Cascades shutting down paper machine at Thunder Bay, cutting 150 jobs

09:48 PM EDT Aug 23
ANDREW DAVIDSON / CBC

TORONTO (CP) - Cascades Inc. is shutting down a fine-papers machine at its Thunder Bay, Ont., operations and cutting about 150 jobs in the latest blow to Canada's beleaguered pulp and paper industry.

Some of the work will be transferred to other plants within the firm's fine-papers group, Kingsey Falls, Que.-based Cascades (TSX:CAS) said Tuesday. "In spite of sustained efforts over the past few years to improve profitability, this plant has continued to incur major financial losses," the company said.

"Non-competitive operating costs, high energy costs in Ontario and the appreciation of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S dollar are the main factors which have adversely affected the performance of the Thunder Bay operations."

The firm also cited "unfavourable market conditions prevailing in the pulp and paper industry."

Observers say Cascade's streamlining move will not be the last in the industry as mills across Ontario and Eastern Canada feel the brunt of escalating input costs, including energy.

"Unfortunately, it's my sense that more closures are going to come," forest products analyst Frederic Beausoleil of National Bank (TSX:NA) said in an interview.

"Ontario is somewhat more current because energy prices are very high. You're going to see some closures in Quebec, where fibre costs are quite high as well, but northern Ontario is where it's most critical in the near term."

Last week, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said the province is considering creating a special fund to help the forestry sector in northern Ontario to attract new investment and reduce energy costs, which analyst Beausoleil sees as a sign of hope for mills potentially slated for closure.

"If I were operating a pulp and paper mill in Ontario today and it was just on the verge of being profitable in the longer term, I would probably hold off on a decision to close it today just to wait to see what the government will be telling me," he said.

In the streamlining effort, Cascades said it expects to take a pre-tax charge of about $9 million during the second half of 2005, nearly $2 million of which is non-cash.

"What they're doing today is likely to make the mill at least cash-flow positive next year," Beausoleil said.

The high Canadian dollar has forced pulp and paper companies to pay more to produce, while receiving less for finished products. High energy costs, which have increased 10-fold in recent years, have crippled pulp and paper producers feeling the impact of shrinking demand, overcapacity and a shortage of wood.

Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. (TSX:A) announced last month it will close one paper machine in Kenora, Ont., and indefinitely idle a second one Oct. 22.

Between 150 and 200 of the current 350 employees at the Kenora site are expected to lose their jobs permanently, with most of the remaining 150 facing unemployment if the second machine is idled as planned. The company closed its Port Alfred, Ont., mill in January.

Tembec Inc. (TSX:TBC) has said it will close four paper and lumber mills in Quebec and Ontario, in addition to three mills already mothballed this year. Earlier this month, Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. said it will close three North American containerboard mills. (*)

It's time to stop playing softwood charades

By JEFFREY SIMPSON
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 Page A13 / GLOBE AND MAIL

Canada has no serious option but trade retaliation against the United States.

The Americans have acted outrageously and illegally in the softwood lumber file. They have harried Canadian exports, imposed illegal tariffs, and announced their intention to disregard a NAFTA panel ruling that called their actions to account. This insolence is really the last straw.

Doubt it? Then read the 68-page ruling of the so-called extraordinary challenge panel. It's dry, technical and devastating to the United States. It shows how spurious were the American complaints against the original NAFTA panel that ruled in Canada's favour.

What did it mean, that the panel ruled in Canada's favour? Quite simply, it meant that the U.S. had interpreted its own trade laws wrongly, and unfairly, in asserting that Canadian softwood lumber exports were causing "material injury" to U.S. interests.

So specious was the U.S. lumber interests' claim, and so gimpy was the U.S. International Trade Commission's reasoning in support of that claim, that the issue before the panel wasn't about actual "material injury."

Rather, the issue was whether injury might be done once the export restrictions that had been negotiated in a previous Canada-U.S. deal were lifted. It was a bit like saying someone might commit a crime because the beholder thought he looked suspicious.

David Wilkins, the new U.S. ambassador, counsels resumption of negotiations and lowering of rhetoric. U.S. ambassadors always say something similar: calm down, you Canadians, and let the law and cool heads prevail. After all, we're friends, and friends work these things out.

