Friday, July 31, 2020, Afternoon — Committee A
I reject the narrative and the premise that this is a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants style of management. It's not. An economic analysis was conducted. Of course the member might not like it, but the engagement was deep, thorough and long on the coast forest sector revitalization process. I know sometimes the member and his colleagues ask for immediate action, and then they turn around and say: "We need more engagement." Well, in this case, we engaged thoroughly, especially with industry on our plans and asked them and canvassed them for their ideas around how to revitalize the coast sector from the point of view that we're all in this together. We expected some of the responses from industry to be self-serving. Obviously, each company has to look after their own bottom line, but we were also encouraging them to make suggestions that would benefit the whole of the sector, because this is the new world. We have to understand that we're all swimming in the same water. We got those responses. We did economic analysis on our fee-in-lieu, which is not pulled back. The economic based fee-in-lieu is implemented with B.C. Timber Sales. The deferral is to other licensees. So our analysis of our fee-in-lieu policy was shared. The economics were shared with industry. The member is right. We've refined the fibre recovery zones based on data we're getting. We requested, right away, economic information from companies that would allow us to be precise in our application of the fibre recovery zones. That was requested in April 2019 at the COFI convention. As I already said, we had to wait a long time for industry to get back to us. In fact, it was until November 2019 that the data was forthcoming. We're still waiting for further data, but we also engaged additional resources outside the ministry to help us model the fibre recovery zone. So these aren't indications of flying by the seat of our pants. These are serious economic initiatives and serious analysis. We understand the implications need to be well thought out before we put these policies in place, and that's what we've done. These are serious economic initiatives and serious analyses. We understand the implications need to be well-thought-out before we put these policies in place, and that's what we've done.
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