NRGO Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES AND GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESSOURCES NATURELLES ET DES OPÉRATIONS GOUVERNEMENTALES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, March 21, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton—Lawrence, Lib.)): Colleagues, thank you very much for your patience. I know some of you went to the East Block, and I tried to play the good shepherd; I came out there to get the rest of you. I hope you appreciate the altruistic motive on my part.

Mr. Werner Schmidt (Kelowna, Ref.): Who made the mistake? We or they?

The Chair: Anyway, I brought some of those errant sheep back with me and we're prepared to begin. I make my apologies to Monsieur Jean-Pierre Kiekens, who is the executive director and editor of Forest Certification Watch.

Mr. Kiekens, I apologize for the tardiness.

We are meeting pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a study of Canadian forest management practices as an international trade issue.

Mr. Kiekens, welcome to our committee. I understand you have not had occasion to put a written brief together for us. That's not essential. But I advise colleagues they shouldn't be looking for paper, they should be listening.

Mr. Kiekens, our approach has been to give our witnesses roughly 10 minutes to state a case, a position, and points, and then to engage in dialogue. I hope that's okay with you as well.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens (Editor, Forest Certification Watch; and Executive Director, Sustainable Forestry & Certification Watch): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would really appreciate having some extra time. The topic I will cover is pretty wide and difficult, I would say.

The Chair: How much time do you think you'll need, Mr. Kiekens?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: I would suggest 20 minutes to complete the presentation.

The Chair: That's not a problem for us; it just means there will be less time for questions and answers. So you can use the time as you like, Mr. Kiekens. If you wish to engage colleagues in a dialogue, then you can follow my initial advice. If you wish to make a case that you think is important for our consideration, follow the other one. I'll not interrupt you—I may, on occasion, but I won't cut you short.

I think my colleagues are in agreement. Thank you very much.

Okay, Mr. Kiekens. Please go ahead.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

Mr. Chairman, honourable members of the committee, it is a distinct pleasure for me to be here today.

[English]

It's a real honour for me to be with you today. I will start my presentation in French and follow in English.

[Translation]

Forest resource management and international trade are topics very much in the news these days. Last Friday, the Vancouver Sun reported that the German paper manufacturer Haindl Papier was poised to cancel a contract worth $75 million rather than risk losing its own magazine and newspaper clients. According to the article, potential contract losses in Germany alone could total $600 million. This German company is demanding that an agreement be reached between environmental groups and BC industries during negotiations disclosed last week in the Canadian press. According to some estimates, an agreement of this kind could result in the loss of hundreds of jobs in British Columbia.

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As you know, Europe is not the only region where market access problems have been noted. While there is talk of doing away with quantitative restrictions arising from the Canada-US agreement on softwood lumber, non-tariff trade barriers are being introduced with respect to wood production methods. Home Depot Vice President Suzanne Apple had this to say to the Globe and Mail on January 22 last, and I quote:

[English]

Canada has a history of bad harvesting practices.... “We don't want to do business with people who don't want to move forward with us”.

[Translation]

Other corporations such as IKEA international, Wickes Lumber and HomeBase have also announced plans to restrict their supply of wood to certain sources where wood production methods are deemed acceptable. Canada seems to be the targeted victim of these various policies.

My presentation will cover four themes: Canadian and international experiences in forest certification; certification and trade implications; certification and international organizations; and certification and consumer information. I want to make it very clear to you today that I am speaking personally, as someone who has observed this problem on an international level.

In terms of our experience with forest certification, typically in Canada, there are three certification standards: the ISO, CSA and the FSC, or Forest Stewardship Council standard. In your analysis, it's critical that you not limit yourself to these three options, and I'd like to explain why.

First of all, a fourth option, a certification system developed by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative in the US and spearheaded by the US forestry and paper association, seems to have caught the eye of a number of Canadian companies, particularly in New Brunswick.

Secondly, in so far as private, non-industrial timber owners are concerned, two North American initiatives,

[English]

American tree farm system and green tag forestry

[Translation]

appear to present some interesting features, for Quebec as well as for the Maritime provinces where there are a relatively large number of non-industrial timber owners.