Except things don't work out this way. If an agreement is reached, it always mocks free trade in softwood lumber. It always tilts toward the U.S. lumber interests.

The U.S. interests have enough federal legislators in their pockets that they successfully twist U.S. policy. Legislators from states that don't produce much lumber couldn't care less.

The congressional system operates, in part, on log-rolling -- that is, a legislator remains silent or gives support for an issue of little concern in exchange for votes on issues of importance to his or her state.

The senators and members of the House of Representatives from Idaho, Montana, Georgia and a handful of other states run U.S. softwood lumber policy, or rather manipulate it to protect their lumber interests. Their decisive power is part of the increasingly obvious congressional influence over all aspects of U.S. trade policy.

No president will expend an iota of political capital to twist these legislators' arms over softwood lumber. He needs their votes on much more important national issues. And Canada just doesn't count. From Canada's perspective, the announced U.S. intention to disregard the NAFTA panel ruling strikes at the heart of the original bargain over bilateral free trade. The Canadian negotiators didn't get the binational panels they wanted, ones that could over-rule national decisions. They settled for second best: panels that could review if each country had correctly administered and interpreted its own trade laws.

It was all that the Canadians could extract from the Americans, but the modest agreement was sufficient enough for Brian Mulroney to sign off on the negotiations. The panels' purpose was precisely to stop U.S. political interests from perverting U.S. trade laws, as has happened repeatedly in the softwood lumber file.

The lumber interests have used every weapon in the traditional arsenal, but they are not finished yet. They are now arguing that elements of NAFTA are unconstitutional because they empower a panel other than an agency of the U.S. government to review American action.

These are the instincts of the heartland that reject supra-nationalism in all its forms, be it the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, Kyoto.

The lumber interests will make this legal argument before the appropriate U.S. courts, and they will continue to immobilize U.S. trade policy.

The best way for Canada to awaken at least a few U.S. legislators that their country is defying NAFTA and hurting another country is to draw up a list of selected U.S. exports that will be hit with retaliatory tariffs within a fixed period of time unless the U.S. changes its attitude.

Don't worry about Canadian consumers. Big tariffs on California wine, for example, will just shift our preference to domestic or other imported wines. The same goes for other kinds of products where alternatives are easily available.

The softwood charade has gone on long enough. Talk is fine, but it's also cheap when one side ignores the law.

jsimpson@globeandmail.ca

Value-added efforts should be focus of forestry: Green Party

Ontario Green Party leader Frank de Jong believes the province should be encouraging more value-added forestry practices rather than trying to prop up money losing primary mills.

By Peter James / Miner and News / Friday August 19, 2005

Ontario Green Party leader Frank de Jong believes the province should be encouraging more value-added forestry practices rather than trying to prop up money losing primary mills.

“Subsidies are not a good idea because it will encourage companies to continue non-economical and non-ecologically sustainable activity,” de Jong said.

He pointed to the mechanization of the forest sector and the years of job cuts in the industry as proof that the future of Northern Ontario doesn’t lie in the traditional primary production like newsprint and two by fours.

“Business as usual has to change,” he said.

De Jong said the benefits of labour intensive value-added production are two-fold. He said less trees will be used in the production of the finished products while jobs will stay in the north.

“I’d like to see more forest left alone and set aside from clearcutting,” de Jong said.

The Greens propose a radical tax-shifting strategy to encourage companies to use less natural resources, while employing more people in their processes. The Greens would increase stumpage fees and other charges to use trees and natural resources while at the same time lowering or eliminating personal and corporate income taxes.

“We want companies to be successful so we shouldn’t tax their profits,” he said.

By making it more advantageous for the forest companies to employ people rather than use a lot of fibre, de Jong said it would help stem the youth out-migration which is causing many communities in the north to see population declines.
It would take the tax-shifting strategies a number of years to become effective as existing companies and newcomers adjust to the market conditions. Money would have to be spent building new plants or retrofitting old ones.

In the meantime de Jong noted the government must take steps to help people affected by the spectre of large scale mill closures.

