HALIFAX, TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2004
STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. John MacDonell
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we will get started this morning. There may be some members of the committee who will straggle in yet. I'm John MacDonell, Chairman of the Resources Committee. I want to welcome the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators Association, Mr. Miller and Mr. Prest. We traditionally start with an introduction of the members here and then we will let you make your presentation. If I could start with Mr. Colwell, please.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: So, please.
MR. TOM MILLER: Good morning. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address this committee. I'm Tom Miller. I have worked in the forest industry of Nova Scotia for 30 years this fall. It was 1974, back in the 1900s, when I began with a power saw course offered by Scott Paper, it was then. I'm a graduate of the Maritime Forest Ranger School, so I'm a forest technician in New Brunswick and I can now consider myself a small- woodlot owner and I live in Pictou County.
Wade Prest is with me. He is a forestry graduate from UNB. I think he graduated in 1982 but I think he has been in the industry since he was a young boy. He comes from a long line of woodsmen from Mooseland in Halifax County. We've both been harvesting and silviculture contractors over the years but I think now we are presently very small operators pursuing a low-impact forestry model.
1
I was trying to think of how I would structure this thing today and I thought I would come in and look at a lot of things that we saw as being bad and wrong with the industry but I didn't know where to start and I wasn't sure I would know if I would ever get finished. We do have quite a bit of concern but I think that is often mostly what you people get to hear, sort of the bad side of it. We've spent a bit of our time in the association complaining, expressing our views and we don't see any changes happening. This is over quite a period of time so I'm going to bring some good news, or what we consider to be good news, about what we are doing and what our association is doing.
I put a little brochure out there in front of everybody's table, and I guess you have seen some stuff from this binder here. We are the oldest woodlot owners association in the province. We began around 1969. It was the Woodlot Owners at that time. In 1976, I believe, we added "and Operators" but I sort of like to think it began in 1969. If it wasn't for that group, we wouldn't have had the operators added in there so I think there is some argument over that. Anyway, that's how I see it.
There have been lots of ups and downs over that time but I think we are enjoying a bit of a revival, at least in my mind. As I said, we have spent some time hammering against the industry and perhaps at DNR, what's been going on, came up blank on that and about three or four years ago, decided that we were going to start promoting what we thought was right. Since we have done that, board meetings have become a lot more enjoyable to go to.
We consider ourselves outside of the status quo in this province. For the last couple of years, we have been advocating low-impact forestry, which is heavy to the environmental aspect of things. We want to see more selection harvesting, the creation of natural regeneration, have tighter spacings between our trees; what happens now is an 8 x 8 spacing being promoted in our young stands.
Wade and I have spent some time this winter clearing up Hurricane Juan damage on his land and when you have two trees that are 16 or 18 inches across on the butt and maybe 60 or 70 feet tall and they are three feet apart, I'm not sure that an eight-foot spacing is necessary. What is necessary is longer rotations. We don't look to harvest our land in 40 or 50 years time, we are looking at 100 and longer. As Dr. Wilfrid Creighton told us, in Germany, they cut oak on a 250-year rotation. I guess if you are the guy who has the 150-year-old oak, you aren't doing too good but a little later on, it will be better.
We are also promoting the restoration of the Acadian forest. It's a heck of a thing to say that we are promoting the restoration of that thing because Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I. lie within the Acadian forest region. There are nine forest regions across the country and the Acadian forest region is the natural forest region of this area. You may have heard of the boreal forest region. That often gets maybe a little more press. That stretches from Newfoundland right across to the Yukon and more in the northern end. But that is one of the regions and then there are others as well. But we are the Acadian forest region and that
is basically characterized by very long-lived species, 250 to 400 years old: white pine, our provincial tree which is red spruce, eastern hemlock, sugar maple, yellow birch and others. These trees can stand to be left alone after you die, before you die. You can leave them, you don't have to touch them. They can be for the kids, they can be for the grandchildren.
An uneven age system of management in that type of forest where you take out slow-growing trees, where you take out a huge, giant, very valuable tree, that is a scientifically-proven method of managing that forest. We don't have to clear-cut that ground. We don't want to clear-cut that ground. It is far better to pick away at that and for small-woodlot owners, that is what we want. We either want to be able to go every year or every five or 10 years into our land and take a little money out of it. Wade and I both spend a lot of time on our land. I was in my woods all day yesterday with a power saw. I want to be able to do that each year, to take money out of that. It has really basically become for me now, what I look at as a main source of my income and I don't have enough land to treat it in any other way but to go slow and pick around.
When we are talking about the Acadian forest restoration - and I say restoration - there will be some places where you will find these types of trees but in the type of forestry that has taken place in Nova Scotia over the last 20 or 30 years, I'm almost thinking that we might have to have a new designation. Much of our land has been planted to Norway spruce, red pine - although red pine is found in the Acadian forest, not in such quantities that we see - Japanese larch would be another tree, another exotic. This type of stuff has come in to really take over the management system that is better for the Acadian forest. So we have to restore in many places.
One thing I was saying to Wade, if any of us own woodland or you get into a place where you see a little stand of really big wood, you think, oh man, look at this. Most woodlots have a little pocket of that somewhere and most of our small woodlots in this province are characterized by out by the road where everybody is driving by, there is a field and the house and the barn, an old farm there maybe, maybe a present-day farm. The woods next door, in back there, aren't so good but you can go down into this little pocket where it is hard to get to or hard to get out of and you think man, this is something. Well, at one time it used to be like that out by the house. This wood was there, this Acadian forest-type of forest. Granted, over the whole province, it wasn't all spectacular. Due to soil and climate conditions, you wouldn't have this but there were far more of these older forests in the past. We are looking to promote the restoration to that.
Our association, I think three years ago at an annual meeting, agreed to become a member of the Forest Stewardship Council International. The Forest Stewardship Council is one of the forms of forest certification. Now I don't know how much you've heard about that, it has been talked about quite a bit.
[9:15 a.m.]
At the annual meeting in January, I believe, of this year of the Forest Products Association, they had a moderator, Jean-Pierre Kiekens. So, I'm not making this up, this is the truth, "Resistance to forest certification is futile, agreed speakers at the mid-January annual meeting of the Forest Products Association . . . If there is one thing on which the certification advocates were right, it is that certification is here to stay." So, whether you want to have your woodland certified, whether you want to be part of this system or not, you probably don't have a choice; in the future, it's going to be part of what's going on. Our group has chosen to be a member of the FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council; that just makes the association a member of that, that doesn't mean our woodlot owners as members have FSC certified woodland. There's a whole other process to make that happen.
We believe it's coming. It's here for some of us now. Both Wade and I have FSC certified woodland right now. We have this under the management of - the idea is a pool manager, it's a way to cut the cost of this thing a little bit, although it still seems to be fairly expensive to have this designation, with no real benefit at this time, that we can see. We're some of the first to start this for certified woodland in this province; I believe the first certified woodland was the Pictou Landing First Nation in Pictou County, they became FSC certified through the pool arrangement. There are 12 woodlots in Nova Scotia and four in New Brunswick. A resource manager, Bill McKay - he's a registered professional forester - is in charge of it; he carries the designation but our lands have that certification now.
We see in this article - this is in Atlantic Forestry Review, which comes out six times a year and if you want to know what's going on in the industry, this is the periodical to get to be up to date locally. Everybody's talking about looking at various programs and whatnot and trying to see where they fit in. We have a dozen members in this province doing this. We just held a meeting at my house in January of the pool members. It's imperative in my mind that we start having forest products this year come out with an FSC tag on them. It started out as being, you will get a benefit, you will get a premium in price perhaps, and as this article says, forget about it. I think that to be true. People want to see the right thing done but they don't want to pay too much for it. So that's going to be a little bit of a thing, I don't believe we are going to get that.
The Forest Stewardship Council, they're pretty small it says here, but they're the ones that started it all. This began, I believe, in the 1980s, early 1990s, against the rain forest cutting that was happening. It began out of Europe. It's a system that is impossible for anyone to control, any one organization cannot get control of this and have their agenda be the one. In the FSC, there are economic, social and environmental chambers. There are three chambers that are involved, so you will always have to be able to get along with each other; you might be able to control a chamber, but you can't control the whole bunch.
We see industry, in particular - and I don't want to pick on industry, but they really are sort of putting down the FSC as having too high an ideal to follow. For the downside, what we would see industry against on this are the things that we like about it: very high ideals; no chemicals allowed, is a big part of it, although there are some. The FSC is arguably, I believe, the top certification system in the world. If you're FSC certified, you can get in anywhere; any of the lesser ones you might not be able to get in. The Maritimes' standards are some of the toughest within the FSC International; we've seen some companies that have started out with FSC and haven't continued on.
Our idea is, with the restoration of the Acadian forest - that's a big thing of the FSC as well, is the restoration to the historical forest, that's a big part of what they want. You're not allowed to clear-cut and plant exotic species. The work is to get back to the original historic forest that grew on that particular patch of land that you're looking after and work at it that way. This is every bit as scientific forestry as the industrial forestry we see today. This is highly applicable to managing the Acadian forest, to work it on a long-term, tall, heavy type of forest. We believe that there's more value - and I started writing that value and I was going to put a dollar sign there, but there's more of all the values that we can get out of a forest: quality timber, the diversity of the species, lots of wildlife, clean water, tourism opportunities. All of these things are far more available in an Acadian mixed, diverse type forest, we believe, than in the clear-cut plantation style that we see happening from industry.
I don't know how I am time-wise here but . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: You're doing fine.
MR. MILLER: FSC, like I say, if you ever go to a meeting on certification, you have FSC, CSA, SFI; there are more of these acronyms that by the time they all get read out, you don't know actually where you fit in that little bunch. It's my opinion that everything comes out of the FSC, the FSC is the grandfather, it generated the whole thing; anything else is really going to be somewhat of a compromise on that to make it easier to swallow or whatever.
