Forestry would instead be managed by 100 regional structures
Maybe it’s fitting British Columbia’s latest forestry report was released on Groundhog Day. After all, it’s roughly the 60th review touching forestry policy since the BC NDP took power in 2017, sending the sector into a never-ending time loop of study-upon-study.
Monday’s latest, co-authored by veteran foresters Garry Merkel and Shannon Janzen, goes down as one of the most ambitious efforts. Even if it may be destined to languish on the same dusty shelf alongside what Merkel himself called “a zillion reviews” of the past.
The difference, this time, is that the review has the political heft of the BC Greens, who got a commitment from the BC NDP to commission the work as part of last year’s confidence agreement.
“It’s absolutely true that when we started down this path, folks said, ‘Rob, another report?” said Green MLA Rob Botterell. “But I think what we saw… yeah we’ve got lots of reports, but we’re still stuck. We’re not getting places. And we’re not getting the solutions.”
The final Provincial Forest Advisory Council report sketches out a plan to move B.C. from a volume-based forestry system, guided by things like the Timber Supply Review and the Annual Allowable Cut, into a new framework for Regional Forest Management Areas where the local community decides which trees to cut and which to preserve, while looking to the long-term sustainability of the land base.
The goal is to remove governments from decision-making, and put people who are actually affected by what’s done to their local forests in the driver’s seat, said Merkel.
“You need stable direction, and we just can’t get that in four to 12 year political cycles and continuously shifting mandates,” he said.
Forestry policy is ‘like a tiramisu’
Merkel, himself an author of previous government reviews on old growth, described the current forest policy as a core that dates back to 1912 upon which are layers of partially-finished, abandoned, reversed and forgotten policy changes from decades of political leaders.
The entire thing is “like a tiramisu with many layers that we don’t know what they are” all contributing to “a cake that doesn’t taste very good, built on a very weak foundation,” he said.
Two more recent examples include Premier David Eby’s forest landscape planning tables, which have produced one draft plan out of 15 tables in the last three years.
There’s also the NDP government’s temporary old growth deferrals, made five years ago as temporary measures, which have since become quasi-permanent but not integrated into wider forest planning.
The old growth deferrals were based upon a previous report Merkel produced, but he said Monday he’s not even sure the right old trees were protected because the work was never completed by Indigenous or industry groups. “It really is creating a lot of conflict and a lot of issues in industry,” he said.
“We’ve built a system on an era that no longer exists.”
Shannon Janzen
Janzen, a former vice president and chief forester at Western Forest Products, said forestry has suffered under a tremendous amount of external pressures.
“If you’re going to sum it up, why we’re here today is decades in the making, is that we’ve built a system on an era that no longer exists,” she said. “And that’s fundamentally where we sit.”
Forestry decision-making would be outside BC government
The council’s 10 recommendations are intended to inject more certainty into the sector, said Merkel.
They begin by creating a high-quality public database of all public plans using LiDAR laser technology, so that government, companies, environmental groups and Indigenous nations aren’t all using different data on what trees are where.
From there, the panel wants independent bodies to manage data, evaluate high-value old-growth, and oversee the sector’s transition, free from political interference.
As many as 100 Regional Forest Management Areas would move decision-making on forestry outside of government and into regional structures, each with dynamic spatial management plans rather than decades-long timer supply reviews that are based on past conditions, according to the report.
BC Timber Sales, already the subject of government reforms, would be modernized into a more efficient timber pricing system as part of the regional structures.
Reconciliation will guide the work
The co-authors said Indigenous reconciliation pathways would guide the work, based upon legal advice given by former attorney general Geoff Plant, who has defended the Declaration of Indigenous Rights of Peoples Act (DRIPA) and the BC NDP’s reconciliation efforts.
One of the recommendations is “collaboration with First Nations to design governance structures that respect Indigenous Rights and Title,” which likely means joint or consent-based decision-making on forest management to align with the NDP’s interpretation of DRIPA and the principles of UNDRIP.
Uncertainty caused by government’s reconciliation policies is one of the problems the forest sector has cited in recent years, as well as a lack of economic fibre for both sawmills and pulp mills. American tariffs have also played a major role.
No industry representatives were included on the Provincial Forest Advisory Council to help prepare the report.
“We appreciate the goals of long-term stability and predictability, as well as the need for regional decision making,” said Kim Haakstad, President & CEO of the BC Council of Forest Industries, who said she’ll be reviewing the report in detail in the coming days.
“It is clear the status quo is not working, and strengthening B.C.’s forest sector is a shared priority.”
“It’s clear the status quo is not working.”
Kim Haakstad
The Truck Loggers Association said it “supports the overall direction of the report and its recommendations, including the shift from volume- to area-based management.”
Opposition Conservative forestry critic Ward Stamer said the report does nothing to immediately stabalize the sector and protect jobs.
Forests Minister Ravi Parmer said he’ll take the report to cabinet, but did not commit to enacting any of the recommendations specifically.
It’s time to interrupt the cycle, says forester
For Merkel, who has spent his career in forestry, there has to be a move to break the industry’s cycle.
“I think of this a lot, maybe, like the cod fishery, we’ll just keep doing it until we run out, and then we’ve got to shut it down forever,” he said. “That’s the kind of situation we face.
“And yeah, we could just decide, okay we’ll take care of all these short-term things and get re-elected again, and make a bunch of friends and kick it down the road to the next party.
“Sooner or later somebody’s got to do this. We just cannot keep kicking this can down this road.”