HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Mr. John MacDonell (Chairman)

Mr. William Dooks

Mr. William Langille

Mr. Gary Hines

Mr. Charles Parker

Ms. Michele Raymond

Mr. Wayne Gaudet

Mr. Keith Colwell

Mr. Gerald Sampson

In Attendance:

Ms. Mora Stevens

Legislative Committee Clerk

Ms. Joanne Cook

Campaign Coordinator - Standing Tall

Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators

Mr. Will Martin

Vice President

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2006

STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

1:00 P.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. John MacDonell

MR. CHAIRMAN (Mr. William Dooks): Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We will call the meeting to order, and until the chairman arrives, I will chair the meeting. I'm the Vice-Chairman, and my name is Bill Dooks, MLA for Eastern Shore. We welcome today witnesses from the Ecology Action Centre. Before we recognize the Centre we will ask our members and witnesses to introduce themselves.

[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome to you all this afternoon. I don't know if you're familiar with the protocol here, but we allow the witnesses 20 to 30 minutes for a presentation - I'm always very kind - and then we open up to the committee for questions. Whoever is taking the lead, please start and be very comfortable.

MS. MINGA O'BRIEN: Thank you, Bill. I wish I had known that you were a little more flexible, I might have made my presentation a little longer.

Good afternoon and thank you very much for coming here today and we thank you for the opportunity to present to this committee. We also look forward to a full discussion of the issues after the presentation.

Briefly, I'll be reviewing the critical issues facing the Acadian forest, presenting the findings of our report on the forest sustainability regulations and, lastly, at the end of our presentation we will be talking about a request to your committee to recommend to the minister specific changes to the forest sustainability regulations.

The Acadian forest is the area here outlined in yellow, and it encompasses most of the Maritime Provinces, parts of New England and parts of Quebec, mostly the Gaspé. It's a transitional area between the northern conifer-dominated boreal forest and the hardwood forest to the south. It's unique in the world - there's no other place on this planet that has the same assemblage of trees, plants and animals as the Acadian forest. Because it's in a transitional area, it's a mix of both hardwoods and softwoods.

The Acadian forest is distinguished by red spruce primarily, but also by white pine, hemlock, sugar maple, American beech and yellow birch. The Acadian forest is dominated by shade-tolerant trees, and by this I mean trees that go up under the canopy of existing trees. Most of the trees of the Acadian forest are long-lived - red spruce can live up to 400 years, eastern hemlock as old as 800 years.

I have a few definitions - I'm sorry, but there is a bit of technical jargon and it's key to understanding some of the things that we'll be talking about, and I apologize if you are already familiar with these terms.

First of all, silviculture. Silviculture is the art and science of growing trees. Even-aged management is about growing forests of the same age and it involves techniques like clear-cutting, and then silviculture for planting, spraying, thinning. Even-aged management in Nova Scotia is primarily for softwoods. Uneven-aged management involves maintaining an intact forest cover, whereby individual or small groups of trees are harvested at a time. Uneven-aged management promotes a multi-aged, multi-species forest, and the main reason for managing forests in uneven-aged basis is to promote the regeneration and growth of desirable species, it's more about quality than quantity. Under an uneven-aged management regime there are very few, if any, large gaps in the forest canopy.

Why do our forests matter? I think we would all agree the jobs and economic activity of the forest industry are vital and important to all Nova Scotians and to the economic activity in this province. Forests are also important because they provide clean, safe drinking water, they produce oxygen, they absorb carbon dioxide, they are wildlife habitat, they produce opportunities for fishing and hunting, recreation, tourism and other values people value here in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, most of these values are lost when we clear-cut our forests.

This is what happens to over 500 square kilometres of Nova Scotia's forests every year, the entire canopy is removed and pretty much everything is levelled, and because of these cutting practices, the World Wildlife Fund considers the Acadian forest an endangered forest type. Logging, they say, is the main cause of forest loss.

In Nova Scotia, 98 per cent of the trees we cut are by clear-cutting. You may hear from industry or government officials that the situation is getting better, but we beg to disagree, we believe the numbers speak for themselves. For 30 years, most harvesting in

Nova Scotia has been by clear-cutting, and the area harvested has doubled in the last 30 years.

There is no local equivalent in nature to clear-cutting 500 square kilometres per year. The Acadian forest renews itself by filling in gaps. A large tree, or a few trees die, fall over and create a nice gap in the forest where the sun can hit the forest floor and a whole bunch of young trees can fill in that gap very rapidly. This creates a multi-species, multi-aged forest, and the diversity that results makes our forests resistant to large-scale disturbances like fire, wind and insects. Now, you may be thinking, what about the spruce budworm, what about Hurricane Juan, and you are right, some of our forests are regenerated by large-scale events like hurricanes and insect infestations. Such events are infrequent and they tend to affect certain species over others. The spruce budworm, for example, favours balsam fir.

Despite polices that encourage clear-cutting, DNR agrees that clear-cutting should not be the only harvesting technique in Nova Scotia. They recently put out a report that says that forestry practices should mimic the natural disturbances in our forests. The report recommends that clear-cutting be used for 42 per cent of forests to mimic hurricanes, fires and insects, and selection harvesting for at least 23 per cent of our forests to mimic small-scale disturbances, like those gaps I was talking about. We don't think these DNR figures are high enough, and the science also indicates that this is the case.

The University of New Brunswick and Maine forest scientists recommend no more than 25 per cent of our forests be managed on an even-aged basis. They say that the majority of our forests should be managed on an uneven-aged basis, and clearly neither DNR's position, or the scientists' position, is being adopted on the ground, with over 95 per cent of harvesting in Nova Scotia done by clear-cutting.

[1:15 p.m.]

So what does the public think about this? Well, there have been a variety of public opinion polls in Nova Scotia. One, a Nova Forest Alliance poll asked the general public in central Nova Scotia what they thought about clear-cutting and 87 per cent said they wanted the government to control or ban clear-cutting; 88 per cent said the public should have a say in directing forest use; and 70 per cent said current forest uses threaten wildlife and fish habitat - and I think it's worth mentioning that there was no significant difference in the results of this poll between urban and rural dwellers.

Another Nova Forest Alliance poll of woodland owners indicated the woodland owners ranked environmental benefits of forests significantly higher than economic benefits, and 62 per cent of woodland owners favoured forest management aimed to produce quality wood products. Lastly, a poll commissioned by the Ecology Action Centre and carried out by Corporate Research Associates indicated that 69 per cent of Nova Scotians want more protected areas - and I would submit that this is because people across this province are

seeing the devastation around them. They are seeing the clear-cuts around them, they're seeing their favourite places being levelled, and they're recognizing that there have to be some areas off-limits to clear-cutting.

With all this clear-cutting there's a cost. We've put all our eggs in the softwood basket for too long. In December, a senior economist with the Conference Board of Canada said that the forest industry in this country is in a state of absolute disaster. There have been mill closings across the country and 10,000 jobs have been lost in 2005 alone. In Eastern Canada earnings dropped from $431 million in the third quarter of 2004 to a loss of $36 million in the third quarter of 2005. What's driving this free-fall? The high Canadian dollar; ever-rising fuel costs, and they're going to continue to rise; new supply coming from Asian mills, China and India; and a fall in demand for newsprint.

We're not in a business that is economically, let alone ecologically, sustainable - and we can't say that there haven't been warnings. For years qualified people, people in the industry, people in government, have been warning that we've been cutting too much.