I believe having the high ideal is a far better thing because when you're shooting for the stars you often don't get there but at least you've gone quite a ways. If you're going to shoot for the top of your boot and you don't get there, well, you really haven't gone anywhere at all. So, we like that idea and the members of the Nagaya - which is, I guess, an African name for restoration - the Nagaya pool are all like-minded, perhaps a little more environmentally inclined. The FSC is being recognized by the City of New York and by the City of Boston. These are two fairly new things that have come out but it's interesting to note, this isn't in China, this is in northeastern North America, which is pretty close to where we are.
In New York City now, they have a "Good Wood" bill, which will amend the administrative code of New York City in relation to city contracts involving the purchase of wood products and materials. So if you're going to have building materials or furniture, anything that has wood in it, FSC certified is the certification program out of four that they studied; only the FSC meets this bill's requirements.
I would have to imagine that the buying policy of New York City is fairly extensive and fairly large and it requires people who supply that to go to a lot of work. However, the State of New York has 700,000 acres that are FSC certified. So they've taken that initiative and so there is a place, and I wouldn't doubt that there is also some private FSC wood available in that state. But it's showing, for that city to choose that certification system, they don't want any second best or third best, they want the top one and these contractors are going to have to meet that.
Also, the City of Boston, their watershed is FSC certified. So, Boston wants some pretty good water, I should imagine. It is one of the places that cities like Halifax could look to; Boston cleaned up their harbour a number of years ago . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: They took the tea out of it. (Laughter)
MR. MILLER: They took the tea out of it. So that was a good start. But their watershed is FSC certified and it would be interesting to know with FSC, that doesn't mean leave it alone, we're just hugging the trees, you can have timber extraction. These things can happen, but it's to a very high ideal. How you cross over water is a key thing. You don't just drive the skidder through there, leaving big ruts, you have to do a lot of extra work.
I want to read something here, and I'm going to finish off with this. This is something that I see as guiding my life now, what I want to do and what I see our association is doing, out of the status quo, trying to go our own way, instead of complaining, create what we see to be the right thing. This comes from a book - I believe it's a book - called the Shaker Adventure by Marguerite Fellows Melcher. I haven't been able to find it in the library, but I haven't done enough work. Don't tell me I can probably find it on the Internet, because I'm not one of those guys who goes there.
Anyway, this is the quote, "One of the intangible legacies the Shakers left to the world is their demonstration that it is possible for man to create the environment and the way of life he wants, if he wants it enough. Man can choose. The Shakers were practical idealists. They did not dream vaguely of conditions they would like to see realized; they went to work to make these conditions an actuality. They wasted no time in raging against competitive society, or in complaining bitterly that they had no power to change it; instead they built a domain of their own, where they could arrange their lives to their liking" Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Wade.
MR. WADE PREST: Well, maybe I will have a few words before we go to questions. I was here three years ago. John, you were on the committee at that time. I don't think there was anybody else who was on the Natural Resources Committee at that time who is here today. I don't believe. Anyway, I sat here with Eldon Gunn, and Eldon and I espoused two very different points of view regarding forestry, at that time. I'm going to just read how I opened my submission to this same committee three years ago. I was trying to be provocative, there's no doubt about it.
"Forest management as practised in Nova Scotia today is both unsustainable and quite inappropriate for our province. It is unsustainable because we are not using the management systems which are suitable for our natural forest, our climate and our soils. It is inappropriate because it delivers fewer benefits to our people than is possible under a more appropriate management strategy."
Now that was how I opened my talk three years ago. If I was doing a talk today, I would open it exactly the same. Nothing has changed. The problems have probably become worse rather than better. Then I went on to tell why I felt that way and tried to explain to the committee why our forest management practices were so inappropriate and why we were getting so many fewer benefits than we could.
Now, at the end of the morning, when we left, I didn't feel that I really had gotten through to too many people. That is an example of what Tom is talking about when he says our association is tired of putting out and out to the rest of the forestry sector. In this case, this committee is part of the forestry sector of Nova Scotia. When Tom says that we got tired of it, that's what he's talking about, because we've been doing it, as individuals and our association has been doing it, for 40 years, almost. Things are not getting better, they're just continuing to get worse. I think the biggest part of the reason is because the short-term economic and short-term political time frames under which our society operates are not able, at all, to deal with the long-term nature of forestry and the long-term planning that's necessary to have sustainable forests. That word sustainable, it's a terrible thing that everybody claims to be sustainable. Everybody claims that their system is sustainable, and they're the only ones that are sustainable. I guess that when we come here and we talk about what we're doing, we're just part of that, we're saying that we got it right and everybody else has it wrong.
[9:30 a.m.]
Here in Nova Scotia we have real trouble. We all say that science backs us up, and the industry that has been increasingly implementing an industrial forestry model in Nova Scotia and the Department of Natural Resources will tell you people exactly all the science that backs up the management that they want to impose upon our forest. Then, when I speak to you, I bring forth other science, the science as far as I'm concerned, that is actually the more suitable science for our type of forest here in Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia our forests
are very different than most everywhere else in Canada, so we always have to be very careful about looking at other areas and saying, well, if they do it there, it must be all right here.
It's certainly discouraging that we haven't been able to make more changes over the years. At the end of my talk three years ago, I threw it right at the politicians, right at the committee members. I said that I wasn't really trying to blame any particular part of the forest sector but I said the buck stops with our elected politicians. It's up to elected politicians to learn and to get out there and to inform themselves of what's happening in our forestry industry to the point where they can start to make judgments on their own, not being told this by one person and something else by somebody else.
The forest industry and the forest resource, other than the people, is probably the most important resource that we have in Nova Scotia. If what we are doing is unsustainable, if the way we are treating our forest now is unsustainable, then our politicians are duty-bound to deal with that. It's not acceptable just to listen to what DNR or bureaucrats or industry or woodlot owners, who all have a vested self-interest, say. I tell you, you have to get out there yourselves and learn enough about it to be able to make the judgments. You can only do that by getting out in the woods. The forest resource is too important a resource for you not to deal with it. I guess it falls first on members of such a committee as this.
Just very quickly, the Forest Stewardship Council, which has a certification program that we support and we participate in, when the Forest Stewardship Council first came to the Maritimes, industry did participate, but after a few years it dropped out. They dropped out because they said that the Maritime standard - a generic international standard tailored to conditions in the Maritimes, and that tailoring was done by people in the Maritimes. The industry dropped out of that whole process and took away its support because the standard - was too high, they said. One of the main, and a good illustrative point, is because the standard denied the use of pesticides in the forest.
Now the industry will tell you today that you just can't work without pesticides. In Nova Scotia you probably can't grow forest without pesticides if you're using an inappropriate forest management system and if you're trying to impose a different forest on Nova Scotia than nature wants to grow here. But if you're working with the natural forest and the natural climate and our soil conditions and so on - and hurricanes are a part of that - there is no need for herbicides in the forests of Nova Scotia. In the first world, things like herbicide and pesticide use are on the way out and we should realize that here in Nova Scotia. We shouldn't be like certain countries in the Third World, which have become the big markets for pesticides manufactured by large chemical companies who aren't allowed to sell them any longer in North America, which is very much the case.
Nova Scotia is one of the last places in North America to be holding tight to this science that justifies the use of herbicides in the environment and in forestry - and it's not just exclusive to forestry but in forestry as well. There are a lot of places in Canada where
herbicides and pesticides are a lot more justified to be used in forestry than in Nova Scotia, but in Nova Scotia - like I said - they are only justified if you are trying to impose an inappropriate forest on the province, than what we should have. The message in that is the Forest Stewardship Council Maritimes' standard is not too high, it is only too high if your forest management program and your forest management paradigm is wrong, and that's what I talked about the last time I was here, three years ago, and as I say, nothing has changed in that whole time. I will leave it at that and let it go to questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: One thing I wanted to verify for the record, would you spell your last name Wade?
MR. PREST: P-r-e-s-t, no i.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Our notes say Press. I didn't think that was correct so I wanted to get that on the record. We have one speaker already on the list and I want to tell members I have no problem with allowing the committee members to go and then I will jump in at the last. I may limit it to five minutes per member to get started, only because the last time I did this I limited myself pretty short. Anyway, Mr. Parker, you are first and Mr. Sampson after that.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Good morning, gentlemen, I'm certainly glad to have you both here. I commend you for your more positive approach, your change of heart or whatever since three years ago, or since whenever you decided to change your tack. Probably, that's a realization maybe that you're banging your head against the wall and not getting anywhere. With many, many years of woodlot experience on the ground and growing up with it, certainly you're aware that there is a better way and that things can and should be different. What you've outlined, your system is, I guess, from a lifetime of experience, really, learning and knowing what can be done in a better way, but you are certainly very, very much in the minority.
As you know, you're a very small part of the woodlot industry at this moment in time and as you've outlined, there are many problems with our forest industry in Nova Scotia at this time. Just driving down here on the Trans-Canada Highway from Pictou County, where I live, you see acres and acres of clear-cut land just off the ends of the Trans-Canada Highway and it's all over Nova Scotia. It's a very different forest model than what you're promoting, but it does seem very much like what you're advocating here is a win-win situation, not only for yourself but for our environment, for years to come.
I guess I have had some experience as a woodlot owner, having grown up on a family farm, so I have some idea what woodlots are all about. My question, first of all, is, how do we get from where we're at today, which is primarily liquidation of the forest model that we have in this province, to the type of system that you're advocating? How do we go from the clear-cutting norm to the low-impact forestry that you think is the right way to go?
