Forestry plan favours industry, not people

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/09/2020 (2032 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE way long-term, large-scale forest management planning is approved by the Pallister government is about to change — and not for the better.

In the spring of 2020, Manitoba’s minister of the environment and climate issued a mandate letter to the chair of the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission (CEC), which requested that the CEC provide the minister with a report that “reviews the existing approvals process for Forest Management Plans (FMP) in this province.”

In the terms of reference, issued by the minister to the CEC, it was very clear in whose interest this report should be focused, as the minister stated clearly that, “(t)he forest industry has raised concerns that the two approval processes for a FMP are duplicative and are not in line with the approval processes of other Canadian jurisdictions.”

This, despite the fact that there are a multitude of other users of our publicly owned forests, none more important than First Nations, who have specific Section 35 rights that are enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. These rights are directly affected, and probably adversely, when it comes to forest management planning in this province.

This forest-industry focus in this report is also reflected in the fact that CEC never once consulted with any organization or group that represents the interests of other users of our publicly owned forests.

The current broad-strokes approval process for long-term 20-year FMPs for forestry companies that hold forest management licence agreements to harvest trees on very large tracts of forested lands in this province — there are two such companies, Louisiana Pacific and Tolko Industry — is to prepare a 20-year FMP in accordance with the Manitoba Forestry Act.

This then gets approved via the Manitoba Environment Act, as a Class 2 development project. This so-called “two approvals process” acts as a check and balance mechanism for both the government department that manages our publicly owned forests and for the forest industry that harvests our public forest.

Given the length of time, the sheer volume and the area harvested over this 20-year period, these FMPs then undergo a full public panel review by the CEC.

All of this is about to change, based on the report prepared and submitted to the minister in May 2020, by the CEC — which, in my opinion, will only serve to reduce public and government oversight in the planning process, while saving both the government and the forest companies money in the approvals process stage.

This should come as no surprise, given that the Pallister government has made it very clear it wants less government and less government spending — as it has cut back government departmental spending at all levels since coming into power. This government’s preoccupation with instituting government austerity measures is to the direct detriment of people’s health and welfare and the protection of our province’s environment.

The new FMP regime being recommended to the minister by the CEC would see FMPs exempt from approval, as a Class 2 Development, under the Manitoba Environment Act, and approval of 20-year FMPs would be done through “ministerial agreements” that may or may not be legally binding or enshrined in legislation — and if so, it will be done at some future date.

I have had many problems with the current approval process for FMPs, mostly because there is far too much discretionary power given to the the director of environmental approval under the Manitoba Environment Act, and FMPs should have been designated as a Class 3 development to begin with under the act.

However, what is now being recommended by the CEC is a total regression, not a progression. If it were progress, it would provide for more public and government oversight to ensure our publicly owned forests in Manitoba are managed properly for all forest users, not just for the forest industry. It does not do this.

Finally, I am appalled, in this age of reconciliation, that there is not one word in this entire CEC document that mentions First Nations’ Section 35 rights and how these rights are dealt with in this new FMP regime, nor how these rights will be accommodated in the new proposed FMP approval process.

The changes proposed by the Pallister government regarding how it will manage and plan for our forests into the future are not in the interests of the vast majority of Manitobans. They should be opposed.

Don Sullivan is a landscape photographer, freelance writer and former director of the Boreal Forest Network. He has served as special adviser to the government of Manitoba on the Pimachiowin Aki UNESCO World Heritage site portfolio and is a research affiliate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Manitoba.