As early as 1912, Fernow, the author of the first report on the condition of Nova Scotia's forests, found that the province's forests had been depleted. In 1958, the first province-wide forest inventory noted that Nova Scotia had lost most of its primary forest and increased the land covered with non-commercial and low value species. In 1971, Murray Prest, then president of the Forests Products Association of Nova Scotia, a forest industry lobby group, warned of indiscriminate clear-cutting and cutting of immature stands. In 1986, Ralph Johnson, who was the chief forester for Bowater Mersey for 31 years and who had initiated their selection harvesting program, in his book - The Forests of Nova Scotia - worried about the increasing prevalence and dependence on clear-cutting and felt that it is economically and ecologically unsound and, more recently, in a 1997 DNR position paper, it stated that overharvesting is a potentially serious problem demanding immediate action.

DNR's efforts to correct our current situation and restore the health and condition of our forests have lacked substance. In their 2004 Code of Forest Practices, DNR recommended managing Nova Scotia's forest ecosystems to sustain or restore their natural patterns. At this point these promising words are still lip service, given what's really happening to our forests.

So what's our plan? We would like to see the network of protected areas completed in this province. Both provincial and federal commitments have said that we would have 12 per cent of our land area protected; we are at 8.3 per cent. We would also like to see the working forest managed to restore a healthy, natural Acadian forest. Tree farms, softwood tree farms, short rotations, should be restricted to a maximum of 25 per cent of the working forests and, furthermore, we would like to see support given to the development of a vibrant value-added forestry and wood manufacturing sector.

We believe that one means to get there is to improve the forest sustainability regulations to provide incentives for uneven-aged forest management. To that end, we produced a report on the regulations, which you all have a copy of in your binders. As a bit of background to the report, the forest sustainability regulations, as you likely may already know, were enacted in 2000. The idea behind the regulations is to grow as many trees as are cut. So mills, in proportion to the amount of wood they acquire, are supposed to invest in silviculture, invest in growing more softwoods faster on every hectare of land. These regulations do not control or regulate clear-cutting practices, and they have nothing to do with protecting watercourses or wildlife habitat. In these regulations, there are seven categories of silviculture and only one is targeted towards uneven-aged management.

So why do we become involved? It came to our attention early on in our campaign that there are a lot of forestry professionals out there in Nova Scotia trying to use these regulations which, on paper, say that they support uneven-aged management, but, in practice, really don't. People were getting increasingly frustrated across the province, and the silviculture resources delivered under this program reflect these professionals' experiences. Only 2 per cent to 3 per cent of the silviculture under these regulations since 2000 have gone towards Category 7, uneven-aged management. This is despite DNR's own recommendation that at least 23 per cent of forestry in Nova Scotia be by uneven-aged management, at least 23 per cent.

So early in 2005 we held a workshop - and interviews with people who couldn't attend the workshop - with forestry professionals. At that workshop we discussed people's experiences with the regulations to support their uneven-aged management practices. We then summarized those discussions in a report, and released the report in October 2005. We found that there were many barriers to practising uneven-aged management in Nova Scotia. In general, the regulations encourage clear-cutting and degrade many forest values. The focus of the regulations is on growing high volumes of short-rotation softwoods. They do not meet the needs of the hardwood sawlog industry. The technical standards are too restrictive for the natural variability of our forests. People have said it's like the people developing the criteria applied even-aged scenarios to an uneven-aged forest, and it just doesn't work.

Under these regulations, the mills call the shots, but they're only paying a third of the costs on private woodlots. The taxpayers, meanwhile, are putting $3 million a year into this program. That's 20 per cent of the cost of the whole program. People also noted that it's more lucrative to clear-cut and grow softwood tree farms than to manage in an ecologically-sound manner under these regulations.

In our report we have 21 recommendations, but I've put our top four recommendations here. We think that a minimum of 25 per cent of all silviculture funding should be available for uneven-aged management, and this would be in keeping with DNR's recommendation that a minimum of 23 per cent should go towards selection harvesting. We think that the taxpayer contribution to this program should go towards Category 7 - uneven-

aged management treatment. We think the regulations should emphasize growing shade-tolerant hardwoods and softwoods, which will have many benefits for value-added manufacturing. We also think that there should be more uneven-aged management for wildlife and other values.

Where are we now? Well, we've been unofficially informed that the Forest Technical Advisory Committee has recommended adopting a number of our technical changes to the minister, but these have not yet been publicly released. We were also invited to meet with the Minister of Natural Resources, deputy minister and several senior bureaucrats in December to review the report findings and recommendations.

Recently, the report was praised publicly by a senior DNR bureaucrat in the most recent issue of Atlantic Forestry Review, and the Eastern Hardwood Users Group, an industry group in eastern Nova Scotia has focused on using hardwoods, including Stora and Fraser Lumber and Groupe Savoie and others. As well as the Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association - quite an acronym - who are a bunch of woodlot owners who have a bargaining arrangement with Stora, both these groups have agreed with the overall thrust of our report.

Our request to you, the Standing Committee on Resources, is to recommend to the Minister of Natural Resources that there be dedicated funding to uneven-aged management to try to even the scales. Right now the scales are tipped very much in favour of even-aged short-rotation softwood management. We would like the public funding, the $3 million that goes to the program now, to be allocated to uneven-aged management. We would like to see more of a focus on encouraging a better quality hardwood supply. We urge you not to wait until the new forest strategy is developed to implement these changes.

So, to wrap up, we believe there is far too much emphasis on even-aged management in Nova Scotia. It is both economically and ecologically unsustainable. Given the current condition of the pulp and paper sector across the country and the rate of degradation of our forests, there is no time to lose. We must start investing in value-added forestry, in other words, uneven-aged management and a value-added forest sector.

So thank you for your time and let the discussion begin.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your presentation, Ms. O'Brien. At this time I would like to recognize MLA, Gerald Sampson.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to welcome everyone here today and just state some of the fears that you have touched on, that I carried myself for quite some time. Myself and the Chairman, John MacDonell, went out on a tour of Bowater. I believe John was pleased with what he saw. I can't speak for him, but I know I was pleased with what I saw, I saw areas that were clear-cut and then replanted. They showed us the

reasons why some areas must be clear-cut and, wherever possible, showed us new areas that they clear-cut and leave specific areas of trees that are old enough to regenerate seeds and whatnot so it will naturally reforest. Areas that were clear-cut would have to be replanted, and they are in the process of doing that.

We are well down the list in regard to being against any spraying of any kind. They took us to an area where the hardwoods - hardwoods grow faster than softwood - had been high and the softwoods down low and, after a spray program, it slowed down the growth of the hardwood - it doesn't kill it, but it slows it down and allows the softwood to grow up above the hardwood, then the hardwood eventually comes back, but not in a way that it's above the softwood, that the softwood must fight to grow in the natural way. It was almost like a crop rotation on an agriculture farm. It surprised me. Then I see the big machines the harvesters were travelling around on, and they travel around on now. I suppose you would call it, webbed or spruce beds. When they remove the branches from the trees they make a roadway and they put the branches across, the tracks of the machine travel on that. They took us to areas that had been harvested quite some time ago and showed us that there were actually new spruce trees, naturally reforested, coming up through the tracks. So the machines hadn't compacted the soil that nothing would ever grow, because my fear - I have it down my way on Boularderie Island where there are areas that a tree farmer would go in and put three and four foot deep ruts and nothing would every grow there again. So, after that tour, I guess maybe I wasn't looking at the other side of the coin, and I changed my ideas on several things that they were doing.

I agree with you about protected areas, we need protected areas; that goes without saying, that protected areas are a must and should be followed through.

