Speech for the Community Forum on Tenure Reform in Ontario

By Daniel Sigouin – Economic Development Officer for Hearst Economic Development Corporation

HEARST October 3 2009 – I am speaking today not only as the Economic Development Officer but also as a resident who chose to live and invest in Hearst. I would like to share the concerns I have for the future of our community and to share some fundamental principles for a new tenure approach for the forest. What is currently taking place in Hearst and in other Northern communities is without precedent. We are experiencing a crisis in the forestry sector that persists, a crisis that started in 2003 but most importantly, a crisis that risk changing the landscape in northern Ontario forever. Luc Bouthillier says “IT WILL NEVER BE LIKE BEFORE”, and he is not the only one saying it. It is not a question of BOOM and BUST but unfortunately, many have yet to realise it. This crisis is structural, not cyclical but have we started to restructure in response to these changes? Well I believe a tenure reform is part of that restructuring process. Are we too late? Many people will say that it is never too late yet the most important question is, to what degree communities will be listened to or considered (ask Smooth Rock Falls)? Maybe it will be someone else who will decide which communities will survive and which ones will be eliminated. Can we take that chance?
Many say that Hearst is holding its own during this crisis. But are we really holding our own or living off an artificial economy? What I mean is; are we living off borrowed time? Are we living off the prosperity we generated in the past? Are we generating new wealth and prosperity in Hearst, for our community? We have to ask ourselves the right questions.
I will give you a concrete example. We are currently operating our mills at a loss and we have been for a few years now. We are not talking about thousands but rather of millions of dollars in losses. Every time you see a rail car or transport truck filled with lumber leaving our community, there is lost revenue attached to every container of wood. That is the community’s, businesses’ and workers’ money ... money that is lost to the community and most importantly money that could be invested differently.
When you eat at your capital, you impoverish yourself more and more. More importantly, it is the proof that our communities are not sustainable.
There exists much imbalance in the principles for sustainable communities. What is a sustainable community? Are communities in Northern Ontario Sustainable? Ask Smooth Rock Falls they will tell you, or ask Longlac, Marathon, White River, etc… Sustainability is a big word and one that is often overused and can have conflicting connotations. Sustainable Forest Management, sustainable agriculture, sustainable development, sustainable technologies…but what is a sustainable community?
It’s defined as achieving a healthy community and quality of life by addressing economic, environmental, and social issues through a long term integrated systems approach.
Economic issues include good jobs, good wages, stable businesses, appropriate technology development and implementation, business development, etc. If a community does not have a strong economy, then it cannot be healthy and sustainable over the long term.
From an environmental standpoint, a community can be sustainable over the long term only if it is not degrading its environment or using up resources. The impacts of climate change (warming is part of climate change) are pressing issues that also need to be addressed locally. Not only are they important challenges for our communities, but they can also provide important opportunities for the future, like carbon sequestration…the cap and trade issue.
A community must also address social issues. If a community has significant social problems such as serious crime and social inequities, it cannot be healthy and stable over the long term.
A major assumption of the sustainable community definition is that trying to address such issues in isolation, eventually ends up hurting some other part of the community's health.
Well tenure reform makes no exception… it has to be developed in an integrated manner. Tenure can influence all three pillars of sustainability. It’s not only about the size of the forest management unit, the method of wood allocation, the pricing and so on. It’s about considering who occupies the territory and who is living of it?
A tenure system ... regulates interactions between companies, communities, stakeholders and government while also determining who has authority and access.
The existing system is structured so as to ... expand on commodity production with the anticipation of offering larger returns for the province (Robinson 2008, Zhang & Pearse 1997) which has resulted in a system that primarily serves the primary commodity sector in pulp and paper and dimensional wood, sectors that have been in decline in the past decade.
Presently ... the tenure system has failed to provide a framework for the conversion of natural resources for economic development. Furthermore, the existing tenure system provides very little flexibility or capacity for communities and the forest industry to respond to changing markets and economic conditions as well as innovation in the forest sector.
Markets are shifting ... towards value-added products and environmental services. Nous sommes choyés parce que nous vivons dans une grande forêt en santé et qui offre un potentiel immense de services écologiques sur l’échelle internationale.
But where tenure change should be headed…to achieve sustainability in our communities?
• The economy is not only shaped by economic factors. Infrastructure and strategic planning go a long way to offer a stable and promising place for investments. However, until communities have access and have a form of decision-making authority on the forest, very little can be done in this regard.
• Decision-making capacity and access for communities in forest management is necessary to build sustainable and adaptive communities, businesses and forest sector.
Decentralized models such as community forests provide the principles necessary to a tenure system that allows for the necessary flexibility and control to respond to the changing landscape of the forest sector and world markets.
Finally, as a community, we owe ourselves to make a return to our core values that enabled the development of our regions and take root in our territory.
Northern Ontario is perceived as a resource base, only interesting because it can be extracted. We must counter this approach and repatriate our territory through a sustainable development process. Offer balance between the environment, the economy and the social. We also have to mend our ties with First Nations and Aboriginal peoples who were our first guides. They will help us restore our understanding of being part of the territory. We also need to restore principles of coexistence in order to build a stronger economy together.
The solution is not to do more of what brought us in this crisis.
The solution is to do things differently and to do things that will enable our community to prosper in the future.
We must accomplish this for the future of our children.

Merci,
Thank You
Meegwetch