Tag Archives: OMNR

The Government of Ontario is building a new flight training centre for water bomber aircraft in Sault Ste. Marie.

The 6,700-square-foot (622-square-metre) facility will be the first of its kind in Ontario. It will hold a state-of-the-art flight training device that will simulate the sights, sounds and motions of the CL-415 water bomber aircraft used to fight forest fires in the province.

The building’s steel structure will be erected this summer and the flight training device will be installed in the fall. The facility is scheduled for completion by the 2013 fire season.

Ontario believes that the new centre will eliminate the need to send pilots out of Ontario for training, and will attract pilots from other areas to train and practise.

“This new facility will help us train our pilots, right here in Northern Ontario, on one of the most advanced flight simulators available. Our pilots will learn to deal with dangerous situations like severe weather and instrument failure while training to protect our families and communities.”

– Michael Gravelle, Ontario Minister of Natural Resources

Source: Government of Ontario

In August 2011, an Ontario Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Grassy Narrows First Nation (Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek), by deciding that the government of Ontario does not have the power to take away the rights in Treaty 3 by authorizing development including logging and mining.

The Ontario Court of Appeal is considering an appeal of Keewatin versus the Ministry of Natural Resources case. While that appeal is being considered, the government of Ontario has agreed to suspend logging north of the English River.

This legal battle has continued for 11 years. The Grassy Narrows First Nation feels it is likely the matter will be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Are clearcuts still planned for the Grassy Narrows area?

Grassy Narrows is concerned that the province still has plans to proceed with large clearcuts in the Treaty #3 community’s traditional territory. In December 2011, the new Whiskey Jack Long Term Management Direction (LTMD) was released, without any support from the Grassy Narrows community. In the LTMD, large clearcuts are called for in the community’s territory north and south of the English River over the next 10 years.

“The government is beginning to recognize that it is wrong to allow logging in our territory against our will,” said Grassy Narrows Chief Simon Fobister. “But Ontario continues to make plans behind our backs for destructive clearcut logging on the lands we have always used and cared for. This must stop.”

“This document was developed without our participation or consent, and entirely outside the good faith negotiations we have undertaken with MNR since the 2008 Process Agreement,” said Chief Simon Fobister. “It sets the stage for more clearcutting throughout our traditional lands, contrary to our Treaty and inherent rights. And we have not given our consent.”

The LTMD is part of a Forest Management Plan the Ministry of Natural Resources plans to put into effect on April 1.

Why is the Grassy Narrows First Nation so against clearcuts?

The Grassy Narrows First Nation has good reason to distrust pulp and paper companies as well as the province and federal government.

Back in the 1950′s, Ontario Hydro built two major dams at Ear Falls and Whitedog, causing significant and unpredictable fluctuations in water levels which affected wild rice beds, the habitat of fur-bearing animals and the local fishery for the Grassy Narrows’ people.

In the 1960′s the Canadian Government moved their community to a near-by area that was accessible by road, in order to provide the people with Governmental services. This included a school, which allowed the children of the Grassy Narrows to stay in their community, rather than being relocated to residential schools.

The people of the Grassy Narrows First Nation have long had issues with the lumber companies in their area dating back to 1970 when they experienced mercury poisoning from Dryden Chemical Company, a chloralkali process plant, located in Dryden, Ontario that supplied both sodium hydroxide and chlorine used in large amounts for bleaching paper during production for the Dryden Pulp and Paper Company. Dryden Chemical company discharged their effluent into the Wabigoon-English River system. An estimated 20,000 pounds of mercury entered the river system.

Due to the high level of mercury in the waterway, the Ontario provincial government initially told the First Nation communities to stop eating fish — their main source of protein — and closed down their commercial fishery. Closing of the commercial fishery meant economic disaster for the Native Reserve – the employment rate plummeted from 90% to 10%.

The Grassy Narrows First Nation received a settlement in 1985 (15 years after the poisoning) from the Canadian government and the Reed Paper Company that bought-out the Dryden Pulp and Paper Company and its sister-company Dryden Chemical Company, but the mercury was never removed from the water.

