Mike De Souza
May 16, 2012

UNDATED — Canadian forest product companies admit they are not going as fast as they had hoped in fulfilling a historic May 2010 agreement to protect the nation's boreal forest.

"It's a complex agreement but we're making progress," said Mark Hubert, vice president of environmental leadership at the Forest Products Association of Canada. "Do we wish we were moving faster? Absolutely, but . . . there's an extraordinary amount of work going on by both parties to make sure that we get to the finish line, so to speak."

Hubert made the comments in response to claims from some environmental groups involved in the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement that 80 per cent of the goals established in the deal to protect forests and species at risk still have not been achieved.

Eighteen different member companies in the association are part of the deal to protect about 29 million hectares of forest from logging by 2013 in exchange for the suspension of "do not buy" campaigns led by Greenpeace, ForestEthics and Canopy. The deal also calls for aboriginal treaty rights and traditional territories to be respected.

But a status report by the three environmental groups found that 58 out of 75 goals in the deal had not been met, while only 10 were delivered on schedule.

"Everyone had good intentions two years ago, but this update is a wake up call that we have a collective responsibility to deliver on the promises of boreal forest protection and improved forest practices within a meaningful time frame," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Stephanie Goodwin. "Companies that are buying boreal forest products are reasonable in demanding products from forests that are well-managed and protected."

Another conservation group — a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society — voiced optimism about the months ahead, suggesting that the criticism was more a strategy to maintain pressure on the industry to deliver its commitments.

"They (Greenpeace, Forest Ethics and Canopy) operate as watchdog groups and that's their role," said Janet Sumner, executive director of the CPAWS Wildlands League, a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. "Our role is to be the conservation group that understands science, knows how you do conservation planning, walks the land with the forestry companies, meets with the First Nations, builds agreements across communities and goes into government and sells the plan."

Comparing the exercise to a 12-step process, Sumner suggested that all of the parties were now in "step 10," but that they are in a race to complete their goals.

"To make the plan be able to stand on its own two feet you actually have to take it out and test drive it with the various people who are going to live with that plan," she said. "There are communities, there are decision makers like First Nations, and there are governments at play."

mdesouza@postmedia.com