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, April 6, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton—Lawrence, Lib.)): Colleagues, I call the meeting to order. As you know, we're continuing our consideration of Canadian forest management practices as an international trade issue, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2).

I thank you all for coming here immediately after the vote. We are only about 22 minutes late. That's not bad for those of us who are using modern technological systems of transportation.

This morning we have with us Ms. Jean Arnold, who is a representative of the Forest Stewardship Council—Maritimes Regional Group.

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As I understand it, Ms. Arnold, you do not have a brief, which is fine, but you have distributed some of these items in both official languages. Are these yours as well?

Ms. Jean Arnold (Representative, Forest Stewardship Council—Maritimes Regional Group): Yes. Shall I say a bit about them?

The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much. Our normal procedure is that our witnesses come and give us a presentation. It can last five minutes or it can last ten minutes if you like. It doesn't matter. But what members find most productive is a dialogue. So as soon as you want to engage in that, you stop your presentation and we go ahead. Our members are thoroughly prepared, so they're always ready to get going.

I welcome you to our committee. The microphone is yours.

Ms. Jean Arnold: You won't get your whiskey unless you behave until it comes.

Thank you for inviting me. I am executive director of Falls Brook Centre, and I brought you our brochure. We're a community-based organization with environmental and social activities, and we have a site where we endeavour to practise what we preach. Some of what we do is in that larger brochure.

We were elected at a multi-stakeholder meeting in the Maritimes to be the secretariat of the Forest Stewardship Council in the Maritimes in 1996. I thought I'd talk to you today a little bit about that process. I don't know how much any of you know about the Forest Stewardship Council or even particularly about the Maritime regional standards.

Some of you have from the Forest Stewardship Council Maritimes a brochure on labelling of wood products, and some have a brochure on forest certification for small woodlot owners. Then there's a little marketing tool we've produced for consumers and retailers, “Why you should buy wood with this label”. And another little brochure is for the woodlot owner, how to get involved in certification at the small woodlot owner level. You can have a look at them. If you don't have any further interest in them, you can leave them on the table or give them back to me. I do have other copies if people want more.

I'll start at the beginning. We had a process whereby all interested parties in the Maritimes, or at least a mailing list of 800, were sent a notification that anybody who was interested in forest certification should come to Truro, Nova Scotia. This was in 1996. Out of that large gathering, people divided up into sectoral groups. Forest industry was in one room; woodlot owners were in another; academics were in another; foresters were in another.

Out of that were elected two people to sit from each of the nine chambers on a steering committee for the Maritime regional process to develop standards for best forest management as we know it at this current time, understanding that forestry and forest science are an evolving understanding.

That committee, with various public consultations and regrouping of that large body in the Maritimes, worked on developing standards. We had two scientists seconded, one from CFS and one from the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources, to help us do research and provide scientific backup. So we had the private sector makeup—which included first nations, environmentalists, woodlot owners, large industry, sawmillers, and academics—and two government representatives.

That process went through various renditions, and we now have endorsed standards. We had endorsed standards about a year ago, and they were appealed by J.D. Irving, a large forest company in New Brunswick that has been a constant member. It has had two representatives on the committee and has been represented there since the beginning. They appealed the decision to endorse the standards.

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That went to a dispute resolution committee at the national level, which took six months to deliberate and fact-find and do the research to determine that the appeal was not warranted, and the appeal was overturned with various recommendations to the regional committee to proceed. We received endorsement for the standards from the international office in January of this year.

That, in a nutshell, was the process whereby the standards were developed in a multi-stakeholder way, harmonizing with the surrounding areas, with other international...with Sweden and the U.K. In the harmonization process, it was found that our standards, given some cultural ecosystem differences, are compatible and acceptable to those other regions.

So from certification standards development, we now move forward to getting parcels of land certified in the Maritimes. Right now, one first nations' group in Pictou Landing is certified. We have two or three chains of custody, which is a form of endorsement for being able to track the product from cradle to grave, and we have several other applications and people, woodlot owners and first nations, who are interested in proceeding to become certified.

I don't really know how much anybody knows about the Forest Stewardship Council. It's a non-government initiative. It was formed as the result of feeling that current forestry practices were not adequately meeting criteria for future trading possibilities and good forest management. So it has been controversial.

Now I think the challenge is to try to meet the emerging markets. There has been a large request for certified timber. We can't meet it. We have had resistance from companies and from government in the region against the Forest Stewardship Council, which I think is unfortunate, because times are changing, forest practices are changing, international trade is changing, and I think it behooves everybody to look toward the future and see what sort of natural resource management we might promote, as Canadians, in the international marketplace.

That said, it probably makes more sense for me to answer your questions, because that way I can have some idea of the issues that concern you. I could talk on any of these things for quite a while, I'm sure, but it probably makes more sense, as the chair has suggested, to throw it open to the floor.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

You're going to be followed by the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada. Because I'm new to this game, I would ask, what's the difference between you and them?

Ms. Jean Arnold: The Forest Stewardship Council is an international body. Every country that wants to set up a Forest Stewardship Council has a national office. The Forest Stewardship Council of Canada is a national umbrella organization that oversees regional standards-writing initiatives.

The maritime region is the first standards-setting initiative in Canada. There is a Great Lakes-St. Lawrence standards-writing initiative, a B.C. writing initiative, and the beginning of a boreal initiative, and I think Quebec is just beginning.

So we're the furthest ahead, in the Maritimes. Actually, we're the first endorsed standards in North America. We're quite proud of that. We all started at the same time, right across North America, and in the Maritimes we've always been the ship opening up the channel.

The Chair: What is your relationship with some of the environmental groups? You've indicated, and I've noticed through some of the material, that you have a relationship with all the stakeholders, including the environmental groups—the Sierra Club, for example. What's your relationship with them?

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Ms. Jean Arnold: Falls Brook Centre is the secretariat, so we have an equal relationship with all the stakeholders. We have a relationship, I suppose, in the bringing together of the committee, working with the committee, trying to resolve issues, and working to make sure the process is transparent and accountable. So we certainly have relationships. Mostly we're an e-mail initiative. We have a listserv, and everything goes on the listserv, so everybody has equal access.

The Chair: You also go out to the field and monitor the whole process, do you not?

Ms. Jean Arnold: There's such a lot of rattling here, and you're not very close to the mike.

The Chair: No? Okay. I think it's probably because I'm farther away from the translators.

Ms. Jean Arnold: Yes. Have we had any monitoring in the field?

The Chair: No, you also go out into the field and do your monitoring, right?

Ms. Jean Arnold: As a secretariat, no. We have had monitoring initiatives, and those are usually done by certifiers. The Forest Stewardship Council broadly speaking is an accreditation agency that certifies certifiers. The certifiers are, at this current time, Smart Wood in the U.S.A., and Scientific Certification Systems. We have only two potential certifiers in Canada. One is Sylva Foundation and the other is KPMG, which is in the process to become a certifier.

The Chair: I see.

Ms. Jean Arnold: So those bodies that are technically trained to do the monitoring, evaluating, and certifying have worked with us to look at how the standards play out in the field.

The Chair: Lest I take all of the time in question and answer, I'm going to stop. I may come back a little later.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Canadian Alliance): This is all a lot of conceptual stuff, and I think it isn't well within our collective knowledge yet. So if some of the questions seem a little basic, it's because they are.

There seems to be a sort of chicken-and-egg thing that I don't quite comprehend. For example, you've mentioned that standards are being written for British Columbia. The stakeholders involved in that process are flying off to Oaxaca in Mexico. Why would they be doing that, rather than dealing with Toronto? I'm puzzled.

Ms. Jean Arnold: I can't speak intimately for what's happening in B.C., but Oaxaca, Mexico, is the head office of the Forest Stewardship Council. That is where it's located. So when they have their annual general meeting, when they have subcommittees working on various controversial areas, maybe somebody from B.C. is on one of those subcommittees. That's the ultimate place where standards get endorsed—through that international office.

Mr. John Duncan: So what does the Toronto office do?

Ms. Jean Arnold: The Toronto office oversees activities in Canada. Sometimes, for instance, our organization, Falls Brook Centre, also manages the non-timber forest product working group for the international body. Sometimes I go to Oaxaca because the non-timber forest product working group is meeting. That particular subcommittee is global in its outreach and development. Maybe somebody in B.C. is on one of those subcommittees, which are global.

Mr. John Duncan: Who is ultimately responsible for the FSC? Does it have a board of directors who are elected?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Yes, there's an international board of directors from the different chambers from northern and southern countries.

Mr. John Duncan: How is the board nominated?

Ms. Jean Arnold: The board is elected through a process that culminates in the annual general meeting. We have only one—a Canadian board member in the social chamber, who I believe is a Cree lawyer. He's a Canadian and he's the only international board member we have. But not every chamber has a western board member, or a Canadian board member even.

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Mr. John Duncan: Who is eligible to vote?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Any FSC member.

Mr. John Duncan: So if you're not....

Ms. Jean Arnold: Yes. You can meet criteria for taking out membership.

Mr. John Duncan: What are the criteria?

Ms. Jean Arnold: The Forest Stewardship Council is supposed to be an organization of organizations, so preferably and usually it is organizations that join the FSC.

There are some places for individual membership. For instance, a forest company that is trying to get certified, that is not yet certified, cannot take out membership under a company name in the Forest Stewardship Council. So some companies that are waiting to get certified will take out their chief forester, maybe.

In the case of J.D. Irving—I can use that as an example—their chief forester is a member of the FSC, whereas JDI itself.... There's a threshold of hectarage certified before you can have a company membership.

Mr. John Duncan: Are all members equal?

Ms. Jean Arnold: All organizational members.

A chamber is made up of social and organizational membership. All the individual memberships within a chamber add up to only 10% of the vote. So yes, all the organizational members are equal, and individual memberships, because they're trying to discourage these, add up to only 10% of the vote.

