Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Second Reading of Bills
Bill 6 — Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Statutes Amendment Act, 2011
M. Sather: I rise today to join the debate — I should have looked around to see if any of my colleagues opposite were getting up, but obviously they weren’t — on Bill 6, the Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Statutes Amendment Act, 2011.
Members of the public have seen a lot of changes in names of various ministries in this government and may not be familiar with this one. But it is, in fact, the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations under which this statute is being launched.
The previous speaker or speakers have pointed out that in the past we always had a ministry solely devoted to forestry. Now we see it lumped in with a whole lot of things, including environmental issues, hunting regulations, even some fisheries management. So it’s a grab-bag of responsibilities that I’m afraid is reflective of the state of forests in this province today. That’s of concern to all of us, I think, certainly on this side of the House.
I remember in the ’90s, the favourite decade of members opposite, when I was assisting the then MLA for Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows and hearing the then members of the opposition say
that when they got into power they were going to show British Columbians how forestry should be run in British Columbia. They didn’t add the word “down” at the end or “out of business” at the end, but that is how it has been as we have seen the destruction of our forest industry under this government.
We have seen the demise of a once proud ministry, where it’s relegated now to part of a grab-bag of responsibilities of government, and that’s truly dismaying, I think, for all British Columbians.
Not seeing forestry even highlighted in the throne speech, again, speaks volumes to, I think, the fact that the government has given up on the forest industry, other than to act as an agent for exporting increased numbers of logs to China.
That’s not a job strategy that has any merit, in my view, and one that a lot of folks in the forest industry — currently and previously, those out of work that used to have jobs —
would, I think, agree on. They would like to see jobs for their families here in British Columbia.
We know that when we have manufacturing…. Of course, manufacturing is disappearing from the developed world as we move through the wonders of free trade. Well, it’s not free for the
workers in British Columbia. It’s costing the workers in British Columbia a lot, whereas we just ship off our resources and we don’t make any effort to get the maximum amount of manufacturing dollar out of those resources here in our province. It’s a real shame.
I want to focus most of my remarks on this bill around one particular part of it, one that a number of speakers before me have addressed, and that’s the issue of the removal of
private lands from woodlots in British Columbia. The woodlots that we have in British Columbia grew out of the farm woodlots that previously came into place in 1948, which I want members to know was a very good year. Under those, farmers were able to acquire the use of forest lands adjacent to their farms, or they could go out and cut down wood for fence posts or building a barn or maybe helping to build a new home or the home.
That has evolved, until in the 1970s the Pearse commission did a voluminous report on forestry. The evolution of woodlots as we know them now arose from then. I had the pleasure of
speaking to a former colleague the other day with regard to this — one Corky Evans, who some members will recall. Corky made submissions to that commission because he has a background working in small-scale forestry.
I see there are some members in the House that weren’t here when the estimable Mr. Evans was in the House. They missed one of the finest speakers, I think, that has graced these
halls and a person that I will always remember for having blown the lights of the Legislature out. That happened in an all-night debate we were having in these chambers. Corky was up waxing eloquent and actually singing a Woody Guthrie song about how some people will kill you with a pistol and others with a fountain pen. And boom! The lights went out. To me, it spoke to the spiritual power of the man and his connectedness. Even the electrons were paying attention.
So there has been a lot of input into the woodlot issue. Just a bit of facts and figures on woodlots: 65 percent of woodlot licences are held by individuals and partnerships, 25 percent by corporations and 6 percent by First Nations. So there’s a very large…. It’s really, basically, a family-based forestry operation, although there are others that have a stake in it as well. But it’s family-based, it’s community-based, and it’s a very good program, which everyone on both sides of this House, I’m sure, supports.
Woodlots were seen to be particularly valuable in areas near civilization, where there would be increased emphasis on sustainable management.
You know, if you fly over the province in an airplane you can see sometimes some very large clearcuts that bring howls of protest from some quarters. That could have included me at
times. But when you are in close to communities, there’s more scrutiny. There are more people watching out for what’s going on in the forests next to their homes and next to their communities or in their communities.
So the woodlot licence program is a very good way of having a smaller-scale, oftentimes family-based operation where there’s a strong emphasis on sustainability, including
environmental sustainability, and that made it a very supportable program. I certainly do support the woodlot program in our province.
The woodlots require annual allowable cut in a management plan by which they operate, not that larger tenures don’t have that as well, but just to be clear, they are managed and
regulated in that respect. It’s not that they just go out and do whatever they want — quite the opposite.
Harvest on woodlots increased from 1.1 million cubic metres in the year 2000 to 2.4 million cubic metres in 2006. That’s attributed, in considerable measure as I understand it, to the increased harvest opportunities for beetle-killed wood, which obviously is a two-edged sword for all of us. A lot of our forests died and still are dying in some quarters as a result of the beetle kill. There are a lot more folks out there harvesting that timber.
