NRGO Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES AND GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESSOURCES NATURELLES ET DES OPÉRATIONS GOUVERNEMENTALES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, March 30, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton—Lawrence, Lib.)): I call this meeting to order. I see we have a quorum.

We have before us today, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a study of Canadian forest management practices as an international trade issue.

We have with us this morning, from the Coalition of Primary Northern Forests, Mr. Pierre Dubois, who is the spokesperson of said organization, and I guess he's accompanied by Michel Fortin, who is the vice-president, pulp and paper Canadian something or other. What is it?

[Translation]

Confederation of National Trade Unions.

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Do you prefer to make a presentation in French or in English? In French? Very well.

Usually, you have ten minutes to make your presentation. Then we move on to the question and answer period. Please begin now. You have the floor.

Mr. Dubois.

Mr. Pierre Dubois (Coordinator, Coalition sur les forêts vierges nordiques (northern virgin forest coalition)): I am Pierre Dubois and I am coordinator of the Coalition sur les forêts vierges nordiques. I have with me Mr. Michel Fortin, who will make the presentation with me and who will introduce himself.

Mr. Michel Fortin (Vice-President, Pulp and Paper Division, Confederation of National Trade Unions, Coalition sur les forêts vierges nordiques): I am the Vice-President of the Federation of Paper and Forest Workers of the CNTU.

Mr. Pierre Dubois: This Federation is one of the members of our Coalition.

The Coalition would like to thank the committee for inviting us to appear. Our Coalition is made up of 12 labour, social and environmental organizations from Quebec: Assemblée des évêques du Québec (the bishops' assembly of Quebec); the Coalition Urgence rurale du Bas-Saint-Laurent (Lower St. Lawrence rural emergency coalition); the Canadian Religious Conference, Quebec Region; the Fédération des producteurs du Québec of the UPA—these are people who produce wood in private forests—; the Federation of Paper and Forest Workers of the CNTU, represented by Mr. Michel Fortin; the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec; the Regroupement national des Conseils régionaux de l'environnement du Québec (national association of regional councils for the environment of Quebec); the Réseaux québécois des groupes écologistes (Quebec network for ecological groups); the Communications, Energy and Paper workers Union of Canada which is affiliated to the Quebec Federation of Labour; the Syndicat de la fonction publique du Québec (Quebec public service union), in other words provincial public servants; the Syndicat des professionnels et des professionnelles du gouvernement du Québec; and the Union québécoise pour la conservation de la nature (Quebec association for nature conservation).

Our Coalition has been in existence for one year. Let me tell you how it started. In 1997, the UQCN, the Quebec association for nature conservation, the organization of which I am a member, found that the forests in northern Quebec were the biggest problem from an environmental perspective.

The forest which is found in the west to west zone is located between the 50th degree of latitude north and the 52nd, using the Ontario border; it passes north of lake Saint-Jean and goes until Sept-Îles on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence and this provides two thirds of the wood supply for the Quebec forest industry.

What we can currently observe in this forest, is a very, very rapid progression of cutting towards the north. We were very concerned with the forest environment, have been considering and are still of the opinion that there is a risk of deforestation. We have therefore decided, given the seriousness of the problem, to band together with other social and environmental organizations within the province of Quebec in order to compel the government to act.

This Coalition brings together people from all walks of life. As you have seen, we bring together workers in the forest industry, both people who work in the forest and people who work in the sawmills and in the pulp and paper industry, as well as ecologists, bishops and bureaucrats. This is a coalition that could be described as a rainbow coalition. Our situation is different from that in western Canada, where ecologists and people working in the industry have confronted each other when the former blocked a certain number of forest roadways.

In Quebec, we have agreed to recognize that there is a problem and that if we do nothing to solve it, sustainable development of the forest would be nothing more than another motherhood statement. In several decades, we will be able to say that the government of Quebec who manages the forest has not taken appropriate measures to protect it.

Our first and most fundamental, and major, demand, is to have a new forestry policy. We want forestry policy to be fully reviewed, and we would request an independent public inquiry with the power to examine the whole issue of forest management, working conditions in the forest and forestry processes, as well as the theories which determine how much cutting can be carried out. Each year, a company is allocated a certain percentage they are allowed to cut, in other words the maximum amount of wood that a company can cut down. We would hope that a new policy will allow us to review how these numbers are arrived at.

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Another aspect to our demand deals with work in the forest. Over the past 10 or 15 years, in fact since Quebec adopted its forestry policy in 1986, we have seen working conditions in the forest industry deteriorate, among other reasons because of the fact that fewer and fewer people are unionized.

There was also a boom in tree farming which, in giving an opportunity for sub-contracting down the chain, has made the work precarious; salaries are based on performance and there are a very high number of working hours during the day. We therefore request measures which will stabilize the working conditions and improve them.