Two interesting experiments were conducted in Europe, one in Finland and the other in Great Britain. Finland instituted a national certification system. Today, 14 million hectares of forest in the country are certified, making Finland the country with the largest tracts of certified forests in the world. Furthermore, the system was developed with a view to integrating small timber lot owners. Interestingly enough, the Finnish system has gained some market recognition. Last summer, the B&Q chain in Great Britain recognized the Finnish system, just as it has recognized the FSC. Such recognition has not been forthcoming in the case of the Canadian system.

The other noteworthy example in Europe is the British UK Woodland Assurance Scheme which is probably the only national system endorsed by environmental groups. The world Wide Fund for Nature, a staunch advocate of the FSC system, praised the British option as a new model when it was launched in June of 1999. The British UK Woodland Assurance Scheme is a national standard developed by a working group aided and presided over by the UK Forestry Commission. It is recognized by the FSC, whereas recognition of the Pan European Forest Certification Scheme is still an ongoing process.

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Therefore, as you can see, there are more than three options to consider in Canada's case, as well as a number of interesting forest certification experiments conducted elsewhere in the world. These should inspire you to recommend relevant action plans, at the national, and eventually, the international level as well.

It should also be noted that unlike the Finnish and British standards, the Canadian national standard has been embraced by only a small segment of the Canadian forest industry. It is important to analyze the reasons for this low acceptance level.

Regarding the second theme, namely trade issues, as I indicated in my opening statement, we are encountering a growing number of obstacles to the trade of forest products in terms of production methods, in North America as well as in Europe.

A recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations underscored the extent of the problem, and I quote:

[English]

Although many proponents argue that certification is not a trade restrictive practice, it seems to have many of the characteristics of one. In fact this is to a degree the very goal that the approach is trying to achieve—to encourage consumers to discriminate in favour of certain products (and therefore against others).

[Translation]

Two types of measures have been identified: government measures and private measures. While government measures are particularly interesting, notably those instituted by the government of the Netherlands, I will limit my focus to private measures. Admittedly, these are more difficult to comprehend and sometimes leave me a little perplexed.

In the United States, Home Depot decided to adopt a forest certification system after groups such as Rainforest Action Network staged demonstrations in front of its retail outlets. Home Depot has announced that until further notice, it would endorse the FSC certification system, the only system deemed acceptable by Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, the World Wide Fund for Nature and others, all of which are members of the Forest Stewardship Council.

Other corporations have been threatened with boycotts by various environmental groups who are now pushing to have Home Depot's competitors, and more recently the US construction industry, adopt the FSC certification system. Of course, pressure isn't the only factor prompting these corporations to join so- called buyers groups, such as the Certified Forest Products Council in the United States, or to set down timber purchasing policies. However, this would appear to be a major factor nonetheless, unlike price premiums which are negligible in this sector.

Many corporations in Europe have joined buying groups organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature to stave off similar pressure from environmental groups. Regardless of the merit they may have, alternative certification systems, notably the ISO and CSA, have not been able to compete strongly on markets with the FSC. The options I've just described also fall into this category, in particular the Canadian CSA system, although many observers consider it to be a rather stringent system.

However, other observers such as Simon Bryceson, who was formerly with the public relations firm of Burson-Marsteller, have concluded that regardless of the attractive features of alternative systems, the supremacy of FSC certification is probably inevitable, in spite of the many problems associated with this system. These include the recent controversy surrounding the regional FSC standard in the Maritime provinces and the defection of J.D. Irving, the owner of the largest tract of FCS certified forest in Canada.

Personally, I'm perplexed by this state of affairs. I urge you to carefully consider the trade implications of forest certification and to ask yourselves if the practices that I have just described are truly acceptable from a commercial standpoint. Are they acceptable to Canada and to its trade partners, particularly the United States?

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Let us move now to the next theme, certification and international organizations.

[English]

Let me now turn to English and analyse with you the behaviour of some international organizations in relation to certification.