MR. MILLER: The trouble with what we're talking about, when I talk about a tall, heavy forest, Tom Miller, at 53 years of age, I don't get to see it, I don't get to benefit from that, my son doesn't even get that. He might start to see a little inkling of it and maybe my grandchildren will start to see it, because basically my woodlots, the two I have, have been degraded so much that - I do have one section about six or seven acres in Green Hill, Pictou County, large hemlock probably 150 years old and when I first saw it I wanted to get back there so bad but it was hard to get to, so I couldn't get to it. Now, in my present management plan, that has become a piece of a preserve, there are no power saws allowed back there, because there's no other place like that on my land. So this is perhaps the model I would like to have and if I had more acres like that, then we could go in there and take some wood out. But since it is such a rare jewel, there's more benefit to me just to stand in it.
My daughter is taking tourism management and she, I think, hopes that maybe she is going to end up at home with a bed and breakfast or something, or we build some chalets and I said, this will be a place. Right now it's rare and in another 50 years, it's going to be a place where you can charge people to go in there and see this kind of thing because there isn't going to be very much of it. When you start to think, how do I make that change, to go from this degraded forest, well, you have to be the one willing to make the change, and you have to hope that the next person who gets your land is willing to make that change.
One thing that we're going to see is in New Brunswick, they have, I believe, a land trust, where you can put easements on your land, which means that all of the work that I'm doing here today goes in my deed. The next guy who buys this land has to agree to continue on, it can't be - oh look at all this beautiful stuff Miller did, bring in the machine and let's take it off. That creates some problems on its own and we don't have it here in this province yet but New Brunswick, I've been told, and it has been noted by lawyers, has perhaps one of the best land trust systems in the country. We have in our pool, a member - the Nagaya pool, the FSC pool - and New Brunswick is part of that, so I expect that we will talk to him and try to find out how we can make that happen here in our lands. Nothing would be more discouraging for me, in my grave, to know that this land had been treated poorly, after I had done all this work.
The trouble with making the change, Charlie, is that word "change". When you speak of change the first thing everybody thinks is I'm going to lose my job, and some of them are; how could it be? When you're talking jobs, it's such a big thing in relation to the industry.
This is the Forest Accounts out of GPI Atlantic, General Progress Index and this has been really panned by the industry as these guys are out to lunch. Some of this stuff is just numbers and when you do the math you really can't argue with the numbers. One of the things is, how many jobs does 1,000 cubic metres of wood create? In a large Nova Scotian ultra-modern sawmill, the pulp and paper industry creates about 1.5 jobs per 1,000 cubic metres; the large sawmill creates less than one job per 1,000 cubic metres; Finewood Flooring and Lumber Limited in Cape Breton creates 10 jobs. So if you're interested in jobs,
as politicians, which you probably are, tomorrow we have to close our pulp and paper mills and there are large sawmills, and create flooring companies, furniture companies, value-added industries, this is where the jobs are.
[9:45 a.m.]
Now, I didn't make up these numbers and surely nobody was able to make these numbers up, but when you look at all the wood that goes into a pulp mill and you divide it by the number of jobs they have there, that's how they come up with this number. So that's a real number there.
The idea of changing our forest back and trying to work at that is going to be a generational process, it seems. But first there would have to be the will to do that and the desire, and how do we get to that? One way might be for the provincial government to say, all Crown lands are going to be FSC certified, and we're going to go to that standard on our Crown lands. Now that's only about 20 per cent or 30 per cent or whatever it is, it's a small amount, but it's a start. Industry will throw up their hands, we can't do this and that, but that's how it could start. Start that process, let's call it the 300-year process, the 200-year process because we can live with that, but what's the difference between 200 and 500? We don't get to see it.
We start the process of working with these stands and trying to make this change. It will be a long, slow thing, it will be a change. But you talk about the clear-cuts on the way down, now some of those are Hurricane Juan clear-cuts that had to be cleaned up, so that's an argument that can be used now. I would like to make the point about those clear-cuts that are down on the side of our highways. For those of us who have been in the back country for a lot of years, the last 20 years, that's what it looks like all up in there. When you go back up into the uplands, and I know in Cumberland, Pictou and Colchester Counties, where I've done a fair bit of work, when you're up in there, you're looking at plantation forestry.
The startling thing about that is when you think, well, at least it's all planted and it's growing there again, it's all planted to be flattened again. The process is, we planted those trees now, in 40 or 50 years time we're going back to get them. So that's going to be clear-cut off again. This is not a one-time clear-cut with the plantation there, at least now we're looking at trees. That's all you're doing, it's not really a forest, it's a monoculture thing. So how do we get that? Any place that has these exotics planted, we're going to have to mow that off and start again. If there's black spruce or red pine or something planted there, maybe we can start picking away and thinning it.
There are restoration techniques that can be used in these places, but the will has to be there to make that change to that. You can thin things out, you can replant with the Acadian forest species, this little tree, this little red spruce that we planted under here, we're
not going to cut him until he's 150 years old. So we're going to change our rotations to these longer things. That would be a way. But selling the change . . .
MR. PARKER: I guess it really comes down to education, doesn't it? You're educating yourself. You know the system will work, and then it's a matter of educating others, almost from the ground up.
MR. PREST: Where it starts, where it has to start, there has to be vision at the top. The top is at the political level. There has to be a vision there of a truly sustainable forestry that sustains a forest that provides all values and the optimum mix of values for Nova Scotians. That's where it has to be, at the top.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Charlie, I'm going to stop you there. I let you run a little longer than I intended. Mr. Sampson.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: It's a pleasure to listen to people who know what their business is and what the problems are. I was very impressed with your presentation. The last time I spoke regarding forestry I used the word assault, and it was like an assault on the forest. Charlie touched on the clear-cutting and whatnot. I mentioned about areas that I deer hunted years ago that are bald-headed mountains now, and like you say they're replanted.
You're talking about low-impact harvesting, but everywhere we look, even in your brochure, there's large machinery, skidders and whatever, that kind of thing, and I allude to the large ruts that these make, they shove the topsoil down two and three feet below the surface and nothing grows in clay. So you go into an area, you need to have legs like a giraffe, or I don't know what, to get through it afterwards. It's almost totally impassable after it's cut.
Is there some way that that could be - I know it can't be eliminated, but can it be controlled? You're harvesting in such a way that, to me, to somebody looking at it, I think, well, gee whiz, it will never grow again.
MR. PREST: Mechanization and low-impact forestry are not mutually exclusive. That's one thing that's a common misconception. One thing that we're often accused of being is old die hards who want to go back in the woods with oxen and a crosscut saw to cut our wood. I assure you that's not the case at all.
Machines, in today's world, will always have their place in forestry. It's not so much the machine, or even the size of the machine that matters as much as what is the intention of the forest manager and the operators to do with that machine. When machines are used in a system which is willing to incur a higher cost to protect certain values in the forest, then the machines can often do a job quite well.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: More appropriate use of the machinery.
MR. PREST: That's right. It's an appropriate use of machines. I mean, I think we all would like to see more manual work in the woods too, but being realistic as technology changes, we all will change along with the technology. But, put it this way, it's not the machines per se that are the problem, it's what is done with the machines and how they're applied that is more problematic.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I don't want to cut your answers off but I would like to get as many in as I can. You answered the question about tourism, because I put tourism down and I put liability behind it because you can't walk across the street today to show somebody the beautiful buildings you are in, you're incurring a liability, somebody wants to sue you, and everything goes out the window because of liability. We've got four guys trying to fill a pothole and it takes them five hours to put up the pylons and the signs to do five minutes work, so nothing gets done. We will check off the tourism because you've covered that for me.
The forestry school at Memorial Composite High School in Sydney Mines, I understand this is the last year for that school. So there's the industry itself or whomever is sponsoring this forestry school in Sydney Mines, I heard that just this past week and I'm thinking, gee whiz, somebody is not putting very much attention on that. That may be true or it may not be, but I heard that just this past week, so I bring that to your attention and you can check that out.
MR. MILLER: I would interject there if I might for just one second. I read a thing about the Maritime Forest Ranger School, on how they are having trouble getting people to go there. I don't know where I have that, it's probably in something that I left at home, but this guy had talked about talking to politicians and what's going on, and politicians consider it a twilight career. I don't know exactly what that means, but twilight is getting on towards the end of the day. So if forestry is perhaps considered a twilight career, because of information technology and all of this . . .
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: You see, you people are the politicians of the forest industry, so shouldn't you also be promoting what you're promoting to us to the education system and maybe a presentation that you're making here today should also be made to, say, the Storas of the forest industry. Would they listen?
MR. PREST: We're waiting for an invitation from the Forest Products Association of Nova Scotia to be able to make the same presentation to them . . .
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: If you're waiting for an invitation and you haven't received one . . .
MR. PREST: No, they haven't given us an invitation.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: . . . maybe you should request one.
MR. MILLER: I want to say that what we can do as a non-profit, we get no money from anybody, it's all volunteer time and when we have to do this stuff - now, the roads are closed and it's a little bit snowy where we're from but it seems that every meeting that I get into, it's a beautiful day outside and our work happens outside and when we're here, we're not getting paid for it - we're getting some mileage - but if somebody from industry sits here, his paycheque comes in at the end of the day. When they sit around at meetings and decide how they're going to sink the NSWOOA and try to get them shut up on this thing that they're saying, they're all getting paid to do that; when we sit around in a meeting, I will drive to Windsor to have a meeting and get home at 12:00 o'clock at night and get up at 5:00 a.m. and go. This is the problem that we face when we're trying to promote this thing, but we still seem to be coming up against something.
Although, when you talk about what would people take, walk people in a tall, heavy forest, walk them through a 12-year-old or 15-year-old plantation - you don't walk through a 15-year-old plantation, you fight your way through that thing, and if it's been thinned out and re-opened again, you could get stuck in there, actually. So which type of forest would you like to have? It becomes quite obvious when you talk about education, but sitting around here talking about it - let's go to the woods, and then make up your mind. When you do that, everybody votes on our side.