We know that an industrialist pays stumpage fees based on volume, per cubic metre cut, but we consider that the controls aren't very strict. We have the impression that the government of Quebec is being had as to the actual number of cubic metres which are being removed from the forest. Therefore, we request that an investigation be carried out into this issue so that we may shed light on what is happening and so that amounts due can be claimed.

We would also request that the new forest policy respect the traditions of the Natives who live in the forest.

We deal with another point, namely the timber supply and forest management agreement also called TSFMA. Each plant has a TSFMA. However, over the past few years, the territorial limits of these agreements have been expended towards the north. We demand a moratorium on these agreements and on any expansion. We fear, as I was saying earlier, that northern virgin forests will disappear.

Furthermore, Canada, like Quebec, has made the undertaking, on the international stage, to protect the biodiversity of the forest ecosystem. Normally, throughout Canada there should have been a certain number of protected areas put in place, in other words areas where ecosystems are preserved. These are international undertakings which we have made in the past and which Quebec has not respected. And it is even more obvious in the northern zones of the province. Therefore, we ask the government to create such protected sites.

There is also the matter of the woodland caribou, a species which lives in the forest, and which is different from the large herds of caribou in northern Quebec. We would request that the forest policy ensure the survival of this very vulnerable species and protect it from the forest industry.

Lastly, we have also asked the government to conserve public forestry management within its purview. With the move towards deregulation, in Quebec as in Canada, we are trying to lighten legislation and we see more and more companies sitting on various committees dealing with forest management at different levels. In Quebec, there was some thought given to transferring certain powers to the forest industry, for example in terms of inventory or production plans or even control over the land. We were firmly opposed to this suggestion.

On the last point, Minister Jacques Brassard of the government of Quebec agreed with us and intends to maintain control. However, we feel that we must remain vigilant because the industry is stubborn and wants to have ever more control over the forest.

Our Coalition does not feel that things are going very well in terms of Quebec's forests. We feel that there is room for a major overhaul of how the forest industry works. All of that should be bracketed by government policy. Our Coalition also believes that we have to undertake a major reform of the forest regime which would provide clearer guidelines to industrialists and would ensure that we are truly geared towards sustainable development.

Contrary to what the government of Quebec and the industry are saying in chorus, namely that our children will still have forests in the centuries to come, we are not willing to buy that song. We don't believe it at all because a lot of members of our Coalition who go into the forest and who have lived in the forest don't believe it. We feel that the resource is at risk over the long term. And that is why we formed our Coalition.

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During the past year, there has been a debate in Quebec around the movie entitled L'Erreur boréale produced by Robert Monderie and Richard Desjardins. We, of the Coalition sur les forêts vierges nordiques, have endorsed this movie. We also participated—here I'm referring more specifically to the Quebec union for nature conservation and of my own participation—in some 15 debates which were held in various cities throughout the province. I can tell you that the subject matter contained in L'Erreur boréale does not deal with urbanites in conflict with people living in rural communities.

When we went to cities located in proximity to the forest resource, we realized that people who go into the forest, who work in the forest, whose daily lives take them into a forest, are even more outraged by what they see happening there. I can tell you that there is a great deal of support for a complete overhaul. However, for the time being, the government of Quebec is not listening.

Now, I would like to talk to you about your recommendations, based on the text that I was able to obtain from the Internet, mainly the committee's interim report. The first recommendation deals with the integration and various standards of certification and sustainable forest management. We also refer to CSA and the FSC.

As far as the Coalition is concerned, it would appear obvious that the Canadian Forestry Service, or Forest Canada, has played an important role in the past in the process regarding environmental certification as proposed by the CSA. I have personally observed how this whole issue was managed, and I know that one can wonder whether the objective pursued was that of the general interest or the public interest, call it what you will, in other words the development of forests in Quebec and Canada.

We have unfortunately noted that the government seemed rather to adopt and to closely follow the commercial objectives of the Canadian forest industry. Let me elaborate.

When the CSA standard was implemented in Canada, it followed concerns expressed by the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association which, at the time, subsidized the CSA to set up committees and put a process in place. At any rate, it was to protect its own image on international markets. It was as if to say that even if no standards per se existed, there were some on the horizon. Among other things, the FSC was glimmering on the horizon. The CSA standard was a reaction to the FSC.

What we wanted to do, basically, was to influence European and American wholesalers who purchase Canadian lumber. We wanted to influence them by telling them that in Canada, forests were well managed.

I think that it's simply an image war, and if you want my humble opinion, sustainable forest development wasn't even an afterthought in their concern; it wasn't of concern at all. All that was wanted was to ensure a good perception of what was happening in the forest, no matter what the reality may have been.

I think that the CSA campaign, as well as the image of certification, is no more than smoke and mirrors, window-dressing. I'm not saying that it would not be worthwhile to improve forest practices from an environmental standpoint, but the way that we are doing it now seems to be more a matter of public relations than of real changes in forest practices, which is what we truly need.