To analyse this behaviour, it is worth noting first the official international consensus among countries on certification as it emerged from the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests recently. The forum notes—and I quote—these conclusions:

IFF recognized the potential role of voluntary certification of forest management and labelling of forest products as among the potential tools in promoting sustainable forest management and differentiating forest products and services in the market. However, more practical experience is necessary to reach conclusions on the effectiveness of such programmes. Moreover, unsuitable design or non-transparent application of such schemes may in some cases lead to unjustified obstacles to market access.

Two international organizations of which Canada is a member appear to be acting in a manner that seems unrelated to this consensus: the Commission for Environmental Cooperation under NAFTA and, more importantly, the World Bank. Regarding CEC, it has financed several certification projects with taxpayers' money, but all these projects have focused on the FSC system, while I think it would be suitable for CEC, were it to decide to be involved in this area, to also cover systems such as ISO 14000, sustainable forestry initiatives, CSA, the American tree farm system, and green tag forestry.

More important is probably the alliance that the World Bank concluded with the World Wide Fund for Nature in 1997. The agreement was apparently a decision of the bank president, James Wolfensohn, and it appears that the board was not even consulted. The World Bank and WWF have set a joint objective to have 200 million hectares of forest under independent certification by 2005.

While WWF is a strong promoter of FSC, the bank's official position is not to promote one system over another. But in practice this alliance seems to promote FSC much more than any other system. In a May 1999 report, the World Bank-WWF alliance announced that at least 25 million hectares of forest around the world were meeting their requirements. There was some hope that the bank would then explain which certification system was meeting the requirements, which forests were on the list, but the bank has, to date, declined to provide information as to where these 25 million hectares of forest meeting its criteria were located and under which scheme they were certified.

Also to be mentioned is the financing by the World Bank of an organization called Forest Trends. The organization is an emanation of the World Bank and the World Resources Institute, itself a strong FSC promoter. Again, it appears that Forest Trends, which is financed by the World Bank and a private foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, is favouring the FSC system over the other approaches to forest certification.

As in the case of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the World Bank seems to overly advantage one certification system against the others. The bank, in some of its joint reports with WWF, also suggests that activities such as bioscopes buyers groups are to be lauded, while, as I mentioned earlier, they are considered by others—for example, FAO—as potentially detrimental trade-restrictive measures.

Another disturbing element is the fact that WWF is now suggesting to financial markets that FSC certification is an indicator of good financial performance, despite the existence of at least one example—some call it a scandal—demonstrating just the contrary. Again, the World Bank, through its alliance with WWF, is providing credibility to WWF's claims.

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All these elements merit, in my view, the attention of your standing committee and maybe other committees in the House. It is not an issue of only forest certification, trade, and forests, it is also an issue of governance of international organizations by their member countries and an issue of proper use of public funds.

Let me now turn to the final part of this presentation: certification and consumer information.

Certification, particularly the FSC system, the only scheme that currently has an operational labelling system for forest products, is presented by its advocates as a means to enhance consumer information. But not everybody agrees.

The Consumers' Association of Canada, in a position statement of August 1998, states that none of the certification systems operating in the Canadian marketplace can support their results adequately to make a product claim at this time.

Regarding the FSC, the Consumers' Association of Canada stated:

The FSC labeling program falls short of our requirements for a credible program. Most importantly, the program does not consider the life-cycle of the product. It leaves the door open for the shifting of environmental impacts from the forest to the distribution phase of the product...The FSC actually allows labels to be applied to products which have never been near an FSC forest, as it labels wood on an inventory base at the process level with no adequate chain of custody process...Probably the most important shortcoming of the FSC program is that it cannot adequately verify the claims it makes at this time.

Three major problems are identified from this consumer perspective: the labelling scheme is not based on the life cycle analysis, there is no guarantee that products bearing labels actually originate from forests that have been certified, and unverifiable claims are made regarding the merits of labelled forest products.