[1:30 p.m.]

In regard to value added, I must bring up the name of Finewood Flooring and Lumber in Middle River. I kind of promised that gentleman that I would bring the name of their company forward and see if they could make a presentation here because they take sticks of hardwood as short as two- and three- and four-feet long and they make wonderful products out of that, and it's something to behold, to hear these guys talk about getting maybe six or eight different cuts from one tree because of the size, quality and the different types of hardwood that they have.

So the old practices, it appeared to me, were being phased out and the practices coming in - some of them proven, some of them not, and if they're not proven properly it seems that the industry was willing to change, but I think it's a process of maybe it's not changing quick enough in some cases, but the trees grow so slow and take so long, it's almost a process of evolution. Would you get rid of the old and bring in new practices? Technology is into the industry and I don't really have a question as such, I just wanted to give you the overview. After having that tour, it kind of opened my eyes to what I saw and

evidenced and it's pretty hard to argue - with some of the things that I went in with - when they showed me that they weren't the big bad guys that I thought they were before I entered on the tour.

It gave me a look at both sides and they also basically said that they had enough wood in the forest for the next 50 or 100 years, and by that time the new trees that they were planting, the new growth that was coming up, would be ready to be harvested. They kind of had this sustainability built into their forestry practices, which surprised and pleased me. So that is all I have to say, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I'm not recognizing Michele Raymond at this time, but I'm welcoming you here and introducing you today; you will be recognized a little later on. At this time I would like to recognize your colleague though, the very famous Mr. Charlie Parker.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Well, I'm not sure how I got that introduction, but thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to pick up on Gerald's comments and lead toward a question on it. I guess you are here today to help explain, maybe even to educate us about changes that are needed in the forest, and the word "sustainability" is kicked around a lot and everybody says they are sustainable, but it depends on your definition. In truth, many of the large forest companies in this province are following the industrial forest model of clear-cutting and replanting and spraying and just on a continual monocultural basis and, while that works, for them, I don't know if it works for everyone.

The studies you have done are showing that people want change. I think the vast majority of Nova Scotians out there do want change and are quite willing to maybe look at measures, even financial tax measures that would help pay for change in this province, but the people I talk to, whether it's landowners or contractors who are in the woods right now, they like to do things better, but sometimes you get caught in a financial squeeze and you have to pay the bills at the end of the month and you have a big machine and you have to pay that payment. I think the people are open to change, they want change, but sometimes you get caught in a cycle and you can't get out of it.

So I guess it's all about education. How can we educate our public out there that there is a better way? Certainly you are to be commended for the work that you are doing. So I know you are here to educate us and that's good, and you are constantly working on that, but I wonder if I could ask what, besides lobbying decision makers in government, what other changes are you involved in or what other education methods are you involved in to lobby for a positive change? That's my first question.

MS. JOANNE COOK: Well I think one of the strategies that we're using is evident here, since we have at the table both the Ecology Action Centre and the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators Association. We're pragmatic environmentalists, we recognize that forestry and forest ecology are inextricably intertwined. You can't look at healthy forests without looking at a healthy forest-based economy in this province.

Our argument is that the greater diversity we have in the forests, the greater diversity we have in our forest sector, the more robust the whole system is for people and for the natural ecology. Towards that end, we're in the process of making common cause with a number of groups. We are presenting, for example, at the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers & Hunters AGM, we're going to woodlot owners conferences, we're talking to Nature Nova Scotia, we're talking to the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia, which was an early sign-on to the Standing Tall Campaign. We're trying to look at ways to make both our forest economy and our forest environment healthier. To do that, we have to work with a lot of groups, find the areas that we can agree on and try to move along in those directions. We are a participant of the Nova Forest Alliance, for example.

MR. PARKER: There certainly is a strong relationship between a healthy environment and a healthy economy. Right now we have sort of the opposite in some respects, with 98 per cent of our lands being clear-cut, we're losing jobs, we're hurting our environment, we're hurting our tourism industry, it's the negative side. If you flip that around and look at better forestry methods, you're going to have a better economy, there's no question, they are strongly linked.

One of the major recommendations that you're coming up with here is around changing the forest sustainability regulations, and your research has shown that that would allow for more uneven-aged management. You had an initial meeting with DNR in December, you indicated, how do feel you're getting along with that? Do you feel there's an openness within the department to consider those changes, are you hitting a brick wall, just where are you with those?

MS. COOK: I think the department is at the point where the senior bureaucracy is recognizing now that changes have to be made. I would not put words in Peter Underwood's and Ed MacAulay's mouth but, certainly, the meeting that we had with the minister and several senior people was cordial, was very open. We did not run into any absolute brick walls. We know through our contacts and our representative on the Forest Technical Advisory Committee, as Minga said, a number of the technical changes in the report, they are looking at ways to integrate those into the regulations, and they're working on a recommendation to the minister to that effect. Jorg Beyeler, the Director of Science for DNR, openly endorsed this report in the Atlantic Forestry Review in their last issue, which of course is the major publication in the forestry sector in Atlantic Canada.

We've also been talking to DNR frequently about the issue of how the development of the new forestry strategy is going to proceed, and that discussion is ongoing in terms of how public consultations are going to be handled and how people's input is going to be handled. I would not characterize our relationship with the department right now as combative, I think there is a willingness to seriously consider what we are saying. Will, what do you think about that?

MR. WILL MARTIN: I haven't been part of the meetings but I know that certainly a positive indicator for me was that our association's president, Mr. Tom Miller, was actually nominated Nova Scotia Woodlot Owner of the Year this year. Tom Miller has been somebody who, throughout the years, has promoted the ideals and change that we're looking for in this report. In fact, he was a participant in producing this report, so the fact that they even recognized his work on his own woodlot, to me, shows a real sign of opportunity there to actually make some of these changes.

MS. COOK: And the Eastern Woodlot Owner of the Year as well, is practising even-aged management.

MR. MARTIN: Right.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker, you have one other question.

MR. PARKER: Yes, one further question. I know Tom Miller and he's doing good work, he and Lori, his wife, are constituents of mine and live not far from me. They're a positive example of alternate forestry or doing forestry the right way that's making a difference.

I just wanted to ask finally about the biggest controversial issue - other than clear-cutting - around forest spraying, and certainly they go together. Every Summer it comes up in my constituency, as it does in other parts of the province. An example of maybe not doing forest spraying is Stora, they made a commitment in 1997 not to spray any longer. I think they're having some success with that model. They're using larger seedlings, instead of just a one-year-old they're using a two-year-old seedling, and they're using manual weeding methods in the seven eastern counties, on the lands they control under Crown land. It seems to be working for them, why is it that we can't get other forest companies to do the same thing? It seems like a successful model and if it didn't happen on other company lands, it would be great and wonderful and there would be a lot less controversy out there.

MS. O'BRIEN: I'll just say briefly and maybe you can add. For those who might not know there is absolutely no spraying allowed also in the entire Province of Quebec on Crown land, which is the majority of the land area there. The government took a stance on that and banned herbicide use in Crown land management there.

With Stora, I understand it is a higher cost not to spray, but the thing is spraying is part of the even-aged paradigm, it's almost a necessary component of that. If you're going to grow softwoods and you have all these hybrids coming up in between, then one of the easiest things to do is spray to get rid of the hardwoods.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Langille.

MR. WILLIAM LANGILLE: On Sunday I was in the woods and got a load of hardwood, by the way, and split it. There's no snow in the woods, I'm very happy about that, it was dead hardwood by the way.

