourselves to this problem is that we are down now 25 per cent in supply from private lands to the Stora mill, as a result of technology and other reasons, already as a result of the chipping. If our private supply is down 25 per cent, that means we are down 25 per cent in the money you have available for silviculture. On Thursday Wilma and I will be at a meeting when DNR is going to unveil its new computer modelling and it is going to tell us that it has found a whole new volume of wood.
I suggest to you, and I honestly don't know where they have found it, I believe in the computer modellers, I believe in the integrity of the people who have come up with this information, I suspect we are going to a lower specification to get the wood. I suspect that right now you are landing stuff as logs in the mills with 3 inch tops. Think about it.
What has happened in this province - I was talking to Elmer MacKay's son in law, Robert Davidson, yesterday morning, about this business - he is a big landowner - about the small landowners, how they are cut out over there in central Nova Scotia, right out of the system.
[10:30 a.m.]
This business of the tiny trees, it was Elmer MacKay's great-grandfather, Andrew, who was the pine king, he was cutting all the big pines. When the big pines were gone, we went to the smaller pines. When the smaller pines were gone, we went to the big spruce and then the small spruce. Then any time we had to make a decision about how we were going to keep our economies going in our rural communities, what could we take from the forest without making an investment in management? Well, then we went to the little tissue trees. This is what we decided each time we had to make the decisions. So now we are down to a situation where logs with a top that big are going into the mills.
In your newspaper you will see here that the province's woodlot is healthy and can meet all demands. This is Mr. MacAskill, March 1, 1999. The fact is, he is wrong. There may be enough wood to keep some mills going but there is no sustainable forest management on the basis of mill supply, biodiversity and multiple use perspectives. There is not a single forester you can talk to in Nova Scotia today, in government or in industry, who does not feel that on all fronts we are over cutting.
For instance, if you want to look at this one from the Halifax Chronicle-Herald of October 21, 1998, the province's forests being cut at unsustainable levels. Who was saying this? Why, it is Scott Maston, Chairman of the Nova Scotia section of the Canadian Institute of Forestry, mainly made up of government and industry foresters. This is what is going on. We are getting all these lovely stories and it is all of this bloody flimflam.
You have the woodlot owners going out and taking this initiative, and that is why I am telling you, let's go into the next century standing up on our own pins and saying that the rural people who are citizens have the skill and imagination and competence to be able to come up with forest management strategies and that they are going to have a say, first among equals, about how that work is going to be done because, very clearly, governments have abdicated their responsibilities. An MLA's job is to defend the interests of their constituents. They have not.
MR. PARKER: I have one other question, Kingsley, that I want to ask you before I turn to someone else. You are putting the emphasis on the small woodlot owner taking responsibility for his own future and that is good, but what role do you see that government should be playing? Their role in the past has been, as you say, to work with the mills and represent their interests, but in the future what role do you think government should be playing?
MR. BROWN: Well, you have the Crown out there and we are dumping this wood, it is dumped. That is what we are doing, we are giving it away to these big companies. I think we have to open up the Crown to start with. We have to develop a new public policy on Crown lands. While you are at it, you might as well repay First Nations what we know we are going to have to do eventually. They come first in that equation. Don't wait until you have gone through this whole business of the courts and everything else, let's start doing it now with First Nations on how that forest is going to be used. Right now it is a fiefdom for those big companies and they have pretty well wrecked it. That is the first thing.
The second thing government can do is when we come forward to you and say that we are going to need some enabling legislation to allow us to do things along the lines I am talking about, in marketing and changing responsibilities and what not, respond positively to that. When I was talking to bureaucrats and politicians one day and I was talking about these things - and I have talked to each of your Parties - and the senior people, they said, well by God, Kingsley, how are we going to do that? I said, were you listening to your radio today? What do you mean? I said, in old Tory Ontario, for God's sake, they just made over 300 parks, put more land in the public domain than is in southern Ontario with Inco, the biggest nickel producer, and Domtar, one of the world's biggest woods operators, in the same room, trying to put a smile on their face.
It is a legislator's job to change the law. The laws are there to change them to serve the public interest of Nova Scotia, it is that simple. And what is your job? Gee, we own a part of you, it is your job to go out and look after those things that we need to create healthier and happier communities in Nova Scotia. That is what government has to do.
MR. JAMES DEWOLFE: Mr. Chairman, DNR representatives recently made a presentation to this group. They led us to believe, Ms. McInnis-Leek in particular, led us to believe that we have overcome the worst with regard to over-harvesting Nova Scotia's forests. I would just like to hear your comments on that;have we, or are we, cutting at too rapid a rate?
MR. BROWN: I only know what people tell me, who have made a career commitment to forestry, in government and in industry. They tell me that we are, by any reckoning, we are over-cutting. You can't restrict interprovincial trade. If someone wants to take advantage, and as I was told the other day that an outfit in New Brunswick is buying dry chips at $90 a ton, what is to prevent us from sending our stuff up there? John Sullivan was talking about the mills being clogged, down in his end of the province. If people are getting paid what they are getting paid down in his end of the province and they decide they want to sell to Europe and the United States and what not, they are going to go where the market is and the market is there. They are paying enormous amounts of money for wood.