Despite these problems, FSC is deploying substantial efforts to achieve recognition of its logo in North America. This includes ads featuring public celebrities like Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Newton John in widely circulated magazines like People, Playboy, and Time Magazine.

The Pierce Brosnan ads include, for example, the following claim: that the FSC label guarantees that the forest the product came from is managed to protect clean water, wildlife habitat, and recreation. That claim appears to be misleading if one takes into account the analysis made by the Consumers' Association of Canada. Quite interestingly, the ads appeared as public service announcements, which means that the FSC didn't even have to pay for them, and it raises the question whether other certification initiatives like CSA would benefit from the same kind of generosity from U.S. publishers.

I have a question for you, as you are professional politicians. Just tell me, what is the public interest in all of this?

As you can see, certification is also a contentious issue when it comes to consumer information. The problems I mention are, for the time being, specific to the FSC system, but they may later emerge in the context of other certification initiatives, for example, the pan-European forest certification system. The impact of certification on consumer information is again an area that your standing committee and maybe other committees of the House may want to investigate.

Mr. Chairman, to conclude, yes, certification has become a central issue in this consideration surrounding forest management practices and international trade. Many present this issue as a private one—for the private sector. Let the private sector deal with that. But I think there are many public interest issues at stake, and I would suggest you really take into account these public interest issues properly by analysing the certification experience that can be observed in a variety of countries worldwide—I mentioned Finland and the U.K.—and seeing how these could help in improving the Canadian situation; by analysing the trade implications of certification, including the private measures taken by a variety of major corporations like Home Depot; by analysing the role of selected international organizations, particularly the World Bank, in the promotion of certification; and finally, by analysing the relevance of forest product certification for consumer information.

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Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Mr. Kiekens, thank you very much. I especially appreciate the concise manner of your presentation in both official languages.

I'm going to turn immediately to one of our colleagues. I think almost everyone has indicated they want to speak.

Mr. Schmidt.

Mr. Werner Schmidt: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much, Jean-Pierre, for your presentation. I thought it was very well organized and very easy to follow.

The question I have really centres around this whole business of certification and sound science. There are so many different systems you have identified here this morning, and I think accurately so. I think that's good. The difficulty I think we have, and the public interest we must be interested in, has to do with on what basis you determine one system as being superior to another. You've taken a real shot at the World Bank getting involved with the FSC system and seemingly preferring it to others, and there are a whole lot of other systems.

For me the big question is what criteria do I apply, looking at these various systems, that would give me a basis in sound science, not politics? We know this thing is shot through with politics. But what is the issue? What is the science involved that would actually allow me to certify a forest as being sustainable and managed properly?

The Chair: Well, Mr. Kiekens, this assumes of course that there are no politics in the certification process, but I look forward to your answer.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think one has to look at this issue on a medium-term basis at least, and if you look at this issue on a medium-term basis, there is no evidence whatsoever to say that one scheme is better than the other. I think that is actually reflected in the statement that was at least a conclusion of the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests.

There are some empirical studies that have emerged very recently. For example, there were interviews of corporations in Sweden that have embraced both ISO 14001 and FSC, and these corporations seem to suggest that both systems are useful to them. There is very little in the current situation to have any kind of judgment based on science on these issues.

Mr. Werner Schmidt: Well, if in fact it's not a science issue but primarily a political issue, if that's really what's going on here, then I have a very serious question, because it's not as if forests were invented yesterday. It's not as if harvesting forests was invented yesterday. These companies have been in operation for a long, long time. Management of forests has been going on for centuries in many countries, and this is not something that suddenly appeared.

So somewhere along the line somebody was satisfied with the management of forests, and somewhere along the line somebody said, no, we're not satisfied with this. Now, on what basis was the decision made, yes, we're satisfied; and on what basis was the decision made, no, we're not satisfied?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: That's a social issue, really a political issue, if you take why the forestry issue is so significant in B.C. and in other places it's less significant. I think it's just a result of the various groups that are present in society and the way they feel about the issue.

I have no good answer to your question.

