June 6, 2024 • 59 mins
It’s been almost a year since Canada’s Online News Act was passed, and in response Meta blocked links to Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram. This has created a void of fact checked articles that meet journalistic standards and ethics on those platforms. As a result, information about wildfires, forestry and forests from respected media sources is not shareable via social media.
We sit down with Joan Baxter from the Halifax Examiner about her recent article on the growing problem of greenwashing in an age of digital information sharing. We discuss the Forest Products Association’s (FPAC) ‘Forestry for the Future’ advertising campaign that’s been proliferating across social media. Joan breaks down how this could be problematic in the absence of independent journalism on Canada’s forests available on those platforms. How can those concerned about Canada’s forests and climate become better at identifying industry public relations materials?
Read Joan's article in the Halifax Examiner.
Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.
You can help this community grow by sharing the podcast with your friends.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jan Sumner (00:00):
Welcome to T the Clear Cut.
Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, ExecutiveDirector at Wildlands League.
Kaya Adleman (00:08):
And I'm Kaya Adleman, Carbon Manager at
Wildlands League.
Jan Sumner (00:14):
Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation
organization working onprotecting the natural world.
Kaya Adleman (00:21):
The Clear Cut is bringing to you the much-needed
conversation on Canadian forestmanagement and how we can better
protect one of Canada's mostimportant ecosystems, as our
forests are reaching a tippingpoint.
Jan Sumner (00:41):
Well, Kaya, it's another Monday.
I know when you're hearing this, it probably won't be a Monday,
but today for Kaya and I it isa Monday.
It's rather foggy here inScarborough and I don't know
what's the weather like in yourpart of the country, kaya.
Kaya Adleman (00:59):
Sweltering.
It's very sunny and hot.
Jan Sumner (01:02):
Oh, really Well.
I was just out in Alberta.
We were in Canmore, which is abeautiful town and all around
you could see mountains, and itwould say it was 18 degrees.
But because it's higherelevation, you're closer to God
or the sun or something, andtherefore it feels like you can
get a burn just about any time,and the air is thinner and I had
(01:26):
a bit of altitude sickness when.
I yeah, when we were, we wereout for a hike and just I was
finding it hard to breathe and Ihadn't actually put two and
four together and got sick.
So it was a bit of a shock whenI couldn't, couldn't make out
all the way in the hike, whereason Saturday I was out.
(01:46):
Well, as you know, I do somerefereeing for soccer and I was
out as a soccer referee and didthe 5K and the whole game and no
problem.
But those mountains werekicking my butt.
Kaya Adleman (01:58):
Yeah, it's people who are able to adapt to that
quickly.
All the respect in the world toyou guys, yeah.
Jan Sumner (02:05):
Anyway, I was out spending time with some of our
friends within the CPAS family,the Canadian Parks and
Wilderness Society, meeting withfolks across the country, and
we actually ended up talking alittle bit about forestry on the
podcast and that means Ibelieve we're going to try and
get in a couple of episodesbefore summer break, so we'll
(02:27):
see how that goes.
But it was good conversationsand I'm happy to be home and
even if it is foggy and a littlebit overcast here, but I was
also encouraged to see that wemight get to see some Northern
Lights later this week as well.
Yeah, so there you go.
Anyway, we're going to be doingsome of the recording for the
Joan Baxter episode, and thatepisode is with a reporter who
(02:51):
has reported all over the worldon forestry, has written books
and was working with a largeproject last year called
Deforestation Inc.
Um, called Deforestation Incand, uh, it was over 300
journalists, and these are allgood reasons to interview Joan
Baxter.
That being said, uh, she's also, uh, beyond just being a great
(03:12):
writer for the Halifax paper, um, she's also very well-spoken.
So I think you're going toenjoy this episode.
I know we enjoyed theconversation with her and she's
got a lot to say, enjoyed theconversation with her and she's
got a lot to say, and I'll justremind people from our
perspective that the clear cut,the podcast, is about bringing
all kinds of voices to the tablethat don't normally get heard
(03:34):
or only get heard, you know, for15 minutes of fame.
Or maybe it's a book that getspublished or it's an online
piece, but you don't get achance to dive into the issues
like we do on a two-part episodewhere you really get the
freedom to just allow the personto speak about what those
issues are.