I was talking to a buyer from our mills a couple of days ago in western Nova Scotia and he told me the mills down there are taking hemlock and pine in order to get their hands on spruce. As an inducement or an enticement, Bowater will give you a ticket - this is absolutely Dickensian the way Bowater operates - to sell your pulpwood. We will buy your pulpwood but you are going to give us your spruce logs, this kind of stuff that goes on.
So yes, DNR is telling that story but I will tell you that I was at a voluntary planning, government run deal in Truro a month or two ago and they are establishing an action plan for a national forest policy. Up there on the projection under 3.6 was the importance of getting information out to the public and media on sustainable forest management.
At that meeting I said, well the minister says there is all kinds of wood and Colin Stewart, who is from the Nova Scotia Naturalists, he said, well I wonder if we can hoist that aboard. I said, I don't think so, I think the minister is wrong. Ed MacAulay, who is the senior guy in this area said, hey what do you mean? I said, I have been talking to Jorg Beyeler of your computer modelling people and you have come up with some interesting things and I cautioned everyone on this one, for God's sake, because twice in the past when we got into a bind, the department went out and increased the amount of wood that was growing in Nova Scotia. Now I said if we do it again now make sure you have got it right, make sure the assumptions that you are making are accurate. Ed said, well it is sustainable and I said, it could be sustainable for mill supply but it is probably not sustainable mill supply, biodiversity and multiple use perspectives and he said yes, that is right. There is your answer.
I would also bring one other point up, in Guysborough County and in Antigonish County we have been hit hard over these last couple of weeks by what was known as the balsam woolly aphid, they have a new word for it now, hard hit.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Can you explain what that is?
MR. BROWN: It is a bug that eats fir trees and it is almost impossible to get at. It bores in where the stem fits in and they don't know how they are going to handle it. They are wracking their brains, they are doing all kinds of research on it. But I was talking to Eric Jorgenson and incidentally we have a fine public service there in DNR, a straight shooting bunch of guys. Where you run into the problem is, you get a bunch of politicians that want to jerk us around up at the top, looking at the short range ideas. I said - in 1975- I am going to hear Nancy McInnis-Leek with her projections on Thursday, I want to know more about this bug business. He said, it's bad.
Now, I said, what about budworm? I was in the great debate in the mid-1970's with Elizabeth May and others. The budworm now is hitting and hitting hard, right back into the same pattern in Ontario and Quebec. Not yet into New Brunswick, but the pattern is absolutely identical to the same thing we had the last time, and the last time we lost a 20 year mill supply to the budworm as far as Stora is concerned, the biggest operation in the province.
The last time, that was part of the debate that was shown nationally across the country, where I was holding up the DNR figures that showed we were way over our annual allowable cut at that time. Then we got hit by the budworm; then we had the allowable cut effect that Stora put in because it had to make its mill bigger; and then in the last 10 to 15 years we have had this unprecedented market for wood. That is the best way I can describe it to you, Jim.
There is no way in God's earth I can think that we are getting a true picture from the government, except if there is some kind of a qualifying thing in there that we are moving to junk wood and some other lower, as I mentioned what can we take from the forest without putting any money into it. We are putting $3 million a year into it. Quebec puts 55 million.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Sullivan.
MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Chairman, if I could just say, in answer to Mr. DeWolfe's question, to put it in perspective from one who makes his living from working on a woodlot, you have expenses: tractor payments, equipment payments and you have to take an operating wage out of your operation. That usually can be budgeted; it is usually a firm amount. You meet those commitments from products that you sell off your woodlot.
On most healthy, diverse woodlots, you have a smaller percentage of high-quality logs that will bring top dollar and you have a lesser amount of immature and smaller, poor-quality logs. The thing kind of goes on a sliding or exponential scale. After you have marketed all your quality logs, if you are still unable to meet your financial commitments, then you have to look at your immature, smaller, poor-quality logs. The problem is, to get a dollar at the end of the month you have to cut more of them than you do of your quality logs. Simultaneous to this, you are not putting anything back into your forest. You are not doing anything to increase the rate at which that forest will produce.
With the money that we are getting paid for our product right now, in western Nova Scotia, the reality is we simply do not have enough disposable income at the end of any given day to go on our woodlot and do work on a spruce thicket that will bring us no remuneration today; it may be 10, 15 or 20 years down the road before we will reap the benefits of that.
With the prices that we are making today, the private woodlot owner simply cannot take time to do procedures that won't bring in any money because, Friday afternoon, when I crawl off that tractor, my wife meets me in the dooryard, she says I am going grocery shopping, cross my palm with silver.
MR. CHAIRMAN: It's the same everywhere, I want to tell you.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yes. If I say there is no silver because I spent the whole week thinning out a spruce thicket, she says you better be prepared to eat it then. That is the reality.
Our forests are being depleted at an ever-increasing rate. We are cutting smaller trees, we are cutting poor-quality trees and, as we sit here today, we are doing absolutely nothing to reverse that. The sad, sad part of it is there is something that could be done and it is not rocket science, it's relatively simple. Basically what we need is the assistance from government to make it happen.
MR. DEWOLFE: Just one quick question, Mr. Chairman. The price of a cord of wood in our region and eastern Nova Scotia is remarkably higher than it is in western Nova Scotia. In fact, we get approximately $100 for a cord and in the west it is somewhere around $58. You have indicated that you are working with the central and western regions in developing a forest management plan. Will the price in the western and central region improve under a forest management plan, similar to the one that we have in the seven counties in eastern Nova Scotia?