Just to clarify a couple of things. In your presentation you said 88 per cent of the public should have control in forest use. I'm looking at 88 per cent said the public should have control in the forest use, and I'm thinking, that seems like a high number when you consider approximately 60 per cent to 70 per cent is land owned by private landowners. Could you clarify that? How do we get 88 per cent of the public thinking they should have a say?

MS. O'BRIEN: I didn't do the poll myself, I was just reading the results. I think what you're seeing there is that the Nova Scotia public are feeling alienated from the process of deciding what happens on the landscape around them, and they would like to have more of a say. I think that that should just be a given for Crown land, Crown land is everyone's land, we should all have a very significant input into Crown land management. I think maybe by saying that, people are also hoping for tighter regulations and controls on clear-cutting so that all of the private land, or much of the private land around them can't be levelled, that there are regulations to control size of clear-cut and protect streams, protect old-growth forests, significant forests, et cetera.

MR. LANGILLE: The reason I brought it up was because of the large percentage - which is unique to Nova Scotia, compared to other provinces in Canada - of private ownership of our forests. When you look at 70 per cent, that is a large number and I was just questioning that, if that was Crown or if that was private?

[1:45 p.m.]

MS. O'BRIEN: I have the source with me, I can look.

MR. LANGILLE: No, that's fine. The other thing is, and I'm really concerned, I had three industries in my riding that ceased operations in value-added hardwood, which I believe we need in Nova Scotia. There is too much raw material leaving, and we're not getting our value when it comes to management. It is the same with our resources in the ground, and I look at gypsum as an example of that.

I know it's hard. I had a phone call last week from a person from St. Stephen's, New Brunswick looking for hardwood. He said you have lots of it in the Wentworth Valley, I was down there. I said yes, but I have people who want it here now; in fact, I get calls all the time. I think it's a shame that we can't supply wood for our value-added industries here, because it's a big industry. Unfortunately, it's real hardwood and I know they import wood from Maine, New Brunswick, and Quebec just to try to keep going.

I think we are seeing that, but also technology is allowing them, as Mr. Sampson said, to cut up to two feet - it's not like the old days where you lost so much in cutting when you needed a straight log. They can really do wonders now with what wood that they have.

There's a Private Member's Bill in the House, I believe, and I think it's 300 feet from any water, that you cannot cut near a stream, brook, or river. I'm looking at one of my properties and my woodlot, which I'm presently cutting, and in that amount of area I have a river running through my property, and also a brook running through my property. If you take that and bring that into law, what am I going to cut? I understand the anglers and hunters are in favour of it - well why not, they don't own the woodlots, they should be in favour of it. I look at that and what we have now in regulation as to how close you can cut to a river, and do we need that? What's your opinion on that?

MS. O'BRIEN: Can I comment first on what you said about hardwood? You mentioned there was a value-added facility in your area that used hardwoods and they had a hard time getting their supply.

MR. LANGILLE: I had three manufacturers that closed.

MS. O'BRIEN: I just wanted to speak to that for a second. I want to say that our provincial forest management treats hardwood like a weed, it's something they don't want and that's why they spray it to get rid of it, and that is a very serious problem in Nova Scotia.

Under these regulations, for every cubic metre of softwood the mills acquire, they're supposed to put $3 worth of silviculture back into the woods, and for hardwoods it's only 60 cents. Apparently when they were first having discussions about what that amount should be for hardwoods, because they didn't feel that there was any problem with hardwood supply it was going to be zero, but then they felt that some people wouldn't like that and so they put it up to 60 cents - it's nominal. That just speaks to the lack of interest and emphasis on hardwoods here; and if that number was higher it would probably help our hardwood producers an awful lot. Right now, instead of actually growing hardwood, we spray them and we take beautiful, tolerant hardwood stands and we clear-cut them to convert them to softwood stands, and that's happening across the province.

MR. LANGILLE: I agree with your last statement that we take hardwood stands and then replant them with softwood. However, I can show you over 50 acres of land, my property, that I haven't silvicultured properly, and what I have are the nuisance trees - and I'm talking about grey birch, which is useless for anything really, and they are taller than the trees that I planted. I also have some maple scattered in that. The problem is this grey birch comes up and you have to either silviculture it or spray it, one or the other, to keep it, because it's a nuisance tree, it's not good for anything. I want to bring that to your attention.

Also, silviculture, you almost have to belong to a co-op in order to get the benefits of silviculture. If you don't belong to a co-op, where do you get the money? So, you know, it's regulated to death as far as I'm concerned, because the private landowner who doesn't belong to a co-op should be able to have the benefits of silviculture, too, when he cuts the property.

MS. O'BRIEN: Bill, I should emphasize that when I was talking about hardwoods, I was trying to emphasize the importance of shade-tolerant hardwoods over the shade intolerance. I agree with you that there's an awful lot of low-value hardwoods out there, and that's part of the problem of clear-cutting, to take shade-tolerant stands and turn them into, you know, stands that like lots of sunlight, and then you get the red maple, grey birch and other things. There needs to be more encouragement of those shade-tolerance and the valuing of those.

MR. LANGILLE: I agree 100 per cent with what you're saying right now. I also think that there should be more emphasis put on silviculture with saws and that.

I just want to go off course for a second. I think one of the problems is in our education system. We have a large forestry industry in Nova Scotia, but I know that we're not educating our youth to go into forestry, especially in the high schools. Now, I know Stellarton has an excellent program of forestry in its high school, but when other high schools want it, they're getting blocked, for some reason, not to have this forestry program introduced into the high schools. There are a lot of rural students out there who would go into the woods and make a living, and a good living, if they only had the training. I think that's one thing we should look at as a government and as legislators, to have it enacted in our education system. I think you might see that down the road more, but it's one place where we're truly lacking now. What's your opinion on that?

MS. O'BRIEN: Oh, I agree with you very much, yes. We definitely need that.

Did you want an answer to the riparian question that you put?

MR. MARTIN: A couple of comments, actually. What you're describing as your experience on your own woodlot is very common to what we find in our membership as well. To me, the problems you've laid out are actually the very things that we were trying to push

for these changes so that we wouldn't encounter those problems consistently. Our current forestry model that is encouraged through this silviculture system by providing funds directed at a certain type of management actually promote those types of stand conditions rather than what they're intended to do, which is to make our forests more vibrant and productive.

So the question about grey birch, for instance, the reason why grey birch is there is because we're in a forest economy that promoted a heavy disturbance in that stand to open up, like Minga said, too much light, and that's why grey birch is there. By managing in an uneven-aged manner, you would have smaller gap sizes that wouldn't allow for something like grey birch to grow and, in fact, would promote the valuable hardwood species like yellow birch and sugar maple to fill into those gaps.

So the reason why a lot of people don't do the uneven-aged management on their woodlots is because there isn't the incentive provided to do it through the silviculture regulations. In fact, there are more monies given for the even-aged systems, that put us in a bit of this trap with sort of intolerance and not seen as commercially-valuable species taking over our stands and, therefore, we have to use more aggressive measures like spraying, for instance, to combat them. So we've put ourselves into that corner.

MR. LANGILLE: Just to comment on what you said. You are 100 per cent right on that, and I realize that. I looked up, on my property, which is in the same area as Tom Miller's in Earltown, and what I did, I followed the program of Natural Resources for my property. They came on to my property. They set out what I should do and I followed it to the letter and this is what happened to mine. Now, unfortunately, at the time I was an absentee landowner in a way and I didn't do as much as I should have on that particular property.