Everything from, you know, theHonorable Harvest with David
(03:56):
Flood to a conversation that wehad early on with François
Dufresne, the head of FSC forCanada, and now we're getting a
chance to talk to Joan Baxter,who's worked on forestry issues
for over 30 years, and so it's atrue treat to be able to step
into that world with her.
Kai, what did you think of allof this?
Kaya Adleman (04:17):
Yeah, I mean I was just going to say, while we're
on the subject of news media andthat we're bringing together
voices that may not be heard, wewill talk a little bit about
journalism forest journalismmore specifically, and its
presence in the information ageof today.
So I think one thing that mightbe important for people that we
(04:38):
don't fully flesh out in theinterview is that last year,
canada enacted a law Bill C-18,also referred to as Canada's
Online News Act which requiresbig tech companies to compensate
media outlets if they want tocontinue to host Canadian news
content on those platforms.
(04:59):
So, in response to this law,google and Meta, which is
Facebook and Instagram, havestated that they were going to
block Canadian news content fromtheir platforms.
And while Google has sincereached a deal with the Canadian
government, links to news arestill blocked on Facebook and
Instagram in Canada actually alot, because I have lots of
(05:26):
family in the States who love toshare links to articles for
things that are happening downthere or things that are
happening up here that they hearabout, and I can't see them if
it's on Facebook Messenger.
So my dad will send me a linkand I'll try to open it, and it
says you can't see this.
So that means you can't see anynews media sources on Facebook
platforms about Canada's forests, anything that comes from like
(05:50):
the Globe and Mail or theHalifax Examiner, which Joan
writes for and I think this isjust some additional context.
Especially in today'sinformation age, what does this
mean that you can't see news onsocial media platforms?
These are statistics fromStatistics Canada.
(06:11):
In 2023, the majority ofCanadians got their news slash
information from the internet,television or social media, and
the majority of young peopleaged 15 to 34 reported getting
news or information from socialmedia or the internet, and a
significant proportion of thepopulation aged 34 to 54 also
(06:31):
preferred to get informationthrough the internet and social
media.
So if you can't get news onsocial media from sources that
follow, you know journalisticstandards and ethics.
What does that mean?
What are the implications?
So it's important context tohave for this.
Jan Sumner (06:47):
Yeah, I'm really glad that you raised all of that
, because journalistic standardsmean that you have to fact
check it.
So you can't just take somethingand publish it because somebody
sent you a nice news release,you actually have to fact check
and make sure that it's true.
And so Joan talks about thisand gets into this.
(07:09):
What happens in a world whereyou don't get to see the media
that is using ethical journalismstandards and fact
checkingchecking their articles?
And that goes for all thetraditional media, like you said
, like the Global Mail, torontoStar, vancouver Sun, whoever it
is out there writing aboutforestry and forest issues, and
(07:33):
other forms of media like theNational Observer and other
papers, the Narwhal, et cetera.
It's a big challenge, I guess,in terms of this, and so I
wonder what happens in that.
And Joan talks about this,because then the other piece
that you've got coming is youhave everybody else out there
writing public relationsmaterial which can be shared,
(07:57):
and we speak very specificallyabout one of those.
And when we talk about you can'tshare media, journalistic,
fact-check media.
You can't share media,journalistic, fact-check media
around forestry and forestissues.
That has a significant impactwhen you're talking about
wildfires, so people wanting tostay safe or understand what the
risk is or understand what thechallenges are can't make
(08:18):
decisions If you're in acommunity you can't access that
you can't see it on thetraditional social media
channels like Instagram orFacebook, and that is a problem.
It's a significant risk.
So I hope they get that sortedout, because it's creating this
void of information andincreasing risk.
(08:39):
So I would like to see how thatgets resolved.
But anyway, maybe we should cutto the conversation with Joan,
because she lays out the issuesmuch better than I do just
rambling on about them.
Okay, good morning, kaya, goodmorning.
Looking forward to thisconversation with Joan.
Joan, can you give us a littlebit about yourself so the
(09:02):
audience knows who you are andmaybe even why we're talking to?
Joan Baxter (09:06):
you?