MR. SULLIVAN: I think it will, eventually. The ideal scenario that I see is woodlot owners throughout the province producing quality products, which they sell to a group of competitive, healthy mills who produce quality lumber, which we can sell all over the world. I think that is coming off the rail simply because the source of supply is starting to dwindle. We are even getting to the point now where logs of three inch tops are starting to get scarce. If there is no supply going into those mills, they will have no choice but to eliminate some of these jobs that we seem to hold with such high regard.
What I am afraid of is, money follows money. The people who own these mills are not of this area. They are not from this area. When the forests have been raped, they will close up their mills and move on. We are in it for the long haul. We are working land that was handed down from our fathers and our grandfathers and we are here to stay. We don't have any choice. We have got to make this work. I think that is why we have finally been able to get an organization in western Nova Scotia, because people finally realize, hey, nobody is going to step in and do this for us. If it gets done, like it or not, we have got to lay down our tools and go make it happen and then maybe we will have something to go back to.
MR. BROWN: I would add to that, Jim. It is extremely important for the Resources Committee to know the position of the Forest Products Association. They went out and brought in a stewardship initiative. This stewardship initiative was foisted on its membership without any debate at its annual meetings. You did not have the participation of the membership in setting up - this is the mill's scheme. The Forest Products Association made a condition of membership in that association, adherence to this plan of theirs. Half of the membership in the Forest Products Association is ordinary people, like ourselves, who must become a member of that association in order to get the woods road assistance.
The Forest Products Association response to the government's White Paper on sustainable forestry, where only one organization was mentioned as the organization to look at, which was Wilma's organization, the Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers
Association. The Forest Products Association says we don't go along with an audit. We will only give conditional support to the sustainability provisions that government wants to bring in. In other words, we are going to run it our way. We don't want to have government inspections.
Well, the fact is, you can't have sustainable forest management with those terms. That is where your industry is. That is why, when you read in Monday's newspaper, Mr. Goodale went out and talked about how sustainable forest management is coming and it is a must. You noticed Diane Blenkhorn, who is the CEO of the Maritime Lumber Bureau, said, yes, sustainability for certification is on the way but, with all the woodlot owners, sustainability will be difficult to verify and enforce. Certification will be difficult because with that many landowners, how do you coordinate? Wilma does it every day and we are going to put it in in eastern Nova Scotia. I don't know whether the water is any different in eastern Nova Scotia, but we will coordinate it and we will run it, right out of her office. But the industry doesn't want anyone telling them anything. Well, the fact is, we have 70 per cent of the mill supply and it is damned near time that somebody recognized that we had better be, at least, first among the equals about saying what kind of silviculture program we are going to have and what kind of forest policy we are going to have, because successive governments have given it away.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The next questioner is Mr. John MacDonell.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I guess some of what you have said I knew or thought; some of what you said I didn't know. I don't really understand why there is a difference between the eastern counties and the western counties. Is it organization?
MR. BROWN: It is a cultural thing. It may be the old Anabaptists that came over with the Germans, it may be the United Empire Loyalists people that were removed by the ethnic cleansing of the American Revolution. These were the shopkeepers and what not that came up, the I-am-all-right-Jack, hearty independents.
Thirty years ago, the western Nova Scotians organized the independent Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners & Operators Association. It is a cultural thing that sees something very much wrong with people getting together; it is quite different from eastern Nova Scotia where you have a long tradition of the Antigonish movement and the co-ops and the credit unions.
Western Nova Scotia, they are very leery of government, but they are also, I think, even stronger in their feelings about the environment and the importance of their woodlots, I think mainly because they have better woodlots than we have in eastern Nova Scotia. It is no big secret why Michelin has the two plants in western Nova Scotia after it put the first one in Granton and why government went out and put in the Michelin Bill to protect that investment.
Incidentally, I attend meetings every year in Clare - I go to lots of meetings in western Nova Scotia; they invite me to come - and I have noticed over the last five years at least quite a difference in feeling. I don't think it is so much anti-clerical or anything else for a group of their neighbours to get together and say, look, we can't deal one on one with the mills, I think that we had better get together and deal with the mills. It is a cultural thing. I think it is going to change.
MR. SULLIVAN: And a traditional thing as well. I think a lot of farmers, woodlot owners in the western counties have traditionally - and I think it is simply a mindset but, nonetheless, a real factor - viewed their neighbour as a competitor. There is a mill down the road, it will take x number of thousand board feet a year, gosh, I better get mine cut and get it in there before my neighbours use up all the quota. It is just now that I think as a group we are collectively starting to see that will not work in the global marketing structure that we have today. None of us individually are big enough or strong enough to take on that kind of . . .
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: That is the reason it has worked this long, that the mills have had as much power, because they thwarted attempts for people to get together.
MR. SULLIVAN: We have played right into their hands.
MR. BROWN: At the meetings, they will rant and rave, down there. I know when I go to Queens County, they will rant and rave about Bowater. They look up at me, and I say, the problem is not Bowater, you are creating this drama. The problem is in this room, stop it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you still have questions?