The trouble is, if we're going to close the mill on Abercrombie Point, we're going to close Kimberly-Clark, Charlie is going to be hung from a tree and so is John Hamm and so is the other guy in Pictou East, if they let this thing go down. Well, for us woodlot owners, that mill closed in 1996. They stopped buying our wood. As far as Wade and I are concerned, as far as I'm concerned, I can't see the mill - I could if I went from up on the top of Green Hill - but from where I live, I smell it. The only thing it does for me now is tell me when it's going to rain, because when the wind comes out of the east I smell the mill and the next thing is it's raining.
That mill is closed to me. I can't sell any wood there. It was the type of wood that we needed to make in our restoration, the poorer stuff that we can't saw, but they convinced everybody that they don't have to buy wood, and this is where we're stuck.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: You focused on Finewood Flooring down in Middle River.
MR. MILLER: And that's only a name, I don't know who they are.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Well, I know the guy. For the last 20 to 25 years, he was probably just referred to as some crazy hippie down there in the woods, with very little to go on. Anybody who wasn't as tough as he is - and today he has a very viable business because he had an idea that he stuck with, but it took years to get to that point. He's doing very well now. He gets about six to seven cuts out of a tree. He takes different pieces and different types of wood coming off the one tree, talk about value-added. But it was a long, tough road for that man to get where he is today.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Sampson, can you make this your last one?
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Yes, okay. As politicians, like you say, what would you specifically want to see from us today, after you make your presentation? You said three years ago there was nothing done since. As of today, when you walk out of here, what would you charge this committee to bring forward on your behalf?
MR. MILLER: To be able to stand up to the suits from industry and their lawyers when they come and tell you, don't worry, we want clean water, we want clean air, and we're not going to let this thing fall apart. When a thing is right, it appears to be right. If you're looking at that clear-cut and you don't like the look of it and you think it looks wrong, this is what they're selling you, that that's okay. We're saying it's not.
Some clear-cutting is going to be necessary. We're not saying that you can't clear-cut, we're saying that you look at that forest stand and you decide the proper method of harvesting that, and clear-cutting Acadian forest, long-lived species trees is not the thing to do, even if the landowner wants it. Who is the adult here? I was told there are three reasons to cut a forest: it's mature, it has disease or insect, or we need the money. Where is the science behind needing the money? Just because you have the deed, and "I'm paying the taxes", that's the cheapest taxes we pay in this province, I believe, tax on woodland. If you're worried about paying your woodland tax, cut about two cords of wood and you can pay your taxes. That would solve that. So never mind that you had to cut all 100 acres to pay the taxes, that isn't what it's about. That's to drive a $50,000 pickup and to put the big screen TV in the house and that kind of thing, or send the kids to college, maybe that's a better way.
But clear-cutting the forest and looking at it as a cash cow to mine is not the way to do it. It's tough to stand up to those guys, because what they do, they carry the big stick for you guys. Well, all right then, I guess we will just have to close the mill. They go home, they put that press release, the Province of Nova Scotia has made it impossible for us to work here in this industry, we're closing the mill and going home.
MR. PREST: The next day the Premier will give them a few million dollars, maybe $15 million or something.
MR. MILLER: To actually keep the mill going, a little more.
MR. PREST: To assuage their feelings from being hurt.
MR. MILLER: How tough it is. You talk about me, Tom Miller, how many jobs does he supply? I'm as small as you can get. I cut the wood, I put it out, I'm the guy. Wade's a little bigger than me, I think he has two or three guys. I am inconsequential. What's he do? What's Kimberly-Clark doing for Pictou County? They're not doing anything for me. I say that mill is closed to me and I can tell you it was really tough and really difficult and so I would sympathize with everybody else in Pictou County who would be directly affected by that. We felt that thing, both Wade and I.
[10:00 a.m.]
MR. PREST: And a lot of others.
MR. MILLER: And a lot of others, I'm not saying it was just us, but any woodlot owner. (Interruption) So that mill is closed to us and that was a tough thing, but we lived through it and I think others could too.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Colwell.
MR. KEITH COLWELL: There is always the question, if the government was to take a stand and do what you are suggesting - and I'm not saying that it's not a really good idea - and you are looking at a 100-year or 200-year time span to really see the economic benefits and I'm personally convinced that those would be there. The trouble is governments change, attitudes change and lobby changes government when it comes to ideas. How do you propose that we would ever make it stick if someone did come up and say, okay, we're going to take all the Crown lands and put them under a proper management program of selective cutting?
I own a piece of property that was devastated by Hurricane Juan but it was selectively cut for 200 years and there are some small trees, some large trees, there is everything on it and probably, as I was saying to you earlier, it was a very valuable woodlot that I refused to get cut, and now I have no choice so you can see that it does work. How would you envision that would ever work because, as you say, you get the whims of a government who says, here is a thousand jobs because this big mill is going to come in and clear-cut everything. Unfortunately, that is reality and I don't know the answer to that question.
MR. MILLER: Well, like I say on my land, neither one of my children is interested in the woods, they haven't sought an education in that, they're young yet so anything can happen a little farther down the line, but I'm really going on a wish and a prayer and a song here that they're going to take this on and continue on. Perhaps I have to put this easement on it, this land trust, to say this is the way it is. The FSC is a thing you sign up for, we've signed up for seven years. I can be kicked out if I don't continue to follow the practices or I can leave if I don't want to follow those practices.
So, yes, there could be some changes and if the government changes, perhaps they could put an easement on it, just on the Crown lands or a percentage, 50 per cent of the Crown lands from now on will be FSC certified and we're going to try that for 100 years, let's see what happens, or we're going to try it for 50 years; make up a number and try the thing out and try to do it. Yes, if a mill is going to come in and provide all these jobs, you have to decide. I have already shown you that the pulp mill won't do it. If you're going to have the flooring mill come in, well, then, you don't have to worry about clear-cutting the forest.
The higher value added, let's get value-added industries, let's start looking at that. We don't need another pulp mill, we don't need another big sawmill, we need more of these little guys that can take the one tree and make three or four products out of it, they're not using it up so much, they often need a better tree.
Down at Jim Drescher's Windhorse Farm, when I first went down there, he talked about trees that he was selling to guitar and fiddle makers, they were paying $1,000 for the tree. As a small woodlot owner, if I have 50 of those trees on my land, Monday morning I'm done for the week because I can go out Monday morning and I can put that tree to the side of the road for that guy and have my thousand bucks. I could probably do one of those for the next 50 months and then some other stuff that it would be in there. He has a forest that has been managed properly over the past 150 years, they've only picked away at it.
If you have ever been down there, you're stumbling around looking up at all these huge trees and they've live-logged it, you can see a stump over there and another one here, but it has been picked away at and picked away at all this time. So he has the thing, he has it in place and you say, that guy is lucky, I don't, the province doesn't either, so how do we make that change? It's the intestinal fortitude to go forward, make this thing, we're going to do this. If a government is going to change, it has to get down to the people, doesn't it, we keep hearing about the people but that's what I have found.
One of the things I started writing here, nobody is listening to the little people, really. We are listening to the lawyers and industry saying the same old thing, but we're not listening to little people who are out there. What the hell does Tom Miller know about the woods? Yes, 30 years, so what? We have computers and technicians and foresters, and we've been doing this business for a long time and we know what is going on, we have the science to back us up. What we're talking about is not unscientific, it's a proven method of work in our Acadian forests.
As Wade said last year, many of these people are stuck in that industrial forestry mode. They don't like it, they don't like what they see, what they have to do, but they have to because that's their job, their pension is tied to that, and all of these things that are holding them in.
I'm looking at my land and Wade is looking at his land and we're trying to do this thing and it's very difficult. I can't make the money I want out of that woodland there, I have to let that tree stand and the next time I came down, it blew over and it's dead, I didn't get the value out of it. But my land did because it turns out I found out a lot about deadwood and deadwood is an extremely important thing to the forest; it's not like the field where you want to clear that off and then you're going to put some manure on it or something.
A dead tree is a very important thing and as Wade says, you reinvest in your land when you let that tree die, when you let it stay there and gee, it blew down and I can cut the log out of it or I could take it out and make something out of it, but there's not too much of that right here so I'm going to leave that. If I'm leaving it I don't get the money out of it. In the stand I worked in yesterday, I'm struggling, I'm not making any money out of it. I'm saying to myself, what have I got here, it was a beautiful place, but what about this?
If it's only just about dollars, if that's all that we're selling, what we're trying to get, then we're going to just keep mowing it, and don't wait until it gets 40 years old, mow it at 30, let's just really start turning it over. I think the trouble is going to be, after a couple of rotations like that, the soil isn't going to take it.
One thing I think that a lot of people who aren't connected to the land - and there are fewer and fewer people today - it's not about the trees, it's about the soil, the soil is the thing. If we don't treat the soil properly it's not going to grow stuff for us, and it's very difficult, I can appreciate that. If you believe what we're saying, then there have to be some changes. We're not going to be around here hammering about it, we're done with that. Why can't we go out - we should be doing this - I have too much work to do, and so does Wade, and so does our association, promoting this thing, just to try to promote that and get out there.
We have held two field days, one on Dr. Wilfrid Creighton's land, which is not necessarily a low impact thing but that guy is an incredible man - there's a picture of him right there. When we were on his woodlot he was 98 years old and when he was 96 years old he started a sugar bush; he always dreamed of doing it, so he did it. At age 98, we met down there on a July day, kind of warm, two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm about ready to go home, had enough of this tramping around here and he says, are you ready for a little walk, would you take a little walk? Well if you can, sir - we can envision taking him out of there on a stretcher - and he led us up, three-quarters of a mile and back the whole way; he's going to be 100 this year. He was at Wade's woodlot tour last year.