Until 2008, Grassy Narrows land was being logged by Weyerhaeuser and AbitibiBowater. That logging was opposed by the Grassy Narrows First Nation. On 2006 February 7, the Nation sent a cease and desist letter to Abitibi and Weyerhaeuser saying:

“For many years our people have suffered from a forced industrial invasion of our forest homeland. Our forests have sustained us for thousands of years, but industrial exploitation of these once rich forests, lakes and rivers has poisoned our waters with mercury and other toxins, nearly eliminating our ability to practice our way of life, and robbed us of economic opportunities. We are not consenting to the clear-cutting of our traditional lands, which is an assault on our culture, our way of life, and indeed our very existence. Leave us alone, let us use our land how we want to use it, let us feed our people how we want to feed them, and then our people will become strong again.”

On September 8, 2007, Ontario announced that it had agreed to begin discussions with Grassy Narrows First Nation on forestry-related issues. The Ontario government appointed former Federal Court of Canada Chief Justice Frank Iacobucci to lead these discussions. Iacobucci’s discussions with Grassy Narrows was to focus on, “sustainable forest management partnership models and other forestry-related matters, including harvesting methods, interim protection for traditional activities and economic development.”

On February 27, 2008, Boise Inc. released a statement that they would abide by the wishes of Chief Fobister and would no longer purchase wood from the Traditional Use Area of the Grassy Narrows First Nation.

“Addressing longstanding concerns raised by northwest Ontario’s Grassy Narrows First Nation, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and a coalition of allies, Boise Inc. has notified logging company AbitibiBowater that it will cease purchasing wood fiber logged from Grassy Narrows’ traditional territory in the Whiskey Jack Forest without the Indigenous community’s consent.”

In May, 2008, the Grassy Narrows First Nations signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Both parties were agreeing to engage in a process to find ways to protect and manage the community’s traditional lands. Grassy Narrows was optimistic about the beginning of this new relationship, but they were not yet ready to lift their moratorium on clear-cutting within their traditional territory.

Also in 2008, AbitibiBowater (now Resolute Forest Products) surrendered their harvesting license in the Grassy Narrows area.

Grassy Narrows first had their case heard in the Ontario Supreme Court in October, 2009. Their case was based on the treaty signed in 1873 that gave the First Nation hunting and trapping rights except on land that the federal government used. Grassy Narrows was asking the court to determine if that treaty authorized the province to log.

Dr. Masazumi Harada, a world renowned mercury poisoning specialist from Japan, has studied the impact of the 20,000 pounds of mercury the Dryden paper mill dumped into the Wabigoon River in the 1970′s. In 2010, he released his research showing that not only had the effects of the mercury poisoning not gone away, the health impacts of mercury poisoning in Grassy Narrows people are worse now than in the 1970′s. In 1975, Dr. Harada found mercury levels in some Grassy Narrows people were over 3 times the Health Canada limit, and levels were 7 times the limit were found in White Dog. When he visited again in 2002 and in 2004, 43% of his patients from 1975 were dead, including including every patient who had mercury levels above the Health Canada guidelines in 1975 (50 ppm). The mercury poisoning has resulted in high numbers of people with Minamata Disease. Symptoms include a loss of sensation in extremities, ataxia (loss of muscular coordination), tremors, impaired hearing, speech, and tunnel vision.

In April 2011, Grassy Narrows and the province of Ontario reaffirmed their commitment to working together by signing another memorandum of understanding that built upon the framework decided upon in 2008.

In August 2011, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice decided the Government of Ontario does not have the power to take away the rights in Treaty 3 by authorizing development including logging and mining.

Read more:
English River logging suspended during court battle (Free Grassy Narrows)
Logging banned as appeal considered (Chronicle Journal)
Large clearcuts planned for Grassy Narrows territory (Wawatay News Online)
Grassy Narrows Rejects MNR’s “Long Term Management Direction” for the Whiskey Jack Forest (Free Grassy Narrows)
Long-term study on the effects of mercury contamination on two indigenous communities in Canada (1975-2004) – Dr. Harada’s scientific report
Fact Sheet – Mercury Poisoning of the Grassy Narrows and White Dog Communities
Mercury Still Killing in Grassy Narrows (Press Release)
Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation (Wikipedia)

The government should do more to oversee private-sector forest companies to make sure they do an adequate job of successfully reforesting areas where timber has been harvested, Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter says in his 2011 Annual Report.

“The forest industry is an important employer and economic driver, particularly in the north,” McCarter said today following the release of the Report. “The government must make sure that forest management companies are adequately replanting and tending forests so they are renewed as a resource for future generations.”