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I do, I have several. You can choke me off when my time is up. I had a discussion with a local contractor and he had mentioned this problem to me about Kimberly-Clark and not buying roadside wood and the chips. I am only remotely familiar with the court case that ensued. Actually, I think my brother took support from, was it the Woodlot Owners & Operators Association?
MR. BROWN: The Central Suppliers Division of the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners & Operators Association.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Right. But this contractor had mentioned that Kimberly-Clark was going back onto their own land and high-grading, cutting what they had left in order to keep from buying as a result of this court case. Do you know if there is any truth in that?
MR. BROWN: I know nothing about that.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I am curious as to why there is a difference. I am assuming that if a mill came to me and wanted to buy logs, once upon a time they would buy the logs and take them and mill them. There would be planks, boards and whatever. So they would pay me so much a thousand or so much a cord or whatever. I don't see chipping as anything different, you start with a whole tree and you change its shape into something else. A chip is a much smaller piece of wood than a board but why can't they buy it on the stump or on roadside and chip it? Why is that a problem?
MR. BROWN: I am going to tell you how much of a problem it is for us. We are out of business; once that mill goes to chips, we can no longer bargain, the Stora price goes down, the MacTara price goes down and that is the end of it. We see this as such a serious problem that the board of directors of our association, the Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association, will be taking to its membership for ratification a very significant increase in the levy because of what work we are going to have to do to not submit to this technological change. We are going to have to sidestep it, come up with a new policy and then it is going to wind up in your lap because we want your support. The dividends have to come to us, we are not going to be looking at anything revolutionary here. It is just to make sure that we continue to get value from our forests rather than see the dividends go off overseas.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I guess what I am trying to get at is this, is your agreement of sale of wood a written contract based on roundwood? By them saying they want chips, that doesn't give you any avenue to bargain?
MR. BROWN: Exactly, it is that crazy. The Primary Forest Products Marketing Board has ruled, roundwood is chips and chips is roundwood. Kimberly-Clark, I am told by the executive of the Central Suppliers Division in New Glasgow, that they had given their word of honour that they had only had this challenge at one level of court and now it is going to a second level of court. Our association has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. We had the Curtis Study that was brought forward about 8 or 10 years ago that said - and this was a report to the Primary Forest Products Marketing Board - that the fact that government allows the woodlot owners of Nova Scotia to be dragged through the courts continually and putting up this kind of money is a disgrace, and it is.
MR. JOHN DEVEAU: Mr. Brown, I have to say this is the second time that I have had the pleasure of listening to you speak. I find it very educational but I have to be honest, I also find it a bit frightening. I have numerous constituents who call me at my office with concerns about the sustainability of our forests here in Nova Scotia. My question is really a very simple layperson question, is it time to push the panic button here in Nova Scotia or are there things that we could be doing now, today, yesterday, that will of course encourage the sustainability of our woodlands here in the province, or have we gone beyond that point?
MR. BROWN: You don't push panic buttons because usually when you do that you are making decisions on the basis of no information, in this case. The initiatives that have been brought forward by the woodlot owners of Nova Scotia are so significant that that is one reason why you don't push the panic button. The organization in the East that now has the joint management plan in place which is threatened by the technology of chips but in western Nova Scotia when you have this kind of a membership, this kind of an organization, it is the biggest grouping of people ever in western Nova Scotia for collective bargaining for anything in any industry. The Forest Council of Western Nova Scotia represents a bigger membership, proportionately than the Forest Products Association, which has around 900-odd members and half of those are woodlot owners who have to belong to it for two years in order to get access to the roads program. So you have this initiative coming forward.
We are here to tell you what is going on in Nova Scotia. I think that before you press any panic buttons and certainly the Canadian Institute of Forestry has been, if not pressing a panic button, it has certainly been ringing bells for some time now. This is a professional organization of foresters in Nova Scotia that is taking a professional responsibility for the forests. In fact, I think it is one of the best examples we have in Nova Scotia of professionals who are looking after their professional responsibilities to the trees. These people have been ringing bells for some time.
[11:00 a.m.]
I do think that if we're smart enough to be able to sidestep this damn technology that is coming in that's wiping out all of these small woodlot owners, if we can get to our standing tree idea, if we can set up in the East the kind of a marketing association - in the West they are moving forward to setting up a silviculture program where they have a say in it, the say - after that, we're passing the template of certification, ISO certification down to them. We have offered our experience and our template of how - this is a first in North America - it is going to be done to any organization, not only John's.
It is extremely important, of course, that we get the straight goods from government. For instance, I have talked to people in DNR and they're as confused as you and I are because they say, is this government saying what are we doing, are we managing our forests for fibre, or are we managing it for what we've been told all along we're supposed to be managing it for - a good, healthy forest producing logs, veneer, whatnot. Our woodlot owners might decide they would like to grow yellow birch. Well, by God, I don't want a mill to go and say we're not using yellow birch and we're not going to contribute to that. We're going to have a say in what that's going to be because we're going to, as John says, be here, you see.
No, it is no time for a panic button because what you have is people with the skills, imagination and competence, they have already demonstrated it here in Nova Scotia, in the West and in the East, we can handle it. What we need is some kind of support and understanding from our legislators. That's all we need because you guys represent us. You
don't represent refrigerators. It's an interesting thing, Stora Enso, they got together with the Finns; they hate each other's guts, the Finns and the Swedes, but they had to get together in order to get into the European union.