We don't get any money to do this, we just have to - a board of directors and our members put on a field day and have 60 to 70 people there, it's a huge undertaking and a lot of days are spent doing that and that's promoting the thing we want to promote. For us to go and talk and hammer about what we think is wrong and try to go against the juggernaut of government and industry, I've always said that small-woodlot owners and our little organization could fight one of them if we had the other one on our side, but we can't fight
them both. If government agreed with us, we could go against industry and change their minds.
If one mill would say, we are going to FSC everything, if Stora, or whoever - Stora is, in our minds, the closest that might do such a thing - if they said, we want to start having FSC wood in here and they would come to government and say, FSC certify all Crown lands under our lease, well, that would be a good start. Once that happens, you have that kind of thing out there, don't worry about having to convince anybody, it's going to happen; that's sort of from the top down. But these little guys hammering away at the bottom - and we don't have all the answers - it's very difficult and we can't compete job-wise or economic-wise with those big guys and what they're promising.
MR. COLWELL: Just one last thing . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: A short snapper.
MR. COLWELL: . . . a short snapper. The only agreement that I have ever seen that stuck in the industry is when Scott Paper made a deal for a 99-year lease on Crown land and I believe, if I remember right, it's at 99 cents a cord. That is the only thing that has stuck and it was made by the Stanfield Government back in the 1960s to get Scott Paper to come to Nova Scotia. I know there have been several efforts to get that resolved and at least get the price up on it and nothing has worked so maybe that's the sort of the situation your organization should go after, is a 99-year lease on some of this Crown land and do these things; just a suggestion.
MR. PREST: We can't do that because when Tom referred to us fighting government, what I think he really means there is the Department of Natural Resources. The Department of Natural Resources has always been an instrument to deliver up the forest resource of Nova Scotia to the industry, it always has been and it's totally committed to that and it remains that way today. On an earlier question, Tom referred to the suits of industry. They're not the only ones you have to stand up to and see through, you also have to see through that top-management echelon, the executive layer of DNR, who is completely committed to the industrial forest model as the only way for Nova Scotians to get benefit from the forests.
To make change you politicians have to remember that the Minister of Natural Resources does not have his bureaucrats on his side, and I haven't seen one Minister of Natural Resources that I have been involved with yet, who has had his bureaucrats on his side. Every one of them, when they went into office, the bureaucrats changed him, they converted him, they taught him the line, the position that was created back in 1960 when Stora came and the province did whatever they could to get a mill to come, and did the same thing with Scott Paper in 1965, delivered up whatever they could to get those jobs in here. That was another time and another place, it's certainly not an appropriate attitude anymore.
I'm not going to get back into history but that same mentality and that same commitment of the Department of Natural Resources exists today, as existed 50 years ago.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaudet.
MR. WAYNE GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I want to focus on the stakeholders themselves. We've been talking about certification and I guess that's where I want to maybe start off. I guess, if you want your woodlot certified, where would you start? I guess my first question would be, for your industry, for your association, in reaching out to woodlot owners, how do you try to convince them they should consider getting their lot certified?
MR. MILLER: Last year we held a field day on Wade's woodlot and that was the first FSC field day, that was the Forest Stewardship Council's certified woodland, and we held a field day there to promote these things that we're talking about; we showed people stuff and there were interested woodlot owners there. If somebody was going to say to me, how would I go about doing that, I would say to talk to Bill McKay, he's the guy in charge of Nagaya, but if you're talking to me, I would want to know what are your interests from your woodland, what would you like to see?
I think that the demographic of the woodlot owner is changing. I have no proof of it, but it just seems natural that as people inherit woodland or the family farm, many of these people today are doctors, lawyers, teachers, they have another job, they don't need the money. They don't like what they see in industrial type forestry and so they right away have an interest in seeing things done a little differently. They don't have this big need to have the money come out of the woodlot; they cut a little firewood there, they like to go get their Christmas tree, they like walking there in the fall, they have these other values that are more important on that woodlot. The number of people, I think, who are willing to clear-cut their land, corner to corner, is getting to be fewer and fewer. We're starting to see a shift.
[10:15 a.m.]
I brought this up at the pool meeting we had at my house in January. I was saying, how are we going to get people to buy FSC or to look into this thing and to come on board and want to be a part of it? Immediately, my fears were put to rest when one of the guys said, well, we're looking to the fringe. We're looking to the people who want something different. Now, environmentalists don't have a very good reputation in many people's minds. When you say environmentalists, we automatically think of the long-haired person blocking the logging truck or stopping this or that. But if you look environmentalist up in the dictionary, which I've done, it's someone who is concerned about their environment. So, hands up, who isn't an environmentalist? We should all be worried about what's going on out there whether we have any control over it or not.
A tree hugger is another thing. I made a joke, I was at a meeting, I talked about environmentalists and made that thing and tree huggers, well, we don't want to be considered tree huggers, although we do it, but when we're hugging a tree, we're measuring it for the story back home, right? It was this big, we couldn't even get our arms around it. Well, you basically have to hug the tree to do that, you know. So, what's a tree hugger? Well, that's someone who doesn't want the tree to be cut. Well, when I started in this business and I started looking at big trees, what I used to think was, imagine the noise that's going to make when it hits, because big wood coming down and hitting makes a pretty big noise, even though your power saw is sitting there, it's kind of idling by this point, but there is this huge crash and a thump. I used to think that and now, I don't want to cut them, because there are so few of them. Look at this big tree here, we want to actually hug it now and fawn over it. But we're getting people who are interested in that are not looking to their woods as a cash cow. They want something different for their woodland. They maybe want something different for their children. So, we're starting at that fringe level, we're starting with preaching a message to people and the stuff that we put out there; somebody has to finally get that and say, yes, that's what I want in my woodland. How am I going to do that? Talk to this guy, we would turn him to Bill McKay.
One of the things I want to see us doing, through the pool and through our association, is to have technicians and foresters who can come to your land and give you a management plan or an idea for your woodlot that is Acadian-forest-restoration based. We're not going to talk about clear-cutting. You might have a piece that is a real head-scratcher.
The other problem with this that we're talking about when we're talking about making this switch is how much harder it is to work. If we're going to clear-cut it, what we do is we run a line of ribbons around here and we go in and we cut everything inside the ribbons or maybe we mark off these clumps that are along the brook, we've cleared that, we would just have to mow it. When we're doing selection harvesting, here's what happens a lot. We're looking up at the trees and we're trying to decide, because it's not at this level, you're trying to deal with crowns and what should be cut. You think, okay, I'm going to cut these three here and as soon as you cut one, it changes the situation, you've got to stop and you say, wait a minute, I don't want that now, I want something else. It slows you down. You really have to think, you have to earn your forestry degree. You really have to be a guy that's now putting it, and you're just not putting ribbons around and putting the machinery in there.
As far as what a machine will do, the trouble is why the machinery has to go so much is how much they cost. A friend of mine has one, and he told me his payment - and whether this is right or not - is $17,000 a month, for the payment. Well, you can't let that thing sit over there while you're trying to decide which tree to cut but if I had a little patch of re-gen with one big tree in it and I wanted it out, I would love to have one of those processors there, because they can reach in and cut that tree up and they can pull it right out of there. Whereas me, I have to cut it down and drag it out through. So I end up causing some damage. Those
guys can actually do a better job if they could go slower. But they can't go slower because they cost too much to have it.
It is all about a mindset and machinery and operators but it's going to have to start with people who want to have a difference anyway. I don't want what I see there for my land, where am I going to go? You're going to hear about our association, you're going to come to our annual meeting next Saturday, you're going to hear us spouting, you're going to hear us talking about different types of stuff and, hopefully, you're going to move from there.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I have one more question. Coming back to this certification, maybe the right information is not out there. I had understood in speaking with some individuals that with certifications comes high premiums for your wood. But at the same time, I'm hearing here this morning that nobody wants to pay more for their wood than what they have to and at the same time, higher premiums aren't happening. I guess I'm trying to find out if it's true or if it's not true.
MR. PREST: Theoretically, higher premiums for certified wood were going to be the market mechanism that gave the preference to certified forests. Now, that hasn't developed yet. Unfortunately, what is developing is certified wood is going to be the wood that gets the market access, it's going to be bought and what's going to happen is that uncertified wood will have to be sold for less in order to be sold. So it has not really been reflected truly in a premium for certified wood at this point because it's too early in the whole process.
MR. GAUDET: So, if that happens, then the industry will take advantage of woods that aren't certified, I guess?
MR. PREST: Most of the industry is certifying. They're certifying under other programs.
MR. MILLER: They are doing it. It is coming. In order for them to sell in the markets they sell, this certification stamp does have to be there. The premium idea was sold at first to encourage people to do it, because the Forest Stewardship Council was the first one to hammer against what was happening in the rain forest. They convinced retailers in Europe to not sell - you got a bad name if this brand new teak table you just bought and paid thousands of dollars for came from the rain forest wood, you could be shunned in society. They do that there, if you have rain forest wood, so that's what the FSC starters tried to make. So they said, how are we going to sell this thing? Well, they hammered at it from the market end and they said, if you buy certified wood, you would be willing to pay more for it - it's like organic food, you have to pay more for organic food. Well, it should be the same for this. But that hasn't materialized.
In this article from the Forest Products Association meeting, the guy is saying, it doesn't look like that's going to be. That was one of the things to try to get people to certify, but it doesn't look like that will be. But it's like Wade says, maybe you can get the market. Like in New York City, you can get the market, but it can't be overpriced. Your certified two-by-fours can't cost twice as much as your non-certified, you won't get the market then.