So it is equal in its two-tier system.

Mr. John Duncan: So in regard to the characterization of FSC as being Greenpeace-inspired and Greenpeace-dominated, how would you respond to that?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Well, it's absolutely not true, because Greenpeace will have only one vote. They may make a lot of noise, but ultimately they have only one vote.

From my perspective, I think Greenpeace often becomes a convenient whipping boy for other organizations that may share the same view but are less outgoing in their tactics of trying to get their points of view across.

Mr. John Duncan: So over time, as more and more areas become certified, obviously the membership will grow. Will that lead to more diverse ownership of FSC—ownership being a loose term?

Ms. Jean Arnold: As in any membership organization, the members control and have ultimate say in all the workings of the organization.

From my perspective, I think it's a very interesting organization, because to a certain extent it's looking at global systems for integrating all aspects in one sector—forestry—but it's forestry and trade. So designing the appeals process, the dispute resolution process, the standing committees, and how northern and southern participants from the various chambers all work is, from my perspective anyway, quite an interesting committee to be on, because it is looking at new kinds of government structures.

Mr. John Duncan: It's been said that the certification logo will at some point in time have real value. If the FSC earns significant revenues, what is the plan for those revenues?

Ms. Jean Arnold: The Forest Stewardship Council itself and the regional bodies don't earn revenues. There is a bit of a glitch in the system there.

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The Forest Stewardship Council accredits the certifiers. The regional standards committees, like ours, endeavour through their—in our case—non-profit, charitable status to raise small amounts of money to carry out the standards process. When the standards come to a fine point, they are then sent out. They go back to the head office for endorsement, and once they're endorsed the certifiers come in and certify. That's where the money is. So they are a completely separate, third-party, independent audit, and that's where the money goes.

So you could ask yourself what does KPMG—I'm sure most of you are more than familiar with them—do with the money? We don't know. But the Forest Stewardship Council and the regional standards-setting initiatives don't receive any money from the certification. At this point in time, they're seriously underfunded. As somebody who has tried to raise money, I can say it's very difficult in Canada, and it's almost impossible to raise money for the Forest Stewardship Council, because so many people have seen it as more fit to undermine it rather than strengthen it. That, I think, is a short-term viewpoint.

Let me tell you what we're seeing now, just to give you an idea of the sort of trade potential. Alan McKnight, from B&Q, which is a retail home thing like Home Depot, came to the Maritimes to say that B&Q is expanding its operations. It started in the U.K., and it has x number of stores across into eastern Europe. They have assured their consumers that all wood products coming in will be FSC-certified by 2002, so they are pushing the organization, which can only move as slow or fast....

They met with suppliers in New Brunswick, and we set up the round table for companies who already supply things to B&Q. That ranges from raw lumber to pressure-treated planks to knobs for barbecue grills. There's a whole range of all their forest products. They were told to get with the program or get out, because B&Q is going to move with suppliers that are credible for its consumers. I would therefore suggest that the European consumers are now further ahead in terms of their understanding of the ability of voting with their dollars rather than just buying anything that's on the shelf. So it was one industry talking to other industries to say what the route of the future is.

I think there is a tremendous potential for people to.... I would suggest that New Brunswick.... I don't see any New Brunswick MPs here, but what on earth are we doing exporting raw materials in this day and age? Why aren't we value-adding right down the line? It should be totally illegal to take a raw log out of the province. That is why we are working with the Forest Stewardship Council: because it is a system that tries to give back the wealth of the natural resources to the communities that depend upon it, as opposed to what we have now in New Brunswick. With the exception of J.D. Irving, all our companies are owned and therefore dependent on the whims of the shareholders in the U.S.A., and I think that's really a damned shame.

The Chair: Well, you don't have any strong views on that, I guess.

Ms. Jean Arnold: No.

The Chair: As I take a sip of water and we go on to the other side, I just wonder if you would take a moment to give us an indication of what you mean by “performance standard”, as opposed to “management system standard”.

Ms. Jean Arnold: In all certifications the whole 200 acres and all our operations at Falls Brook Centre are certified organic. We also work at the international level with the Marine Stewardship Council, the international federation that accredits organic products in Europe. All of the accreditation systems now have to be third-party audited. Ultimately the only litmus test is what the marketplace demands, but if you have third-party, independent audits, that is a step away from an internal management process whereby a company agrees to behave in a certain manner. They then certify themselves under that management system, which ultimately doesn't have the same credibility. That's why the Forest Stewardship Council is set up as an accreditation body. Certifiers are completely independent. I think that is what we're going to be looking at. You can't certify yourself. That has the potential for a conflict of interest, anyway.

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The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Reed.

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.): Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Is it possible to get a set of standards for certification? I was looking through the material you supplied, and there's nothing there that I've seen that outlines what the requirements are. Would it be possible for this committee to—

Ms. Jean Arnold: I could send it, or it's on our website—

Mr. Julian Reed: Is it? Okay.

Ms. Jean Arnold: —which is listed here. You can pull it off your website, or you must have people who can pull it off the website.

Mr. Julian Reed: Okay, thank you.

As an individual woodlot owner, what will it cost me to certify?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Therein is one of the glitches in the system. They're estimating that it's going to cost about $1,000 for a hundred acres of woodlot. At this point in time, it therefore hasn't been that user-friendly for small woodlot owners. So that's one of foci of the future.

A lot of our publication is geared toward how we are going to get to individual woodlot owners. One of the best systems right now is to look at group certification, whereby a group of woodlot owners across a landscape.... In the New Brunswick context, we have the New Brunswick Federation of Woodlot Owners or the Carleton-Victoria Marketing Board, so we have systems whereby we could go forward with group certification. But because it's a new technology or a new system, it's rather expensive, and it has only been the forest industry that has been banging on the door to get in. Now we're seeing the first nations seeing it as a system for them, because they're also managing larger.... Well, I don't know about anywhere other than the Maritimes where there tends to be a lot of small woodlot owners.

Mr. Julian Reed: In the way it's set up now, is the certification permanent, or is it renewable? Does it have to be renewed annually?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Annually.

Mr. Julian Reed: For another thousand bucks?

Ms. Jean Arnold: No, I think it's a smaller fee for a renewal.

Mr. Julian Reed: But we don't know how much.

Ms. Jean Arnold: No, we don't know how much, but we could take a guess that it's probably going to be half that. It's expensive right now, and that's partly because we have no Canadian certifiers. In the four years that I've been on this, every time there is a university person, every time there is a community college asking, I ask why we aren't training. We have hordes of young foresters coming out with different viewpoints and with thoughts about good forest management, and wanting to work at it. There are lots of jobs in forest certification, but we don't have anywhere in Canada that trains young people to become certifiers.

If we could get more Canadian certifiers, and if we could get Canadian certifiers in the Maritimes, we wouldn't have to bring them in from California, with their salaries and the airfare and the time in the field. So it is, as whoever said it, the chicken and the egg. As I keep saying, we have to get with the program. It's not going to go away, so let's try to move it forward. This is a whole new job area.

Mr. Julian Reed: The reason I brought that subject up is that there was a change in Ontario in terms of graded lumber a few years back. The small woodlot owners and small sawmill operators found themselves cut right out. The bureaucracy said it would train people to be lumber graders, but then people found out it costs $2,400, and then they found out it had to be renewed every year. So we were back to square one. This is going to be an impediment, I'm sure.

Once I'm certified, can I join the Forest Stewardship Council as a full voting member?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Yes, as a company member, and therefore as an organization.

Mr. Julian Reed: Do I have to be incorporated to do that, or can I do it as a proprietor?

Ms. Jean Arnold: You can do it as an individual, yes.

Mr. Julian Reed: Okay, thank you.

Ms. Jean Arnold: I think one of the things I've been arguing for.... You do have to remember that the maritime region is actually the first regional standard globally. Sweden has Swedish standards, the U.K. has U.K. standards. So we're the first western exporter as well.

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One of the systems I try to promote is that within the woodlot owners' association one of their foresters could be certified, and that forester would then be able to have a bunch of different woodlots under their management. If he or she did an inventory, that would be a way of reducing costs rather than always having people come in from the outside.

Mr. Julian Reed: When you authorize a company, a retailer, to use the logo, does that mean the retailer will be using only FSC products?

Ms. Jean Arnold: No. It means that what FSC product they do sell will have an audit trail. The chains of custodies are set in place. The national office knows better, so you should ask them. I think there are something like 42 chains of custody, and from what I have seen of the list, I think most of them are in Quebec. I'm assuming that the Quebec furniture area is looking more at where they sell to, and it's a value added there, so it's a bonus to be FSC-certified.

Mr. Julian Reed: So a retailer could put up the FSC logo and still be importing plywood from Indonesia?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Well, they would have to have a separate sort. There would have to be a separate section, in which it would be FSC that would be separated. That's what a chain of custody is: you can track and separate. You would lose your chain of custody if you were trying to pass off your Indonesian wood, unless Indonesia got certified.

In terms of the way it works in England, because I've seen it there, at B&Q they have the stacks of lumber set up, and it will say underneath that all the stuff in that stack is FSC-certified. On the barbecue things, they may have a little wooden tray and a little wooden knob, and it has a little tag that says the wood is FSC-certified.

Mr. Julian Reed: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Canuel.

Mr. René Canuel (Matapedia—Matane, BQ): I am looking at your folder. Do you have it in French? No? I am surprised, since the Maritimes, especially New Brunswick, are bilingual.

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: It's a funding question. We had to scrape by. This is our own organizational money, and we barely got enough money to do it in English. We certainly wouldn't mind having other sponsors, but we can talk in the corridor.

[Translation]

Mr. René Canuel: As far as the land area is concerned, what stage are we at in certification in Quebec compared to New Brunswick?

