John Rustad has chosen Prince George as the site of his first public comments about the report of the Special Committee on Timber Supply.
Rustad, MLA for Nechako-Lakes, was chair of the all-parties committee of the Legislature that, since June, has been travelling the province gathering stakeholder input and studying the forestry crisis caused by the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Their report is due to be released Wednesday at 10 a.m. and Rustad will take questions on its content and recommendations at 10:30 a.m. from the northern capital.
"This is the central community for the area most significantly impacted by the pine beetle so it was appropriate, I thought, to make myself available in Prince George," he said. "The release of the report will be done by the Legislature, not by me or any other member of the committee. Each member of the committee could, if they so choose, do a similar thing to what I'm doing. Once it is deposited with the Legislative clerk's office, it is deemed to have been made public. I will be following that process, allowing time for people to read the report first."
The committee that authored the report was made up of six other MLAs under Rustad, three each from the NDP and BC Liberals. On Monday morning in Victoria they held their last meeting together, and produced a rare moment in Legislative committee history.
"The committee's internal vote was made on the report, and it was unanimous," Rustad said. "We all agreed on the content and the recommendations. I was talking to the clerk's office and of the four most recent resource-related reports of Legislative committees, going back at least 12 years, it is the only one to be unanimous."
Rustad said the committee could theoretically direct their recommendations towards government in general, a particular ministry, a Crown corporation, or the private sector. He would disclose nothing, prior to the report's release by the Legislature, about what this document contained.
"We have no power to enforce any of the recommendations, only make public suggestions based on our research and province-wide input," he said.
"It is likely the report will have recommendations directed towards the provincial government. We don't know for sure if any of the recommendations will impact our ministry or the role of the chief forester, we anticipate it might, but we will not prejudge the report," said a source with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. It may recommend anything between sweeping changes and doing nothing differently, but we will wait to see the specifics."
Many in the forest industry are expecting the report to be the first domino to fall, setting off a sequence of major changes in timber supply. The mountain pine beetle killed so much of the provincial forest - most of it in the central region - that some mills may not have enough timber supply in the coming years to remain open.