MR. PREST: We don't know exactly how that's going to work yet, but the point that we had about the New York situation is that New York City has decided it will buy only certified wood products for its city expenditures on its budget. They've looked at all the forest certification programs that exist in North America and only the Forest Stewardship Council met the requirements of the bill. The rest were deficient. The rest, by and large, are industry initiatives which tend to have a lower standard than the Forest Stewardship Council. Draw your own conclusions from that. In Nova Scotia, we've taken a lot of flak for the Forest Stewardship Council being too tough, but what we say is that it's realistic and it's the only one that's realistic. The others are not a high enough standard to be really different than the status quo and this in New York City sort of backs that up.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Dooks.
MR. WILLIAM DOOKS: Gentlemen, good morning. I certainly appreciate your passion. A couple of questions. Do you think that government should regulate the harvesting of private lands? I wasn't picking that up.
MR. MILLER: I'm not sure that you ever could. That is a question where in my mind you are really bogged down with how you organize each woodlot. Wade and I both have on our woodlands an annual allowable cut that we have to follow. The annual allowable cut, that is how much wood grew this year.
MR. DOOKS: This is on your product.
MR. MILLER: This is through the FSC. In order for us to be FSC certified, we agree, now if my woodland will grow 100 cords in a year, just as an example, I'm not allowed to cut the 100 cords, I have to take 30 per cent of that away. I'm only allowed to cut 70 cords. That is part of what the FSC is doing. This is how it starts to really get difficult. You don't get to cut all the interest, you get to save some of it because there is going to be blow-down and maybe some insects. There are going to be some problems so you have that. So regulating all the private owners, however many there are, would seem to be at this point an extremely difficult thing. Once you become certified, there should be certain things in place that would cause that to happen.
I just read a thing on this last night when I was thinking about coming here and talking about the AAC, annual allowable cut, well, 70 per cent of Nova Scotia woodland is privately owned. The logistics of getting that organized so that there would be an annual
allowable cut and people could keep to it, it is virtually impossible. They were saying in the rest of Canada, the jurisdictions, most of it is Crown land so they are able to do that there and it works very well. So the first step here is to regulate Crown lands. It's smaller, the Crown is in charge of it. Let's put an AAC, an annual allowable cut, on our Crown lands. Let's put a certification system in there on our Crown lands, that is a higher standard, and see how that works. That is something that the Crown can control. To control all these woodlot owners.
MR. DOOKS: Speaking of Crown land, how long would it take, realistically, for the government to adopt the low-impact forest practices on the Crown land? We talked earlier about forest technicians actually going in the woods and not looking simply by placing ribbons around the perimeter but actually take the time to go in and decide which tree should be cut.
MR. MILLER: Tree marking, yes.
MR. DOOKS: So you would have, number one, Crown lands do provide a certain amount of fibre to the industry so if you adopt the new practices, would you continue to supply enough fibre to the industry? Do we have a lack of forest technicians to decide what should be cut, what should not be cut? What about the gentlemen who do have the $17,000 per month payments on their machine? You are talking a total change here so how do you plan to phase this in? Certainly it wouldn't be able to change tomorrow morning so you would have to recommend some type of phase-in.
MR. PREST: But don't expect to have to change it by tomorrow morning. That isn't even a realistic way to look at it. The way the industry works, when they make investments in machines, it's for a period of payback of five or six years. Mills make some medium investments that they expect to be paid back over 10 years. They build a mill with an investment that they expect to be paid back over 20 or 30 years, you see. Nothing changes overnight in forestry and even if today you make a decision that we are going to embark on a different forest vision, a different policy, nothing is going to change until the forest grows that way. So you can't, no matter how politically committed you would be, nobody can change the forest overnight. All you can do is start the process.
If the commitment is there at the highest level, at the political level, then the industry has all its opportunities as time goes by to make the appropriate investment decisions as time comes. So if they know that a certain type of machine is only going to be appropriate in the woods for another five or 10 years, they are not going to wait until 10 years go by and then buy another brand new one, they are going to be changing, formulating new practices and new policies in all the time leading up to when those things are going to be implemented.You can't do it all at once because the forest can't change all at once.
MR. DOOKS: That would be my point. It would have to be phased in over five, 10 or 20 years. You are talking a long period of time.
[10:30 a.m.]
MR. MILLER: So let's say that within 10 years' time, Nova Scotia Crown lands will be FSC certified so that you begin the process of all the players do their whining and crying upfront good and early, get it over with because this is going forward. In 10 years' time it's going to be. The one thing we have to watch out is that we don't put all the machines in there and make everything so that you have to start right from scratch. You have to be very careful.
I don't doubt for a minute that there aren't enough technicians out there to handle tree-marking duties. That's a big part of FSC certification. As a matter of fact, if you were going to have someone do harvesting on your land for you, that's one thing you would do, is go out and mark trees. When you're going to try to do a low-impact forestry and try to take care in how you do it, you mark trees. It's interesting to know when you mark a tree, you mark it at eye level and you mark it down on the stump. So a stump with no mark on it was an improperly cut tree, the only way you would have to tell after the tree is gone. So, having those people trained to do that, the land could probably be FSC certified by the end of the year. That could happen, but we want to phase the thing in, we're going to look at it.
I don't know expropriation is such a dirty word, but if Joe Blow owns a little cottage down here, we will take it from him in a second and make a nice park there, but if we try to do something to industry that has the word to it, then we say, we're not open for business. Well, you know, it could also be saying, we're open for business but we're going to be harder to work with. That might not be such a bad thing.
Walter Miller - he's deceased now - was a very close friend of mine, he was the General Manager of Scott Maritimes when they arrived here. The thing he said to me, he said, I can't believe the way we have it here. If I want to talk to the Premier, I pick up the phone, the Premier is talking to me. When I was in New York State, if I called the governor, the governor would say, what does he want? No, I'm not talking to him today. We couldn't get in anywhere. But things can happen. We're not saying it has to happen overnight but if there was a commitment to do that, it's the same as this protected areas thing.
Industry is crying about having the wood they need, I'm suggesting industry has used up their land base, they've overcut. Nobody is saying, we're not overcutting; I'm not hearing that anywhere. When we say that we're cutting more than we're growing or overcutting the province, nobody is saying, no we're not. I never hear that from anybody, from industry, government or anybody. It's admitted that we're overcutting, we're cutting more wood than we're growing. But we're doing silviculture at such a rate that we don't have to worry about it because we're growing trees faster and we're going to shorten our rotation so the industry doesn't have to worry.
Things have to be changed and they can be changed slowly or they can be changed quickly; perhaps a percentage of Crown land gets FSC certified within five years and the others in 10. You look at whatever is going on. If you have agreements with industry, with anybody, you change them. You will do it if you have to, if it became a safety concern or an environmental concern, it would happen like that. But if it's going to be just inconveniencing somebody's wallet, we're not so quick to change it.
MR. DOOKS: I have so many questions to ask today, but do you have a problem selling your product, your fibre roadside? We hear stories that you have to have a certain amount or quota, or whatever, before the larger mills will purchase yours.
MR. MILLER: It depends on the time of year. This year with Hurricane Juan, if you had hurricane damage, you probably had no trouble. It's always been in the summer things slow down but in late fall, until road closure - which just happened, March 1st - there was never too much trouble in selling wood, but at certain times you could have trouble.
MR. DOOKS: Are you able to sell to small mills as you wish? Would there be a restriction on a small mill to buy from a larger mill in a contract or agreement with them or is it still open?
MR. MILLER: I think that's pretty much a free-market enterprise system, where you can go and call up a mill and if they're buying, they're going to buy your wood. It's always interesting to me, how many places do you go where the buyer tells you what the price is? Whatever our costs are and our problems, so what?
MR. DOOKS: It's sort of like the fishing, the fishing industry is like that. The plant owner or the . . .
MR. MILLER: It's not like when you buy a car or like if you go downtown or anything. This is the price and that's it . . .
MR. DOOKS: That's the resource.
MR. MILLER: . . . that's what we're facing when we're trying to sell something. This is another thing, really, when a tree is standing in the forest, it has no value, or not too much, and we're going to pay you this much stumpage for it. When it's out beside the road and ready to go, it has a little more value, but I tell you, when it goes through that mill gate, it's exponential how the value of that piece of wood goes up.
MR. DOOKS: What are you getting for 1,000 cubic feet, I guess, it goes by now. Is that how it goes? Is it metres?
MR. PREST: It's 1,000 board feet of logs.
MR. DOOKS: That's what I would know it as, 1,000 board feet.
MR. MILLER: That's what we know it as.
MR. PREST: About $350 is a pretty good price at the side of the road for a woodlot owner, which is a good price given the mess that the lumber industry in Nova Scotia and in Canada has been in in the last number of years, the last two or three years.
MR. DOOKS: For a cord of wood, how much would you get?
MR. PREST: Well, if you can get into the Stora market, about $90 for a cord of wood.
MR. MILLER: For pulpwood, but there are cords of stud wood too and you might get a little under $120.
MR. PREST: Prices aren't very good. Prices for roundwood are probably higher than what's justified by the lumber markets. But the mills are in a situation where they're having a hard time getting enough wood to keep themselves going, even though they're not trying. A lot of mills are not even running. A lot of the mills that were doing two shifts are on one shift, they've slowed down. But they're still having trouble getting enough wood to keep everybody happy.
If such a thing was to happen as say, the lumber problems with the U.S. were solved - just say they solved them this Spring - you've got a lumber industry in Nova Scotia that's going to really ramp up its pace and its production in an attempt to make up for these last two or three years. If that was to happen, I think that would completely break the backbone of the wood supply in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, because my own belief is that we're teetering on the edge and the only thing that's keeping it from falling over that edge right now is the poor market conditions for lumber. We're that close.