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: The certification in Quebec has not yet started, but I know a team is getting together to begin this regional standards-writing process. Quebec has more chains of custodies than anywhere else in Canada, so at some level it's already happening with the manufacturing sector. Other than that, I don't know. I have a young intern from Laval, a master's student in forestry, who has been with us for over a year. He has gone back to Quebec, and he is part of starting that. I can give you his contact if you want to find out more about it later.

[Translation]

Mr. René Canuel: We were talking earlier about training certifiers. You say that in Canada there is not any. What training is required or what course is taken to become a certifier? It is very complicated. How long does it take? What faculty offers this course? Do you have to go into forestry?

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: No one at this time offers any courses in certification. The only way to get trained as a certifier now is to be apprenticed to an existing certifier in the U.S., or to KPMG, which does ISO certifications. They are going through the rigorous entry point to become a certifier for the Forest Stewardship Council. So if a company is going to get certified, they have to apply to the Forest Stewardship Council in Mexico, and then meet all the criteria, documentation and expertise.

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[Translation]

Mr. René Canuel: Would this not be an additional structure? I have worked with forestry groups. We had engineers, forest protection technicians, fauna experts, river developers, and we had just about all the same standards as you. Is this not an additional structure that just complicates things for foresters and lots of land owners? I see some ten standards and others will be added. At some point, people no longer know what to do on their land, on their own forest area. I would like to know what the advantages are. Tell me a few of the advantages of certification.

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: First of all, natural resource management, if that's what we want to call it, is very much more complicated. I'm sure you're finding in all things you're involved in that life is a great deal more complicated.

A certification process employs technical experts in forestry, biology, economics—

[Translation]

Mr. René Canuel: That is what complicates things for everyone.

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: Well, it does—

[Translation]

Mr. René Canuel: That complicates things for everyone.

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: Yes, I understand that. I'm just maybe suggesting to you that complicated is better.

We are looking at much more complex systems than we used to, and that complexity is getting certified. It's that depth of understanding. How recently have we seen biodiversity as a factor at all? So all of these aspects create forest certification that has looked at forestry from every perspective. We will be looking, because I'm on the non-timber forest products...85% of the biodiversity in a forest is not in the trees. Right now, forestry is mostly concerned with the trees. So we will have to get more and more complex.

The Chair: In your estimation, is this accreditation process going to be a help or a hindrance to the forest industry and the forestry industry in Canada, or more specifically, in your region in the Maritimes?

Ms. Jean Arnold: In the short run, I suppose it's going to be a rigorous exercise. In the long run, we're looking at consumers requiring more knowledge about what they're purchasing. We have a more educated, aware and maybe more concerned consumer. Maybe we don't have that so much in Canada yet, but certainly in Europe with the beef scare, the GMO scare, people are now in a much more educated society, and are requiring things under a different management regime.

For the forest industry in the Maritimes, it will be difficult. We can see it's difficult by the resistance. We're talking about a system that is restoration. We're talking about a system of forestry that restores the multi-species original makeup of the forest—original as far as we can understand, whereas Maritimes forestry is largely looking at fibre production.

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So if we're moving out of fibre production into restoration forestry, with all the values that mixed ecosystem gives, and we're moving away from fibre production with chemical-intensive machinery and an intensive export system of raw materials, it will be a change in the short run. In the long run, you can resist it all the way to that change, but I'm absolutely convinced that's the way we will see forestry moving.

The Chair: Should I take it from that that you think the marketplace is going to be a lot more accepting of products from industries that have your accreditation, as opposed to those that don't?

Ms. Jean Arnold: I think that is very definite. That's already moving. The B.C. context is possibly moving faster, in terms of the marketplace, than the Maritimes. We don't export so much to Europe. We're mostly a U.S. market. The U.S. market is not demanding the same rigour as the European market. But we'll see it eventually as people catch up.

Maybe I'm presenting a snapshot of what we might be seeing five or ten years down the road, so why not tool up to get ready for that? I suggest that's what our industry should be doing. A more progressive one is Stora in Nova Scotia. Because Stora's head office is in Sweden, with the Swedish standards and no chemical use, they are pushing Stora's Canadian office to accept the same criteria. Once we get one company turning over, we'll see others.

We're also talking to Kodak in Rochester, where all the St. Anne—Nackawic pulp goes for making Kodak paper. Kodak customers are now more aware. We're talking with them about asking for forest stewardship products coming in from St. Anne—Nackawic in New Brunswick. Time magazine has just run all these adds on Pierce Brosnan or somebody, promoting the FSC. Time magazine is now looking at its paper. Repap in New Brunswick is making paper for Time Warner change. All the lands of New York state have been FSC-certified.

It's going on out there. In the Maritimes we have seen tremendous resistance to change, but I think most of the companies know that change is afoot. Hopefully we'll see good examples come out of first nations. There's such a lot of tension and difficulty in their sector. We're trying to work with the better reserves, in terms of their forest management, for them to go forward with certification.

The Chair: I hope I don't sound mischievous, but it sounded to me very much as if in addition to being a body that accredits, you're also into market development.

Ms. Jean Arnold: The European NGO members of the Forest Stewardship Council tend to pitch their message to the general public. Canadian NGOs tend to pitch their message to government. So in Europe, the marketplace is being opened up for FSC products.

I would suggest that's what most NGOs in Canada will be doing in the future. There wasn't any way to do it before you had any standards endorsed, but certainly a start in that direction is to get that logo out there and encourage people to ask for it. It's like the chicken and the egg. If we don't have a market for the product, nobody will want to go for certification, so we want to try to have the marketplace. It'll reduce the costs for the small woodlot owner, and make it easier to get on board.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Provenzano.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I gather from your comments that biodiversity is gaining in prominence as a factor in certification. Am I correct in that?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Yes.

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Mr. Carmen Provenzano: How big a role does biodiversity play in certification, based on FSC standards?

Ms. Jean Arnold: I think biodiversity in its broadest sense plays a very big role. Especially in the Maritimes, our vision statement—which you can read in your little book there—is one of restoration. Plantations would be a first step in restoration toward a more natural ecosystem. Within that more natural ecosystem, we are protecting our watersheds and our wildlife.

We will see in the future—and we are seeing in New Brunswick—a huge market opening in non-timber forest products. We have people applying for ferns, from the conference centres in New York. We could supply all the ferns and doodads. So these markets have not been explored.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Okay, thank you.

I paid close attention to your comments about Sweden. I've been to France and I've seen plantation forests in parts of that country, and I assume the same is the case in Sweden.

From where I'm sitting, it seems that if your natural forests were ravaged and the landscape denuded a long time ago, what you're relying on now are plantation forests, and it's easier to get FSC certification for those than for the types of forests that prevail in Canada. Why is that so?

Ms. Jean Arnold: I must say I don't know much about the French situation because they're not a very big component right now of the Forest Stewardship Council. Some parts of Sweden were deforested, the same as in the U.K., but now they are restoring with mixed species, and looking at doing the research that brings them back to an equilibrium of species, so it's the same thing.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Are you suggesting the same biodiversity is present in those Swedish plantation forests as in typical Canadian forests?

Ms. Jean Arnold: No, I don't think you can compare a plantation.... There's probably the same biodiversity in a Canadian plantation as in a Swedish plantation, very broadly and unscientifically speaking. But you can't compare a plantation forest to a natural forest.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I guess I'm asking whether we have two different sets of standards, one for Canadian forests and one for the forests of Europe that are of the plantation variety. They have been certified and do not have the biodiversity—there can be no argument about that—yet you're telling this committee that biodiversity is a prominent factor in certification. How do we buy that? How can you sell that?

Ms. Jean Arnold: I would have to disagree with you that there is no biodiversity—

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: On what aspect?

Ms. Jean Arnold: —in the Swedish.... Their standards are very similar to ours. There was a misconception, I think, that the Swedish standards were much looser than ours. We rigorously went through our standards with the Swedes, and our standards are very compatible with theirs.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Do we have your assurance that biodiversity will not play any larger a factor in the certification of Canadian forests than it does with respect to any type of European forest?

Ms. Jean Arnold: That's a very sweeping thing to say. I don't know about any European—

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Why can't you say that? Why can't you say that the standards for certification of Canadian forests are going to be the same as they are for European forests? Why can't you tell us that?

Mr. Jean Arnold: Because I don't know all the European standards.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I was interested in your comment that it should be illegal to export a raw log out of Canada. I guess that's what you were saying. Is that your position personally, or is that the position of the Forest Stewardship Council?

Ms. Jean Arnold: That's not the position of the Forest Stewardship Council.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: So those are just comments you made.

Ms. Jean Arnold: Yes.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: All right. That actually goes to the politics of international trade, doesn't it?

Ms. Jean Arnold: Maybe.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Well, I think it does. This committee is very interested to hear whether your organization plays some role with respect to the international trade issues that affect our forestry industry today—boycott conditions among them. What is your role? Are you, as a Canadian initiative of the Forest Stewardship Council, playing some kind of role in that international trade arena with respect to Canadian forest products? And is that role a positive or a negative one?

• 1210

Ms. Jean Arnold: Hopefully a positive one.

We have a dual role. We are managing the secretariat for the Forest Stewardship Council and we're also an independent, non-profit organization in the New Brunswick context. Our interest in both FSC and from our aspect as the Falls Brook Centre is to see good forest management.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Would you agree with me that with respect to those comments about exporting raw logs out of Canada, that's a matter for the politics of international trade and for governments?

Ms. Jean Arnold: No.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: You don't.

Ms. Jean Arnold: No, I don't, because I think that if we still see ourselves as a country that exports raw materials for the lowest common denominator, then we have very short-term thinking, as Canadians, for the future.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Then how do you respond to the criticism that your council goes beyond forest stewardship, that it wants to play the politics of the issue in the grand arena?

Ms. Jean Arnold: The Forest Stewardship Council?