“There are short-term issues and there are long-term issues and you have to be sensitive to that,” he said.
De Jong said the province should focus any money it spends on forestry in helping companies become more innovative and to develop new technology for value-added production.

At the same time the Green Party said the government should encourage companies to build environmentally friendly power production facilities. De Jong said in some parts of the province that means more investment in wind power, while in Northern Ontario it can include more biomass co-generation plants. He said the power plants could be built off the grid to service the forest industry.

“It increases local reliability,” de Jong said.

Forests' Recreational Value Is Scaled Back

U.S. Lowers Estimate of GDP Contribution
By Juliet Eilperin / Washington Post Staff Writer / Monday, August 15, 2005; A03

Forest Service officials have scaled back their assessment of how much recreation on national forest land contributes to the American economy, concluding that these activities generate just a tenth of what the Clinton administration estimated.

Under President Clinton, the Forest Service projected that by 2000, recreation in U.S. forests would contribute nearly $111 billion to the nation's annual gross domestic product, or GDP. Bush administration officials, by contrast, have determined that in 2002 these activities generated about $11 billion.

Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System, said the revised numbers may spur the administration to shift some of its recreation dollars within the system but will not prompt it to downgrade activities such as hunting, fishing and wildlife-watching.

"It's just as valuable to us today as it was 10 years ago; we just have a better way of calculating it," Holtrop said in an interview. "We recognize recreation activity is an important program to the American people."

But critics of the administration said they fear that the new numbers, which were obtained from the nonprofit Natural Resources News Service, will be used to justify more logging and mining on national forests. Under the old estimates, recreation accounted for 85 percent of the system's contribution to the GDP, compared with extraction's 11 percent; under the new formula, recreation represents 59 percent.

"Would I expect anything different from the Bush administration? No," said Michael Francis, who directs the national forest program at the Wilderness Society, an advocacy group. "They will cook the books for whatever they want."

According to Forest Service strategic planner Ross Arnold, who developed the most recent estimates, earlier studies inflated the number of people visiting national forests and how much money they spent while they toured the area. In 1995, Clinton administration officials assumed there would be 800 million visits each year to national forests by 2000; current officials have determined that there were just over 200 million visits in 2002.

The Forest Service obtained the lower visitor numbers through its National Visitor Use Monitoring Program, which surveyed tourists in every national forest between 2000 and 2004, Arnold said. The agency also decided to peg spending associated with such visits at $46 a person, by basing it on how much visitors spent within 50 miles of a forest on a single day.

Greg Alward, another Forest Service planning staffer, said officials did not purposely inflate the earlier recreation numbers but were simply relying on rougher estimates. "They were the best available data at the time," he said.

American Forest Resource Council Vice President Christopher West, who represents Western sawmill operators and forest landowners, hailed the new estimates as a better assessment of the national forests' true economic worth.

"The bottom line for us is: There's value to all these resource uses," West said. "And as long as we compare them apples to apples, we can have responsible discussions about the national treasures."

The revised numbers come as an array of groups, including outdoor equipment and clothing suppliers and wildlife advocates, are touting the financial benefits that come from preserving recreation areas within the forest system.

Watchable Wildlife President James Mallman, whose nonprofit represents state and federal wildlife agencies, noted that in 2001 the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that birders and wildlife watchers spend $38 billion a year on equipment and travel. Last year, Fish and Wildlife officials concluded that wildlife and nature viewing had surpassed hunting and fishing in terms of the nation's top recreation activity.

"Often not developing an area is where the best economic gain can be, because that is what people want," Mallman said. He added that he was surprised by the Forest Service's new numbers, because "more people are going to national forests than ever before."

Holtrop said he did not question that forests are seeing an upsurge in visitors. "Empirically, we know that recreation use on national forests continues to rise," he said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Another pest threatens Ontario's trees

By Paul Choi / Canadian Press / Sunday, August 14, 2005

TORONTO -- As forest officials slowly manage to contain one invasive beetle species, another pesky bug continues to run roughshod over Ontario's trees.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the Asian long-horned beetle, a shiny black bug that feeds on hardwood trees, has been contained.

"The population hasn't grown over the year,'' says food agency spokesman Howard Stanley.