If the government of Canada's position, when becoming involved, is to improve its image without changing forest management processes, than we have a problem. Sooner or later, public relations which are images only without dealing with the heart of the problem can implode. And then we would have to face the real problem, face a dilapidated resource, face a badly managed industry, and deal with forest management which is in a dead-end situation.

That leads me to my second comment. You are requesting that the federal government renew for a five-year period the international program of forestry partnership and grant it the required funds to carry out its objectives, more specifically the promotion and the support for the Canadian forest industry on the international market.

The northern virgin forests Coalition, as many others, has seen that this year at least there is a trend toward concentrating capital in the Canadian forest industry, in the North American industry and even internationally. The Canadian forest industry is becoming less and less Canadian. Over the last few months, everyone is aware of the takeover of Cartons St-Laurent, in Quebec, by Smurfit-Stone, an American giant in cardboard production. We have also seen Forex, which owns several particleboard manufacturing plants in Quebec, move to the control of Louisiana-Pacific, a major multinational in the construction material industry in the United States. Unless I'm mistaken, in the West, MacMillan Bloedel has come under American control over the past few months.

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Therefore the forest industry is less and less solely Canadian in the current context. In our opinion, we have to take a look at the numbers. Over the past years, among other things, opening up the American market to our wood has allowed these industries to make large profits which are expanding.

We of the Coalition are of the opinion that the Canadian forest industry does not need public money to enhance its image on the international market place. The Canadian forest industry has a powerful lobby, namely the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, which is capable of promoting itself. As taxpayers, we find it rather offensive to see public money used for these purposes, which when you think about it, is nothing more than public relations for the industry abroad. I feel that the industry is able to cover its own public relations costs. Basically, the industry can take care of itself and we don't need to get involved in any way.

Furthermore, if the Canadian forest industry has an image problem, we would ask the committee to examine how this image could be changed. In our opinion, to change this image, we have to convince the forest industry to move into other types of forest management practices, to really change the forestry in the field. We feel that this would improve the image of forestry, mainly changes made within the industry. We would ask the Canadian Parliament to encourage initiatives which would change the image of forestry through change in its practices.

For example, Forestry Canada has over the past decade implemented a model forest program. This is very encouraging, at least as far as we can tell in Quebec. For example, there is the model forest of Waswanipi with the Crees and the model forest of the Lower St. Lawrence in a region to the east of Quebec City. These programs make clear that other methods can be found. It shows the way for others who would want to improve their forestry practices.

I think that given the money at your disposal, you could encourage new avenues of forest management, which, in the long-term, would change the perception. They would indicate to Canadian citizens that there are other things to do than simply clear-cutting, and once money has been made, moving on to another area to repeat the process. I think that we can improve things.

There is also another way to change the image of the industry. In Quebec there are various associations, wildlife associations, citizens' associations, municipal associations, who want to protect the forest and to be heard by the forest industry when they say that changes have to be made. Currently, these associations are under-funded and are facing very well-funded multinational corporations. This is not a fair fight. Because of the inequity which exists in terms of information and of dialogue, it is difficult to change the forestry industry.

You would do well to look into the possibility of providing financial assistance to groups involved in changing forest management practices, groups calling for improvements in forest management. These groups are currently underfunded.

That is my basic message on behalf of the Coalition. We will, of course, be pleased to answer your questions.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Dubois.

Mr. Pierre Dubois: Mr. Fortin might like to add something.

Mr. Michel Fortin: I will not repeat what Mr. Dubois has just said. I am an elected representative of the Paper and Forest Workers Federation of the CNTU. However, I still work at the Donohue pulp and paper plant in Clermont. I have been working there for 25 years. So I have some understanding of how the companies' work and the assistance they are given to meet objectives such as the ISO quality assurance and environmental standards. I also understand the issues of forest management versus raw material costs.

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For the 25 years that I have worked at the plant, every time there was a drop in the cost of paper, the companies would meet with us and say that they were having problems: the wood fibre had to be brought in from a long way away; they did not know whether our plant, or even the ones at Amos or at Baie-Comeau, were going to be able to keep running. So we slowly got involved with them on the issues. Contrary to what people think sometimes, the unions are not always at war with the companies. Since we have worked very closely with them, I can tell you that that is a misconception, since we discussed how the work was organized, job security and the company's viability.

So the companies know our thoughts on these areas, and we have good credibility. Our problem is with the forests. It is one thing to talk about job security in the plants, which is something we discuss a great deal with our bosses, but if there is no more wood to supply the plant....

There are also decisions and changes when various mergers happen, so that in the short or medium terms, the raw material will be located too far away. The forests must have been poorly managed and would no doubt have been in better shape, since we were told back in 1983-84, that there would be wood in my region of Charlevoix for the next 75 years; by some strange coincidence, we were told 10 years later that what had been there was gone.