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Yes, that it goes beyond stewardship; it's into the politics and it's going—

Ms. Jean Arnold: Any time you are involved in forestry I don't think you can probably separate forestry and politics—

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Don't you think it goes to your credibility as a council if you're going to be involved in the politics and not the stewardship of it?

Ms. Jean Arnold: I don't think the Forest Stewardship Council is involved in the politics of it in the sense you're talking about. The Forest Stewardship Council is an accreditation body.

The Chair: I think you've brought your points across, Mr. Provenzano.

I'm going to turn to the New Brunswick member for a moment to see if there's a different perception there.

Monsieur Godin, you're welcome, even though you're late and we don't normally allow anybody who doesn't have a full interest in this thing to come. But out of courtesy to New Brunswick, you're okay. So you have about 30 seconds to get all your stuff out.

Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP): Nice shot, Mr. Chairman, and I really appreciate it too. But sometimes we have some other duties we have to look after. I will wait to see if the chairman doesn't come in late one of these days, and I'll say you can't continue the meeting.

The Chair: It's my committee; I'll do what I want.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Godin: Some of the things you say really interest me. The thing is to know how to do it and how to be rigid with things like those you mentioned when you said we had to take our forest and process a second and third time, especially in northern New Brunswick. I come from northern New Brunswick, and what little we have there is in natural resources.

We have fish, which we send straight to Japan. This is one example. We have crab, and it is the same thing. We have lobster, and it leaves too. It is always like that. We also have forest problems. I can understand you and I support you. I am among those who really support processing a second and third time. I think it is the way of the future, which we should take if the government, especially the current government, cannot make any changes to employment insurance.

Let us come back to my region, which I think you know something about. Model forests had been created in the Sussex region. There was another one in the Rivière-du-Loup region. Do you think this is an acceptable model? Before asking you to answer, I must say that I am convinced that, with the forest, long-term employment can be created. It is not like a mine. I am a former miner and I know that from the time we dig our first shovelful, we are deciding the date the mine will close. Mineral ore does not grow under the earth.

Moreover, we have the good fortune to have a forest on this land that we can cut. There are people who can live off it. There are families who live off it. It can be replanted and future generations will be able to use it. It is not just beautiful to the eye for those who like to look at the beauty of nature. There are also people who must live off it. We cannot all live beside a beach. So it is a natural resource that people can live off.

• 1215

Maybe that is what I would most like to hear about. How can we use this natural beauty? Can the model forests that have been created provide the right direction to follow to try and convince even the companies to adopt attitudes that will ensure the forests remain alive and that they come back so that we can use them again?

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Godin.

[English]

So, Ms. Arnold, you've seen two different styles of questioning.

Ms. Jean Arnold: I don't profess to know extensively about the model forest. I've been on a few committees on the Fundy model forest, and I think that where you have a system of larger stakeholders sitting at the table together to work out the problems it is very productive.

I think that maybe there's too long a research stage and less action than I might personally like in the model forest system, but by and large from what I have seen it seems to be that at least by having different stakeholders—the landowners, the forest companies, the salmon federation, the environmentalists—together, people are engaging in a dialogue where people begin to see that there are different interest groups who are all users of the forest. Hopefully out of that come useful, long-term solutions.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Godin: On one of our trips, we went to British Columbia. We went to Bella Coola and other places, and I was really impressed to see that the B.C. government had a regulation. Correct me if I say something wrong, but what I understood in British Columbia, for instance, is that there was a law whereby every tree that is cut down has to be replaced with three trees; then, through sylviculture, the best is kept and the result is a nice forest. That is how I understood the law. If roads are made in the forest, the forest must be restored to nature because 50 years will be required for the forest to come back. So nature is restored. I found that very positive, even for British Columbia.

In spite of that, they are criticized for their forestry practices. I spoke with some workers from British Columbia. They say that it is fine to criticize them, but they think they have done a lot, because the forest is their future and their children's future.

I do not know whether you know British Columbia, but would you look favourably on pressure being made in New Brunswick to have similar regulations so as to make sure that we can use the forest and that future generations can live off it? As I said, nature is beautiful; it is beautiful for our eyes. That is how I see things.

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: I agree with you. I think we could have a lot more hands-on replanting and having people in the forests and looking at why we don't have more small mills. Why aren't our mills owned by New Brunswickers? Why don't we have community forestry? Why don't we encourage the value-added, have more manufacturing of wood? Why doesn't our government in supply and services buy furniture from New Brunswick? There are lots of solutions.

I don't really know very much about the situation in B.C., but I think we could make much more use of the woods while still respecting that the ecosystem needs to be remain intact in order to reproduce itself and continue to give us the fresh water and the recreation so that New Brunswickers can still enjoy walking in the woods and being in the woods and have many people who have a small woodlot.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Godin: I am going to close by making a comment. What I can see with my eyes, walking in the forest and all that, is fine, but there are people who have to live off that forest. How can we find solutions all together to manage to do all those things, so that we have a forest which people can really use, like the loggers where I live? These are people who need to go and cut wood. If I were a miner, I would not want someone telling me that I cannot take the ore out of the ground. It was put there to be used, but how do we go about using it as we should? Do you agree with me that there are ways of doing so, but that logging must not be stopped, that there should not be boycotts and other things that hurt our workers?

• 1220

[English]

The Chair: I don't think he was really asking you to comment on that, Ms. Arnold.

Ms. Jean Arnold: I'd like to comment.

The Chair: I know, but if you do then your colleagues from the Canada Forest Stewardship Council won't get a word in, and we're already running over time.

I want to allow all members to have their say. Seeing as you are such a willing person, especially when it comes to repartee, I'm going to ask my colleagues on this side here if they wouldn't mind imposing a little shorter timeframe on their questions and answers.

Mr. Julian Reed: I've asked my question, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: I know. Those of us who are sated are probably very compliant right about now, but those who have yet to drink from the water of knowledge have a different view.

Monsieur St. Denis, go ahead, have your fill.

Mr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma—Manitoulin, Lib.): Mr. Chair, thank you very much. I can be brief, as usual.

Thank you, Ms. Arnold. You seem very knowledgeable about the issues at hand. One of the things I've asked all the witnesses on the subject of international issues with respect to Canadian forest practices is about certification. There are a number of different certification systems at different levels of development: you have the SFI, the sustainable forestry initiative in the U.S.; there is the pan-European certification system; there are the FSC, CSA, ISO, and there may be others I'm not aware of. And clearly they're all in their infancy. There is no one system that has fully evolved and has become universally accepted.

What do you see as the future of certification? I think it's fair to say that certification in some form is going to be with us, and I think you used the word “inevitable”; I'm not sure if it was that word, but it was something along those lines. So if we accept the inevitability of certification, do you see that one system will emerge eventually or that there will, by necessity, be a number of different systems around the globe working in concert possibly through some kind of protocol to make sure that the different regions, different climates, are adequately taken care of? What do you see as the long term, if you can jump ahead ten or twenty years?

Ms. Jean Arnold: I always say, when people start talking about the sort of competitiveness and the kinds of tensions between the systems we currently have—and I don't know the central Canada context, but in the Maritimes you can shop at the SaveEasy, you can go to the local farmers' market, you can go to Sobey's—you you have a variety of choices. I think at this point in time certification is largely determined by what marketplace you are trying to enter and what are the criteria your market demands. So for a small woodlot owner who is selling to the local hardware store, there's no point in them getting an international certification.

I think we will definitely see third-party independent audit certification as being the front-runner, because it has the most credibility. But I suppose for different people under different systems we tend too much to think there has to be only one way of doing things, whereas I think—which responds to that earlier gentleman who has since left—that we are entering into more and more complex times, and as we begin to understand and accept that complexity we can choose where we purchase things based on whether we might be going for things we want to support that are organic, let's say, or a forestry without chemicals, or whether we want to support something that really promotes fair trade and community forestry because those are the sorts of criteria that I, as a shopper, am looking for on the label, anti-GMO or whatever it might be.

Labelling is something the consumer of tomorrow is going to be looking at. I don't really see a competitiveness except in what the consumer wants. I guess it's looking to see what markets you need to enter that determines what sort of certification suits your business practice.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: I'll help you, Mr. Chair. I'm finished.

The Chair: You're a great guy, Mr. St. Denis.

Monsieur St. Julien. I hope you're going to be just as good.

• 1225

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik, Lib.): Thank you, Ms. Arnold, for your presentation this morning. You have lots of experience in forestry. Do you know about the forestry situation in Quebec? There is talk of boreal forests. There is talk of forestry practices in regional markets, and right now there is a lot of publicity about the boreal forests in Quebec, because of the claims by the James Bay Cree, as expressed by Grand Chief Ted Moses, and especially the film by Richard Desjardins, who is from the Abitibi region, about forestry in Quebec. Have you seen it?

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: Do you mean L'Erreur boréale, that film?

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Yes.

[Translation]

May we have your comments on this?

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: I think the Quebec situation is so different from our own that looking at certification there and looking at the native reality, I couldn't really comment.

We recently had a very large certification meeting in New Brunswick, and I noticed that the Quebec foresters, academics, and university people were the largest contingent. I found that quite interesting, because we don't usually get such a large number of Quebeckers down to New Brunswick for those sorts of events. Because one of my staff was from Quebec, I sort of hung out in the evenings with the Quebec contingent, and I found them extremely interested in certification. So I'm assuming there is an emerging interest, and by the large number of chains of custodies, I'm presuming there is more of a manufacturing export sector that is very favourable to the FSC system.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Yes.

Ms. Jean Arnold: But that's merely conjecture. You should ask my colleagues, who have a better idea of what's going on in Quebec than I do.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you very much, Madam.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. St-Julien.

[English]

Ms. Jean Arnold: Am I allowed to respond to him on the jobs, or is my time up, Mr. Chairperson?

The Chair: I'm chairman, but that's okay.