Mr. Werner Schmidt: I can tell that. The issue is not a bit funny, with all due respect, because about 60% to 80% of the economy of British Columbia, for example, is forestry. This is not a small enterprise. It's a major revenue generator not only for British Columbia but for Canada. It's there for Quebec, and it's there for New Brunswick.

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The very fact that these boycotts are going on is a very serious impediment to the economic development of this country. When we mess around with these things and suggest they are something that people feel about something, it would appear to me that there has to be something a little bit more scientific than that. Somewhere along the line, there has to be some sort of arbiter who says where the plumb line is, that there is a measure we can apply that will be recognized by Finland, Japan, and other countries in the world. It's not some arbitrary thing, or that they feel this way about something.

Surely with all the experience you've had, with all the literature you've read, and clearly with the research you've done—and it is impressive—you must have something in there on which there can be a consensus and agreement about what does constitute sustainable, good forest management. There has to be something there somewhere.

The Chair: Mr. Kiekens, do you want to comment on that?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: I can't really add much to what I mentioned previously.

The Chair: Thank you. I imagine you'll probably want to come back, Mr. Schmidt.

Mr. St. Denis.

Mr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma—Manitoulin, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank Mr. Kiekens for being here. We've had a lot of good presentations, and I think his presentation is among the very best we've received on this subject. I think his fair and honest inability to answer to some of the excellent points that Werner has made speaks to the very political nature of the certification process.

If I understand his capacity as a professional watcher and student of these things, the tipping point—to use the new term for when it became a hidden issue and then became a public issue—goes right back to when it became possible to raise public funds to promote your own interests, as with the seal hunt. You go back to that point, because I think it's driven by money and the ability of some of these NGOs to raise money.

I will now come to my couple of questions, Mr. Chairman.

An hon. member: That wouldn't be a bad idea.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Thank you.

Some meetings ago, I asked Elizabeth May of the Sierra Club for a response to a question of mine. I asked her about the plethora, the great number of certification schemes around the world. Is it better to have a whole bunch of schemes, or to somehow, at some point in time, come to one scheme that is some kind of integrated scheme?

I will say that she surprised me with her answer when she said it's better to have a whole bunch of different schemes. There may be a good reason for that, but to me, intuitively, as Werner is suggesting, it would be better to have at some point in time—short, medium, or long term—one scheme for the world's forest countries, foresters, and forest companies to deal with.

That's my first question, and maybe I'll leave it at that. What do you think about that? What are the possibilities eventually to have one scheme, or is that even preferable?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: The proponents of the Forest Stewardship Council—the Sierra Club being kind of an exception—would typically argue that one needs just one global scheme with one single label so that you don't confuse the consumer, etc. That has been very much promoted. The other certification initiatives and the organizations behind them, whether they be forest owners in Europe or the industry in Canada, basically say we need a variety of schemes to avoid a monopoly, etc. I'm just observing this situation now, but the reality is that there are several schemes and they are not going to disappear. There are more and more coming. That's the reality.

Of course there are efforts toward the mutual recognition of schemes. One of the blueprints being considered is for basically each country to have a national scheme and then to have a system for mutual recognition amongst these schemes. There was even an attempt by the Australian Minister of Forestry, the Honourable Tuckey, to have some kind of governmental intervention so as to streamline and to have comparable schemes in a variety of countries. There are talks along these lines, because national schemes need a bit more than being national in order to compete on the global marketplace. These are the trends and they are not going to go away very rapidly.

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Think about the constituency behind these various schemes typically. For example, in Europe you have most of the forestry sector controlled by small forest owners. Pan-European forest certification is a scheme that has been created by the small forest owners, so that's one constituency. FSC, although it has opened to industry and social groups, was initially very much, and is still very much, controlled by environmental groups. And then you have ISO, which has more of an industry orientation. So this is a reflection of society in a sense, you see, or at least some segments of society.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Lebel.

Mr. Ghislain Lebel (Chambly, BQ): Mr. Kiekens, I'm not as knowledgeable about forestry as my colleagues, but I did tour a forestry operation in British Columbia as a member of a parliamentary delegation. We visited Lignum in Williams Lake and it was an absolutely fascinating experience.