"In fact, these may be the remains of the original 2003 population.''

About 7,000 infected trees will be cut down in the Toronto area in an attempt to contain and eliminate the last remaining insects, a group of which was first found burrowing into area trees two years ago.

Stanley said he was optimistic the species could be eradicated from the province within the next several years.

But even as federal officials gain the upper hand on the Asian long-horned beetle, another beetle infestation threatens to spread out of the province.

"The ash borer has been more problematic,'' said Barry Lyons, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service.

"It's over a much wider area so we're really battling it on a number of fronts.''

Unlike the Asian long-horned beetle, which is localized in and around the Toronto area, the emerald ash borer has been spotted all over southwestern Ontario -- mainly around wooded areas in Windsor and Chatham.

The tiny green bug, which is originally from eastern Asia, is also threatening trees south of the border in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.

"In Ontario and areas in the (United States) the ash borer has probably killed millions of trees,'' said Lyons, who estimates about 12 million trees have been downed by the pest since its introduction to North America in 2002.

While there is no accurate monetary value attached to the loss, Lyons said the impact on the forestry industry and the environment has been huge.

"This particular insect is just an incredibly aggressive tree killer,'' he said.

According to the CFIA website, the ash borer does its main damage by burrowing into the trunks of ash trees, which are found in wooded areas and re-planted in cities for their aesthetic and environmental qualities.

After burrowing, the insect lays eggs in the bark which spawn larvae that eats away at the bark, disrupts movement of water and nutrients, and ultimately kills the tree.

Over the past year, the Canadian Forest Service and the food agency have been taking the same steps they've taken against the Asian long-horned beetle in the hopes of understanding the ash borer and slowing its spread, Lyons said.

"We're trying the whole arsenal of things that we've used on other insects and finding the most effective ones we'd use against the emerald ash borer,'' he said.

Introducing natural predators and removing infected trees are all solutions officials have tried with some success.

"Part of the problem with the emerald ash borer is that we don't have good detection tools,'' Lyons said.

"We don't have a lure that will attract it to a trap, so it's very difficult to know where exactly the insects are. And if you don't know where they are, it is very difficult to regulate the areas.''

Adding to the problem is the fact that the insect doesn't travel in large swarms, which makes them even harder to detect, Lyons said.

The good news, however, is that there have been no substantiated reports of either the Asian long-horned beetle or the emerald ash borer in the rest of Canada, he said.

But the potential that these two species could spread outside Ontario is definitely there.

"It has the potential to be a huge national problem,'' Lyons said. "If we don't do something now, then the problem will be out of hand and we'll lose some very valuable natural resources.''

To prevent further spreading of both insects, the CFIA has set up several regulated areas in affected zones to prevent people from transporting wood infected by the dangerous beetles, Stanley said.

Doing this is key, Lyons said, as both the ash borer and the long-horned beetle were likely first transported to North America after they burrowed into wooden shipping crates and packaging materials.

"The biggest problem with some of these wood-boring insects is that once they've become established some place, people inadvertently move wood material around, like firewood,'' he said. "This is how much of the spread occurs.'' (*)

ALHB: 7,000 trees to be cut ... to save trees

ALEJANDRO BUSTOS / STAFF REPORTER / TORONTO STAR

Approximately 7,000 trees will be cut down in Toronto and Vaughan in an attempt to stop the ongoing Asian long-horned beetle infestation.

The massive felling, which follows the removal of more than 16,000 trees over the past two years, is set to start Aug. 22 in three areas in Vaughan and one in Toronto.

"This is a very serious forest pest that poses a great risk to Canada's hardwood forests by killing a wide range of hardwood trees," said Howard Stanley, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. "The Asian long-horned beetle must be eradicated."

Stanley rejected suggestions the beetle infestation is expanding. "The population hasn't grown over the year. In fact, these may be the remains of the original 2003 population."

After living in a tree for about two years, the bluish-black beetle burrows out to mate. So, many of the recently spotted beetles may not be new insects but rather mature ones that emerged from trees that weren't previously cut, said Richard Ubbens, director of forestry for the City of Toronto.