Ms. Jean Arnold: Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: I would really love to have your response to his item, but your time isn't just up, Madame, it's actually well over. We've eaten away at your colleagues' time. I think I speak for everybody around the table that we've enjoyed the exchange. It has been informative—at least for the chair; I don't know if it has been for anybody else.

Mr. Yvon Godin: On a point of order—

The Chair: One second—

Mr. Yvon Godin: On a point of order—

The Chair: Mr. Godin, what is your point of order?

Mr. Yvon Godin: Thank you. I think she could respond in two minutes, just to be fair, because that's what happened with fisheries. We took it out of the sea, and we have no jobs today. If she has something to respond, she's here as a witness that we're for or against. We're here to listen to our witness, please.

The Chair: Except that, you know what, we also have another point of order. The other point of order is that when you use up all your time with preamble, you don't leave a lot of room for the witness to give a response, and that's what happened.

I want to give the other witnesses the opportunity to give an answer as well, Madame. I think I speak for everybody else. Thank you very much. It was a pleasant experience.

I want to take a minute of adjournment while we bring in our other witnesses.

• 1228

• 1231

The Chair: We'll resume our hearing.

Our witnesses are from the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada: Marcello Levy, who is a representative of the council; and Marty Horswill, who is the standards development coordinator, B.C. regional initiative.

Gentlemen, you're both very welcome. We've chatted a brief moment, and I want to remind you, for the record, that normally we give people about five to ten minutes to present their case. If you don't have a brief to present to us, that's okay. If you can go ahead and present us with a brief overview and then engage our colleagues in a question and answer session, I'd appreciate that, as I think will our colleagues.

I know you were here for about forty minutes, so you heard more or less the tenor of the debate going back and forth. You might use that as your guide, or ignore it, as you will.

Which of the two will begin? Mr. Levy.

Mr. Marcello Levy (Representative, Forest Stewardship Council of Canada): FSC certification has been growing substantially over the last five years. It has been growing at an exponential rate in almost every department except our budgets.

A successful certification program needs to be international in scope, it needs to have consumer credibility, and it has to have market recognition. We believe FSC meets those conditions.

The key to the success of any certification system is its credibility, and FSC has throughout its organization, a multi-stakeholder process, right from the international board of directors, divided into chambers and members electing representatives who will guide the FSC, all the way through the national initiatives, such as FSC Canada, which also has several chambers, to the regional initiatives that are developing standards in Canada.

That is the strength of the FSC, the regional standards development process in which a variety of stakeholders are included. That is its strength, because we are providing a table at which these different sectors come to terms with what constitutes good forest management in their regions.

Also, FSC provides an internationally recognized label, so there's an effective link between local and regional conditions and what standards apply to those, and the international markets.

• 1235

Both FSC Canada and FSC International are committed to work together with other certification systems to make the costs to companies that are seeking various certification systems, which is what's happening in fact.... Companies are mostly going after ISO as a foundation, and then they are adding some other label to that. We believe there's nothing wrong with that. As Ms. Arnold said before, each company will seek the certification that will best suit their marketing needs.

With that, my colleague will speak about other issues.

Mr. Marty Horswill (Standards Development Coordinator, B.C. Regional Initiative, Forest Stewardship Council of Canada): First of all, I'd like to thank you for inviting FSC to speak about FSC. One of the biggest problems we have is that people tend to speak to individual members of FSC and get that member's viewpoint, but the nature of our organization is that we bring all perspectives on the forest question into membership and into our decision-making. Understandably, those different perspectives have different aspirations for our organization. As staff, our job is to try to reflect the consensus that has been reached so far amongst those stakeholders and not go beyond that.

As I thought about what I ought to say here today, I asked myself, what do members of Parliament who advise the Government of Canada on forest policy need to know about forest certification? I want to share with you the sense I have after working in this for slightly more than a year in a province where there is an extreme diversity of viewpoints on the question, and where, obviously, the outcome of certification is extremely important to all our communities that almost entirely depend on forestry.

I think the first thing you have to understand about certification is that it's no longer a distant blip on the radar screen of futurists. Certification is here now and it's important now. Independent, third-party, market-linked certification is really the only certification that matters, because it's the only certification that has credibility with consumers and the only one that empowers consumers to make a choice in the marketplace—and that's where it counts.

Certification is big. I think if you want a frame of reference for the importance of certification in forestry, you wouldn't be far wrong to consider it as the most important innovation in forestry since the invention of the chainsaw. It will have huge ramifications for forestry in Canada.

Canada is already falling behind some of its competitors in positioning itself to take full advantage of the market opportunities and in avoiding the market risks inherent in certification. The “Scans”, as the industry likes to refer to our friends in northern Europe, are a major step ahead of us because they fully embrace the concept of certification and put the full weight of government resources behind making it work.

As with any emerging or shifting market, it is the early entrants into the new certification market who will reap the greatest benefits. If Canada continues to lag behind, we risk losing not only the new market opportunities but a sizeable chunk of our existing markets as well.

Canada sells most of its wood into an undifferentiated commodity market that is global in nature. For this reason, FSC certification, which is the only internationally recognized system, is likely the only one that will work for Canada given the nature of our involvement in that undifferentiated global market.

FSC certification can only be fully operational after the approval of regional certification standards. Developing standards is a complex and costly process. Not surprisingly, the only countries with approved regional standards at present are those countries whose governments contributed both in the content and in the cost of developing those regional standards.

• 1240

To enable Canada's forest industry and value-added sector to compete on a level playing field in the certification world, it is essential that Canada have approved FSC regional standards for all our forest types and forest regions as soon as possible. For this to happen quickly enough to enable Canada to catch up to our northern European competitors, it's essential that the federal and provincial governments engage fully and effectively in both the content and the cost of developing FSC regional standards in Canada.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Horswill. That was very brief. I thank both you and Mr. Levy.

If I may, just before we go to questions with our colleagues, I have two items. Number one: we're focusing this part of our study on different regions, so it behoves us to hear a regional perspective. Whether it's consistent with anybody else's views is immaterial to us.

Second, during your presentation, you made reference to third-party audits and certification. I just wonder what that means in this context. You may correct the context, if you will, please. I have this impression, and I think I expressed it earlier on with the other intervener, that the FSC might be.... I'm trying to be very careful in my choice of words. The FSC seems to be associated more with environment, with environmental issues, and, in fact, with environmental groups. The CSA, another certified group, appears—and I underline that word—to be associated more with industry.

Could you explain, then, first of all, if the context is correct, and secondly, what you mean by “third-party audit”?

Mr. Marty Horswill: I think you accurately reflect the perception that's out there, but the perception is wrong.

The Chair: That's another way of saying you're all washed up—

Mr. Marty Horswill: One of the things I was thinking about doing was talking about the myths about certification. One of those myths is that FSC is owned by the environmental movement and that we're just puppets of the environmental movement. In fact, major stakeholders in my province have expressed that opinion quite forcefully.

The Chair: You're from British Columbia, right?

Mr. Marty Horswill: The reality is that FSC is controlled by—

The Chair: Which province is that? British Columbia?

Mr. Marty Horswill: British Columbia.

The Chair: Thanks.

Mr. Marty Horswill: The reality is that FSC, at every level, is required to have equal representation of at least three broad perspectives on forests: economic, environmental, and community. Here in Canada, we've added a fourth—first nations.

Environmentalists only have 25% of the votes in any decision-making body in FSC. The industry has 25% of the votes as well. So do first nations and so do community and union representatives. FSC, by its international rules, has to be broadly representative of a full range of stakeholders, and that's what we are.

The Chair: So you're not going to talk about third-party audits...?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Okay. “Third party” basically means that the people who do the verification of whether you meet the standard or not are independent from either you, as the operator of the company, or from us, as the FSC that sets the standard. Somebody independent of both of us comes in and says, here's your standard and here are your operations on the ground, so do they mesh or not?

The Chair: Thank you.

I'm going to go to Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you very much.

I think it was Marty who talked about what MPs might want to know.

Mr. Marty Horswill: What I thought you might want to know—

Mr. John Duncan: This is an international group. You're now in more than one province and you have a head office in Toronto. I don't think any of us have any feeling of knowledge or confidence in the transparency of the organization, in how you're set up internationally, who you're responsible to, how you're accountable, whether your books are open, whether your membership is an open book, and how you're registered. Are you incorporated? Are you a society? The business of FSC is not something we understand. Therefore, I think that's something we'd like to know. I don't think this is the appropriate time.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Okay.

Mr. John Duncan: I don't think we have the time for that, because I only have five minutes.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Would you like that as a brief?

• 1245

Mr. John Duncan: Yes. I think that would be a very nice thing to have.

We also—this is my second point—have a lot of reports where people are boosting FSC, encouraging the boycott of Canadian forest products, and denigrating anyone other than FSC. The suspicion is that they're either a proxy for FSC or they're freelancers. I heard you say you wished to cooperate with other groups, so why would you not make an opposing statement to people who said things like that? Why would you not go on record at that time?

The Chair: Mr. Horswill or Mr. Levy.

Mr. Marcello Levy: I'll take a stab on that, and you can add.

Again, FSC is accountable to its members. Members of FSC have different values, visions, and hopes. FSC has its own vision and its own voice, expressed mostly by its policies, by the principles and criteria, and by all the things that are inherent in developing these standards.

So it's not our role to tell any of our members to just shut up and not say anything. I don't think that's our role. Sometimes we need to clarify what FSC's position is regarding that, and that's what we strive to do.

Mr. John Duncan: Regarding my final question, you're trying to work with other stakeholders, whatever people there are available in B.C., to develop FSC standards for British Columbia. That's been a long, convoluted process, and we're still not near completion, as I understand.

One of the questions this committee has is related to the difference between setting standards for plantation and setting standards for old growth. Is FSC going to succeed in setting guidelines for the harvest of old growth in British Columbia?

I'll quit right there.