MR. DOOKS: What about our hardwood industry in Nova Scotia?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Dooks, is this your last?
MR. DOOKS: It could be.
MR. MILLER: I apologize, you guys are under a time limit and we get going here, we're a little bit rampant in our answers and how we go.
MR. PREST: The example of Finewood Flooring. There's very high value-added potential for hardwood. The lowest possible value you can add is to take it to Sheet Harbour and put it into chips and send it to Japan.
MR. DOOKS: Is that not our second-grade hardwood, that wouldn't be appropriate for . . .
MR. PREST: It's all the hardwood, it's all the young hardwood, it's everything that gets in the way of that feller-buncher. If you really understand why that plant is in there at Sheet Harbour, if you really understand the industry and know why it exists, it's to facilitate the liquidation of the crop that's on the ground now in Nova Scotia, to get something out of it for the shareholders of that company.
MR. DOOKS: Was it not the intent to harvest the second-grade hardwood?
MR. PREST: That's the way it's portrayed.
MR. DOOKS: Is it true that number-one hardwood should not be there?
MR. PREST: No. Second-grade hardwood is a small diameter that hasn't grown into a big one yet, so you can't wait until it grows to a big one, you call it second grade and chip it up and get it out of there.
MR. MILLER: But there's also wood going in there.
MR. PREST: I don't want to talk about Sheet Harbour, I live too close.
MR. MILLER: But as far as the hardwood goes, when you look at a piece of hardwood and a second grade, that might not look like much of a tree, these guys can take short little pieces out of it and make something. In my firewood pile, this last year, I went over my woodland and I thinned, I took the very poorest of trees and when I split that wood up, I saw too many pieces of curly maple and I found a piece of bird's-eye in there. So the joke is, nobody burns any better wood than Tom Miller. But I couldn't tell from the outside what it was. I took a poor quality looking tree and I cut it out and when I was able to open that up, even that piece at four feet long, this guy could take it and he could make . . .
MR. DOOKS: Where is he getting his hardwood from?
MR. MILLER: I imagine all around Cape Breton. There's hardwood up there and it's the underutilized portion of our forest because there hasn't been any pulp mill chewing it up.
Now, what Wade says about how that works, you would think there are some beautiful logs that should go up to that guy, they can make more, but if you're a high producer with a couple of processors going, you don't have time to separate that over there into a pile. You throw it all onto that truck and they take it down there; maybe they get the chance to take that out of there, maybe they don't, maybe they're down on their quota. They have to move that stuff through there. They can't take the time to put it over in the log pile and make more money, they have this thing over in Japan, where if they don't ship that load they're in
trouble. So you chew up what you have in front of you so that you can meet - that's a casualty of the war, I guess, in a sense.
MR. PREST: All these things are things that happen out there in the woods that we know about because we're there and we've seen it for years and we know that's how the industry operates. But industry does not portray itself that way. It portrays itself as only putting through Sheet Harbour that low second-grade hardwood that if it's cut out of there, it will improve your land. But that isn't the way it works. That just isn't it. When the fellow with the $17,000 a month payments on his machine does not have time to look at that tree and wonder whether it will make a veneer log or not, it goes in the pile and into the chips.
MR. MILLER: They're more geared to that at Sheet Harbour where they can take it down there, they know where they're off-loading it, and it's gone.
MR. DOOKS: I'm very familiar with the operations at Sheet Harbour, but the point is, it has always been contentious about whether it's number-one material going into that harvest.
MR. MILLER: There has to be some. Anybody who would say that there was absolutely none would be lying. That would be it. So there has to be some; hopefully they're keeping it down to a minimum but there has to be some. Like what Wade says, that second-grade tree becomes a second-grade tree because it hasn't grown into the first grade yet. I mean, there's a pretty low opinion of soft maple, really, it's just a weed or something like that. Well, I cruised some at Brookfield Lumber that was this big, clear, and soft maple is maple and they can make stuff out of it. So, if we let it grow, we're waiting for that rotation (Interruption)
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, you crossed the line with your last question.
MR. MILLER: It's probably our fault, sorry.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, I'm going to let the Chair ask a few questions. I really appreciate your presentation. I'm quite impressed, although I've heard of low-impact forestry, it's just what I've read in this binder last night kind of filled me in a little better on it. We introduced legislation to ban clear-cutting in the province a couple of years ago. The basis of our legislation was to ban clear-cutting as the major harvesting practice but not as a treatment; you could make a case that it could be done.
My thought is that it would be great to have resources to put into the department, if you had a different vision for the department, then you have to back that up with resources. But I didn't see that as necessarily needing more people on the ground, because if the public was aware that clear-cutting was banned, then you could rely on the public; if they see a
clear-cut, then they would report it and then you find out whether or not that person actually had a permit to do the clear-cutting. So I thought that would be a fairly straightforward way.
I didn't see phasing in a ban, say, we're going to reduce it by 25 per cent this year and 25 per cent the next year, because nobody would ever ask - if they saw a clear-cut, they would never know whether it was supposed to be there or not, if it wasn't completely outlawed. So I thought a complete, direct ban right off the bat was probably the most sensible way even to police it. But we were going to say, within a year, like it would be a direct ban but we will give the industry a year to make some adjustments. My thoughts are that some component of that, whether you want to say clear-cutting, or maybe to say, toward low-impact forestry might be more sensible than banning clear-cutting.
I do want to say - and you can give me your view on this, please - my thought is that it would have to include industrial, Crown and private. My thoughts around that, some people say you can't impose anything on private woodlot owners, but we used to have the Small Tree Act that was imposed on private woodlot owners and they didn't complain about it; it was the industry that saw to it that we got rid of that legislation. I think private woodlot owners were fairly progressive; at least they thought about the next generation. They may not have had their forest practices right in terms of what we know today about forest management, but at least what the old-timers knew about forest management, they at least thought about keeping trees for the next generation, which was a big help. We really didn't have the market, there were a lot of trees that weren't being cut as well.
[10:45 a.m.]
It would seem to me that along with this, and this is something we have said, Mr. Miller, is that we're overcutting. There is no way to separate these two issues about how we harvest and the volume we harvest. Those two things are in conjunction. It would have to be, whatever you do, if you're going to low-impact forestry, you're going to have to address the overcutting issue in this province along with that because you can't have the two existing. I mean this is a volume issue, in the overcutting problem. It would seem to me that if you addressed that, you would get the premium for your wood. In other words, if the volume that you were allowed to cut was reduced, that woodlot owner's wood would start to go through the roof - as a matter of fact, it's almost through the roof. I think it might be down a little bit now because of market conditions, but $2,000 an acre for anybody's half-decent timber was - actually, I know mills who couldn't get it, they couldn't bid it, they were outbid on that type of money.
The fact that we have no annual allowable cut, I think we're up against the wall on harvesting and sustainabililty now, we're past it, I don't think we can maintain what we're doing, we're going to be out of wood. You kind of alluded to that, that there are people having a problem, even with a downturn in the industry, they're having problems finding wood. If we don't impose an annual allowable cut and this does ramp up, there was a forestry
commission, they did a report, I think in 1984, they said we would have cut around 3 million cords by 2040 and we're at that stage now, 40 years ahead of that. So, we're ramped up pretty high even at this rate.
So, I'm wondering if you can tell me your thoughts around legislation for private woodlot owners, the necessity for an annual allowable cut in the province, because the department has imposed a sustainability fund and the sustainability fund is designed so that money, resources go back into the land to meet the cut that we're harvesting. Now, I see this as planting trees, basically, and not an awful lot of other silviculture. As a matter of fact, the reason I think there is not a lot of other silviculture is because there is nobody doing silviculture, the guys are going broke. So, we're not creating more jobs in that area, we're creating less. So, if it's true that this sustainability fund is supposed to counter what we're harvesting, then I think we're in big trouble.
I guess the last point I want to make, I want you to answer to, is you mentioned around the difficulty, I guess, in trying to impose an annual allowable cut but kind of policing it or enforcing it. But I was thinking that some type of marketing structure would be necessary, either a marketing board or some similar structure to that, where woodlot owners actually sold through the board and that could, somehow, keep some kind of tally on the cut. So do you want to address any of that?
MR. PREST: There already exists the board, the Primary Forest Products Marketing Act and the Primary Forest Products Marketing Board, who gives us absolutely no support but who does support initiatives of woodlot owners who are doing the things that the department and the industry want them to do. We fought in court with Kimberly-Clark for several years until we finally ran out of money. Guess what? Our pockets aren't as deep as Kimberly-Clark's pockets were . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: So, how does the board have to be changed?
MR. PREST: Well, I mean, just saying, we have the Act, we have the legislation, we've got the board, it's been there for a long time and it hasn't functioned. It just doesn't function. That's basically because the political will is not there to improve the lot or to even understand the plight of woodlot owners and where they fit into the industry because the Primary Forest Products Marketing Board has become an issue to try to ensure the viability of the industry in Nova Scotia because of all the problems they're facing here and so on and so forth.
The other thing I wanted to say was banning clear-cutting is an approach that uses more of an emotional argument than the approach that says we should implement uneven-aged forest management in Nova Scotia because that is what is ecologically right and economically the most appropriate for Nova Scotians in the long run. If you change things on the basis of science and the basis of fact, then you have a case to put to the private
landowners, and the Department of Natural Resources can educate private landowners. Don't depend on the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators Association to carry out that enormous task.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, I'm not going there. I think you are above and beyond the call of duty now.
MR. PREST: When you say ban clear-cutting, you set yourself up for being accused of taking an emotional approach to the whole issue and the fact that clear-cuts don't look good, that's true but it ain't the reason why we are promoting a different kind of forestry. It's because large-scale, indiscriminate clear-cutting is ecologically destructive to our forests in Nova Scotia.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The reason I promoted the ban was that by stopping it, it addressed all the other issues around ecology. But the biggest thing it addressed was the sustainability issue along with - well, you would have to impose some type of level of the cut but that was what I was trying to address because to me, we are going to be out of wood in some time.