When asked why some of the trees infested in 2003 had not been cut, he said, "It's not possible to find every tree (infected with beetle eggs) because the eggs are very hard to find."

To ensure that all trees that could become infested are removed this time, it will be necessary to cut down all host trees within 400 metres of one found with the beetles.

A host tree refers to any species — such as maple, willow, elm, birch and poplar — where the beetles can live.

Once the trees are removed, however, municipalities must pay to replace some of them.

It costs Vaughan about $350 to replace each tree on city streets, with the federal government covering $150.

Vaughan has so far replaced about 1,000 trees at a cost to the city of $200,000.

The trees that will be chopped down in Vaughan won't be replaced until the fall of 2006.

In contrast, the cost to replant in Toronto is $150 because the city uses trees with thinner trunks that make them easier to plant.

The three sites in Vaughan slated for tree removals are a cemetery near Steeles Ave. and Jane St.; a commercial area south of Highway 7, west of Weston Rd.; and a residential area north of Chancellor Dr., east of Ansley Grove Rd.

The Toronto site is in a predominantly residential area north of Finch Ave. and west of Jane St.

All the locations are within a "containment zone," where officials are keeping a close watch for the beetles.

A wider boundary outside the zone — from Highway 401 to Rutherford Rd. and Highway 27 to Dufferin St. — encompasses the "regulated area," where no wood products can be transported without a permit.(*)

Toll of the pine beetle

Source: TORONTO STAR

The mountain pine beetle is about the size of a grain of rice, usually between 3 and 7 millimetres in length, and lives for one year.

7 million: Number of hectares infested in B.C. — an area about the size of New Brunswick.

80 Percentage of trees in the infested region that are estimated to be dead by 2013. The beetle's favourite food is mature lodgepole pines.

$1 billion: Money needed to combat the bug infestation.

$250 million: Money committed to the fight ($150 million from the B.C. government, $100 million from the federal government).

$15 billion: Value of B.C. forest industry.

58,000: Potential industry job losses.

Source: B.C. government

Mountain Pine Beetle: Chewing through the forest

The mountain pine beetle infestation in British Columbia is growing, threatening the province's $15 billion timber industry and thousands of jobs, Daniel Girard reports

DANIEL GIRARD / WESTERN CANADA BUREAU / TORONTO STAR

PRINCE GEORGE, B.C.—At first glance, it's a spectacular Canadian snapshot worthy of a tourist brochure: brilliant fall colours against the backdrop of lush green countryside, a multitude of fresh, clear lakes and snow-capped mountain peaks.

Trouble is, it's not fall; it's summer.

The yellows, reds and greys of the trees are not a result of any change of the seasons but a sign of the destruction wrought by a pest ravaging the forests of British Columbia.

The colours represent the stages of deterioration of the dead trees that are victims of the largest infestation of mountain pine beetle ever seen. It now covers 7 million hectares — nearly the size of New Brunswick — or about 40 per cent of the forests in B.C.'s north-central region. By 2013, it's forecast to have killed 80 per cent of the area's pine trees, the most dominant species of commercially harvested wood in a $15 billion-a-year forest industry.

It's been called the biggest natural disaster in Canadian history.

"It's absolutely overwhelming," says Bob Clark, a former forest district manager who is the so-called beetle boss, B.C.'s point man on the epidemic.

"It's kind of like an eighth wonder of the world," Clark says during a recent flight over the hardest-hit area.

The beetle, which is about the size of a grain of rice, is endemic to the region. It destroys mature lodgepole pines — 60 years and older — by boring in, eating out the inner bark as it lays eggs, and introducing a fungus that impedes the water flow and dries out the tree.

Warm, dry springs and summers allowed the beetle to flourish in the late 1990s. Prolonged winter cold snaps — minus 40C for a week or more — which kill off the beetle have failed to materialize in recent years, as have sharp drops in temperature in the fall, when the insect has yet to build up its defences for the long cold season ahead.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that in the past 40 years forest fires have been fought much more effectively. That, and the more than threefold increase over the past century in mature pine forests in B.C., has increased the amount of habitat in which the beetle can thrive.

"There's no real way of stopping this," Clark says. "It's most likely we'll just have to let it play itself out."