Mr. Marty Horswill: I can't predict the future. We are trying to succeed, and it is our intention to succeed. But to succeed, we have to do what so far has eluded us in British Columbia, and that is to find a way of building a broad consensus among environmentalists, first nations, the government, the industry, unions, and communities about what good forestry is in B.C.

We have to do it around all 10 FSC principles and all 56 FSC criteria. It's not going to be an easy task. It's not going to happen overnight. It needs a lot of technical backup to give the level of comfort that all the different stakeholders around the table have about the specifics of how it's going to work in practice and what its impacts are going to be.

Mr. John Duncan: Just as an observation, you have FSC standards in the Maritimes. The Maritimes is the only part of Canada where we're not logging old growth. So although this may be an issue for British Columbia, it's actually an issue for the rest of Canada, with the exception of the Maritimes. I just thought I'd point that out.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. St. Denis.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I may have a couple of short questions, if you will allow them, just to follow up Mr. Duncan's question.

Do I take it from the response, Mr. Horswill, that it is conceivable that a reasonable standard for old-growth forest logging is possible, that it's not like “no chance”?

Mr. Marty Horswill: The question you're wanting me to answer is will the FSC allow logging in old growth or will it not?

Mr. Brent St. Denis: I guess that's the short way to put it.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Okay. I can't answer, because the standard hasn't been written yet.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Okay.

Mr. Marty Horswill: But there's nothing that I read in the principles and criteria of FSC that prohibit it. It simply says you must achieve all of those objectives. And our task in the regional standards development is to take those broad principles that are there and make them specific, provide indicators that are measurable, and provide minimum thresholds that become the basis that accredited surveyors can then use to determine whether a company meets the standard or doesn't.

• 1250

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Would I be putting words in your mouth to say that FSC certification of old growth is possible?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Yes, it's possible.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Okay. I'll ask a question similar to the question I asked Ms. Arnold, to get your perspective on it.

There's the FSC system, and we'll accept that they're all in their various stages of infancy. With FSC, the SFI, the new American system, the Pan-European system, ISO, CSA, all with different criteria and different goals, and maybe others, do you see that eventually one will emerge?

I'm not asking you to agree or disagree with Ms. Arnold, but from your own point of view, will one emerge, or do you see down the road five, ten, or twenty years that there will still be a number of systems but possibly some kind of protocol that allows a consumer to link one and the other? What do you see in certification in five, ten, or twenty years?

Mr. Marcello Levy: I would say that the various systems serve different purposes and are developed in a different way.

I don't want to get into the details of this, but the CSA and ISO are basically a systems approach. They are under the umbrella of the environmental management systems. That serves several purposes, and companies are pursuing this for various reasons.

The FSC is more of a performance-based standard. I would qualify that a bit, but in general we can say that the FSC is a performance-based standard and has a link to the market. It's the only one that has a link to the market so far. Probably others will come up with labels later on. I can foresee that.

Our position with respect to working together with other certification systems is that there is a lot of overlap, and we recognize that. We need to make sure that companies that are pursuing various of the certification systems available—which is already happening—are not overburdened with meeting different requirements that in fact are the same.

Our objective will be to work to minimize costs for those companies on a very specific basis or a very specific case, to minimize cost in seeking various certification systems. I'm talking more broadly. I could foresee some protocols in terms of understanding what each system means, but I don't really see a merger into one system.

The Chair: Mr. St. Denis.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: I have a last short question. Maybe I'm stealing a question from Mr. Provenzano, but I think Mr. Horswill mentioned that in a Scandinavian experience the governments got behind or worked with the companies to advance the cause of certification. A cynic might think that was done for the purpose of getting out there first, which is not an unreasonable thing to do—get out there first with the standards and have more say about what happens in the marketplace than someone who comes along later.

It's like in China. If you're a European company, you want to sell 220-volt systems to China. If you're a North American company, you want to sell a 120-volt system. Whichever system gets bought, if you're a supplier of 220 volts, you sell 220 volts and not 120 volts. I think the same thing would apply in certification.

So to what extent today do we still see the Scandinavian influence, if it exists, in the FSC system as a disadvantage, say, to North American or Canadian forestry? Governments got behind them and worked with the companies to advance this cause. I think you would argue that Canada should jump in, and I'm trying to see what the reason would be.

• 1255

Mr. Marty Horswill: I don't think the Swedes have the advantage because they've set the benchmark or in some way provided the baseline that favours them over others. Rather, they've completed the process, and their industry can now go ahead and get certified knowing precisely what level they have to meet. Ours can't. The biggest problem that Canadian industry faces with FSC is still not knowing precisely what the FSC standard is and therefore being able to do their gap analysis and see how close they are to it. So they're sitting waiting.

The Swedes got in, government resourced the process, the process was completed quickly, and they're out of the gate and running. We're still waiting on the gate. Resources is a very serious reality in the development of the standards.

This is Canada. South of the line, there are large foundations that can fund the civil society initiatives. Canada does not have in any way, shape, or form the same accessibility for civil society organizations such as FSC. There are two foundations. Government is the source here.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Godin.

Mr. Yvon Godin: I am going to try and ask a brief question to redeem myself in the eyes of the Chair, since I took too long a while back.

My question is about the FSC. It is as if you had an organization that says you are able to bring 25 per cent of each industry, be it the industry itself, environmentalists, native peoples, etc. Would you agree to the government's taking responsibility for saying we have a problem and that there has to be certification, to its creating an agency in Canada to carry out certification and inviting each organization to come to this committee, which would consist of members representative of our country, as takes place for other things? There would be certifications by the government and people would take part. As I was saying, environmentalists, Native peoples, industry and unions would be invited to take part in it, and it would be sponsored by government.

The government would take responsibility itself, while an organization like yours would be recognized. Rather than inviting everyone who would want to be recognized, the government would refuse and say that it was going to do it, that it was going to invite people and certification would be Canadian.

Mr. Marty Horswill: I am sorry, but I cannot express myself easily in French. I am going to answer in English.

[English]

That can't happen in FSC, because FSC, by definition, is a non-governmental initiative. Government does have a role, but it's not the one you've described. The role is to be one of the important contributors to the discussion about what certification standards for Canada should be and why.

Obviously, since the provinces are the owners of most of the resources we're talking about, their voice is absolutely essential. But the nature of FSC is a non-governmental initiative. Governments are the only people who can't be members of FSC; others can, but governments cannot, for that reason. The nature is that governments can't solve our problems for us. We have to do it with all the stakeholders, and government is welcome to be there as a major voice in that process. Obviously, what I'm saying to you is we need your help in more than just your voice contribution to the content, but in your financial contribution to the process.

Mr. Yvon Godin: I have just a small question.

The Chair: Go ahead.

Mr. Yvon Godin: I don't think you're getting me. What I'm saying is not to be involved as a member but be more in charge of the umbrella of everything, just make sure we have it. I don't know if I'm clear on what I'm saying. For example, where is your group from? Are you from the environmentalists? If it's that, why then will the industry not do it? Do you know what I mean? We need somebody independent there who brings all those groups together and kind of....

Mr. Marty Horswill: Marcello and I are employees, and we're paid to be the neutral people who are not in any one of those four chambers. Obviously we're human beings, so we have our biases too, but our function as staff of FSC is to facilitate the process and to remain neutral among those contending interests.

• 1300

The Chair: If I might jump in for a moment, I think Mr. Godin was talking about a government role that would provide some leadership. I was interested in his line of questioning, because in his previous intervention he had given some indication that a government—and if I'm not mistaken it was the B.C. government—had provided some sort of leadership in establishing standards for forestry. Without judging whether they were good or bad, do you not see, and I'm interpreting, but I was interested in the question—

Mr. Yvon Godin: I'll tell you if you are right or not.

The Chair: Do you not see a role for government to bring together all the stakeholders and provide the kind of environment necessary for establishing commonality of practices and standards?

Mr. Yvon Godin: Yes, I agree.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Are you talking about all the different certification systems, or just the FSC process?

The Chair: I guess I'm looking at both.

You're probably aware that the federal government, at least, was not involved in the CSA process, just simply because the government does not desire to be involved there. But I thought I caught you, in one of your earlier interventions, actually encouraging government involvement, and I thought that was where Mr. Godin was going as well.

Mr. Marty Horswill: We're certainly encouraging government involvement within the FSC standards development process, particularly the provincial governments, as they are by far the largest forest landowners in Canada. They are also the forest regulators, and there are regulation implications of FSC certification. If the government wants forest companies operating within the province to be able to take advantage of the market opportunities certification represents, then they must—and I know they do—understand there may be regulatory and policy implications that only they can act on.

The Chair: Surely, Mr. Horswill, I gather—and I'm just jumping off from where Mr. Godin was taking you, and I'm not sure he was going in this direction, but I am—you see a role for the provincial governments. That's all fine and good. But the implications, especially contained for us in the parameters for this study, are on the international trade side, where of course there is a role for the federal government.

Do you see any implications for federal government involvement in an environment that sets standards whose outcome will have an impact on the international trade component of the forestry industry in Canada?

Mr. Yvon Godin: Jointly with different groups.

The Chair: Yes, you can add that on.

Mr. Marcello Levy: Let's see if I understand your question correctly. You are asking whether the endorsement of the FSC certification system will then become a regulatory process subject to some trade barriers, or even if it doesn't become a regulatory process, whether it will be a technical barrier to trade.

The Chair: I suppose that could be one of the outcomes.

Mr. Marcello Levy: I think one of the reasons why the FSC is the umbrella is by being a non-governmental organization, which is a voluntary system, it precisely avoids some of these issues around trade.

The Chair: You're absolutely confident of that?

Mr. Marcello Levy: Pretty much.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Let's put it this way: our lawyers tell us that.

The Chair: We're politicians, and we have some lawyers among us as well. We don't like them at all.

Mr. Yvon Godin: Sometimes there are too many.

The Chair: Mr. Chatters.