As you know, the Americans lost the dispute over the lumber surtax and almost overnight, as if by magic, environmental groups arrived on the scene and threatened to boycott our products. Basically, aren't we being blackmailed to some extent by the US lumber industry? Isn't that what's really going on here? They didn't win under NAFTA, but they are going to stick us on the environment. Regardless of which standard they want to impose on our industry, they are always be trying to trip us up some way.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: I don't have all of the details, but I can tell you that there is a major difference between corporations like Home Depot that sell lumber and the US timber industry. Even the US industry is having problems meeting the new environmental requirements of Home Depot and its cohorts. One needs to understand that where certification is concerned, the Canadian and US lumber industries have a number of issues in common.

Mr. Ghislain Lebel: My question was somewhat more direct. I suspect that the US lumber industry is subsidizing or funding US environmental groups and that because they failed to get to us through NAFTA, they're trying to get to us on environmental issues. Would that be a fair assessment of the situation, or am I out in left field?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: I don't have all of the details and therefore I can't answer your question. I believe there is considerable information available as to who in fact funds environmental groups. Generally speaking, where certification is concerned, the funding comes primarily from private foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mac Arthur Foundation. Tracing the source of the funding is not that simple a matter, but I may be wrong. This is a rather murky area and there is no auditor general to look into this matter.

Mr. Ghislain Lebel: I have no further questions.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Provenzano.

[English]

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a lot of questions, so I'll try not to ask a question that in effect has already been answered.

You asked a question about what the public interest in the issue is. I would say we would have a very difficult time in responding to you right now. I don't think we could give a good answer. Part of the problem lies in the shared jurisdiction between the provinces and the federal government in forestry.

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You mentioned four points at the end of your presentation that I think really are germane to the whole exercise of how we fend off the kind of attack that environmentalists have successfully launched against the Canadian forestry market. I think there's a role for the federal government in that area, in fending off the attack. I think the four points that you mentioned certainly will allow the development of a strategy to do that.

There also must be a role for the federal government to play in terms of the development of the certification process. There are three standards currently being developed in Canada, as I understand things. The difficulty I have in answering your question about the public interest is the same difficulty I have in understanding the role of the federal government in the development of that certification process. Do we have a role? If we have a role, have we been playing it? Have we been playing it effectively if we're in the game at all? If we haven't, what do we have to do to come to the table and to be of assistance to the industry?

I see the federal government's jurisdiction as essentially residual here: here are areas where the Canadian forestry industry is under attack, and here are areas where it seems the federal government has a very definite role to play. But I don't think we're playing that role, so I'd just like your comments on that.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: It's certainly a difficult issue, and I really encourage you to do your thinking and to give pieces of advice to the government or maybe even to go toward legislation. It may be the case that I'm going to make a comment that is not too serious, you see, but this is a very confusing area, so maybe you need a clarity bill to make it a bit more palatable.

There have been concrete examples of government involvement. One concrete example is the U.K. The United Kingdom, through its forestry commission, has chaired very lengthy meetings to bring birth to a U.K. woodland assurance scheme. It's a kind of standard for its management. Now, that would obviously be a problem in Canada, because it's provincial jurisdiction, but maybe those are the kinds of experiences that you can have a look at to see how a role could be played.

Recently there has been a decision made by the Government of British Columbia to use a small grants program to have these kinds of studies and a pilot testing of the three certification programs: ISO, CSA and FSC. That is using public money. But there are several kinds of experiences from which you could draw to try to design a policy. I have not studied it sufficiently to make any kind of recommendation.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I have one more question, Mr. Chairman. Is that all right?

I have had the pleasurable opportunity of being able to tour some of the forests out on Vancouver Island. I've become familiar with some of the forestry practices of companies like MacMillan Bloedel and Lignum, and it seems to me that their current forestry practices are really not forestry management practices, they're ecosystem management practices. They start with what's living in the ground, and then they develop their harvesting plans based on all of this comprehensive ecosystem data.