MR. MARTIN: Just in terms of the question on buffer zones, very quickly, my personal feeling on that is that buffer zone regulations, you're right that landowners often feel that this is a fairly onerous thing to comply with, it takes out a lot of land area. The principle around buffer zones though is in direct relationship to what's being done after the buffer zone, so the fact that we need such buffer zones today is really a result of the fact that our forestry practices have been so intensive around those buffers or outside of them. So I think the buffer zones have a lot of values which could be argued. We could have a whole discussion about that today, but it's just important to note that buffer zones are in direct relationship to what's being done after the buffer zone.

MS. COOK: Also to clarify my understanding of the bill and, of course, I'm not its sponsor, that's Leo Glavine, my understanding though was the GS had established a zone of 100 metres on each side of a watercourse. The first 30 metres out from the water would still allow for individual logging, but not mechanized logging, individual tree. The next 70 metres out from that would allow for selection harvesting, uneven-aged type of harvesting. Clear-

cutting would not be permitted within the 100 metre zone, but it would not mean an absolute halt to all logging activities. That's my understanding of what the essence of that was.

MS. O'BRIEN: Sabrina could probably clarify that, she helped.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before your staff person would be able to comment, she would have to take the mic. If you would like to do that, you're quite welcome. (Interruption) Maybe she would like for copies to be presented to committee members and we thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Langille.

Ms. Michele Raymond.

MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for coming in to talk about this because I know it's something that has been at the top of our agenda for a long time. I have been interested recently, one of the things that you talked about was the working forest and you're saying that at the moment 98 per cent of lumbering that takes place, takes place in the form of clear-cutting. Your ideal would be that silviculture money would actually be, you know, closer, that you would actually be working towards restoring this. How big is the working forest? What is the working forest of Nova Scotia, what do you consider it to be and how big is it?

MS. O'BRIEN: Well, 4.2 million hectares of forest land for the total and 8.3 per cent of that in designated protected areas.

MS. RAYMOND: So about 73 per cent of 4.2 million hectares, so you consider working forest to be anything that's not protected?

MS. O'BRIEN: That's right. Even people, say a woodlot owner who doesn't want to cut today, if they don't put any kind of legal designation on their property to protect it in the long term, it could be that the next generation cuts it.

MS. RAYMOND: So it could be something that might end up as residential development, or anything else, is also technically at the moment considered working forest? If it's not designated, then it's working forest?

MS. O'BRIEN: That's right, because 4.2 million hectares of forest land and then in addition to that there's agricultural and the urban areas.

MS. RAYMOND: Right, okay. So about 93 per cent, or currently urban areas. Okay, that is very helpful to know. So you have a wide variety of ecosystems in there. When you talk about 2 per cent of the silviculture resources going to uneven-aged management, right, so 98 per cent of it is going to basically replacing the 98 per cent that is clear-cutting. You would almost like to see a flip of that. Is that going to take some time, or is it like a bad

haircut and you just kind of say, this is it, we're doing it today. What happens? (Interruptions) A bad haircut. You just have to keep on cutting it.

[2:00 p.m.]

MS. COOK: The idea of a sudden total change in forest practices, a complete ban on clear-cutting, a complete ban on spraying, in an ideal world that would be wonderful. We are not in an ideal world. We're in a world where there is a lot of traditional forestry jobs sustaining a lot of rural communities out there. As much as I, as an environmentalist, as an advocate would love to be able to wave that magic wand, we're working within a community context.

Now, my personal feeling is that we are dangerously dependent on a pulp and paper mill-driven forest economy here. Yes, our sawmill sector has done very well in the last decade, partly because, as I am sure most of you are aware, we don't have the same high countervailing duties applied on shipments to the U.S. as do many other provinces because so much of our forest is private and doesn't fall under that subsidy regime. But - there's a big but here - our mills, in general, are small on the global scale. They are aging.

Stora has put a lot of money into that new super calender machine, but to be brutally blunt, Bowater and Neenah and the older mill at Stora are small and they are aging. I don't even know at the moment how many mills or parts of mills have shut down across Canada in the last year. This has been something, a crisis, that a lot of people in the industry saw coming, but nobody predicted how fast it was going to hit this year. When you had this confluence of the rising Canadian dollar, the mills coming on stream, huge mills, from Russia and China, the big new super efficient ones from Europe, coupled with sinking demand for newsprint, partly because of the rise of the Internet, partly because a lot of people just don't read as much anymore as they used too, higher electricity prices, higher fuel costs, in general, and the industry in Canada and in the rest of North America has been battered, there is no reason to think that we're going to escape more closures here in the next few years.

We have substantial sectors of our rural economies that are driven by those pulp and paper mills. Queens County, in particular, 16 per cent of all the jobs in Queens County are in the forest sector. If Bowater closes, if Neenah closes, if Stora shuts down its old mill and cuts its 150 jobs that way, we have communities that are going to be facing not as dramatic difficulties as some of the northern Ontario and northern western Saskatchewan, B.C. communities that are solely mill towns, that when that mill closes, the plug has been pulled altogether. We have diversified economies in Pictou, in the Strait, in Queens County - but at least there are other economic drivers in those areas.

MS. RAYMOND: So, you can't wave the wand.

MS. COOK: You can't wave the wand but at the same time, we're way too dependent on a sector that is shaky at best.

MS. RAYMOND: So to start the process, to get to the point where your balance is different, it's not 98 per cent clear-cutting and softwood, but your ideal is 2 per cent, that kind of thing, or it will push to 25. How long would it take to regenerate a forest that is in that ideal balance? Is it 30, 40, 50 years?

MS. COOK: I think that is very location-specific. It depends on the practices that have gone on in particular woodlots in particular areas, and it depends on how fast we can bring in, for example, forest stewardship, council certification on all Crown lands in this province - which should be a given. Stora it appears is thinking of moving towards FSC on their industrial lands and through their contractors. We've seen a couple of the acronym . . .

MS. O'BRIEN: Nova Scotia Landowners and Forest Fibre Producers Association.

MS. COOK: Thank you. They are a major group of landowners that supply fibre to Stora, the entire group has gotten FSC certification in December. So it depends a lot on how quickly we can change practices, it depends on how quickly we can change those regulations to start helping out the woodlot owners who aren't trying to manage on an uneven-aged basis. I don't have a magic number to give you, Michele.

MS. RAYMOND: Okay. Even if we start tomorrow from the ground up? Can I ask one more quick question?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Last question, Michele, please.

MS. RAYMOND: There's a lot of talk about the carbon sink, particularly of North America and the forests' role in that. Do you know anything about the different transpiration rates of softwood versus hardwood, mixed forest? I mean, which would be the more valuable type of forest as a carbon sink in the Kyoto world?

MS. O'BRIEN: My understanding of this, from a bunch of scientific papers that I have looked at, is that the older the forest the more carbon it stores. There's a terrible misunderstanding out there in the general public - I think slightly somewhat promoted by an industry that wants to push things more towards short rotations - that older forests store less carbon than young forests. In fact older forests are an incredible reservoir for carbon in the living matter and in the dead matter, all the organic matter on the forest floor and the decomposing matter on the forest floor. When you clear-cut and convert an older forest to a young stand, there's an enormous amount of carbon loss. When you take an old field, and you're beginning with an old field and planting it with trees, then you might see more carbon absorbed in the atmosphere than just the field, but if you're converting an older forest to a young forest, there's a very large loss of carbon to the atmosphere.

MS. RAYMOND: Really? Interesting.

MR. MARTIN: Something to consider in that regard as well - Canada right now, in their Kyoto strategy, we've talked about spending millions of dollars to pay Russia for carbon credits.