Mr. David Chatters (Athabasca, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

• 1305

I'm just kind of following this conversation and the questions. It seems to me that if you set up a process, as I think I heard you say, where you have a four-stakeholder group to study standards, and industry has a 25% vote, aboriginals have a 25% vote, environmentalists have a 25% vote, and something you called “community” has a 25% vote.... And I'm not quite sure what “community” is. I suspect it's not the community where the loggers live. I think it's perhaps where the university academic community lives. We heard they went to New Brunswick to participate in the standard-setting process there.

Government is expected to come up with money and have a voice in setting these standards, but it's not allowed to be a member of your organization. Why in the world would industry ever agree to willingly support that process when clearly the interests of the industry and the loggers are so outweighed by the other interests? Why would they jump into this process unless of course, through your association with environmental groups in Europe, you can encourage the boycotting of Canadian forest products, thereby forcing industry, if they want to sell their lumber in Europe, into buying into this process and being part of it? It seems so loaded to me that I don't know how you could possibly expect industry to jump up and down and say yes, we want to do this.

Mr. Marty Horswill: I wouldn't describe them as jumping up and down, but industry is certainly very much present in the process in British Columbia.

Mr. David Chatters: Because of the boycotts in Europe and elsewhere.

Mr. Marty Horswill: That may be part of their reasoning. The fact is that they're there. I think if you talk to leaders in the forest industry, certainly in my province, they will tell you they believe certification is absolutely unavoidable. They also recognize that some kind of a solution to the as-yet-unresolved situation with environmentalists is essential if we're going to continue to maintain our markets.

The FSC is the only forum that's out there for that discussion to take place. The far-thinking leaders in the forest industry realize that FSC may offer a very important avenue for resolution of what up to this point has been an absolutely irresolvable issue. The environmentalists aren't going away. We have to solve this.

Mr. David Chatters: Yes. I suspect that's where the far-thinking part comes in. It's not that we have to do this because it's right. We have to do this if we're not going to lose our market share.

Mr. Marty Horswill: I was at a certification conference in Victoria last weekend, and Professor Baskerville, who I think is generally recognized as one of the most pre-eminent forest thinkers in Canada and certainly is not an enemy to the forest industry in any way, shape, or form, expressed the view that forest certification was one of the most encouraging initiatives he'd seen in his lifetime. There are some solutions built into it. It's potentially win-win.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Provenzano.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I have a question along the same lines. I think this follows Mr. Godin's question.

You're saying that FSC is basically the only certification process that's providing a forum for the kind of dialogue that's necessary to eventually establish the certification standard in Canada. Why can't government play the role of providing that forum where the organizations, the NGOs...? Excepting the fact that maybe government should not be a member, why couldn't government facilitate the discussion among the NGOs?

We have three certification processes. The distinction between them is that they are systems-based or performance-based. In the end, it's probably going to have to be something that combines those standards. Why can't government play the legitimate role of providing that forum, get all of the certification players together, get all of the stakeholders together, and come up with a standard?

What you're asking is that the government get behind the FSC initiative. Well, in the end that might be a good move, but as a parliamentarian, before I would feel comfortable about that, I would want to know why we should get behind your initiative as opposed to ISO 14000 or the CSA certification standards. I would want to know that. If I were going to pick one, I'd want to have a rationale for it.

• 1310

I would much prefer—and this is where I'm looking for your comments—that government be a facilitator, play the role of a facilitator in this entire process, bring FSC, ISO, and CSA all together, bring all the stakeholders together. Let's develop a standard that's going to pass the global test and go on from there. I see that as a legitimate role for government.

The Chair: I guess you're just looking for a comment, right, Mr. Provenzano?

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Yes.

Mr. Marty Horswill: I see no problem with government playing a facilitating role and bringing stakeholders and certification systems together to try to discuss ways of harmonizing and generally helping Canada make use of certification. If your expectation is that the result of that process will be the melding of all these different certification systems into a single Canadian certification system, that won't happen. I don't think it needs to happen.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Well, it could be optional.

Mr. Marty Horswill: One of the fallacies about certification is that there's competition between them. ISO is a very different system and it doesn't compete in any way, shape, or form with FSC. Certainly I think any large company that wants to get FSC certification needs to have an environmental management system in place, and ISO is the way to do that. Having ISO certification that you have a good environmental management system in place and you're using it effectively is a major step down the road to an FSC certification. There's no competition there whatsoever.

CSA is somewhat in between the two, but also is not competitive. It isn't an either/or sort of thing. You see many companies in British Columbia seeking CSA certification and FSC certification at the same time now.

I think what would be really valuable in that kind of facilitation role would probably be to clear up a whole lot of misconceptions about the nature of these different systems and the level of fear and anxiety that's out there. Yes, I think the federal government could play a very helpful role in that regard, just getting everybody together to talk about it more.

It's happening, anyway. There's been a huge growth in the interest in certification just in the 12 months I've been involved with FSC. Whereas I was invited to speak maybe two or three times in the first six months, I'm getting two or three invitations a month to speak to different groups now. The awareness level is picking up very rapidly and I think that level of misunderstanding is bound to drop as opportunities to talk to people increase. This is a good example.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. St. Denis, briefly.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Thank you. It's been most informative and very helpful to have you gentlemen here.

I'd like to read this short paragraph. This is a recommendation our committee made in its interim report on this issue. You may have read it, but I'll read it into the record. I ask whether this goes far enough, doesn't go far enough, or is totally off-base. It's in the context of the most recent discussions around the table.

I'm quoting from the interim report recommendation:

The Committee recommends that the federal government, in cooperation with the provincial governments and other stakeholders, actively promote integration of the various sustainable forest management certification standards, both nationally with the CSA...and the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), and internationally where a number of approaches have been developed or implemented.

Is that on-base, off-base, not far enough, too far? It does say “promote integration”.

Mr. Marcello Levy: I would say that's going too far. As Marty described, perhaps the role of the government is facilitating that understanding, facilitating some kind of gap analysis, so then any kind of reciprocity could be done. Then we know that CSA standards mean this. If you want to go to the next step, you will have to do these other steps. And if you want to have ISO, you have to do these other steps. That would be very helpful, but....

• 1315

Mr. Brent St. Denis: So you would change that to promote “dialogue” as opposed to promote “integration”?

Mr. Marcello Levy: Yes, I would say that.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: That makes sense.

Mr. Marty Horswill: I would replace it with “implementation” of all of them.

Mr. Marcello Levy: Yes.

Mr. Marty Horswill: What Canada's forest industry needs is the ability to fully access all of the available certification systems in as cost-effective a manner as possible.

The Chair: Mr. Horswill, I wonder if.... I don't want to interrupt you.

Mr. Marty Horswill: That's fine. Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. St. Denis, are you finished?

Mr. Brent St. Denis: I'm finished.

The Chair: Okay, thank you.

In forestry, if a company wanted to certify its forest according to FSC certification standards, have you calculated for them in a ballpark fashion the cost of complying or attempting to meet some of those standards—your 10 principles plus, I think you said, 56 other items? Do you have a sense of the cost? I'm not talking about getting a certifier out there and doing this. They obviously have to implement some things. Have you thought in those terms?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Well, no. I mean, first, I'm not competent to do it; it's not my background. I think the companies are thinking in those terms for sure.

The Chair: Is it an unfair question?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Western Forest Products, one of the large companies on the B.C. coast, was speaking at the same certification forum last weekend in Victoria. They indicated that they've spent $600,000 to $700,000 to date on their certification efforts. Now they're doing all three, I think, but they've hired a full-time certification environmental officer and there's lots of work going on. The indications are that the highest portion of the cost is training. It's getting their employees aware of what they have to do differently in order to meet these standards.

The Chair: Let me just deviate for a moment and pick up on a question that was raised by Mr. Provenzano earlier. If you haven't done those calculations but the companies are sensitive to those types of calculations, are you aware of what those sensitivities have produced relative, say, to the sensitivities that might have been in play in a plantation environment as opposed to a reforestation environment?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Well, no.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Fourteen percent of the diversity is not in the trees.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Yes, I heard your questions to Ms. Arnold earlier.

There is no question that here in Canada, with all of the natural forests we have, we have a different playing field to deal with, and I don't think we want to change that fact. I don't think we want to duplicate what the Europeans did 400 years ago and obliterate all the natural forests and lose not just the biodiversity, but all the other values and economic benefits that having our forests as they are allow us. But it places a higher burden on us in terms of the biodiversity components of the FSC principles and criteria, because there are values there that we have that under FSC we're obliged to protect.

I don't think that's in conflict with what we expect of ourselves. All it is doing is providing us with an avenue to not only prove that we're doing it through an independent audit, but also to benefit from it in the marketplace. So ultimately it's to our advantage if we make it work.

The Chair: Mr. Horswill, let's suppose that's exactly where everybody's at. Let's suppose for a moment that everybody is in principle exactly on the same page. Because of the mere fact that you acknowledge that there would be a greater burden imposed on those countries—and in this case, Canada, because of the character of its forests—have we not taken into consideration the international market impact of that additional burden, if for no other reason than to think in terms of the realism or the realities associated with complying with the 10 principles and the 56 standards?

• 1320

Mr. Marty Horswill: First, we aren't the only country with natural forests. Brazil and many others have similar obligations. But we're also all different, and it plays itself out in different ways.

The Chair: I realize that. Please forgive me if I don't fall into the trap of everybody else is doing it. I want to get a sense so that I can appreciate what it is industry is looking at and what the certification processes aim to accomplish while at the same time ensuring that the competitive advantages—or the competitiveness, period—of Canadian products is maintained.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Obviously the industry is very concerned about it. It all focuses within the FSC system on what is referred to in our jargon as “harmonization”, and that's the requirement that all regional standard-setting processes look at other standards in adjacent ecosystems and even further afield and be able to explain why there are differences, where there are differences.

