Harvesters brace for worst when forest management plans reviewed.

Alex Welch and his son Curtis of New Liskeard would have gone bankrupt if they had been making payments on their logging equipment during a recent work stoppage in the Temagami forest.

Luckily, they weren't. But, Welch is not sure about next time.

Welch and his son operate a small, independent harvesting contract operation in New Liskeard. Alex Welch has been cutting timber from the Temagami Forest Management Unit for 28 years. Every five years, when the forest management plan comes up for review, Welch braces for the worst.

Under Ontario's Environmental Assessment (EA) Act, it is possible to have a timber-class environmental assessment--required for all Crown timber land--"bumped up" from a class EA to a more thorough individual EA. Welch does not have a problem with these requests, but what bothers him is the fact that "bump-ups" require investigations, which can take anywhere from a couple of months to a year.

During that time, he cannot log. Small operators like Welch rely on a licence that limits their logging to one management unit--something that bigger licensees like Tembec and Domtar need not worry about.

If large forest harvesters are hit with a bump-up delay, they can simply shift their production to their other units.

Welch is the last remaining independent harvester in Temagami, he says. He sells his wood to local sawmills such as Grant Forest Products, the Elk Lake Sawmill and Goulard Lumber in Sturgeon Falls.

From March 2004 until the first week of August, Welch could not work in Temagami and he and his son had to take part-time jobs in the community to make ends meet.

The bump-up request for 2004 was eventually denied, although the minister set specific conditions for the management plan in the future. The worst aspect of the requests for harvesters, says Welch, is that, regardless of the outcome of the actual request, work must stop in the woods while the government investigates.

Bump-up requests, he says, also create tremendous uncertainty within the harvesting industry. Getting loans from the bank or other sources can be a challenge.

"Try to get a mortgage from a bank and tell them you don't know if you can make payments on the loan for six months out of the year and see how quickly you get approved." Welch says.

Welch's situation has not gone unnoticed by the Timiskaming Forest Alliance (TFA).

"The bigger guys have the flexibility to go to other units. Smaller operators don't have this ability," says Allan Foley, the managing director of the TFA. The TFA has been in discussions with other forest associations over the years about the issue. Their chief complaint is not with the process itself, they say, but with the delays that come with them.

"About nine out of 10 of these requests come on the 29th day. I don't know if it's a delay tactic they use," says Foley.

"The effects of these delays is massive. The writing of the forest management plan is a very onerous and time-consuming thing in itself," he says. The compiling of a forest management plan, along with public consultation and reviews, typically takes about three years.

Moreover, many of the bump-up delays cut down the level of fibre supply available to the industry. Given the existing wood supply shortage in Ontario, forest industry associations believe that action must be taken by both the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) as quickly as possible.

Jamie Lim is the president of the Ontario Forest Industries Association. She says her organization has recently met with MNR officials to discuss the issue. As early as March of this year, she says, she met with Gail Beggs, the assistant deputy minister of natural resources. Considering the industry pays over $26.3 billion in direct and indirect wages to Ontarians, Lym hopes the ministry will see the seriousness of the problem.

Foley says that the vast majority of the parties filing these bump-up requests tend to be urban-based environmental or conservation groups. One group, he says, that keeps popping up is Toronto-based Earthroots, formerly the Temagami Wilderness Society. According to officials within the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, anyone, including groups like Earthroots which are not directly impacted by the Temagami Forest, can file a bump-up request.

"The Environmental Assessment Act doesn't specify citizenship requirements to file a Part II bump-up request," says Edward Nayal, a project evaluator with the Ministry of the Environment.

Although the legislation does allow for broad standing to apply for a bump-up, Nayal says that the process is flexible enough to minimize the impact on harvesters and forest operators in the forest unit under dispute. The Minister of Environment, he says, evaluates each bump-up request on a case-by-case basis. After the final draft document of the revised forest management plan is completed, the public has up to 30 days to file a bump-up request or the plan goes ahead.

The minister then has to reply, usually within 45 to 60 days of filing. According to Don Farintosh, the area MNR forester for the Sudbury forest unit, bump-up request determinations rarely stay within these timelines. The delay occurs when the ministries evaluate the claim and make their determination.

The minister can either grant the request, deny it outright or deny it with conditions. The granting of bump-ups in Ontario is quite rare. The minister can also stop logging activity in only the area in question, so that logging can continue in other areas of the forest unit.

This was not the case for Alex Welch and his son. The whole unit was recently under investigation, which meant a moratorium on harvesting.

In the case of Temagami, Earthroots based its request on the management plan's recreational aspects. The group also pointed to repeated access violations happening throughout the forest unit.

MNR has indeed been reporting continued violations. Goulard Lumber of Sturgeon Falls, a licence-holder in the unit, was identified in an indepdent audit for violating access rules.

"The MNR is not willing to stop these access control violations," claims Victor Lorenz, forest campaigner with Earth-roots. Lorenz says forest companies and the public have been ignoring clear signage on roads for years. Earthroots, he says, opposed changes to forest regulations introduced under the previous Ontario government and members believe that a re-balancing of recreational and economic values needs to happen in Temagami. The presence of rare old-growth forest in Temagami, they contend, requires a stronger weighting on the environmental side.

However, Walsh is not buying it. He says there is plenty of time during the five-stage process of reviewing a forest management unit plan for resolution of conflicts. There is opportunity for "issues reconciliation" throughout the process, he claims. Beyond this process, all public stakeholders, he says, have opportunities during the three-year planning process.

The Ontario Crown Forest Sustainability Act, he says, already provides a very rigorous environmental assessment process. The Temagami unit has eight natural conservation areas and maintains buffer zones around conservation areas. Welch says harvesters must also act as "OPP officers in the woods" because they must record access violations to the MNR, a job he believes should not fall on his shoulders.

Some forest company operators are convinced that environmental groups are playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship with the MNR through bump-up requests.

"These people will not be satisfied until they turn 100 per cent of Northern Ontario into a park," says Aurele St. Jean, one of the owners of Temagami Forest Products. He says their decision to wait until the last minute to file these requests is a "delay tactic" and that they view a work stoppage as a victory. His company, which employs close to 100 area residents, was not operational when the recent bump-up request went through. He says his business would have been adversely affected by the delay because he draws about half of his wood from Temagami.

St. Jean and others believe that the bump-up request process needs to be reformed in order to weed out what they call "frivolous claims." Welch himself recommends that parties that fail to convince the MNR of the need for a bump-up be required to compensate logging operations for lost business. In the end, Welch says he just "wants to work" and he hopes the EA process becomes more flexible.

"There are many things I don't like that happen in the cities. You don't see me stopping these people from working at their jobs," he says, referring to environmental groups.

www.timfor.com

www.ofia.com

www.earthroots.org

www.mnr.gov.on.ca/MNR/

BY JOSEPH QUESNEL 

for Northern Ontario Business