Queen’s Park agrees to review forestry practices

Tannis Drysdale left Queen’s Park with a smile on her face last week as she finally got some agreement from the ministers of Natural Resources and Northern Development and Mines to review forestry practices.
“Any time you get forestry and environmentalists at the same table, it’s a very good thing,” said Drysdale, who also is the president of the Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce.
According to Drysdale, the guidelines to protect Crown land developed several years ago as part of the “Lands for Life” project have outlived their usefulness and need re-vamping.
The argument is two fold.
First, the guidelines affect upwards of 20 percent of the fibre in the management areas. The concern is that it is costly to the forestry industry and detrimental to the northern economy.
“The guidelines were developed for maximum protection,” said Drysdale. “No one looked at the economic impact.”^She likened the effect to having a one-gallon and 10-gallon fish tank.
Sure, the fish can survive in both, but what is rational.
“You have to look at how big the tank really should be and determine what’s rational and what’s not rational,” she argued.
Drysdale noted the ministers, along with representatives of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA), agreed to review the guidelines and look for opportunities to compromise.
Another issue dealt with in the meetings was to address an inequality in the interpretation of the guidelines by MNR biologists.
Drysdale said the guidelines aren’t always interpreted the same way from location to location since they are done by different biologists.
“In the past, there was no recourse [for the forester],” she noted. “The ministers agreed to set up an arbitration system.”^She added the foresters can go to the arbitration system if they feel the guidelines are “being interpreted incorrectly,” which she added will bring more uniformity to the industry.
The final order of business Drysdale pushed with the ministers last week was to begin thinking about long-term solutions for the economy in Northwestern Ontario, including diversifying the industry and providing for value-added products.
She wants the provincial government to consider cluster development.
“Right now, today, there really isn’t much the Government of Ontario can do to salvage the industry,” she admitted. “They can’t change the American economy nor the level of the Canadian dollar.”^But she explained that by diversifying the economy and starting value-added industries around the natural resource of forestry, the area would be able to tough it through bad times.
“You want to get to a point where if you have a bad year with the natural resource, it’s not so devastating,” Drysdale said. “It’s diversifying your economy away from your main product.”^She suggested developing other industries to support forestry, research and development, and promoting tourism could help to salvage the economy in Northwestern Ontario.
“If you can get the forestry industry interested in tourism, it’s a big step forward,” she remarked. “Start telling the real story of forestry. Tell an authentic tourist story.”