The Chair: But you haven't reduced that to a dollar value or calculation.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Obviously only the individual companies with their given piece of ground and their particular cost structures and so on can actually make that calculation. We certainly don't have the resources to do it under any way, shape, or form.

Perhaps the province of British Columbia is trying to make such calculations in a general industry-wide way. I don't know. It probably would be prudent to do so, but we don't have the resources to do that.

The Chair: Mr. Horswill, with due respect, your organization and others have established a series of principles and standards that must be met in order to arrive at the certification. In order to arrive at those principles and standards you will have had to have expended a certain amount of energy that translates into a dollar value somewhere down the line, but you will have already brought all the resources into place in order to establish those, and one is tempted to say very well too.

But you've also in that process recognized that in a particular context the ability of the industry to meet those standards is much easier than it is in a different context, in another context, the Canadian context.

Assuming that the willingness of the industry in the Canadian context is equal to the willingness of those in a plantation environment, the measure of the burden is much different in the Canadian environment from what it would be in a plantation environment. But you tell me that you haven't had the opportunity to assess, even in a ballpark concept, what the impact would be on the Canadian environment. I find that a little difficult to absorb, simply because you've been so very thorough in everything else. Is it unfair of me to...?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Thank you for the compliment.

The Chair: But you have been very thorough, so I'm wondering in that thoroughness why you would not also have included the consideration associated with commercializing that thoroughness.

Mr. Marty Horswill: All I can say is that it's probably an impossibly complex task you're asking, because—

The Chair: Let me interrupt you, Mr. Horswill. This is what the chairman does. He has a certain prerogative, and the prerogative is that he really wants the answer.

I very much want to take a position here, but if it's unfair to expect that of you, is it equally unfair to expect that of industry?

Mr. Marty Horswill: I think industry understands that it has to deal in the marketplace out there, whatever the marketplace is. The fact is that things like FSC certification are having the impact of altering the nature of the market, and the industry is adjusting to those changes.

• 1325

The Chair: Then are you also in agreement with the previous testimony, which said that in addition to having people adjust to the marketplace, you are establishing a different market?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Oh, yes. When it was founded, when the concept was developed in the early nineties, the fundamental purpose of FSC was to create an effective economic incentive for good forest management in the marketplace. That's what it's all about.

The Chair: That's where I think we have a little bit of a problem. If you're going to establish an economic incentive, you have to take into consideration all the economic inputs. The fact that someone is so thorough yet would not have considered the economic inputs leaves me at a little bit of a loss.

Mr. Marty Horswill: I think the founders of FSC were confident that the nature of the free market, which is to adjust and respond to the demands in the marketplace, would work this all out. Indeed, it is doing so.

Sure, it's not easy. If I were the person responsible for selling products into the European market for a Canadian forest company today, gosh, everything's changing. It's not like it was ten years ago at all. But markets come and markets go. There are all kinds of reasons for why markets change. In this case, the reason is independent, third-party certification, but I think we'll adjust to it quite successfully. I can't tell you what—

The Chair: There's that word “think” again.

Mr. Marty Horswill: —the precise dollar figure for any one company will be, but they're going to figure it out fast.

The Chair: Okay, I don't want to absorb all of the time. We've already gone past our time, but Mr. Godin and Mr. Chatters both wanted to add brief comments.

Mr. Godin.

Mr. Yvon Godin: First, I need to raise a question to raise my second question, but it is very short. Do those documents come from the FSC?

Mr. Marcello Levy: Some of them do, some—

The Chair: Just a second. For the record, just so that we know, it's the pamphlet that was presented during the last intervention.

Mr. Marcello Levy: That's the only one produced by FSC Canada.

Mr. Yvon Godin: FSC?

Mr. Marcello Levy: This one has FSC on it, but I believe it's FSC U.S.

The Chair: No, those are the ones that were on the table during FSC's maritime region presentation. They're on a glossy background, in both official languages. There are two of them, and they're fold-overs.

Mr. Marcello Levy: Right, and the other one is produced by the Falls Brook Centre. That's FSC Canada.

The Chair: And the two-page yellow document is yours?

Mr. Marcello Levy: Yes.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Yvon Godin: Well, there's just a question of curiosity that I have.

The Chair: Certainly.

Mr. Yvon Godin: It's based on what you believe in, what you think should be done, and your involvement. I don't feel this is done on recycled paper. If I'm getting it right, that kind of goes against all your beliefs about what should happen in forestry.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Ideally, we'd print it on FSC-certified paper, but there's none available—

Mr. Yvon Godin: No, but recycled exists, though. Normally there's a logo on it. I don't want to make an issue of it, but I just want to know your feelings about that. If it's your document and it's not on recycled paper, and if you are very strong on ecology and the environment and that, how can you explain that?

Mr. Marty Horswill: Point taken.

Mr. Yvon Godin: Point taken? Thank you. That's all I have.

The Chair: Mr. Chatters.

Mr. David Chatters: I have a couple of things. I have a little trouble with what is, at least in my impression, the fairness of this whole process we're going through, because you are creating an international market that's sensitive to certification. You are deliberately doing that very effectively through a system of boycotts on the consumer end of the chain. You are applying standards to the Canadian forest industry, which is being portrayed in Europe and in the United States as the bad guys in this.

• 1330

You're imposing standards on the Canadian forest industry that the European forest industry could never meet, yet the European forests are certified and Canadian forests can't seem to reach or haven't seemed to be able to reach that certification. If you applied the same standards of biodiversity to the European forests that you're imposing on Canadian forests, the European forests could never meet that certification standard. I can't see how that is fair or how that's a level playing field, this arbitrary standard set at a different level in different parts of the world by environmentalists, essentially.

My other question is how could you ever make this certification standard work on volume-based tenure in British Columbia?

The Chair: Mr. Levy.

Mr. Marcello Levy: On the first part of the question, the FSC has at least three legs: the environmental, the social, and the economic circumstances. So to hinge only on the requirements for biodiversity alone, without the context of the history, without the context of the cultural aspects of what happened in Europe 500 years ago, is—

Mr. David Chatters: But if you're going to allow that flexibility in the standards at the forestry end, you'd better allow some flexibility at the market end, and you're not doing that. You have one international marketplace that you're working in and applying your standard to.

Mr. Marcello Levy: Yes, and I appreciate the difficulties of this, because what the FSC is trying to do is, on one hand, really respect the local circumstances of each forest in the world, while at the same time trying to bring those together to a global market. I understand the inherent difficulties in doing that, but that's what the FSC is trying to do.

The FSC, as Marty said before, has in place a harmonization process, which doesn't mean things are going to be easier, but through the harmonization process what we try to do is precisely to understand the differences among the standards at the national and international level.

We conduct our harmonization processes within our regions in Canada, and Canada will meet next week. We are meeting in Europe precisely to deal with some of these issues around harmonizing our standards, what the standards mean in Sweden for Swedish companies and for Sweden as a whole, and what the standards mean in Canada. We are trying to understand that.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Levy.

Mr. David Chatters: There's still the volume-based tenure question.

Mr. Marty Horswill: Volume-based is a serious problem, and I think the government in British Columbia is quite aware of that. They have set up a certification advisory committee. They have two representatives on our standards development team, so they are fully aware of everything that's being discussed and can take that back to government.

I believe the province recognizes that it has to make some changes in the tenure system in order to accommodate the realities of certification, and it will do that. We're not going to develop a standard that says you can't get certified in volume-based. We're going to develop a standard that says, across the board, this is what you need to be able to demonstrate to get certified. If you can demonstrate that from a volume-based tenure, that's fine, but the difficulty is that FSC requires long-term management responsibility on the land, and under volume-based tenure it's really the crown that has that responsibility.

There are two ways around it. One would be for the crown to be party to the certification application; therefore the crown makes the commitment to the long-term management plan involved, or the nature of the tenure changes to an area-based one. But I think the government, in British Columbia, at any rate, is well aware that changes have to come and is preparing for them.

The Chair: Mr. Provenzano, I'll give you the last question.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Performance-based certification standards have the potential to impact negatively the capacity to supply. I don't think there's much argument about that. We have a situation in Canada where that negative impact could be very real, where you have forestry practices that in effect are no different from growing carrots; it just takes longer. Trees are grown like carrots and harvested at a point in time.

• 1335

The ability or the potential to affect the supply capacity is a lot less. You can implement the same performance standards, but the ability to affect a supply capacity of that type of forestry is unaffected, essentially. So again we look at a situation where there seems to be a discriminatory effect on implementing performance-based standards on Canadian forests when you look at it from the supply side.

Mr. Marty Horswill: It depends what performance is around. I think there's a misunderstanding about plantation certification, generally. Plantations under FSC have to meet all the other criteria of FSC certification as well as those of principle 10, which speaks specifically to plantations.

Plantation operations have to take remedial measures to restore biodiversity on their lands if they're going to stay certified. So the requirement, the reality, is that a single-species carrot approach to plantation management won't meet the FSC standard. They have to diversify.

In the Swedish case, if you read the Swedish standards, not only do they have to restore the biodiversity to their forest management practices, but they also have to restore 5% of their lands into as close to a natural state as they can achieve through the limits of science, of what we know.

We won't have that requirement in Canada. There won't be any.... Well, perhaps in the Maritimes, if what I heard here today is true, that there's no natural forest left in the Maritimes, presumably they'll have a restoration requirement. But in B.C. we won't have any restoration requirements. We have lots of natural forest. We just have to make sure we protect it adequately.

The Chair: Mr. Horswill and Mr. Levy, you've done yeoman's work. You've done a great job. Thank you very much for sharing your views with us.

Again, just like the other witness, I think we had a fairly good exchange. I don't know if anybody has convinced anybody, but it has been very helpful for us. We thank you very much for your patience and your forthrightness.

Thank you, members.

The meeting is adjourned to the call of the chair.