But the other side of it is that the long-term viability of your woodlot is completely changed from what you…. You know, it’s not a matter of harvesting 1 percent annual allowable cut or anything like that, because the trees are all dead in front of you — at least all the pine trees are — and they are falling down. There’s lots of wind in some of these areas in the Interior, and they get blown down fairly quickly. So you’re looking at a whole different ballgame.
The woodlot licence owners in many areas are very aware of that and concerned that the viability, or at least the…. For the next 40 years or so, it’s just entirely different — what they are dealing with — than what they had before. So that may, in fact, have something to do with the genesis of this legislation.
Woodlots utilize 1.5 percent of the province’s total annual allowable cut. That’s not a large amount, but as I say, it’s dedicated to handsawn resource management. So it’s a really valuable tool. It’s a really special deal, if you will, an opportunity for a very sustainable resource management in the forest industry.
There were 811 woodlot licences in 2003 and 826 in 2007, but the previous size limits were doubled to 800 hectares on the coast and 1,200 hectares inland. When you read Peter Pearse’s report back in the 1970s, I think there were 30-some, and he was decrying the fact that it was very difficult to get people involved in these licences, these opportunities, and hoping for more. Well, certainly, we’ve seen a change in that regard, and a very positive change insofar as that goes.
There are now 875 woodlot licences today, and 85 percent of those licences of those woodlots — that’s nearly 700 in total — in B.C. contain private land. It’s about 130 hectares of private land on average, per woodlot, and 18 percent of the woodlot land is private. So the vast majority of them have private land attached, but the woodlot itself…. A lot of it is Crown land. The vast majority of it is Crown land.
What we’re looking at is smaller chunks of private land but significant parts of the whole process, as has been talked about in this House and that I will add a few more words about.
The private lands. Certainly, in parts of the province that are mountainous — which, as we know, is a large part of our province — the private lands tend to be in valley bottoms, which
are flatter, obviously, and more productive. The soils are better in valley bottoms than up on the hillsides or, certainly, in subalpine areas, so they’re very desirable places on which to have a woodlot. I also want to mention that they tend to grow about twice as much forest per hectare as Crown land — again, very productive.
Prior to the woodlots there was no annual allowable cut or a management plan for a lot of this high-quality forest land. What would happen is that people would come in and high-grade —
take out the most valuable trees and generally degrade the site, sometimes clearcutting it and leaving the forest depleted for many years as a source of wood and local income. The woodlot licence program is really valuable in order to allow for far greater sustainability in forest practices, which we all strive for.
Crown land is often approved as part of the woodlot in return for putting private land in the woodlot. Bill 6 frees up the private land for development while allowing owners to keep the Crown land lease.
We’re not talking about the buildings where the person lives. If they had a forest on their property that was private, that becomes part of the woodlot, along with, normally, a much larger part of Crown land. That changes the dynamic of a woodlot entirely, with this legislation, because once the private land is removed, as I think the member previously mentioned, it’s not tending to go back into forestry.
According to the website of the Federation of British Columbia Woodlot Associations, the woodlot licences are “a form of area-based tenure which is unique to British Columbia. In effect, they are partnerships between the licence holder and the province of British Columbia to manage public land and private forest lands.”
That puts it very well. It’s a partnership — a public-private partnership of the type that our side can fully support, a very healthy relationship. This legislation is going to upset the balance of that healthy relationship. What we’re saying is that, yes — and I’ll get into it in a minute — there are obviously reasons why some woodlot owners…. I don’t know the exact numbers, perhaps the majority. The minister, I’m sure, does have a better idea of that. Some want their land removed, but we have to look at the public interest.
There are good personal reasons why they want to do that, but we have to look at the interests of the public at large. This is a model that’s working. It’s a “not broke, don’t try to fix it” kind of thing.
I think that the government would be wise to reflect on that. They’ve got a good model. We have a good model here in the province for many years. Why mess with it when it’s working
well?
In 2007 the government allowed large forest companies to remove their private lands from forest licences and sell them. We’ve seen a bit of this on a bigger scale already. Now, I’m not talking about woodlots. I’m talking about larger tenures held by forest companies. But the principle is much the same.
On southern Vancouver Island, for example, 28,000 hectares of private land were removed from tree farm licences by Western Forest Products with the approval of the government.
Of course, that land is not destined for future forestry. That’s taken out of the collective forests that we have in the province for residential or other kinds of resort development.