MS. RAYMOND: I know, I know.

MR. MARTIN: We could be spending that money supporting carbon sequestration and storage here in Canada, which would go hand in hand with our protected areas . . .

MS. RAYMOND: Talk about value-added forestry. I mean, really, yes.

MR. MARTIN: That's right. There may be a day when our forests are more valuable to us as carbon storage than they are for their wood products.

MS. O'BRIEN: I have read fairly recently that Canada's forests are being perceived as a net carbon source and not a carbon reservoir because of a lot of the cutting of older forests and transforming them to young forests.

MS. RAYMOND: There hasn't been any work done then on breaking down the overall patchwork. I was just wondering, what you said, why are we paying for this.

MS. O'BRIEN: I think it's worth mentioning, since you bring up this point. Nova Scotia has lost almost all of its older forests in the last 40 years. Well, over centuries now, but 40 to 50 per cent of our forests were considered true old growth in around 1600, and when scientists define true old growth they're talking about forests that have been in devolvement for 300, 400 years. Today that per cent of true old growth has turned from 40 to 50 per cent of the entire forest area to .0008 per cent. So we have transformed our forests in 400 years from carbon reservoirs to sources of carbon. In the last 40 years, in 1958, 25 per cent of our forests were over 80 years old. By 1995, which is already 10 years ago, 1 per cent of our forests were over 80 years old. In the last 10 years we've seen 50,000 hectares of additional clear-cuts every year.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. At this time I would like to recognize Mr. Keith Colwell.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you. I just have a few questions to ask about your plan. In your plan - and I think this is great, I'm not here to question how you get it but - restrict tree farms to a maximum of 25 per cent of the working force. How did you come up with that number?

MS. O'BRIEN: That is a number that is based on the science that has been published by scientists at the University of New Brunswick, and University of Maine, who are basing that on natural disturbance regimes for this forest area, for the Acadian forest. So they are saying that if we're going to try to copy and emulate, what they call emulate natural disturbances in our forest management - so if it's, for example, a forest type that is regenerated by insect infestations, for example, the Highlands, or a forest type like Jack pine that is regenerated by fire, then the most appropriate management scenario to apply to that forest type is even-aged management, in those cases, softwoods. If our natural forest type for an area is multi-species, multi-aged, then we should try to emulate that type of natural disturbance natural pattern and use uneven-aged management techniques. So when they looked at the entire forest area they said that if we're going to be faithful and try to copy natural disturbances then we shouldn't be managing any more of our forests, any more than 15 to 25 per cent of our forest under an even-aged management regime. So if we're going to really be true to the principles of coping and emulating natural disturbances, that is what the published science indicates. Is that clear?

MR. COLWELL: Yes, that's very clear. Also, in your plan here, support development and vibrant value-added forestry and wood manufacturing industry. I couldn't agree more. When you worked on your plan did you have more details than that of how that might be accomplished? I know it's a real problem when you are trying to add value and compete with places outside the country and all those economic problems that you run into when you try to do this, although it would add a tremendous amount of employment and economic benefit to Nova Scotia and, indeed, Canada. Did you go further in that, or did you just look at that as a blanket statement?

MS. O'BRIEN: I believe, Will and Joanne might be able to add to this, that we have great potential here. We have some very fine yellow birch in Nova Scotia, for example, that instead of promoting that yellow birch, we spray it to encourage softwoods. I believe that if we start putting dedicated funding toward uneven-aged management then we will see a proliferation of value-added opportunities, because right now veneer buyers from New Brunswick come into Nova Scotia and grab the veneer-quality wood. The East Coast Hardwoods in Burnside sell sugar maple and yellow birch. They don't get any of that from Nova Scotia because they can't guarantee a long-term good quality supply of those woods here. For example, the hardwood sawmill sector struggles. Many of our recommendations have already been voiced by them to the Forest Technical Advisory Committee and to the minister, and simply have not been heeded. So they very much agree with the thrust of our report because it would make their lives an awful lot easier. So I think that if we channel funding and education and research and development toward uneven-aged management and also towards value-added opportunities then these things will start happening.

A quick comparison here. In Nova Scotia, the amount of value added we get per cubic metre of wood harvested, in 1998, was $82, compared to Ontario, $273, compared to Quebec, $203, and compared to New Brunswick $122. We are doing very poorly here when

it comes to value added. We have managed the forests into a corner where now we have lots of low-value, low-commercial species, and we need to get out of that corner or we're just going to push ourselves further and further into a rut.

[2:15 p.m.]

MR. COLWELL: I couldn't agree more and every time we can add value to something before we ship it, or further processing even, it adds value and adds more employment and more money for the communities. It's a big problem though when you get the big pulp mills that are demanding softwood all the time and the big operations. Probably to get value added, you are probably going to have small businesses that start this process, until it can grow into a sustainable supply. How do you visualize that happening because I think that's the crux of the problem alone with your management?

MR. MARTIN: One of the things that can be done is actually implementing some of the changes in this report, because many of the changes talk about working in your stands to promote quality, for instance, promoting that tree quality and providing adequate funding for somebody to go out on a very practical level. They are trying to grow good yellow birch, maybe for veneer material, you need to prune that tree. That's effort, that's time out in the woods. To encourage people to do that they have to be supported in doing it properly.

Also, uneven-aged stands tend to grow as well the higher value products. For instance, I have heard it said that Ikea often viewed that Nova Scotia had the nicest white pine in the world, right here in Nova Scotia. That white pine though grew up in a stand condition that was small gapped where a young tree can start, it's shaded by others, so it doesn't put on very many branches. It has to grow tall very quickly, with few branches, so you get clear, white pine wood. That's the type of stand condition that grows added-value products. So, by changing our emphasis in silviculture funding, we can really encourage people to build the stand conditions and build the capacity to first grow the supply that will support that value-added industry, because there is no sense in building a business for value added, if the supply isn't there, and right now the supply isn't there because we haven't built that capacity.

MR. COLWELL: That's good. If you had an ideal situation in place, what kind of cost realistically do you think we could take to turn the corner on this. The province has put $3 million aside for this but realistically, what do you think we should be spending on this to create the situation that you are talking about?

MS. O'BRIEN: I think that a lot of the subsidies that are now directed toward even-aged management could be redirected toward trying to improve the health and condition of our forests and maybe provide a leg up to some small businesses that want to go toward value-added processing. As Will says, you have to start getting the good quality material in

your woods and then slowly add that value-added side of things, the manufacturing side of things.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, one second, Keith. Ms. Cook, did you want to respond to the last comment the MLA made?

MS. COOK: This to some degree ties in to this comment as well. I think that as well as adopting the recommendations that we're talking about that would redirect the existing funding under resources, I think that we need to be paying more attention to value-added forestry planning in our HRDAs and in more collaborative approaches. Maybe, the existing rural secretariat could play a part in more targeted forestry planning to pull ACOA, to pull the HRDA system, to pull the business development banks, the subsidies, the funding is delivered directly by the province. To focus those more on better stand management and better value added. Certainly, I have been talking recently with Nova Forest Alliance and with the rural secretariat about potentially doing some community planning work, to look at options in communities that are heavily mill dependent at the moment.

I don't have a dollar figure to give you, Keith, but I think that if we focus more on our existing forestry sector - I was appalled, I was at an overview of economic development plans for the different regions just before Christmas. Very, very few of the plans had explicit mentions of the forestry sector. A number of the plans from areas that are forestry dependent don't actually address the issue of the health of the pulp and paper sector. There's a gap there and maybe it reflects how fragmented the sector has been. We've got 30,000 individual woodlot owners providing 70 per cent of our wood supply and that's an awful lot of cats to hurt, but we've got to be able to take our existing economic plan and processes and all the people who are working on them and really focus on these issues.