The implications are enormous. B.C. has greatly increased the amount of timber that can be cut annually — to the chagrin of environmentalists — to make use of the wood before the bug renders it worthless. The result is that 60 years' worth of pine may be logged in the next 15.

While that has prompted a boom in activity in traditional sawmills as well as the development of new technologies to use the increased wood supply, it also raises huge economic and environmental concerns. Once all the affected trees are logged, forestry activity in some areas will be halved, raising the spectre of some 58,000 job losses, the devastation of forest-dependent communities and a sharp reduction in B.C.'s GDP.

More logging has some environmentalists raising concerns about the integrity of the region's ecosystem, and fewer mature trees means there's less foliage available to help Canada meet its obligations under the Kyoto climate change accord on greenhouse gases.

Earlier this summer, officials in Alberta said they were rushing to burn a couple of thousand infected trees in a provincial park in the northwestern part of the province before the pine beetles could spread. Specialists say if it continues to move east, the pest could hit the Jack pines of the boreal forest, which spans the width of the country.

"The fact is this is not just a B.C. problem, it's a Canadian one," Clark says. "This is like flesh-eating disease — it may be on your foot but that's attached to the rest of your body."

B.C. has pledged more than $150 million in the past year to fight the mountain pine beetle, including reforestation and softening the impacts on communities. It has also signed a $1.65 million agreement with Alberta to battle the spread of the bug at their boundary.

The federal government announced in March it was committing $100 million to the pine beetle fight, although B.C. Forests Minister Rich Coleman said earlier this month that was little more than a "down payment" and the province wants $1 billion over 10 years.

Geography professor Greg Halseth says while the pine beetle infestation is massive, will eventually result in job losses and threatens the survival of some communities, it's not going to wipe out the B.C. forest industry.

---------------------------------
`It's most likely we'll just have to let it play itself out'

Bob Clark, B.C.'s `beetle boss'
---------------------------------

"It's not about to become a past tense in our economy," says Halseth of the University of North British Columbia in Prince George, 800 kilometres north of Vancouver. "It's still going to be huge, but there are some serious questions that have to be answered about it."

At least two coalitions of communities in hard-hit north-central B.C. have recently formed to respond to the looming drop in timber supply. They hope to develop more diversity in the region long dominated by the forestry sector.

While most forecasts are that there will be significant job losses in the forest industry, the communities are at the early stages of trying to replace them. Along with looking at such things as mining and tourism, there are schemes to develop small businesses, enhance the education and training of residents and ensure key infrastructure is well maintained.

"We're very confident that we will still have a life after the beetle," says Len Fox, mayor of Vanderhoof, a town where about two-thirds of the population of 5,000 depends on forestry. "But we're also realistic and, if we start today, we've got 10 years to find solutions."

Fox, interim chair of one of the new coalitions, says in addition to working to retain its share of forestry jobs, the communities are also looking at the potential for oil and gas development, expanding agriculture and focusing more on tourism in the form of hunting, fishing and first nations heritage, he says.

"This has really given us a wake-up call," he says.

The mountain pine beetle kills a tree within weeks of first boring into it. But the wood remains structurally sound — and thus, commercially viable as lumber — for years after the beetle has moved on.

However, with so many trees being killed by the beetle, sawmills in the region are running at full tilt, saturating the market for lumber. With the amount harvested skyrocketing, there's a push to find more uses for it, a sort of use-it-or-lose mentality.

One company may build oriented strand board plants to press wood panels from the fibre of dead trees. Another is hoping to operate as many as four facilities that will turn the trees into pellets to fuel energy plants in Europe.

"We're not about to throw up our hands and walk away," says Doug Routledge of the Council of Forest Industries, which represents about 85 per cent of the production in B.C.'s Interior. "We will evolve and innovate as we always have in the past."

Technology is allowing mills to use dry and cracked trees that were once bypassed. More advanced planning and management lets firms determine the quality of the wood they are harvesting and even trade with other firms to ensure the right log gets to the right mill.

The simple equation, Routledge says, is that with proper forest management, lumber companies should be able to harvest a high percentage of the affected trees. And because the law requires those firms to replant what they log, that will result in the industry — and the communities and jobs it supports — rebounding more quickly than many expect.