So we’re looking at a history of seeing the government move to privatization of forest lands, which is not surprising. Privatization is, of course, one of the themes of this government. And we’re seeing a different ramification with the woodlot licence. But nonetheless, it’s a removal from the public good into what is seen, at least by some of the owners, as a private good. Though I think we can all sympathize and understand the problems of succession and so on, of handing on your work to other members of your family, perhaps, we don’t want to throw out the baby with
the bathwater, as the saying goes.
So the working forest, which has been spoken about over the years a lot in this province, has been seen as part of a social contract between private industry and the public lands that we’re so blessed with in this province of having in abundance, and we want to keep it that way.
Those same forest companies — I do recall some of those same forest companies, anyway — very much were supportive of that social contract when it came to alienation of forest lands
by the formation of parks. But now the shoe is on the other foot. It’s not only southern Vancouver Island. It’s happened in the Interior as well with the working forests. So we need to keep that forest working such that when we decide that maybe shipping all our logs, or more and more of our logs, to China is not the best jobs policy in the world, we can have that working forest intact to continue to actually provide jobs for British Columbians in an industry that’s synonymous with British Columbia — the forest industry.
With regard to the removal from tree farm licences, the Auditor General said that it wasn’t in the public interest to do that. He said that at the time. We think the same principle applies now. What we’re seeing in the Kootenays, in the north, for example, is that…. Another issue with the woodlot licence — woodlots and other than woodlots — is that individuals from outside the province sometimes, oftentimes, are buying large tracts like ranches for private hunting reserves. We don’t want to see the taking over of woodlots in this way for other purposes.
I’m not a hunter now. I was a hunter. I hunted a lot when I was younger. I thought it was great. But I don’t now. Nonetheless, I don’t want to see our forest lands become private reserves, in effect. Peter Pearse, way back in the 1970s, talked about that as an issue we had to be aware of, that we couldn’t let happen — that we need to keep our forest lands for forestry and not have them being used for other purposes in broad measure.
We’re saying, I think, that the woodlots — certainly, we are — should stay under the current positive sustainable management requirements that we have. I have no doubt that members
of the woodlot association want to proceed with this in a respectful way, because they’re doing great, great work and always have done.
The assurances that the minister makes and that the woodlot association has talked about, such as that before any land be taken out of a woodlot, private land be taken out; it would
be advertised locally and public comment invited…. That’s all well and good, but I don’t see anything in there that would change the outcome, once the government gives the go-ahead to take their private land out of a woodlot. It’s great the communities will be notified, but I don’t see any sense that the outcome would be affected.
The other thing is that it’s being said — the minister, I think, has also said this — that you’d have to have had your woodlot ten years before you could take the private part out. You know, that’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Eventually it’s going to end up in the same way for those that want to remove the private portion of their woodlot.
The issue, though, of a family needing, like anyone, to have recompense for their assets — if they want to give it to their kids, for example, to carry on with — is a real one, and it’s a problem, obviously, with agriculture as well. There are programs federally that assist young farmers in being able to borrow the money they need to help with that transition.
Maybe we need to be seeing — if the government is going to proceed with this, and I presume they will — if there isn’t some kind of funding arrangements that could be made in this
instance as well. It wouldn’t actually have to be…. In fact, it could negate, if it worked, the necessity for — and we don’t think it’s necessary to do this — or the actuality of what Bill 6 contemplates.
Again, this is a similar, common theme that happens with agricultural lands. In Maple Ridge, for sure, we have a lot of smaller parcels in the agricultural land reserve. I hear, not
uncommonly, from some of my constituents who own these lands, that they want them out of the agricultural land reserve so that they can sell them.
But this is a contract, the agricultural land reserve, that we’ve had from the ’80s, many decades now, that governments of all political stripes have recognized as being in the broader
social interest to maintain. So that’s the understanding. There are some costs, obviously, with maintaining that social contract, but it’s valuable, we believe, to do so. We are hoping that the government will reconsider it in this regard as well.
Another issue that I just want to bring up briefly that’s come to my attention has similarities to this as well, in my view. In Bridge Lake — which is not far from 100 Mile House, between 100 Mile and Highway 5 on the other side — there’s a land swap that’s being contemplated where land that was set aside way back in 1945 for the enjoyment of the public…. It’s waterfront, and that’s valuable property up there. The idea is to cut a big chunk out of the middle of it and swap that for a piece of land on the island.
Of course, a piece of land on the island is much more difficult to develop. How do you get there, to your cabin, etc.? But it speaks again to the willingness of this government to go ahead with alienation of lands that are there for the public good in exchange for private interests. In all of these cases I think they are misguided, and I’m hoping that the government will see fit to reconsider. That, of course, is our purpose in having these debates.
With that, I thank you very much for the opportunity to respond, and I will pass the mike on to the next speaker.