MR. PREST: But you have to at least have DNR on your side. You can't have DNR fighting you. You can't have your top managers and executive level of the Department of Natural Resources contradicting you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, my thought is, if I could get the bill through, I would be government and DNR wouldn't be a problem.
MR. MILLER: I would like to say something to what you are saying there. This thing is so layered. When we start talking about one thing, you find that we get going off on another because there are so many parts to this. But what you are talking about, you know, if there was less wood coming on then the price would have to go up. Clear-cutting gets touted as the most economical way of cutting and financially it is. If I can clear-cut that whole piece off in one day, the cheque that comes in is the best way to have it but what we don't hear is how much it costs to get the forest going there again. If you then apply that to it, my cheque doesn't look so big anymore.
All of a sudden, I have to maybe site-prepare that ground, I have to plant a bunch of trees in it. Two years later a bunch of hardwood came up. I have to spray it. Four or five years after that, we go in. There is fir and everything has come up in there since we sprayed it. Now it is too thick so we do a spacing on it and before you know it, we've spent $1,000 per hectare or $1,200, whatever it is. The number can get up, how much money. Then that actually should go back against the wood. So if we are not putting all that money into getting the forest going again, we are actually keeping the forest there and just taking a little bit out of it, then we have the real price of wood.
What industry has done is created a system that is a whole lot simpler to organizing an economy around the mass production of large-scale, uniform raw material. So they are doing this in trying to create this place. We are not talking about the cost of planting. Tree planting is seen as the cure for all this but tree planting has to be timely in order to be effective. Before you even cut that piece of ground, you have to know what is going in there next and if you don't - which we don't, this is pandemic or endemic, whatever the word is; I mentioned this to a guy in the industry. The harvest guys are working away over here all on their own. The silviculture guys are over here. After a while, they find out from the harvest guys where the clear-cuts are. Well, if they haven't been timely and got in there, all of a sudden they are faced with a mess that is growing there and they can't handle it. So how do you get more money out of it and what is the real cost of our clear-cutting? We are not told that. We are told it's the most economical. It is, on that day when the cheque comes, but as we try to get the thing going again, we get into all kinds of problems and money that has to be spent.
Look at this woodlot experiment on the back of our little brochure that I handed out here. It talks about the Maritime Forest Ranger School starting out with 17 cords per acre. They clear-cut that in one piece. They spaced it on another. They thinned it out. They just took the poor out. Over a 43-year period, from when they started, they started with 17 cords, over 43 years they cut 28 and now, in 1989, they are left with 19. They cut more wood than was there. How did they do that? Only started with 17, ended up with 19 and cut that 28.
On the clear-cut block, which they didn't do anything to, it grew up in poplar because there was poplar there. When you cut a poplar tree, all of a sudden it sprouts up out of the roots, 10,000 poplars. At the end of that time, that 43 years, they have about 9 or 10 cords of poplar per acre, and on the other place where they thinned it, they made three cuts. So for a small-woodlot owner, after all that time, he had some income out of each of those three years, he has more wood than he started with, better quality, than this other place. Then you say well, they should have planted it. Well, then let's work in the cost of that because on the thin piece, all they did was cut wood, they didn't put anything more into it than just carefully cutting wood, a little bit, a little bit. The other place, they mowed if off, did nothing, but they didn't get anything.
Okay, so let's spray it, plant it, space it, put in all these other costs, it's not really coming out of the wood. We were led to believe that that $6 per cord was going to be in the silviculture fund: $2 from landowner, $2 from government, $2 from industry. What is happening on that sustainable forest - there's another thing, you have us going now on the bad stuff.
Silviculture contractors are dying because the fox is in the henhouse. Industry is running this thing and do you know what I've been told? Industry is doing what they want because industry is paying for it. How can they be paying for it, it's a one-third/one-third/one-third? But that isn't what it is because the industry guys are coming around and
doing a survey on this. If you have had anybody on a piece of woodland come to you and say, do you want us to thin that for you, we will do it for nothing, they will cut yellow birch, they will cut rock maple, they will cut high-quality species but they leave balsam fir and any spruce. So balsam fir beats out your higher-quality other woods because the mill is paying for it, that's what I've been told.
This is a magazine called Canadian Silviculture, it's published four times a year, it comes out of B.C., this is across the country, and Prince Edward Island, everybody writes in from their area. In the last five or six years since I have been getting this magazine, the Nova Scotia Silviculture Contractors Association, the message has been virtually the same. This is the Winter 2004 issue that has just come out: "As the year winds down, the silviculture profession in Nova Scotia looks less enticing by the day. It is less possible to hire qualified people who deserve a reasonable wage. We (contractors) are creating GIS files . . . We run the forest extension program with private woodlot owners for no monetary reward. We wait for months to be paid for completed treatments. Our costs continue to rise."
In the last five or six years, that is the message that goes out across this country about what it's like to work here in Nova Scotia in silviculture and it hasn't changed, three different presidents saying the same thing year after year; this is why we don't want to come here and talk about the bad things, nothing changes, okay. And this is proof, we're not making this up, these three different guys are writing about this and they're struggling, because industry is deciding what is happening there. The lowest price wins, they just want their wood at a low cost, we will put the silviculture money in later because we have to, and we will throw that on but we can show our cost for fibre and our raw material is way down here, when really it's way up here because you throw this other in. But that isn't how the bookkeeping is done, it's that creative bookkeeping that happens.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Miller, I have one question and I know Mr. Sampson has a short snapper, he says. I wonder if you can briefly make a comment about the PanCanadian Woodlot Certification Program. Are you aware of that or what it means?
MR. MILLER: I don't know anything about all of the other ones, they are there, I'm aware of it. PanCanadian is being promoted by the Canadian Federation of Woodland Owners and I believe the Nova Scotia Federation of Woodland Owners, as a way - I think Stora, their group, Forest Fibres, are looking to PanCanadian. I shouldn't comment, I don't know.
What I know about is the FSC and I know a little bit about it, about how tough it is and that's what I say I like about it. If it's another program below the FSC, I'm not spending the time to know about it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Mr. Sampson.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: You talked about the roads being closed and that reminded me of the 12 years I spent on the municipal scene. Every Spring the problem was the rural roads were being damaged by the industry hauling out the wood in a mad rush before the roads closed. I even experienced the fact that the roads were closed and then they would go in with a triaxle trailer and take out a half load. So you had the required number of wheels, you weren't overweight and the local person had to put a sign up restricting the road to 5 ton or less, simply because there was no school bus on that road and the roads were being pulverized; we didn't have any way to repair the roads, the province did it for us. So, there was a negative impact from the industry itself just on the municipal level, which turned everybody off.
[11:00 a.m.]
The other thing is, you're talking about boards, if you had anything to do with the solid waste management and the recycling board, it's the people who are on those boards are the biggest packaging industry people that you want to get. So, when you say business runs it and you're asking, like I said, to go out and tackle these giants in the business, there just isn't any way that one person or one politician can do that, because you're tackling the giants in the industry and the resources are owned and controlled by big business for the benefit of big business, it's as simple as that.
It's not a question, it's just a statement that I'm making. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
MR. MILLER: I would say, just if I can, I met with the minister one time and the last thing was, what do you want me to do? The day I went to see her was the day at the Chronicle-Herald, Kimberly-Clark mills for sale. You talk about inopportune time to be wanting to deal with Kimberly-Clark and that's exactly what we were doing. But I think what we would want the province to do, since we're not going to be hounding and pushing you for it, I think certification of Crown lands would answer a lot of questions. It will handle your annual allowable cut, it will handle the water, it will handle how things can happen out there, it will get rid of the big clear-cuts, it will handle a lot of problems if you were to do that, phase it in, even a percentage of the Crown lands, and then you could be seen as being a leader and starting it. It's like you say, the Small Tree Act, nobody complained about that because that was the law. Well, as soon as industry got it changed for themselves, well, then I don't want it either. I have had people say to me, we should get Scott Paper and Kimberly-Clark, they can't do this, they can't do that. I said, they're private owners, if they can't, I can't. So I want to be careful what we say they can't, because then that means I can't.
So we've all got to be careful. But I found since certifying my woodland, if I want to keep doing that, if I want to spout that, if I want to walk the walk, I have to change what I do and I can't because we have auditors coming and you don't know when they're coming and things are hard to hide out there that we could do and make a mess. So I never know
when an auditor will show up, once a year on some of our pool lands, they're drawing names out of a hat, and they might come and look at my land, well, I could be quite embarrassed from that, so I don't want to make that happen. So putting that kind of onus on Crown lands, on people who work on Crown lands can maybe start to spread and permeate throughout the industry to start to create things. If woodlot owners see the government, the province doing some things to a high ideal, a high standard, I want that too, is what I would suggest.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I want to say thank you very much. I really appreciate your presentation. I think you've provided quite a bit of food for thought. Mr. Prest, I want to say that I have no way to guarantee to you that in three years if you come back that your introductory comments wouldn't be perfectly applicable. As a matter of fact, my fear is that nothing will change. I've been doing this - I think tomorrow it will be six years, March 24th, whenever that is - since I was first elected, so I'm not a cynic yet but I'm worried and in particular of this industry. I think if we're not up against the wall, we're getting pretty close and if something doesn't happen soon, a change of vision, there are going to be real problems for the industry. As a matter of fact, maybe some of the righting of the industry will happen with the demise of part of it, when there are no trees left.
Anyway, thank you, on behalf of the members of the committee, I really appreciate it.
[The committee adjourned at 11:05 a.m.]