MR. MARTIN: Also just to add, when we talk about money, this report in large part is not about asking for more money. A huge amount could be done just by redirecting or proportionately separating the money that's already available and already being put into this program. So that's a really key thing to remember because industry may feel already burdened by this program and they may be outraged if we ask them for more money, but really we're just talking about working within a framework that already exists and just making that money divide up more proportionately to support sort of the two kinds of forestry we really should have in this province.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your comments. I would like to recognize at this time Mr. Gary Hines.

MR. GARY HINES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, today, and I want to make a comment leading out because I don't think that three years ago we probably would have had the same kind of dialogue that we're having today and the same people at the table. I talked at length to Raymond Plourde about that and I think he has seen a big change in the

attitude towards the industry as well as a big change in the industry's attitude towards the Ecology Action Centre and I give full marks to those arrangements being made.

My question is because we have so many woodlot owners in the Province of Nova Scotia, small woodlot owners become key players as well as the Aboriginal people. Have they been involved in the discussion to the degree that both groups here would like to see them because they will be key players down the road in any decision making? So how have they been accommodated in the discussion?

MR. MARTIN: The small woodlot owners and the Aboriginal community?

MR. HINES: Yes.

MR. MARTIN: I can speak for the small woodlot owners and that's why I'm here. We represent small woodlot owners in this province and in large part the views that are being expressed by us are views that they have put forward to us in meetings. They represent problems they have expressed to us or frustrations. The small woodlot owner, actually, speaking in my experience, they are much more forward-thinking in their forestry management, but often end up being forced into a corner of making decisions they're not even really happy with just because of the economic situation in our province. They can't get fair value for the wood that they sell and also because incentives put forward by the silviculture program as it is actually discourage them from following their own intuition and what they think is best for their woodlot. So the small woodlot owners, I think, would benefit greatly from these types of changes because they are things that people want to do on their woodlots anyway. So I can only speak from that perspective.

MS. COOK: In terms of explicit involvement of First Nations in preparing this report, the initial work was done before I came onboard at EAC six months ago. Was there outreach to the Aboriginal communities?

MS. O'BRIEN: No, none as of yet.

MR. HINES: I think it's important that they come to the table because in their right to harvest you're going to have old constitutional agreements conflicting with changes and I think that the first complaint they will have is we weren't apprised of the changes. So I think that some place they need to be accommodated and very soon.

MS. COOK: They are certainly a very important player, and certainly Minga's very familiar with a number of the issues around First Nations, because - and some of you may not know - in one of her other lives she's a certified assessor for the Forest Stewardship Council's certification program. So she's a forestry practices person as well as an ecologist, and she led the team that brought FSC certification to the Pictou Landing band which was the first Aboriginal certification in Eastern Canada.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We're now starting our second round of questioning and I would ask the members to keep their questioning and response to approximately five minutes, so that if anyone else would like to have a turn we can accommodate them.

Mr. Gerald Sampson, first, please.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Talking about spraying, what alternatives exist to herbicide spraying that you're aware of, and are they successful?

MS. O'BRIEN: Well, in Quebec, as I mentioned, they don't use them in the entire province. There are mostly boreal forests in Quebec, which we don't have here except for a few areas like the Highlands. They are using them successfully there. I think it costs them a little more, but I think that they are working around that. Stora also doesn't use them. Again, I think what they do is they plant bigger seedlings, they try to create smaller gaps in the forests so that there's fewer shade-intolerant species, competitive species, coming in. I will say, again, herbicide spraying is part and parcel of the even-aged management regime and, if we really want to move away from herbicide spraying, we should be thinking about more uneven-aged management.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I have to quote Bruce Aikman from Middle River who asked me, "Why are our resources controlled by others for the benefit of others?" He said at his farm gate that log is worth $3 and, by the time he ships it and buys it back, it's anywhere from $11 to $17 in value. Why can't that be done here?

Then on the other side of the coin, when I see these truckloads of lobster and crab going up the hill and being shipped off to New Brunswick, if somebody has a contract to buy that stuff, how do you eventually break that contract, phase it out or whatever, when they're buying it in New Brunswick and processing it up there - or further west, or even into the U.S. - how could we eventually evolve?

We're talking about value-added and before I ask my question on Winter cutting - the lady from Finewood Flooring, the daughter, when she gave us a presentation she said that that hardwood tree in the middle of the winter with the sap gone down in the roots is pure white. I'll pay $30 for that stick, but nobody will harvest it in the Winter. When they harvest it in the Summer, when it's easy pickings, they harvest it and now it's full of sap, so it's a different colour. She'll pay $10 for it. Nobody will go out in the woods and cut it in the wintertime when it's three times the value. So you're talking about our value-added and harvesting, but how would you foresee the evolution of value-added and keeping value-added here in Nova Scotia, how do you stop the good stuff from going out?

I worked at the fish plant 40 years ago in North Sydney. If you didn't know a fisherman and you wanted a good feed of fish, you had to go to Boston to get it. Fifty years later, who's the first one that had our natural gas? Boston. So you see nothing has changed

over a period of time. So how do you foresee us doing value-added here, which we should be doing and creating the jobs, and eventually easing away from the export of our raw material and then going and turning around and buying it back?

MS. O'BRIEN: Well, there's one quick way of doing that - create a policy or an Act that does not allow the export of raw, unprocessed wood from this province, like they have in Ontario. In Ontario they cannot export unprocessed wood, there has to be some amount of value-added within that province - and we could do that here.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Well, wouldn't you wind up in years of legal wrangling, that's my problem. Newfoundland put that in the Charter, when they did it, that everything had to be processed in Newfoundland. Nova Scotia and the other provinces didn't, therefore our fish is processed somewhere else, but everything in Newfoundland and Labrador that's caught there must be processed there. (Interruption)

MR. MARTIN: Just another quick example of what could be done though - a lot of that value-added work is often done by small entrepreneurs in rural communities, and by building capacity on private woodlots for instance, which supply most of our wood anyway, if you build the capacity to grow value-added products, you're going to have more entrepreneurs in rural communities who feel they then have an ability to start a business because they will have a supply of wood. One of the big disincentives to starting a value-added business that people are encountering is they cannot access a steady supply of the wood, so that's why a lot of the value-added stuff has to be shipped out of province because those bigger mills are pulling in wood from all over the place and bringing it to a central location.

[2:30 p.m.]

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I refer again to Finewood Flooring. He's doing value added, but there's nobody that's as tough and resilient. He started 30 years ago and he's still there just because he's resilient, now he's established and he can afford to stay. But, somebody following in his footsteps would not be able to compete in today's market, it would take them too long to get up to where he is to be able to maintain. So I'm just wondering what government practice, what help, what plan of action could you try to develop so that these young entrepreneurs or old entrepreneurs who are already in the business could open a new branch of value added. That's all for me, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Sampson. The next speaker is Mr. Bill Langille.

MR. LANGILLE: Thank you. Just a couple of quick observations. I'm going to follow up with you, Joanne, on what you were saying about pulp mills. I'm looking at Squamish, B.C., for example, solely dependent on that pulp mill which closed. Kenora, Ontario just closed a pulp mill, and Dryden, which is huge downsizing from what I

understand. Stephenville, Newfoundland, as a matter of fact, is another one that went by the wayside. When you have three mills in Nova Scotia, a small province, you can almost bet that one of them is either going to close or downsize, or maybe all three might downsize. When you look at some of the equipment they have, it might not be feasible. That's something we're going to have to address down the road. Look at South America, you can grow a tree in 9 or 10 years, where it takes us 35 to 45 or so in certain areas. I just wanted to comment on that because you're absolutely right, I've been following that up too.