I agree with Pierre, who just said that there were management problems. There is a credibility problem with both the industry and the government. To what extent can we be sure whether our jobs, in Quebec or in Canada, will be at stake? We know that both the Americans and Europeans are coming here in force.

The resource is no longer there to the same extent that it once was; we used to be the paper sheiks. That is no longer the case today. We just have to look at what is happening in South America, especially in Brazil, where eucalyptus is in strong competition with our native trees like spruce, fir and others. They have also made technological advances that we have not bothered to make. Perhaps we should have looked ahead and planned how to manage our forests to ensure that in the long term—I want to emphasize that—we would have jobs in our region, especially since our plants are far from the forests. And the farther away the forests get, the higher the costs are.

When Richard Desjardins's film came out, the industry was in a panic. People suddenly started talking about ISO 14000, which was going to be implemented to both reassure our foreign customers and prove to Quebeckers and Canadians that the industry was viable. They were going to implement ISO 14000 to show that they were good managers.

So far, so good. I have no problem in that regard, because I am very familiar with the two standards, because I was personally involved. Since 1992, I've been working on the ISO 9000 standard on quality assurance, and on the ISO 14000 standard on the environment. So things are going well within our own companies at the moment. Water, air and soil will be respected in the long term. I have no problem in this regard.

However, if we are complying with standards 14000 and 9000 within our factories but there is nothing in the forest to guarantee what we need to live in the long term, all of our efforts to work with the companies will be meaningless. They may have met some sales objectives for the product, of which they are proud, on foreign markets. However, there will be no wood to supply these companies in future. That will be the problem.

My role is to ensure that in future, my children and their children will be able to find work in their own country that is related to our raw material, the forest. ISO environmental standard 14000 ensures that the industry management program includes a way of disposing of residual material, a way to work in forestry in an environmentally sound way, but is silent on the way in which the industry itself should be managed.

At the moment, we are told that that is not our concern. The companies tell us to let them govern themselves and conduct their operations. The government says the same thing. We are also told to support the companies in their efforts abroad, that things go well at home when we sell our product. For some time now, we have been unable to be quiet on this. Personally, I'm in favour of the industry. I have no problem sitting down with people from the industry as a member of the union, because I think our credibility has been proven, but I want to know how we should be managing our forests. I'm not an engineer, but I know what my livelihood is. Will the management of the ISO standard include a forestry management program, both for cutting and for forest management, and how will the forest be regenerated? Will everyone be able to say the same thing, from both the government and industry side? Yes, look, everything is transparent. I think we had a problem, and we are going to solve it, even if we think our concept was correct.

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I don't want the ISO standard to be used to create an image that may ease the problem we have with our clients, both domestically and abroad, and to in some way prevent people from expressing their views in order to make their own jobs secure. That is what I do not want to have happen, either in Canada or in my province, Quebec.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Fortin.

[English]

I wasn't distracted; I was just wondering when you were going to come up for air.

[Translation]

Mr. Michel Fortin: Yes, that is the way we are.

[English]

The Chair: I thought the translators were having trouble following you. I was looking back there and they were grasping for assistance because you were going at a pretty high rate of speed.

I appreciate the fact that you came here to speak with vigour and passion about something you hold very dear, so I didn't want to interrupt you, but that now means we don't have as much time for questions and answers.

I'll go directly to Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to try to pin down what percentage of the workforce who are involved in the woods, working in the logging part of the business, are members of your coalition—what percent of the union certification or workforce?

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Dubois: I don't have the exact percentage, except that I must tell you that the Fédération des travailleurs et des travailleuses du papier et de la forêt of the CSN and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, the SEPUC, which is an affiliate of the QFL, are the two largest forest industry organizations in Quebec. You need not look further, no other organizations are as big as they are. In Quebec, in the forestry sector, there are very few unionized workers left. There are only a few thousand who are still unionized.

The 1987 forestry policy had a perverse effect. I am not saying that this effect was sought, but it was perverse in that it promoted contracting out—and the industry used that policy—and this allowed it to chase out all the unions.

What I can tell you is that the two organizations play an important role. For example, north of Lake Saint-Jean, there are some pulp and paper plants and some very large sawmills. It is quite rare that these two organizations have no representatives in these sawmills. The same is true in Abitibi, Chibougamau and the Gaspé Region. We are represented throughout Quebec.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: One of the reasons why this committee is studying what we're studying is because a group of unionized workers from British Columbia came to this committee. I understand their circumstances very well. Because of pressures from international boycotts on forest products from British Columbia, they're losing their jobs. I'm very surprised that there seems to be somewhat of a lack of recognition of where this agenda could end up in your part of the world, or so it appears in this presentation. We have 12% of our land base—our forest land base—set aside, and it's never enough. So what's happened is our forests are being used internationally to raise money. Once it gets to that point and you're operating under a microscope as a forest worker, you can never do anything right any more.