Critics contend that since the province first announced its strategy to combat the pine beetle four years ago, forestry companies have enjoyed more relaxed environmental and planning guidelines and sharp cuts in the prices they pay to log trees on crown land.

Despite talk of solid environmental stewardship and community economic diversity, the B.C. Chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada says the result is the opposite — towns are becoming more dependent and the ecosystem will suffer from mass salvage.

Native leaders worry it's their communities that will not only suffer more in the long term, when the amount of logging is reduced, but also will not get in on the current boom.

Poverty among natives on and off reserves in the north-central region of B.C. has deepened amid chronic unemployment, substandard housing and social problems. At the same time, B.C. forest companies outperformed those in the rest of the world in 2004, posting a record $1.5 billion in profits despite the increased Canadian dollar, and the problems of the softwood lumber dispute and the mountain pine beetle outbreak.

"We've got an epidemic of poor Indians and they've got record profits," says Chief Larry Nooski of the Nadleh Whut'en Band about 120 kilometres west of Prince George. "We're tired of handouts and managing our poverty. We want fairness and equity."

In addition to getting more licences to log, Nooski says natives want to form partnerships with forest companies on new sawmills and more specialized plants that will benefit the firms but also provide jobs, skills training and a future for young natives in the area.

Bob Clark acknowledges B.C.'s battle against the pine beetle is lost. But he says that the fight to mitigate the economic and social pain it inflicts, among first nations and other communities, is only just beginning. And, he insists, that fight can be won.

"We shouldn't apologize for being aggressive," Clark says. "We have to do all we can to try to contain the damage that's being done and reduce the impact it causes on people.

"Those are battles that we can still win by throwing everything we have at it."(*)

Beetle battle boosted

JOANNA LAVOIE / 08/12/05 00:00:00 / Inside Toronto.ca Network

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and its many partners have stepped up the battle to eradicate the Asian long-horned beetle in northwest Toronto and York Region.
Yesterday, Howard Stanley, CFIA's beetle project officer announced last year's plan to remove all host trees with evident signs of infestation has now been expanded to include the removal of all potential host trees within 400 metres of an infested tree.

"We've made a change to remove all infested and susceptible trees within 400 metres of a host tree," said Stanley, noting the damaging forest pests have been found to burrow themselves deeply within Manitoba maple, birch, elm, hackberry, horse chestnut, mountain ash, poplar, sycamore, willow and silk trees.

The adult beetles then lay eggs, which grow into larvae and eventually exit the trees as beetles.

"This change will increase the effectiveness of the Asian long-horned beetle program."

Most recently, four new sites, three in Vaughan and one near the Jane-Finch corridor have been found to have Asian long-horned Beetle infestations.

Tree removal is set to begin Aug. 22 and is expected to last about six weeks. Property owners found to have infected trees on their lots will receive a "notice to dispose" prior to trees being removed.

Since Sept. 2003, 16,000 trees have been removed in the initiative and with the new steps, the CFIA said another 7,000 would be cut down by year's end.

"In this case removal is necessary to protect our urban and natural forests," added Stanley who asked the public to report any sightings of the large black-coloured beetle with white spots and any noticeable tree damage.

The beetles typically create dime-sized exit holes usually accompanied by coarse sawdust and small damaged areas on bark where the bugs lay eggs.

In April, the CFIA also discovered a small infestation in a residential area near Hwys. 400 and 407.

Richard Ubbens, the city's director of urban forestry, reports Thistletown, near Islington and Steeles avenues, seems to be free of the destructive pest for the time being.

"So far we haven't seen anything else there," said Ubbens, adding crews are still out surveying parts of northwest Toronto and York Region.

"Egg-laying sites can be extremely difficult to find. They can be the size of a fingernail impression on bark."

Toronto's urban forestry department has budgeted nearly $3 million of its $17.5 million operating budget to combat the problem.

"It represents a very significant percentage of our operation," added Ubbens.

For now, forestry teams will continue to inspect a 55-kilometre regulated area imposed by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which spans from Rutherford Road to Hwy. 401, Dufferin Street to Hwy. 27.