We're going to have to make some interesting adjustments ourselves in being able to pull this off and the mills are going to have to wise up to the fact that we own the forests and we're going to have a say in how this whole strategy is going to be run. There will be no more top-down things. We're so far ahead of government now. We've taken the initiative. Every single thing that government did we defeated, the people of Nova Scotia defeated because it was not good for Nova Scotia. So, no, there's no panic.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Charles MacDonald.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: I guess I have become a bit lost. As I understand, the private and the small woodlot owners account for roughly 48 per cent of the woodlot acreage that's out there today and according to your figures, we have 70 per cent of the supply or we control 70 per cent of the supply going into these?
MR. BROWN: That's the mills' estimate.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: Well, that was the one that you gave us.
MR. BROWN: I gave you the 70 per cent.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: That's right.
MR. BROWN: Because that's what the mill says and we agree with it. I think the figures that you will see from the province, it is 66 per cent, I believe, is small woodlot holdings. It is 30,000 to 35,000. So if you get some funny figures, the province itself doesn't know exactly how many there are. It is between 30,000 and 35,000 woodlots but the estimate from the industry . . .
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: Can I take it a step further. I guess if we control 70 per cent of the supply to these mills and we control 35 per cent to 48 per cent of the private woodlots, or we own 35 per cent to 48 per cent of these private woodlots, to me, we should be independent of the mills, should we not? I mean if we're market driven, we should be going to where we have sale for our product and if we're not satisfied with what we're getting from Stora or from Kimberly-Clark, or whatever, then we seek our markets beyond. In biodiversity, as a forest manager I am looking after my property, and I manage my property and use it wisely so that my hardwoods go where they should go and my softwoods go, and my logs go, why am I concerned so much about Stora or Kimberly-Clark? They don't control me.
MR. BROWN: They don't control you, Mr. [Charles] MacDonald, but a few contracts ago Wilma, Charlie and others negotiated a contract with Stora that put $28 million . . .
MR. [Charles] MACDONALD: But they negotiated that.
MR. BROWN: . . . of new money into that region. That was the largest single injection of money into that region from public sources. This is wood that your constituents put roadside. It is not that we have to go beating the woods or shipping our stuff out. If we ship our stuff to Maine, you can be damn good and sure we are not going to get a levy for forest management. They are not going to pay for forest management here either.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: But we may get a better price for the wood.
MR. BROWN: We are getting $100 a cord now, which is . . .
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: If we go to the market for our product, if I understand it - this is what I don't understand - the market, the end user, is the one that is paying for it. I look at our two-by-fours and two-by-sixes and whatnot. They are getting cut and getting shipped back down into the U.S. and the market is there on a daily basis. The shippers watch it on a daily basis. They know in the U.S. where they are going to ship that on a daily basis, to get the best prices they can get for that product. If I can get that kind of a price for that product, I shouldn't have to worry about Stora or anybody else giving me that $1.00 - or whatever it is - a cord for silviculture. I should have it caught up in what I get in the market.
MR. BROWN: With respect, Mr. [Charles] MacDonald, we had 70 years of this century of your attitude and we are . . .
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: I am sorry. It is not my attitude. I am asking a question. I am trying to understand something here.
MR. BROWN: The point here is that you can't go out and make a one-on-one deal with the mill and expect that you are going to get a decent price.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: No, but we have 48 per cent of the properties owned by private woodlots.
MR. BROWN: The reason we are getting a reasonable price for our product in eastern Nova Scotia is that it is the price that we have been able to establish with Stora. MacTara wouldn't be paying more than we are to get logs if Stora wasn't paying $100 for pulpwood.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: But we don't have to deal with MacTara either.
MR. SULLIVAN: Maybe to help put this in perspective a bit, Mr. [Charles] MacDonald. When I first got into this, being as naive as I was, I thought that that was the way to do it, that you got on the phone and you just phoned around and you got the best price for your product and if that was the mill down the road, fine; if that was some mill in New Brunswick, fine.
For the individual woodlot owner, here is the reality. You are lucky enough to be able to take time out from actually pounding knots in the woods to do this administrative thing of phoning around and checking prices, but, invariably, what you do find is when you make that contact and you find the buyer who is willing to take your product at the price you are looking for, he says, I would like to have 1.2 million feet. Can you have it for me by the end of the week? As a single operator, I am lucky to cut 1,000 or 1,500 feet a week. It is, I guess, the scale. What you are saying is valid up to a point. It is not practical when the individual woodlot owner goes to put it in place without an organization to kind of do that broad sort of thing for him. That is the reality of it.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: I guess on the market side, I look at our fishery and it is one of the areas that has been talked about in fisheries, as well. I look at fishermen and they are a lot the same as private woodlot owners. They have been very independent over the years, as such. They haven't come together collectively to possibly gain the greatest benefits that they could. But, anyway, I will stay away from that.
Can I ask you a question here. In the government's position paper of 1997 and the amendments in 1998, what conflicts prevent you from seeking what your objectives are? What is wrong with that paper?
MR. BROWN: Nothing.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: There is nothing wrong. You would agree with the position papers?
MR. BROWN: We are totally in favour of all federal and provincial regulatory initiatives. We just hope the government is going to stick with them.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: Okay. So you have no problem there.