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We're trying to achieve a recognition across the country that this is something that can occur in your circumstances as well.

My other question is that the briefing notes we were given by the parliamentary research branch say that the coalition has called for a moratorium on the harvesting of the boreal forests. Can I ask you if that is a correct statement?

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Dubois: I will start the second question. It is not accurate to say that we are calling for a moratorium on harvesting. Our moratorium has to do with contracts.

First, our problem is that the industry has been able to develop toward the north. We must understand that as the industry moves north in Quebec, the trees get smaller. They become scarcer and scarcer, and we get into a more and more open northern forest. To use an image, it becomes less of a forest and more like tundra. It is a forest in which the natural processes occur very slowly. It is a forest that if harvested, could take centuries to regenerate, if it regenerates at all, because the winters are very long, the soil very poor and the ecological processes very slow.

We say that we must stop this trend. It makes no sense. We are liquidating our resources.

At the moment, cutting is occurring in Quebec close to Lake Mistassini. Further east, on the North Shore, the forest is being cut north of the Manic 5 reservoir, at the 52nd degree of latitude north. I am a forest engineer, and when I took my training in forestry, I was taught that this was the northern limit of the commercial forest. That is how far we have gone.

So, please, stop the progression of the industry, particularly since we will have to establish parks in order to comply with our international commitments. If the industry has some rights over all the land, we will have to find some way of buying them back.

So, please, let us impose a moratorium to give us time to think about what we are doing with these forests, and to ask ourselves whether it is a good idea to be cutting down forests that we know will probably not regenerate. Cutting down forests that will not regenerate is not sustainable development. That is my response to your second question.

On your first question, I have personally spent very little time in the West, but I am in contact with some environmentalists there, and I think that there has been a problem in that region for quite some time. I would say that at the moment you are harvesting the fruits of past inaction, and that you are living with an image of the past, when the industry was very arrogant in its dealings with environmentalists and said that it had the government and the law on its side, the strong players, and that it could do whatever it wanted in forestry.

If we find ourselves in a situation in which boycotts are the last weapon we have to fight industry, I think it is because wrong things were done in the past. Of course, that will have an impact on the forest industry in western Canada, but ask yourself whether we should be calling a halt when the impact will be so great that there will no longer be any resources to have any forest industry whatsoever. That is the problem.

You seem to be saying in the document that Canada has tightened up its forestry practices. I think there is still a tremendous amount of room for improvement. For example, in the last ten years in Quebec, we've seen many cases where, rather than improving forestry management, we improved what was said about forestry management. I don't think we've changed much in concrete terms, and that is a problem. I think the forestry industry in the West is living with the problems of the past. There is no doubt that some people will suffer boycotts and consequences of reduced cuts, where necessary, but if you let the industry have its way, you will have the same problem.

The Chair: Thank you.

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[English]

Mr. Reed.

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Dubois, in your role as a forester, can you tell me if there has been work done on a study of the age of that northern boreal forest? How old are the trees that are being harvested in that area at the moment? Do we know that?

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Dubois: Yes. Studies have been done on the age of forests. The age of a forest in northern Quebec, as in northern Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, is attributable to the impact of forest fires that regenerate these forests. In other words, forests burn down and then regenerate. It is a major upheaval.

The level of moisture and rain vary depending on whether the forest is in a maritime region or in the centre of the country. Forest fires are more frequent in central regions. This can vary. For example, the forests north of Abitibi, in northwestern Quebec, the ones closest to Ontario, are more continental in nature and burn more easily. Thus, generally speaking, they are not as old. However, on the North Shore, because of the influence of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the forests are much older and have a very different structure, even though they are also located in a northern region.

Until recently, it was claimed that all these forests were the same age, that even coniferous forests were the same age. Increasingly, we realize that there are a number of different ages within the same forest. The age itself varies from 150 to 400 years. The forests can be very old, but they are not spectacular; they are small. They are not very big.

[English]

Mr. Julian Reed: It may be a bad question. I was trying to get a grasp of recovery times. For instance, I think in Quebec, 800 square kilometres are being harvested annually in a forest that is 800,000 or 900,000 square kilometres in size. I expect there is more forest destruction with fire and so on than there is harvesting. That usually seems to be the case in northern Ontario.

I'm trying to get a grip on what kind of regeneration rate there is over that time. If you use simple arithmetic, it can fool you.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Dubois: You have touched on the heart of the problem, Mr. Reed. When we talk about sustained yield—and you must have heard about that in your work on the committee—the reference is to the level of cut that would allow the forest to regenerate in the very long term in a perennating manner. We think of volume of the forest and we ensure that we do not take more than grows naturally, taking into account the maple syrup production. This is the balance we are trying to find. In order to determine the volume we take, we include in the calculation of what are called growth and regeneration hypotheses.