McCarter added that such oversight “is especially critical given that forests take upwards of 70 years to re-grow so these companies have little immediate financial incentive to carry out appropriate reforestation activities.”

In 2009, overall employment in the forest industry was estimated at 166,000 jobs, and the value of its products at $12 billion. However, the industry has experienced a significant decline in recent years following the rise in value of the Canadian dollar and the economic downturn in the United States.

The Auditor’s significant findings include the following:

• In the 2008/09 fiscal year, the licensed forest companies that reported results of their forest management activities indicated that 93% of the total area that had been assessed by the companies met the province’s minimum 40% stocking standard—but only 51% of the total area assessed had achieved silviculture success, a measure of whether the appropriate trees have grown back.
• The Ministry of Natural Resources’ standard for reforesting of 40% has not changed since the 1970s, and several other provinces hold the industry to a higher standard.
• From the 2004/05 to 2008/09 fiscal years, only about one-third of the area targeted for regeneration was prepared and/or subsequently tended by forest management companies. Several independent forest audits completed in 2008 and 2009 expressed concern about non-existent or inadequate tending practices that were leading to reductions in growth, yield, and stand densities.

Source: Ontario Auditor General

2011 was a busy fire season for Ontario.

Ontario experienced 1,330 fires affecting 632,533 hectares.

Much of the area burned in Ontario in 2011 was due to a handful of very large fires. In fact, 2011 saw the largest fire recorded in Ontario history—Sioux Lookout 70 at 141,000 hectares. Another fire, Sioux Lookout 35, reached 112,000 hectares to become the eighth-largest fire on record. These two fires alone accounted for approximately 40 per cent of the total area burned. This is the first time since 1980 that Ontario has had two individual fires of greater than 100,000 hectares in the same season.

As an exceptional fire season draws to a close, Ontario offers its sincere thanks to all the men and women who assisted in 2011. Successfully addressing the many challenging fires this season required teamwork, flexibility and tireless effort. All personnel, whether they were from Ontario, other Canadian provinces and territories, Parks Canada or the United States, demonstrated these qualities. The final fires of 2011 will soon smoulder out but the bonds of friendship and cooperation between Ontario and its friends and neighbours continue on.

Read more: Ontario’s 2011 Forest Fire Summary (Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources)

In September 2009, the Government of Ontario removed the role of Forestry from its Ministry of Natural Resources and realigned the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines to include Forestry. The resulting Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry was described by the government as being an important realignment to “make the province more competitive, create jobs and strengthen our economy.”

Today the Government of Ontario reshuffled its cabinet, and changed its mind. Forestry has been moved back into the Ministry of Natural Resources. Re-elected Premier Dalton McGuinty said his new cabinet will “guide Ontario through an uncertain global economy by focusing on job creation and economic growth.”

Ontario northerners are pleased to see that the MPP for Thunder Bay – Superior North, Michael Gravelle, has been appointed as Minister of Natural Resources.

AbitibiBowater Inc. is echoing the concerns of Ontario Northeastern municipal leaders with regards to the newly proposed forest management approach on the Abitibi River Forest that would result in the immediate reduction of the conifer wood supply in the area by 25%, with reductions of up to 65% after 20 years.

Last week, the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association (NEOMA) held a press conference in Timmins, Ontario, to publicly express concern with the Abitibi River Forest’s Long-Term Management Direction (LTMD), a document recently released by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) for public comment.

The company is concerned that if confirmed, these significant proposed reductions in wood supply could jeopardize future forest sector investments and curtail employment opportunities generated from forest activities, impacting the economic foundation of 25 Northern Ontario communities.

“We should not have to make a choice between protecting caribou and protecting northern jobs. All too frequently this either/or choice is placed before the public, and everyone is told to line up on the side that best reflects their values. This is unfortunate as environmental considerations and economic outcomes are not mutually exclusive. We agree wholeheartedly that sustainable forest management must recognize all three pillars – economic, social and environmental,” stated Richard Garneau, AbitibiBowater’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

AbitibiBowater supports a transparent and balanced approach involving the relevant stakeholders, ensuring all three sustainability pillars are addressed. Serious collaborative work is needed to revisit the proposed implementation of the Caribou Conservation Plan in the Abitibi River forest, factoring in the impact of wood supply and its corresponding effects on future employment. This work has to involve representatives of impacted communities, forest companies operating in the area, the OMNR and ENGOs.