Really, if you're going to manage the ecosystem and you're setting up a certification procedure, where do you go beyond that? Once you adopt a practice that in effect is ecosystem management, it goes beyond the forest. It goes to the ecosystem. Where do you go then? I'm just wondering. We differentiate our systems between performance-oriented and management or system-oriented programs, but I'm wondering when you look at some of the practices of the major companies, which in effect are about as close to ecosystem management practices...how do you characterize those and where do you go from there? It seems to be that we've attained a standard—and I could be dead wrong here—in our practices that would fit the strictest certification system right now.

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Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: I would like to say further that there is a land use issue at stake in B.C. I think officially about 12% of the land is fully protected, but one of the big requirements of the environmental groups in B.C. is to increase dramatically this amount of full protection, and that would of course prevent logging in many areas where logging is currently authorized.

If you look at the blueprint for eco-forestry, there are various approaches, but one of the blueprints has been developed by the Silva Forest Foundation in B.C. They made some studies and they came up with these reductions in the levels of harvesting of 70% to 80%, very dramatic reductions in harvesting.

So there is little agreement about what is eco-forestry, and probably if the view of these kinds of groups were to prevail, it would mean a much more important reduction in harvesting than what would prevail under current legislation.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Bélair.

[Translation]

Mr. Réginald Bélair (Timmins—James Bay, Lib.): Thank you for coming here this morning, Mr. Kiekens.

Clearly you are quite knowledgeable about the subject at hand. I've been a member of the Natural Resources Committee since I first arrived in the House of Commons 12 years ago. Eight or nine years ago, the committee called for the establishment of a pan-Canadian council of natural resources ministers to examine certification and sustainable development. Considerable efforts were made to address the issue of sustainable development and many improvements were introduced. However, it's another story on the certification front. Today, we must face the fact that we do not even have an agreement in place respecting national criteria which should govern our certification standards. Provincial and even regional disparities are so great that it is impossible to move forward. I'd appreciate hearing your views on the subject.

Secondly, if you have followed the progress of the Council of Ministers, do you have any additional recommendations to make to help us achieve national certification and take our vision to a global level?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: I may have to contradict you somewhat. Canada moved very quickly to develop a national certification system, even before the ISO 14000 standard was finalized. That's my first point.

Secondly, the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, or CCFM, established sustainable management criteria and indicators and these same criteria were incorporated into the Canadian system, the CSA. Canada is the only country in the world to have developed an accreditation system for forest certifiers and auditors. It relied fully on existing standards organizations such as the Standards Council of Canada.

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We're the only country in the world to have done this. No other system in the world is as advanced as ours. When the Canadian industry asked the Standards Council of Canada and the CSA to develop a certification system, the idea was to bring all stakeholders together and achieve a consensus on certification. To all intents and purposes, a consensus was not reached. I don't know the details, but I wasn't in Canada then. I did not follow these developments. Today, however, it's clear that a standard does exist and that it does contain all of the specifications you listed.

Mr. Réginald Bélair: Are the standards enforced, however?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: They are voluntary.

Mr. Réginald Bélair: There is a marked difference from one province to the next in the application process.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: It's a voluntary system. Two BC corporations have decided to adopt this system. Other corporations use ISO 140001, theoretically to move to the next stage, which is CSA certification.

Therefore, initially Canada was breaking new ground, but Finland and Great Britain have caught up with, and even surpassed us in terms of certified forest tracts and market acceptance of the system.

Mr. Réginald Bélair: My second question has to do with forestry operations in Third World countries. You just stated, and I agree in part with you, that some standards are respected in Canada.

