Crisis? What crisis?

by Riki Burkhardt

More logging is not the solution for northern communities’ economic woes.

In October 2005, high levels of E.coli were discovered in the drinking water on the remote northern reserve of the Kashechewan. Most of the town’s residents were airlifted out of their community in an attempt to avoid another Walkerton-style water tragedy. The incident highlighted the ongoing poverty and health issues common to many remote First Nations communities in Ontario. The following month, Minister of Natural Resources and Aboriginal Affairs David

Ramsay responded to the emergency by recommending that commercial logging be permitted in the boreal forest north of the current cutline. According to the minister, this would bring the needed economic relief to First Nations communities located there. This announcement came as a surprise, given the numerous reports in the media on the crisis in the forestry industry – a crisis that has had a direct impact on many resource-dependent towns across northern Ontario.

According to the government’s May 2005 Forest Sector Competitiveness Report, 12 mills in the north are at risk of closure. The loss of these facilities will reduce employment in this region by 7,500 jobs directly and 17,500 jobs indirectly.

Contributing to the crisis are a rising Canadian dollar, falling commodity prices and escalating energy costs. Northern

Ontario has already been battered by mill closures. A total of 2,200 jobs have been lost over the past two years in towns like Terrace Bay, Kenora, Thunder Bay and Red Rock. Despite all this, Minister Ramsay is now suggesting that increasing logging in the north will help solve the economic crisis many northern Ontario Aboriginal communities face.

There is no question that many remote First Nations communities contending with poverty, suicides and a chronically high level of unemployment are looking for solutions. The provincial government, in turn, appears poised to roll the same old forestry-based economic model north into the remaining portion of intact boreal forest. Accompanying the staggering job losses, a recent CIBC World Markets Report confirms that mills in eight northern Ontario towns have a “meaningful probability of closure,” even after the provincial government announced its $330 million dollar industry aid package in September 2005.

Clearly, Ontario’s approach to creating economic stability in the northern half of the province is not working and its proforestry strategy seems ill-conceived. The price paid will be high: the degradation, if this strategy is not approached with the utmost caution, of one of the world’s few remaining great forest ecosystems and social upheaval for northern communities. Ontario’s existing Timber Class Environmental Assessment (EA) sets out the legally binding framework for forestry in Ontario. It does not allow for commercial logging north of approximately the 51st parallel, nor was it developed with consideration for the fragility of Ontario’s far northern forests. The Ministry of Natural Resources

(MNR) must secure approvals from Ministry of Environment before allowing any forestry development to occur in this area. Given the global significance of the boreal forest ecosystem, a precautionary approach would involve undertaking a new Timber Class EA that would include a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and social impacts of large-scale logging. A new Timber Class EA would help identify critical measures needed to minimize any negative impacts on communities, wildlife, water and forest health.

In the meantime, however, MNR is considering how to bypass a full public review, which is normally a standard part of the EA process. Instead, MNR may ask Cabinet to approve a declaration order. If granted, the order would expedite logging by limiting the application of the Environmental Assessment Act and essentially rubber stamping the approval of new timber harvesting and forestry roads. This approach rejects a critical opportunity for Ontario to change how forestry is done and who benefits from it. For First Nations communities anxious to undertake new economic opportunities, legally binding environmental safeguards would be well worth the wait to ensure world-class forestry opportunities.

Nationally, the boreal region compares with South America’s Amazon rain forest in terms of its global ecological importance. It is a storehouse for biodiversity and a counterbalance for the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. In Ontario, logging, and associated road building,  have had a devastating impact on woodland caribou and other species at risk across the province. Ontario has the information, the experience and the resources to do things right. We have a collective responsibility to ensure that future development in the northern boreal forest does not deplete our natural capital, but instead sustains communities, wildlife and clean water for generations to come.

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Riki Burkhardt is the protected areas coordinator for Ontario Nature.