“We need to roll up our sleeves and work together, review maps, analyze the numbers, seek out the latest independent science, and come up with solutions that save caribou and provide the resources necessary for a sustainable and prosperous manufacturing sector,” concluded Garneau.

AbitibiBowater supports constructive solutions, engaging stakeholders in a collaborative spirit. One potential solution to the LTMD is a reassessment of the southern boundary of the Kesagami range by the OMNR. The assessment should consider the potential benefits of moving the boundary of the range to focus efforts on the areas where the caribou presence is not in dispute. The work could be done in a separate process that does not affect the timing of the current Forest Management Plan, considering that most agree that the wood supply for the next ten years is adequate for current needs.

Source: AbitibiBowater

Ontario has released its management plan for the Abitibi River Forest in Northeastern Ontario. The plan would see an immediate 25% reduction in harvestable timber, with a 65% reduction in less than 30 years.

The reduction is due to new caribou conservation policies.

Reaction to the new harvestable levels was shift, and negative.

Cochrane Mayor Peter Politis said if this plan goes through, the impact on the forest industry in the region will be “catastrophic.”

Iroquois Falls Mayor Gilles Forget is concerned that these new harvesting limits will discourage forestry companies from starting up or expanding a mills within the region. Forget pointed to the AbitibiBowater announcement two weeks ago that the company is spending up to $17 million to upgrade its mill in Iroquois Falls.

“They would definitely be discouraged from making any further investment in our community or anywhere else in Northeastern Ontario,” he said.

Read more:
Lumbering crisis – Caribou protection plan cuts into forest harvest (The Daily Press)

Here are some photos from the fireline with Ontario MNR FireRangers on fire “Red 74″, located 128 km north of the town of Red Lake, Ontario.

Helicopter lands to drop of firefighters on RED 74
Photo credit: MITCH MILLER / MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES

MNR FireRanger Crew Leader Steph Eligh uses her radio to coordinate firefighting efforts on RED 74
Photo credit: MITCH MILLER / MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Blackened tree stands alone on RED 74
Photo credit: MITCH MILLER / MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES

MNR FireRanger Crew Leader Steph Eligh puts water on RED 74
Photo credit: MITCH MILLER / MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES

MNR FireRanger Crew Leader Jessica Lange hoses down hotspots on RED 74
Photo credit: MITCH MILLER / MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES

MNR FireRangers Steph Eligh and Jessica Lange work the edge of RED 74
Photo credit: MITCH MILLER / MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Fire crews in Northwestern Ontario have been very busy this week dealing with new fires.

On Tuesday, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources recorded over 7,100 lightning strikes in a 24-hour period. (source – CKDR Dryden)

As a result, 27 new forest fires have been reported, and more are expected today.

Approximate 100,000 hectares are currently burning in northwestern Ontario, and the forest fire hazard is high to extreme.

The Ministry of Natural Resources is reporting that the potential for lightning caused fires remains high across the northern sectors of Ontario.

Ontario’s largest fire, Sioux Lookout 35 SLK 35 remained at 78,899 hectares in size, and is approximately 9 km east of Mishkeegogamang at its closest point. An Emergency Area Order remains in effect for that area.

For today’s current fire situation report from Ontario, visit:
http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/AFFM/2ColumnSubPage/268862.html (Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources)

For today’s National fire report, visit:
http://www.ciffc.ca/firewire/current.php (Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre Inc.)

Last evening a fire broke out in a pile of bark at AbitibiBowater‘s mill in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Winds were strong, and smoke was blown from the fire through Thunder Bay’s south side.

To prevent the fire from spreading, two Ontario of Ministry of Natural Resources waterbombers battled the fire with a mixture of water and foam, while Thunder Bay firefighters used hose line, and hand line operations on the ground.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the fire, but spontaneous combustion is likely. AbitibiBowater mill manager Doug Murray said there have been hot spots in the bark pile. “The hot spot could be six inches down into the pile,” he said. “Then the wind blows the bark away, and now you’ve got oxygen.” About three weeks ago, in fact, there was a “flareup” in the pile, but it was quickly extinguished, he said.

AbitibiBowater uses the bark in its boiler to create steam.

Sources:
Bark fire attacked (The Chronicle Journal)
Smoky blaze (TbNewsWatch)

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