MR. BROWN: No. In fact, the government thinks we are the best thing that has come along since sliced bread, but it has just got to stop bowing and genuflecting to industry.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: One last question and I will leave you. Some people in the forestry sector have urged the government to restrict or prevent the export of unprocessed logs from Nova Scotia. How do you feel about that side?
MR. BROWN: Your first question, Mr. [Charles] MacDonald, I think we will do whatever we want with our logs. If our people can get a better price somewhere else that Nova Scotians won't pay for them, they will just go somewhere else. There is no restriction on interprovincial trade. This is what our association has always felt. If Stora won't do a deal, well, we will just have to do a deal somewhere else, but we want to deal with Stora. They are a hard-hitting, fair outfit. You get out of this world what you are hard enough to get. All change comes out of the end of a rifle, said Lenin.
I would like to bring up another point. We are very fortunate in our association that a young lawyer got his first job working with our association. He is the brightest lawyer, he is the smartest guy when it comes to woodlot politics and legislation in this country. He can take the match of George Cooper and Hector McInnes any day. That was something to consider. When you are coming up against a mill anywhere and you are deciding that you want to be able to get a price, you had better have experience on your side, and we have the experience in our association with all of the years that we have been in collective bargaining, but you also need the best legal talent you can buy.
They can put their million dollar men in. Well, we have not got that kind of money, but you sure require that kind of competence when you are dealing with the biggest corporations in the world.
MR. CHARLES MACDONALD: If you are going to do business with them, I agree, you have to do it at their level.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have a couple of questions myself and then we will go to John MacDonell. The Forests Act passed last fall and there was a lot of discussion leading up to it. I know there have been White Papers, pink papers, green papers, whatever you want to call them, being put out on this. We were somehow surprised that the government seems to be moving very slowly with this. I listened to what you were saying, that you are in favour of a lot of the initiatives being planned. Does this slowness to react in the government concern you? Do you think it is dragging its feet on that?
MR. BROWN: You mean as far as bringing in the regulations?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Enacting the legislation and regulations.
MR. BROWN: I can answer that best by giving a little analogy here. The forest technicians who have a very concentrated, one-year course, and they go off to Fredericton or Thunder Bay, or whatnot, and they take a course, these guys have been on my land and
I have met them all over the province. They are extremely talented, well-educated, well-trained people. One thing I have noticed when they come onto your land is they have a very interesting kind of language. They will always say, well, it is a good idea if you leave that big old steerigan standing there, it is good for the birds, or they say that is pretty good over there. It is not the government saying it or not someone coming down, but they say it.
The government has been able - and I put it in the way that it has introduced these regulations concerning wildlife and waterways and things like that - over a period of the last 10 years or so, to create the understanding, the public awareness that this is a pretty good thing.
Yes, the legislation has to come. After all, the government says, look, the landowners, they are the outfit to copy. These are the people who are setting the standards. Yes, the reason we are not ranting and raving about this stuff being made the law of the land - we know it is coming - is because we are not right up there to be able to respond positively to it in the sense that everything government is talking about we are going to have to implement for certification.
Our certification is going to mean that we are going to develop an honour code of forest practice and we expect to have a big say. You can bring in the umbrella idea of the registry in sustainable forest management and the inspections and putting integrity into the system, this is what we are demanding. We are demanding the integrity of the system, because any wishy-washy stuff in there, we are not going to be able to satisfy markets around the world who have to be assured that we are not butchering our forests.
Here, you see, we might be even running into a problem, because what our DNR foresters and technicians are asking me, are we growing fibre now in this province or are we going to grow trees?
MR. CHAIRMAN: A good question. One last thing I wanted to ask you, in your group, in the eastern counties, do landowners have to belong to your group in order to sell to Stora or can they sell on their own to Stora?
MR. BROWN: All they have to do is pay a levy because they are getting the benefits of our negotiating skills. So they pay 90 cents on every cord plus they pay $1.00 on every cord that goes into the mill for forest management.
MR. CHAIRMAN: For silviculture and so forth.
MR. BROWN: Yes.
MS. STUBB: We represent member and non-member suppliers who supply to Stora Forest Industries in the seven eastern counties.
MR. CHAIRMAN: So do you coordinate sales for your members?
MS. STUBB: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Part of the problem you hear is that even in Bowater they are saying that they are not taking very much material right now in western Nova Scotia. My riding is mostly fishery, there is some forestry, but it is in the outer perimeters of my riding. Are we in a situation that when they start taking fewer logs do they look - and I am sure it is the same thing maybe with Stora sometimes - more to your members to supply them? Obviously, if they can take as much as they want then there is no problem but if you get in a situation that they are looking for a certain amount and there are more looking to sell, then I was just wondering do your members get preferential treatment? I just want to understand it.
MS. STUBB: We have roughly 35 per cent of mill consumption.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Guaranteed?
MS. STUBB: Guaranteed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Which is their own production plus private landowners, is that correct?
MS. STUBB: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I was just trying to understand how it works.
There was a question, I believe it was John MacDonell. Do you have a question?