The crux of the problem, Mr. Reed, is that forestry in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, has moved from inhabited regions toward less and less accessible regions, most of the time to the north. In Quebec, we started with deciduous forest ecosystems, and then we moved to mixed fir forests, then to fir forests, and currently, most of the cutting is done in black spruce forests, which are located further north. Our silvicultural knowledge, which is quite limited, finally, comes from the forest in the south, but we are now cutting in northern Quebec. The same is true elsewhere in Canada.

We are applying to the north the hypothesis that came out of the research work, which, very often, was done in the south. There is a significant lack of knowledge, and we in the Coalition sur les forêts vierges nordiques maintain that the hypotheses in the calculation were optimistic, extremely optimistic.

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The government is about to say we are right about reviewing this calculation of potential. We are seeing volumes decreasing, albeit gradually, but it is starting to happen. This is the crux of the problem. When we thought that a forest would regenerate naturally and it does not do so even though our calculation included regeneration, this means we over estimated the amount that could be cut. We will only realize the mistakes we are making today 20 or 50 years from now.

We think the forest industry is exerting intense pressure on the government to encourage it to share its optimism. What we are doing is not being dictated by caution and security.

When an engineer builds a bridge, he makes provision for what is called a security margin. Although he says that the bridge can support 10,000 tonnes, we actually know that it can support 15,000 tonnes, because a security factor has been built into the calculations to account for metal expansion or an exceptional overload. Is this how we work in the case of the forest? We do not think so. We are playing with fire, and we are very close to our maximum capacity.

[English]

Mr. Julian Reed: I wanted to make a comment. I'm not sure I understood you correctly, but I thought you were rather critical of us spending money outside the country for public relations. Did I understand you correctly about that?

We are feeling a great deal of pressure from organizations that campaign in Europe particularly and raise their money in Europe by taking a picture of a clear-cut in British Columbia or wherever, for example, and buying an advertising page in a European paper. The feeling has been that somebody has to have a voice to counteract that, to say here's the other side of the story. You'll never see a picture in Der Stern, for instance, of a clear-cut 20 years later. You'll only see one the first year after harvest.

This has created an image that has caused a great deal of concern among all of us because of the negative impact when a non-governmental organization tells half the story. We feel the other half of the story has to be told. I just say that as a comment. It does cost some money to do that, but we try to do it by countering with facts.

I don't have any questions.

The Chair: That was an observation, Monsieur Dubois. You might wish to comment on that briefly.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Dubois: I'd like to bring up two points. When parliamentarians or government officials visit the forest, do they see the reality? Your bureaucrats will often show you the good side of the situation, and they will try to impress you so that you don't leave with a bad impression of what is happening in the forests. However, is what you're seeing the reality? Have you ever seen a clear-cut forest that has not regenerated after 20 years? They do exist.

[English]

Mr. Julian Reed: I have.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Dubois: I have seen clear-cut forests that remain clear-cut 20 years later and that have never regenerated. We have created vast wastelands in some areas. I'm not saying that this is the situation in the majority of cases, but it does exist. Problems arise when too many woodlands are cut.

We must not launch PR campaigns to try to defend what is in some aspects indefensible. If the Canadian forestry industry wants to finance such campaigns, that is their business. However that is not the role of the Canadian Parliament. As a taxpayer, I don't like this.

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I saw a documentary on television this week where they were describing the tobacco lobby in the United States. This industry has spent millions of dollars in public relations over the last few decades to prove to people around the world that cigarettes do not cause cancer, when there is scientific proof otherwise. Millions of dollars have been spent to propagate this falsehood. Had I seen the Canadian government invest in such campaigns to support this, I would not have been happy. I don't think that this type of thing does any good.

Instead, the government should be investing to promote Canadian forestry and to keep this image from being shown abroad because it no longer exists. Contrary to what foresters think—and I am a forester—clear-cutting is not something that is inevitable and necessary. The problem with clear-cutting is that it is used throughout Canada not because it is a good practice, because it is cheap. I support clear-cutting, but in limited areas where regeneration is assured and where a new forest can grow to maintain the quality. We must not clear-cut hundreds of hectares, nor areas of hundreds of hectares along a similar area that is not separated by an intact zone, as occurs in northern Quebec. I would never be in favour of that. I could never accept that type of forest management.

[English]

Mr. Julian Reed: I understand what you're saying, but I also understand that there's another part to the story. I have been taken through areas of northern Ontario. I travelled for three days with a forester by the name of George Merrick. He was well-known, but I think he's passed on now. He developed clear-cut systems that did regenerate. I've seen them. It was black spruce. It wasn't thousands of acres clear-cut. He developed techniques that suited the regeneration of the black spruce. He did that on land that I think was controlled by Domtar at that time, east of Lake Nipigon. They're there for everyone to see.

