Lee Doney - Deputy Minister

Thank you for your many thoughtful responses to the possibility of us allocating tenures for specified areas of land for resources other than trees. Your ideas will be valuable as we continue to explore the many aspects of developing new policy on this topic.

I'm impressed with the considerable time, thought and research that many of you put into your replies. And I appreciate how some of you bounced ideas off each other and picked up on others' comments, giving the discussion added depth and value.

It's interesting that the respondents focussed almost exclusively on forest products, effectively ignoring the possibilities of regulating tourism and other recreational activities on Crown land. These are indeed quite separate issues and probably should be tackled one at a time.

You've given us much to think about.

Now we're going to close this discussion and open another topic for you to ponder:

What do you think of the idea of the ministry working cooperatively with licensees to develop the kind of sustainable forest management plans that are required by voluntary certification systems?

Government already has a range of planning instruments -- LRMPs, FDPs and landscape unit plans. Where these plans are in place, this helps certification.

However, the kinds of written SFM plans for certification go beyond the LRMP kind of requirements.

What are the possible linkages between government's planning and certification requirements? Are there possible synergies between SFM plans for certification and completing LRMP and landscape unit planning?

Benefits? Impacts on workloads? Impacts on public involvement processes?

And what would be the most important or effective role of the ministry in advancing these multiple planning objectives?

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