MR. HYLAND FRASER: Yes, but he is first.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, I will go to him, because he hasn't had a question.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Thank you, Hyland and Mr. Chairman. Something that bothers me and sometimes when I get into these groups that talk to people, nobody will come out and say it, so I am never sure if it is something that anybody thinks should be said or they totally disagree with me but I have a real problem with clear-cutting. I know in the 1960's there used to be the small tree Act and I would think that a small tree Act wouldn't be a bad idea. I am wondering if you have a thought on that and in today's market system in this world, if that could work? When we talk about logs going with three inch tops, well, I am not sure some are going with three inch butts.
I know that during the Law Amendments Committee on the Forests Act a young man for MacTara came to speak. He was saying that you could get a tree with three inches and we have the equipment that we can cut a two-by-four out of it and maybe two out of it and never touch bark. So we have raised the bar on forestry practices and so on. So I asked what he meant by that, like in what way have they done that and I got a very vague answer. I said, wouldn't a small tree like that indicate to you that you are running out of big trees, that they are disappearing? Because I think that if you could cut big trees - I did work in the woods and I cut logs for a contractor years ago and it seemed to me that if I was trying to make a living, if I could cut a few big trees - it would be less work than cutting a whole lot of little ones, although they would be lighter maybe but that would be the advantage. So, I am just wondering, as far as a small tree Act.
The registry of buyers, which is part of this new legislation was also part of another bill back in the 1980's and it never seemed to answer the question of sustainability.
MR. BROWN: I can answer that, Mr. [John] MacDonell and then I would like John to have a crack at it because there are a couple of different views on it. One, clear-cutting is nature's way of putting a stand of trees in place. On the South Shore you had the Saxby gale which created the large even-age stands of trees. In Cape Breton, now you have the budworm pulse sitting there with all that real estate as the result of the biggest clear-cut in history on our continent, seen by the astronauts, which cuts it all out. That was budworm. Then you have the fires. It is a natural way of doing things. On some sites, you shouldn't clear-cut and on other sites, there is nothing wrong with clear-cutting.
In eastern Nova Scotia, it is an entirely different forest. They are different people in western Nova Scotia and it is a different forest in western Nova Scotia. In eastern Nova Scotia, clear-cutting has been, we feel, a perfectly acceptable way of cutting. On my own land, which is black spruce and pine and white spruce, it is on shattered granite, and there aren't any roots going down, so you couldn't do any selective cutting or virtual thinning or anything else. This is the case in a lot of places, I would think, on the slopes leading up to the highlands plateau in Cape Breton.
The thing that bothers me about the idea of a small tree Act, and let's face it I am more of a bleeding heart, left-winger than I am on the far right, although you can't put any ideological labels on anyone these days, but I am a little leery of going out and telling a woodlot owner who has to get a kid in college or whatever emergency comes up or whatever you need, to go out and tell him on his land that he can't cut these trees. Now my neighbour across the harbour, Ed Chisholm was telling me the other day that he is going to have to go in and cut a pile, two or three acres of immature firs as the result of this bug coming in.
I remember at the time, when the forest improvement Act, and the board, was set up and they wanted to set up a rigid procedure, where you could cut the trees and what trees you could cut and everything else. My view, at that time and it did prevail, was, let's practise
management. We all have different ways of looking at management, Merritt Feltmate down in Goshen who was a fine manager, he would manage a certain way; Reid up in Baddeck Valley would manage a certain way; Clement Comeau, down there, he manages a certain way for what he wants.
This is why it is so important, why it is so very important that our hand is at the lever of strategy and power in this whole issue of silviculture, because the object of silviculture and forest management is to look after the management objectives of the owner. We are not interested in the mills' objectives, it is the owners' objectives that have to be looked at in this issue.
I think that while you will hear a lot more sentiment with people who own land with lots of big trees saying, yes, we should have a small tree Act, you might go to a lot of other places where you will have a different view. I would like to hear John's view on this one.
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, I think it is somewhat similar. As far as clear-cutting by itself, I don't necessarily think it is good, I don't necessarily think it is bad. Clear-cutting is a tool, the same as a lot of the other procedures you can do on your woodlot. As Kingsley said, if you have a situation on your woodlot where you have over-mature . . .
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Well, there is difference between a management technique, using clear-cutting as a management technique. There are those places where you would have to go in and level them for sure, but there is also a harvesting technique, you go and you clear it. As far as the eye can see . . .
MR. SULLIVAN: If you have a section of your woodlot that is even-aged, over-mature, been infected by insects, maybe fire damage or whatever, clear-cutting may be the only practical answer, but you would do it in as small blocks as you could possibly do it and in that case, I would say clear-cutting would be a valuable and an appropriate procedure.
If on the other hand you are clear-cutting large tracts of land - and clear-cutting is only one side of the ledger - simply to feed your pulp mill or your sawmill to bring a smile to your shareholders' faces and then you are going to go back and reforest that tract of land with some sort of monoculture to come back and harvest again in another 10 years' or 20 years' time, I think that will, over time, have an adverse effect on your woodlot. I think one of the reasons that we have avoided a lot of these insect infestations in the western province is our forests tend to be more diverse, we have a mixture of hardwoods, a large variety of softwoods. We don't tend to have tree plantations and do a lot of, until recently, monoculture type woodlot management. I think the procedure itself isn't necessarily bad, but I think it has to be used appropriately by people with a little bit of intelligence and common sense.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Fraser.