I agree with you that mistakes have been made in the past. There was an assumption years ago that the forests were unlimited, that there was no end to them so it didn't matter. I do believe that today we have entered an era where the industry has become much more responsible, has taken this challenge seriously, and is really working hard to do something about it. That's the message we're trying to take to counter these organizations, whose main purpose is to raise money.

The Chair: I guess you would probably disagree with that, Monsieur Dubois and Monsieur Fortin, but let me go to Monsieur Cardin.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin (Sherbrooke, BQ): Hello, gentlemen. I am happy to meet with you today.

There was quite a reaction to the film L'Erreur boréale among the population in general, and more specifically in your organization, as I understand that your Coalition was born after or during its production. Was there any organization of this type in Quebec previous to that?

Mr. Pierre Dubois: I guess I wasn't very clear in my intervention, because our Coalition was formed in 1997, two years before the film came out. There is a quite large environmental group in Quebec, the Union québécoise pour la conservation de la nature (the Quebec union for nature conservation), which was already publishing a magazine called Franc-vert. This is quite a large environmental group in Quebec. The Commission des forêts (Forest Committee), of which I am still a member, is part of the UQCN. After having looked into the forestry issue, we came to the conclusion that the extent of the problem was alarming following the clearing out of the forests from the 50th to the 52nd parallel, which represent three quarters of the total logging in Quebec. We had to do something to deal with this problem. We may well be the biggest environmental group, but we have modest means. This is why we decided to join together with other groups. We took certain steps and communicated with interested parties with the goal of forming the Coalition. I will admit that when we found out that the film L'Erreur boréale was going to come out, we felt that it would be the ideal time to bring the debate into a public forum, all the more so because the film was sympathetic to our perspective.

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Mr. Serge Cardin: If you're in agreement with the film, is it because it reflected your experience or is it because you went and verified if it corresponded to the reality of the situation? There are a lot of people who are sceptical. Did you accept the film at face value or was your support based on the experience of your group, which had been on site? You said earlier that often parliamentarians are not shown everything when they visit the forests.

Mr. Pierre Dubois: All I can say is that, as an example, when we learned that European parliamentarians would be coming last September, I, in my capacity as coordinator of the Coalition, communicated with the Quebec government official who was responsible for the visit, in order to express our will to meet with these parliamentarians. I can tell you that they did everything they could to keep us from meeting them. First off, we were not informed of their visit; we only learned about it at the very last minute. When we made our request, we were told that it would not be possible. In addition, the on-site visits took place in areas that were quite far from our offices. They did everything they could to make sure we did not meet with the parliamentarians.

The Chair: Did you end up meeting with them anyway?

Mr. Pierre Dubois: No, we did not meet.

The Chair: No?

Mr. Pierre Dubois: The members of the Coalition support the claims that I spoke about earlier. Members of the Quebec union for nature conservation took part in the debate that followed public showings of the film and supported the film's conclusions. I personally participated actively in these debates.

Basically, the UQCN's position is quite simple. We believe that too much wood is being harvested in Quebec and it's being poorly harvested. I think that in Quebec, when it comes to forestry development, there's been quite a bit of window-dressing; in other words from afar everything looks fine.

Thirdly, when it comes to managing our collective forest heritage, the government hasn't been living up to its responsibilities. That is the gist of the film and that is the gist of our message.

Mr. Serge Cardin: Am I to believe that if our committee wanted to go and see the actual state of forests, you could propose an itinerary for us?

Mr. Pierre Dubois: As we said to the journalists when the European parliamentarians were visiting, we could propose a tour if they wished to come back.

Mr. Serge Cardin: I find it hard to believe that the big forestry companies would destroy the forest simply to make money without having some long term vision. Recklessly destroying the forest and exploiting it without any standards is tantamount to shooting themselves in the foot, because that would be it for the forest. I sometimes find it hard to imagine that these big forestry companies could have no long term vision.

According to you, do these companies have any long term vision that would allow them to ensure that they could continue harvesting? I'm aware that they may be less sensitized to global environmental issues than you are. Do they not have any long term vision to protect or regenerate the forests, Mr. Fortin?

Mr. Michel Fortin: I will speak slower this time.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Michel Fortin: As I mentioned at the outset, we are having the same problems and there is no easy answer. As workers or union representatives, we don't like the negative image of our work that is being shown abroad, an image which does not correspond to the current situation. The federal government and the government of Quebec will have to invest money to clean up our image because we are seen as irresponsible groups because we have made public statements, said things or produced documents which have tarnished the image of the country and of our industry. They have to be careful not to lay all the blame on us for this.

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Mr. Reed said earlier that there had been mistakes made in the past. How were we the workers, the union representatives, or the coordinators taught about these things? Why is it that at the end of the day, we have to speak out in public to denounce these things that exist? It is true that our raw material is now further away, but the companies had told us that we were going to come back to our logging areas to take what had been cut because their forest management would ensure that we would be able to come back and become self-sufficient. Why is it that 10 years later, this is not the case?