However, we continue to compete with other countries that export forest products. Environmental standards are rather lax in Third World countries which are more interested in securing US dollars for development purposes. Is there something that Canada can do? I'm thinking here in particular about Brazil and about the harvesting and destruction of the Rain Forest in Brazil. What more should Canada be doing to convince Third World countries to adopt standards—maybe not as strict as our own Canadian standards—but standards nevertheless to protect forests?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: This is a very broad field. Somewhat paradoxically, you could say that I'm here today because of the problems with the world's tropical forests. In 1988, environmental groups lobbied the International Tropical Timber Organization extensively to institute a labelling system for tropical timber and only for tropical timber. The issue was also on the agenda in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio, where a predictable trend was noted. I wrote an article on this very subject in the FAO's forestry journal Unasylva in 1995. First of all, industrialized countries would be in a much better position to practise forest certification than developing countries, as would large forestry operations that manage large tracts of forest. This is somewhat paradoxical.

Initially, certification was largely viewed as a process that would help developing countries. However, it later became apparent that it created trade problems between the United States, Europe and Canada. I've observed this, and I do have some knowledge of tropical forests.

At present, virtually no tropical forests are certified. Some tracts of forests, in Africa for example, are certified on a temporary basis, with the certification later rescinded. Generally speaking, certification is the end result. One has to consider the conditions under which many corporations operate.

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You mentioned Brazil. There is one exceptional situation in the country which deserves to be brought to your attention.

Brazil is home to the Amazon rain forest. In the southern part of the country, an area cleared long ago of forests has been turned over to agriculture. One of the crops grown in Brazil is eucalyptus, which is used in the production of wood pulp. A number of American and Canadian corporations are interested in investing in this region because trees grow ten times faster there than they do up here. At least, eucalyptus trees grow ten times faster than the trees in Canada's temperate and boreal forests. Therefore, Brazil is poised to become a competitor of sorts. Some environmental groups argue that forests comprised entirely of eucalyptus trees are nothing more than green wastelands. However, these monoculture crops have no trouble getting ISO or FSC certification and truly compete with Canadian exports.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Monsieur Kiekens.

I want to caution colleagues that I have an urgent matter I must deal with before we lose quorum. Because there's an urgency for one of our colleagues, I'm going to ask Mr. Reed to be the last one.

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.): I'd like to follow along on Mr. Bélair's concerns about what he suggested is third world. Is Greenpeace campaigning in China? Are they campaigning in Indonesia? Are they campaigning in Papua New Guinea? Are they campaigning in Uganda? And is Home Depot buying teak?

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: One test country, in my view, is going to be Indonesia. As you know, Indonesia is a country with very serious deforestation, and it's also a major exporter of plywood. And there is plywood from Indonesia distributed by Home Depot, so we'll see if they cut the Canadian supplies first or the Indonesian supplies.

If you want to solve the forestry issues in Indonesia, this is a developing country with a rapid population growth, an economic growth potential that is very big and a very important share of domestic consumption, and there is no interest at all by the Indonesian consumer in having a green label. So the markets are not going to be a problem for uncertified forest products. So if you want to solve the issues of deforestation in Indonesia, you have to use other means than certification, for sure. So whatever Home Depot does is not going to change the situation there much. But it's a test country, for sure, because if they want to be coherent, they need to apply some similar rules between the various suppliers.

Mr. Julian Reed: The reason I say that is that I think some of us, and I certainly do, believe the environmental groups that push this issue pick and choose the countries where they can establish good money, where they can make money. And to take a full-page ad and show a clear-cut in Der Stern...the cards and letters just keep coming in. To me it represents hypocrisy of the first order. This is why I'm saying, what are they doing in these other countries? Are they pushing the agenda there? If they're not, it makes me very concerned that it's simply a money-making activity.

The Chair: Perhaps it's a question we might ask some of those organizations, Mr. Reed, but I think we're trying to get hold of some of them. However, it's a legitimate question, very valid, and I don't know whether Mr. Kiekens should be put on the spot even if he does know the answer.

Mr. Kiekens, thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us. As you can see, it's been well worth our while. I'm only disappointed, and I apologize for it, that we must rush you away. But I thank you, on behalf of all colleagues, for at least opening up our minds to this issue, at least on this aspect. Thank you very much.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Kiekens: You're welcome.

The Chair: I'll ask colleagues to stay behind for a very brief moment or two. I'd like to take care of a couple of routine items of business while we have quorum.

[Proceedings continue in camera]