Provincial News

  BC’s forestry industry operates under outdated policies and ideals, and the provincial government needs to get out of its own way to fix it, says a new report from the Provincial Forestry Advisory Council.

  That includes the government’s approach to reconciliation, and attempts to improve the industry while adhering to requirements set out in the provincial Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).

  “There is almost no situation in which the Province can make resource decisions unilaterally, without regard for aboriginal rights and claims,” says a section of the report written by Geoff Plant, former BC Attorney General. “One way or another, First Nations need to be included in resource decision-making.”

  That doesn’t mean First Nations get automatic veto power over forestry proposals.

  “It is important not to confuse meaningful inclusion with a requirement for consent,” he says. “The challenge for government is to discharge its obligation to ‘determine, recognize and respect aboriginal rights’ in a way that tends towards certainty, rather than uncertainty.”

  Plant says DRIPA legislation outlines a practical process for making decisions about forestry, but is open to abuse. Maintaining uncertainty around the full extent of rights and title could be used by decision-makers as “tactical leverage,” providing more benefits from stalling or delaying projects than from the certainty and stability of signed agreements.

  “The answer here is to propose agreements which are attractive enough to persuade Indigenous communities to prefer the certainty of agreement over the uncertainty of undetermined rights,” he says.

  With more than 200 Indian Act bands in BC potentially involved in forestry decisions, it will be necessary to “design decision making frameworks that can be used as templates” to streamline the process, he says.

  To that end, the Council recommends an area-based management approach for lands. That means instead of managing lands based on how much timber they can produce, lands will be managed by balancing the needs and wants of people who use them. To oversee these “Regional Forest Management Areas” new legislation will be required, and a single, accountable manager assigned to each area.  

  The report says the council is doing more research into other changes the industry needs. That includes ensuring mills and manufacturers have secure, predictable access to “outputs of area-based units” (fibre) without reverting to old “appurtenance” policies, which used to require timber harvested from public lands to be processed in the community where it was logged. The policy was discontinued in 2003.

  The council also wants to scrutinize and potentially rework BC’s stumpage system, which has been at the heart of the softwood lumber trade dispute between Canada and the USA, ongoing since 1982.

  The council says BC has a unique opportunity to address reconciliation issues and revitalize forestry at the same time, pointing out that more than three-quarters of forest and tree farm licences in the province are either overdue or up for renewal within the next five years.

  “We have a rare opportunity to renegotiate the social contract,” says the report. “This moment allows us to build on existing tenure diversification efforts, including the growth of Indigenous-held and community forest licences, and to create a more equitable and sustainable forest management system.”

  The council recommends one of the first steps this year should be to create a better system for managing forestry-related data,  overseen by an independent body, and buttressed by an updated inventory of the province’s forests. 

  Another recommendation for this year is to establish better management systems and plans to handle wildfires across the province.

  The full report is available here.