How can we speak the same language if we don't have all of the facts? We talk about management standards. Why was this not done before the film was made public? Now that people have seen the film, suddenly, they are talking about total compliance with ISO standard 14001. Will this ISO standard 14001 allow us to control everything and to put down on paper exactly how the forest will be managed? I doubt that very much and I would ask you to be careful. In the future, you will have to take a very close look at what I have just said. If this does happen, we will have made a giant step forward, but I have a feeling that will not be the case.

Mr. Reed asked if there were any responsible companies. Yes, I think that some companies are more responsible than others, but on a Canadian or Quebec scale, is this group of people large enough for us to say that today, as we speak, our forest is healthy and that there are no more problems? And why do they continue to avoid including us in the system so that we might be able to understand it?

Why are they avoiding us? Are they avoiding us because there is a problem or is it simply because they don't want to have us there? Is the Canadian government telling us that they want us to keep quiet, they don't want us going public, they want to be left alone to work on the issue and there will be no more problems in the forest? I can't believe that either, because there are too many unknowns, too much money at stake and too much political involvement. I work at the grassroots level and that is where I want to stay, as I said earlier.

In order to maintain my job security, I must ensure that the Canadian and Quebec governments encourage healthy long-term forest management. If you can show us that, then we will stand beside you and fight all of those who say the opposite, including environmental committees as well as those who tarnish our image abroad. I know that foreigners will take advantage of the context to enter the marketplace, to damage our market so as to grab the largest share possible. I know this will hurt, but today, everyone must pay the price. We have kept our backs turned for too long now.

Mr. Pierre Dubois: Mr. Cardin, I would like to tell you that in the past, industries have moved into the regions. They have often helped themselves to forest resources and then moved elsewhere. There are many such cases in Quebec, in the Gaspé, for example. You know that the William Price company was in the Matapédia valley in the Gaspé region. Recently, with Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., there was the Gaspesia plant. Last fall, there was a debate in Quebec surrounding the closing of this plant, and they are now closing up shop entirely. Now, the Gaspé region is an area where the forest supply is the most unstable in Quebec. In view of that fact, the closing of Gaspesia is no coincidence.

The history of the forest has taught us that of course, individually, some people may act responsibly while others may not. But I think that what we have really learned, is that money is mobile, that companies swallow each other up, they buy one another and that it's up to the State to ensure that these forests, that are a public asset, will be properly managed. The Coalition of primary northern forests has adopted this position with respect to the logging industry. We said that our demands were political and were addressed to the State, because we think that it is up to the government to decide how one is to operate in a forest. But in reality, the industry will tell you what the framework is, and you will have to respect it. I don't think that we can say that a given company is responsible and that another one isn't. That would be evading the issue. What we must remember about L'Erreur boréale is that the forest is a public resource in Quebec, as in Canada, and that therefore, we have a political and democratic responsibility for it.

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Mr. Serge Cardin: May I ask one last question?

The Chair: Yes, a short one.

Mr. Serge Cardin: What type of relations do you have with the Quebec government at this time? Do you have the government's ear?

Mr. Pierre Dubois: No, they don't pay much attention to us. We asked a number of times, over the past fall, for a meeting with Minister Brassard, but the door seems to be tightly shut. We have used other means; we wrote to him and we made a number of telephone calls.

Mr. Serge Cardin: Is there a study or an analysis of the balance that should exist between economic interests, including employment, and public and environmental interests? Since the logging industry is not new, I imagine that such an analysis has already been done. You said, however, that there wasn't much data about the north. I imagine that similar studies have been produced in the south.

Mr. Pierre Dubois: Yes, there are some.

Mr. Serge Cardin: There is a lack of similar studies or analyses that would apply to the north.

Mr. Pierre Dubois: They make extrapolations and projections.

Mr. Serge Cardin: Are these analyses accepted by the industry as a whole?

Mr. Pierre Dubois: They will be accepted as long as the industry is not required to reduce its supply, otherwise the calculations will be challenged. If ever a study were to come to that conclusion, it would not be easily accepted. So far, there has been so much optimism that the industry has been very quick to accept any facts that were brought forward.

Since the logging industry in Quebec operates in rural areas, the forestry companies with big plants have enormous political clout. They are often able to interpret data in their favour and, unfortunately, they do this much too easily, which is something that we have pointed out. The company owners seem to have a fairly direct access to the decision-makers. Even though the government didn't want to hear the coalition members, we know full well that they have welcomed the industry lobby on numerous occasions so as to discuss the same problems that are of concern to us. It's most unfortunate.

Mr. Serge Cardin: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Dubois and Mr. Fortin. Your presentations were most instructive and most interesting.

[English]

You should be assured that of course it's all in the public record now, despite the fact that you might not see every member of the committee around the table. It will be there for our consideration. Thank you very much for making the trip and for sharing your insights with us.

The meeting is adjourned to the call of the chair.