The order also forbids people from removing trees, logs, bark, wood chips from identified host trees and all firewood in the restricted area.

The CFIA hopes the problem will be eliminated within a few years and suspects the most recent beetle discoveries are remnants from 2003's infestation, not new cases.

"Eradication is still possible and it is our goal," said Stanley, noting landowners can apply for $300 to replace a felled tree on their property.

"Losing trees is not easy for any of us but it is the only means of stopping the spread."

The CFIA also intends to hold public information sessions about the ALHB in the weeks to come.

For more visit www.inspection.gc.ca or call 416-665-5055.

150,000 lightning strikes have Ontario burning

By SHANNON MONTGOMERY
Tuesday, August 9, 2005 Updated at 6:19 PM EDT
Canadian Press

Strafed by more than 150,000 lightning strikes in the space of five days, Ontario's tinder-dry forests were being ravaged by fire Tuesday as officials warned they may not have enough personnel on hand to keep the blazes under control.

There were 147 active forest fires in the province, 63 of which started Monday, and more than 1,500 firefighters on the ground in the battle — 207 of whom were on loan from the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and the western provinces.

The province has seen twice the number of fires this year as the 10-year average — but has managed through proactive firefighting to keep them smaller than normal, said Ontario Fire Information Officer Bob Thomas.

The problem isn't the number of fires, it's the number of firefighters, Thomas said.

“We don't have enough people to put people on all those fires,” he said Tuesday from his office in Sault Ste. Marie.

“We have fires burning with no staff on them.”

One hundred campers had to be evacuated Monday from the Big Water Lake Campground near Timmins when a nearby blaze got close enough to pose a serious threat.

The campground's owner, Marian Tremblay, said most of the campers have returned home, although a few were either staying with friends in the area or at nearby hotels.

Although the fire wasn't directly headed for the campground, erratic winds could have easily blown it off course, Mr. Thomas said.

David Ramsay, the province's Natural Resources Minister, said he's been keeping a close eye on the fire threat, which often depends more on the whims of Mother Nature than anything else.

“It's a big fire season, it's always a worry,” Mr. Ramsay said. “Especially when you've got weather coming through like we've had.”

But Mr. Ramsay said he's pleased with the way Ontario's firefighters have kept the fires under control so far — most notably new technology that allows the province to keep closer track of lightning strikes and deal with fires soon after they begin.

“I think that's why we've had some good success,” he said. Ontario has seen 43 per cent of the country's forest fires so far this year, but lost less than 2 per cent of the area burned across Canada, Mr. Ramsay added.

“We have a very rapid response.”

Some provinces, like British Columbia, won't be able to send any more help because they're dealing with their own fire problems.

The province has one fire out of control that's taking up a lot of resources, and they expect more blazes to crop up in the coming days, said Radha Fisher, B.C.'s provincial fire information officer.

“Our indication at this point is to not send anyone right away.”

All provincial firefighters are managed by a central agency in Winnipeg, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which monitors needs and surplus across Canada and sends crews accordingly. Ontario has asked for more help, but Mr. Thomas said he'd never ask a province to send people it needs at home.

Ontario's biggest fire is about 100 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, said Mr. Thomas, and it's 5,000 hectares in size. It's just one of 50 blazes that are burning out of control across the province, he said.

The fire that caused Big Water Lake Campground's evacuation, the only one so far to pose a danger to people, was being held steady Tuesday by firefighters, he added.

Forest fire researcher Tim Lynham of the federal Canadian Forest Service said Canada's fire situation has been about average so far this year.

In the past couple of years British Columbia has seen some massive fires, but Mr. Lynham said the pendulum this year has decided to swing over to Ontario and Quebec, both of which are dealing with bad fire seasons.

The rest of Canada has stayed relatively fire-free, he said.

Quebec has seen 800,000 hectares of forest consumed by fires this year, three times more than the 10-year average, said Mr. Lynham.

Mr. Ramsay said that last year Ontario sent firefighters across the country to help out British Columbia and Alberta, who are now repaying the favour.

“We all get our turn, when the weather fluctuates,” Mr. Ramsay said. “It's like a mutual aid system.”