MR. FRASER: My question is for Kingsley. The arrangements you have now with Stora for the seven eastern counties, are you feeling threatened, or will you be, when all the new growth in the highlands comes into production? Is that going to make a lot of difference and I am concerned I guess with Antigonish-Guysborough because that growth is on Cape Breton and . . .
MR. BROWN: I was talking to some foresters, yesterday, in Antigonish and DNR. Antigonish is badly overcut. No, the mill has an obligation to take two-thirds of their wood from member and non-member.
MR. FRASER: Right.
MR. BROWN: So they cannot bludgeon us that way. Also, the budworm policy is there and it is going to be very difficult I think. I was talking to some people the other day about the tools and they're diminishing in being able to fight because the big pesticide companies feel they're not going to make the investment because they have to go through all the hassle. It is there and there's nothing that's going to protect it. You can do so much with BT, but once you have that enormous amount of real estate all growing at the same time, Jim knows this as a man of forestry, I am not worried about that. I do think though, I have talked to people down in Guysborough and whatnot and where you have those long hardwood ridges, which Stora controls, and I think that we're going to have to have a good look at that, but, no, no, that stand doesn't bother me.
MR. FRASER: Good.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. DeWolfe.
MR. DEWOLFE: How much time do we have, Mr. Chairman? I realize we have to . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: The House is sitting at 12:00 p.m. We could close at 11:30 a.m. because some of us have to get ready for the House.
MR. DEWOLFE: In closing, I just want to say it is always a pleasure to hear from you, Kingsley, and also Mr. Sullivan. Hopefully, we will hear from Wilma at another time. My question, very briefly, I was studying the Swedish model of clear-cutting when the topic came up on clear-cutting and it occurred to me that in Sweden, what they do after they clear-cut, they go in and they mulch everything up, level it, and then plant. I am just wondering what your thoughts are, Mr. Brown, on that? Is that a direction that perhaps we should be going?
MR. BROWN: Well, two-thirds of our clear-cuts regenerate naturally. So that leaves one-third that after a certain period of time and now we cannot plant within two years of cutting because of the smells and whatnot that are there of the resin and the saps, that they
attract a bug that comes in and will eat up any of the new plants that you would plant. Stora just learned this over the last few years.
About planting, no, I don't see anything wrong with clear-cutting at all. For instance, I see nothing wrong with Irving's operation. In my opinion, Irving and Stora have probably the two most sophisticated silviculture operations in America. Irving's operation - I am no apologist for Irving, my job is to get at them - but if the government says that the setbacks are x metres, Irving's setbacks are x plus y metres. If the government says your road standards are x, his are x plus y. He doubles everywhere as far as your protection and your setbacks and your roads and everything else.
The clear-cutting issue, if he's going into an area and he says this makes sense for me to do it this way, it might be a lot of bad wood and whatnot, I think he has got around 270,000 acres bought now down in western Nova Scotia; I think his target is 400,000. But no, I don't see any problem in that area, Jim.
[11:30 a.m.]
Also, when you come to the idea, as John had mentioned, on the monoculture, that one doesn't frighten me too much because we have great monocultures. The Province of Ontario allows these forest fires to just burn as much as they can because it puts in another pile of trees. One of the greatest monocultures we have in the world extends from Newfoundland to Siberia, which is that boreal forest of black spruce. I haven't heard any environmentalist say there was anything wrong with that particular monoculture. Also on my land, I planted red, white and black spruce. So I don't see any problem with that approach.
MR. DEWOLFE: Well, thank you and perhaps as legislators we can work collectively to bring your concerns to a higher level.
MR. BROWN: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'd like to thank the witnesses today. I wish we had a little more time; however, with the House sitting with extended hours it is a little difficult to extend it. I think we had some good questions today from all three Parties and I think you gave a good explanation. I know for myself, coming from western Nova Scotia, just trying to understand how it works is very interesting for us. I would like to thank all three of you for coming.
I am going to turn to the committee's work now. Our schedule for the upcoming weeks is June 22nd, Coastal Community, Ishbel Munroe and Arthur Bull. There was one other person who asked to come and I don't think time would permit us to do it this September. Bernard Christmas has called me; he is a solicitor with the aboriginal community. If I understand his comments, since we invited DNR to come and talk and I think subsequent to the meeting, the enforcement officer - I can't recall his name - gave a lengthy interview
outside of the committee hearing. I think Mr. Christmas felt that he should have a chance to give testimony. I said I had no problem with that, but because of the hours of the House sitting and everything else it would probably be difficult to get hm here. I told him that I would bring it before the committee and I just want to make sure that you are aware of it.
We have two meetings set up, one on June 22nd and one on September 14th but as soon as time would permit, I ask whether or not members would agree to let him come before the committee. I have no problem but I am not going to set a time, especially when we are in extended hours right now; there is no point even trying to set more meetings, this one here was difficult enough. We had caucus today and had to leave early and it makes it very difficult to do our work as legislators, as much as we want to have these hearings, when you are into eight hour days; it is very difficult.
If it is agreeable, I will contact Mr. Christmas and say that when we set up new meetings we are prepared to hear from him but that it would obviously be in the fall before that would happen. However, if we are agreeable to that, that is what I will communicate to him.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: It is agreed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:33 a.m.]
