The missing paragraph in the Crown forest.

• Author: Robinson, Dave
• Position: ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING - Crown Forest Sustainability Act

The Crown Forest Sustainability Act governs our forest economy. The Act is quite clear about its purpose: Northern forests are to be run for the benefit of the south.

The Act's stated purposes are to provide for the sustainability of Crown forests and to "meet social, economic and environmental needs of present and future generations." Sustainability is defined as health. In the Act, health is defined as "complexity" AND "providing for the needs of the people of Ontario." We have circled back to the people.

Since most of Ontario's people live in the south, the Act requires Minister Donna Cansfield to run the forests on behalf of the people of Toronto and its neighbouring cities. The communites of Northern Ontario are not mentioned in the Act. Cansfield doesn't have to worry about the sustainability of Northern communites. She doesn't actually have to listen, either, although she is earning a reputaion for listening carefully.

Donna Cansfield, Minister of Natural Resources

The current crisis was still over the next hill when the Act was brought in. There was more policy interest in Northern trees, than in Northern people in Northern Ontario.

What is needed now is one new paragraph in the Crown Forest Sustainability Act. The new paragraph will recognize that forest communities will have an important role in helping Ontario's boreal forest adapt to a new climate system. It will recognize that forest communities must be sustainable if the forests are to be sustainable. It will recognize that "providing for the needs of the people of Ontario" means managing the forests for value-added products, and gradually moving away from volume exports as the basis of the forest economy.

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The missing paragraph will say:

1. The purposes of this Act are to provide for the sustainability of Ontario's forest communites and the Crown forests that they depend on and are responsible for. In accordance with that objective, Crown forests are to be managed to meet the social, economic and environmental needs of present and future generations, to develop the capacity of the people of Ontario's forest communities to protect and use the forest and to gradualy shift the economic base from high-volume commodities to lower volume value-added production.

This small change recognizes the interdependence of the people and the forests of the boreal region. As the climate warms the forests will need help. Sustainable forests will depend on...