The other thing is, on your even-aged forests, which we have a lot planted in Nova Scotia now, I believe that we can bring those even-aged forests into uneven-aged forests by prudent management. I look at maybe stud wood, have management for stud wood and then you let the other go to logs and your other growth will come up or replant. Even though you have even-aged management today, it could be uneven-aged tomorrow, if it's managed right. I think that's the way to go because I believe in uneven-aged management. I've been working on that myself. It's not that hard to do. It just takes discipline to do it. Those are my comments.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Langille. At this time I would like to recognize Mr. Keith Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: I just want to follow up a little bit more on the approach you're suggesting. I think it's a wonderful approach to get the RDAs and everyone working together for the forest industry. It's a long time. We have a bad history in this province, as we've seen in the fishery, and everything sort of collapses, and everyone realizes it's going to happen even though you've seen as early as the 1970s and probably before that people were telling us that we have to watch this, we have to be careful of what's going on, we have to change our practices. As soon as a big company seems to show up and say we'll employee 1,000 people, we bend over backwards and give them everything and away we go. At the time, that might have been the prudent answer for the day. Who can comment on that unless you were actually there and have seen what happened.

I like this approach of the value added, and the approach you have, because it's a slow, long process to change from what we do today until what should be done in the future. Not just from the standpoint of growing the wood, but people come forward, just the ideas and the possibilities and people come forward, young people like yourselves can come forward and say okay, I'm going to make a living doing this and make an industry of it. It takes a long, long time. I appreciate the work the Ecology Action Centre is doing in this regard because I think it's sort of a reminder to all Nova Scotians that there is more to the Ecology Action Centre's mandate than just to complain about environmental issues, which I know you don't do. You come up with positive answers. I know when I was the Minister of Fisheries, it was a real pleasure working with the Ecology Action Centre and we had a really good working relationship, and we did get some very positive things done at that time.

I really want you to elaborate some more on immediate steps we should take, anything outside of your recommendations. I know you try to make your recommendations sort of small and concise so that we can move forward. Is there anything else that very quickly you can tell me or our committee about, small steps we could take right away in addition to the ones you are recommending - and I think the ones you are recommending really are very good steps and very solid suggestions.

MR. MARTIN: I'll start with two very straightforward things. The first thing, which I think is very simple to do, is just to create a more equitable distribution of the silviculture funds that are already available, and that's just a written thing. That has to be done, it's not complicated and that would already shift the emphasis of what kind of forestry we're promoting.

A second thing that I think should be done is that currently our silviculture criteria, we have categories 1 through 6, are for even-aged management. We have one category, category 7, which is for uneven-aged management. That clearly shows where the bias lies, and I think it's high time that we create categories perhaps 7 through 12 that support uneven-aged management. So, those are two things I would really like to see very directly that could be done.

MR. COLWELL: It's something very easy to implement.

MS. O'BRIEN: I'm not sure this qualifies as "easy". In Quebec, they recently finished up a commission of inquiry into forestry practices, 2004, and from that they recognized the importance of value-added because they also recognized how vulnerable their forest industry was to economic trends and rising fuel costs, et cetera. So the government has now invested a lot of money into research and development into value-added. So they are funding institutions, universities, others, to start looking at the potential for more value-added in Quebec. They are putting a lot of resources into that in that province. They are realizing how vulnerable they are.

We could institute value-added. We could start a program for encouraging value-added manufacturing, value-added forestry. There could be a very specific government program that starts looking at it, and I actually kind of think it's a necessity. We just can't continue to sit back and let things roll and think that things are going to continue to be fine. It will be in no time that the government will be asked to hand out $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, $20 million, to help a mill that's on the brink of disaster and of closing. Why not instead put that money into long-term research, something that will have long-term benefits and will get us out of the corner that we're in?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Charlie Parker.

MR. PARKER: A lot of good ideas here today. A lot of consensus that you are heading in the right direction; that's positive. I think government is starting to realize that changes have to be made and the general public is way ahead of government policy as well, but a lot of government policy is influenced by the stakeholders and the major stakeholders in the forest industry are our big mills - Stora, MacTara, Neenah, Bowater, in particular. I'm just wondering, have you actually had any opportunity to sit down with them or have you tried to discuss your ideas with them because you have mentioned they are at risk and maybe one or more of them could close at some point in the future. From their point of view, it seems it would make sense that maybe they need a new way of doing business, and maybe they would be open to your suggestions. So I'm just wondering, have you actually sat down with any of them, or tried to educate them?

MS. COOK: Well, we were sitting down with Stora just on Friday, with the Eastern Hardwood Users Group folks, and in fact it was Bevin Locke from Stora who pulled that meeting together for us. Certainly, through the Colin Stewart Forest Forum and our sister campaign, the Public Lands Coalition, there is ongoing dialogue and it's going to get more specific in the next few months.

MR. PARKER: So, at least one company then is open to listening to what you have to say?

MS. O'BRIEN: We did invite someone from Bowater to come to our workshop and, unfortunately, they didn't come. They were not overly supportive of our report, our draft report either. Sadly, because I think as Gerald mentioned, they are moving in some ways in the right directions and it would be nice to have seen them look at our report, consider some of the recommendations and see how some of them might actually benefit the work they are doing in addition to the work that they are funding on private woodlots.

MR. PARKER: They are major stakeholders in the industry and I guess you can never have too many friends. So the more people you can get onside, the better opportunity of reaching your objectives. So I guess I would encourage you to keep at it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Parker. Any quick comments from either the committee or the panel? After that, we will go on to other committee business. Mr. Langille, quickly, please.

MR. LANGILLE: I want to personally thank you for coming in. I know you have a hard road. I'm not saying I agree with everything you say, but I agree with a lot of what you say, and you have some good ideas. One of the things I appreciate is that you appreciate yourselves that we have a large number of Nova Scotians who depend on our forestry. You are not against cutting forest, you're against improper management of forest. I thank you for that, and recognizing that aspect of the forestry, because a lot of people, maybe it's your

name or whatever when they think of Ecology Action, they just think of straight protecting everything. They don't realize what your agenda is. Anyway, just for clarification, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, thank you, Mr. Langille for that. Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. O'Brien, Ms. Cook, and Mr. Martin, it has been a pleasure having you with us today. I think we've had some good solid dialogue. Of course, you are always welcome to this committee. So go in good health, and good afternoon to you.

MS. COOK: Thank you for giving us this opportunity, we very much appreciate it. One very rapid comment - unfortunately Mr. Sampson isn't here - I hadn't quite worked it in earlier, one of the people who met with us, with the minister in December, was in fact the president of Finewood Flooring, who is solidly behind this.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Committee, we have further business. So we will just allow the witnesses to leave and we will move on with committee business.

Simply, we have a letter presented by Harold Theriault, MLA for Digby-Annapolis, requesting that Mr. Morrow come to this committee. The letter is in your packet. It's not routinely the procedure for the vice-chairman to entertain witnesses, but maybe if it's the will of this committee, I can do that. If it's in agreement we'll move on and ask you to go through the appropriate steps to have them come in as a witness. Caucus members? It's approved. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Unless there's any further business, we'll adjourn.

[The meeting adjourned at 2:46 p.m.]