Failing Grade
Leaked Forest document says MNR fumbled the ball
by Brit Griffin HighGrader Magazine May/June 2000
What was the impact on forest management of Tory downsizing? Not good, according to the conclusions of independent auditors who recently completed their review of two management units (Timiskaming and Mazinaw) in North-eastern Ontario.
Leaked excerpts of the 1999 forest audits paint a dismal picture of the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) bail-out of Crown land management in Timiskaming. The audits, done by kbm Forestry Consultants Inc. of Thunder Bay, cover the period 1994-1999. It was a time when the the newly elected Tories brought in a devastating round of cuts to northern MNR offices and then handed much of the responsibility for forest management over to the private sector.
A patchwork of industry-led management operations known as Sustainable Forest License holders (SFLs) were handed much of the work previously held by civil servants- planning, allocating cutting rights, monitoring forestry operations and regeneration of the Crown forests.
In the case of the Timiskaming Unit, 4 of the 5 year period of the audit was addressed to the work of the MNR. The last year of the audit examined how operational responsibility has been handled by the newly formed Timiskaming Forest Alliance (TFA). The TFA is the local SFL and is operated by the forestry stakeholders working on the Timiskaming Unit.
The audit commended the work of the TFA and the locally run Elk Lake Community Forest Project, but it raised numerous issues about the way the MNR handled its responsibilities during the downsizing.
The Executive Summary of the draft audit points to inconsistencies in reports, missing data and unreliable documentation.
MPP Shelly Martel, who released the leaked document, says she's not surprised by the findings. She points out that since the Tories took power in 1995, three MNR sub-offices in the district were shut down, and both staff and budget slashed to bare-bones operations.
"To me, it speaks to the significant cuts in budget and staff. It's had an incredible impact on the amount of work that individuals had to do. One person is now doing two or three or even four jobs. Under such circumstances, I do not believe that the MNR is able to serve as a steward of the province's resources."
Although the bulk of the criticism is aimed squarely at the MNR, it's still not great news for the SFL holders. Without proper documentation, the auditors have questioned the sustainability of the Timiskaming forest. This is not to say that the forests are in danger, but that without good records it is not possible to establish trends in forest growth and regeneration and this cuts to the heart of the sustainability issue.
Paul Fantin is a forester and planner with the TFA. He admits that the issue of sustainability could definitely hurt the efforts of his organization to build public confidence. "Even though it's not really our credibility that is questioned, but the credibility of past managers, people don't always make that distinction."

Surprise Release
Both industry and the government appear to have been caught off guard by the Martel's decision to release the leaked document. She maintains that the government has been stalling on releasing the reports and says the public has a right to know the effects of downsizing on forest management.
As yet, neither the 1998 or 99 audits have yet been tabled. In fact, says Martel, after the final draft of the Timiskaming audit was finished, the Conservative government asked the auditors to accept revised reports from it's forest managers. "The auditors themselves refer to the request to revise forest management plans as 'extraordinary'. That leads me to think that some attempt is being made to keep the criticism out of the public eye."
What is definitely being kept out of the public eye are local representatives of the MNR. All inquiries about the audit lead straight to Toronto and the office of MNR Communications honcho, Brian Blomme. Blomme downplays the sluggish time-line surrounding the release of the audits.
As Blomme sees it, there's no cause for a fuss - the overall track-record of the Tories and the MNR is fine. "We've tabled 14 audits since 1996 from other units, and they've all generally been managed sustainably."
If this is the case, what went wrong with the MNR's handling of the Timiskaming unit? Industry insiders say that during the MNR's quick retreat from forest management, offices were closed, boxes of files were misplaced or thrown out and staff turn-over was very high.
This meant that the incoming SFL operations were left scrambling to get a handle on the status of the forest. It also means that the SFL operations are being stuck with the cost of correcting some of the MNR's mistakes.
Blomme hasn't made it clear whether or not the MNR knows where the missing documents are and whether or not the government will foot the bill for accumulating data they should have had in the first place.
Blomme says the matter is now under discussion and that the MNR "recognizes their responsibilities from previous involvement."

Behind the Eight Ball
Al Foley, the general manager of the TFA, says that that TFA realized from the beginning it wasn't being given much grace time to get used to its new responsibilities.
"We were inheriting a land-base, and we knew that there were liabilities out there. We had to know what they were. So in essence we did our own unofficial audit."
Paul Fantin agrees. "We couldn't afford to wait for someone else to come in and tell us what the problems are. We were pretty aggressive in identifying where the flaws were and fixing them." Fantin says that tree planting operations jumped from one million trees a year under the MNR to eight million a year under the TFA.
Al Foley points out that while the auditors were frustrated by the lack of documentation, they were generally impressed by the state of the forest.
"They were fairly critical but one of the things they said was that from just simply flying over this district you can literally see the good forestry that's been done here."
The TFA is confident that it's only going to get better. As Foley points out, under the new arrangement, there is money in place to pay for regeneration, something the MNR never had. Under the old system, stumpage fees were tossed into the main government coffers. Now any monies generated from forest management are tied to regeneration.
Foley says the TFA is proud of the work they are doing in forest management. But he does admit that the audit will cast a shadow on his operations.
Area loggers are very sensitive to the impact the MNR's poor paper work can have on local operations. A 1996 court challenge by environmental groups targeted the MNR's failure to complete its forestry manual on time. The court challenge raised the spectre of the possible closure of mills in the region until the manuals were complete.
Industry insiders say they were caught in the crossfire of the fight between the MNR and environmental groups. In the resulting fall-out of the court challenge, industry was pegged as the apparent bad guys in the forest. It's a role they definitely don't want to be left playing again.

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