Okay, well, let's see Shortversion.
I am a Nova Scotia journalistand author.
I am now back living innorthern Nova Scotia and I
actually am surrounded by whatremains of our forests after
Fiona and 50 years of industriallogging.
And I have been contributing,mostly since I've come back to
(09:32):
Canada, to the Halifax Examiner.
I have had a couple of itemsalso, so there was one in the
National Observer and theNarwhal and the Energy Mix, but
I was out of the country for along time.
I was reporting for the BBC fromWest Africa for many, many
years and a host of otherinternational media for
(10:00):
international NGOs focused onenvironmental, social justice
issues, land grabbing,extractive industries, people's
rights on land and wrote reportson those things.
And in addition to that I havealso worked as a science writer
for international researchorganizations, most recently the
(10:22):
International Center forResearch in Agroforestry, which
recently joined up with theCenter for International
Forestry Research.
Both of those are called CGcenters.
They're part of aninternational network of mostly
agricultural resource researchcenters scattered around the
world.
So for that I was based inKenya and it gave me the chance
(10:46):
over many years to do a lot oftraveling and learning from
farmers, agroforesters, peoplewho live in and around forests
in Asia and in Africa, and thatwas a very long learning
experience and it was also verysad to watch how much their
(11:07):
forest resources have beendecimated over the years by
large extractive industries, biglogging operations, both for
Europe and for Asia.
And yeah, before that, I guessI started out in the tropical
forests of Guatemala where I dida master's in physical
anthropology studying spidermonkeys, and then graduated to a
(11:30):
tropical research institute inMexico where I was looking at
howler monkeys and part of thebig ecosystem there.
So yeah, over the years mywriting and career has taken me
into a lot of forests and it'sbecome increasingly distressing
to see what's happening toforests and woodlands around the
(11:52):
world and to the people whodepend on them.
Jan Sumner (11:57):
So to say that you know a little bit about trees
and forestry is kind of anunderstatement.
Joan Baxter (12:03):
Yeah, but it's amazing how much there is to
know.
The more you learn, the moreyou realize how complex it is
and how we've underestimated thecomplexity and diversity of the
systems and how fragileactually they can be, shouldn't
be, but what we're doing to themmakes them more fragile.
Yeah.
Jan Sumner (12:23):
It's interesting.
We had a similar thread comethrough in our conversation with
Michelle Connelly fromConservation North, talking
about the complexifying agentsin a forest and how complex the
systems are.
It was very interesting just tohear about how fire and insects
(12:44):
are actually complexifyingagents in a boreal ecosystem.
So, yeah, interesting to hearthat repeated.
We now have qualified to beable to run commercials on our
podcast.
This may not seem like a goodthing for some people, but for
(13:04):
us at the Clear Cut it's a verygood thing.
It means that you, our public,are now downloading over a
thousand copies of each episodea month, which is fantastic, and
it puts us into a new bracketwhere people want to actually
advertise on the podcast.
We are going to do our verybest to make sure that the ads
that run on the podcast aresomething that may be, do our
(13:25):
very best to make sure that theads that run on the podcast are
something that may be ofrelevance or of interest to you,
and hope that you can listen tothese ads and see them as a
marker of success and your faithin the podcast.
So thank you so much forlistening to the Clear Cut.
I know that, kaya and Iappreciate it so very, very much
.
Thank you, kaya.
Did you want to start in or?
Kaya Adleman (13:46):
I mean, I was thinking we could maybe get into
why we're interviewing Joan inthe first place, how we came to
this, and that was because Joanwrote a very interesting article
that grabbed our eye in theHalifax Examiner, of which she
has written many, which she haswritten many, but this one
(14:07):
specifically centers around theForest Products Association
Forestry for the Future campaign.
Maybe do you want to talk alittle bit about that.
Jan Sumner (14:13):
Yeah, jill take it away.
Joan Baxter (14:14):
Well, I tried to avoid it for a very long time
and it popped up.
I mean basically it popped up.
(14:42):
I mean basically I have.
It's led to a lot of spread ofmisinformation which and there
are no fact checked articlesbasically on Canadian meta sites
anymore.
So I've been boycotting it.
However, I confess I do lurkthere because there are really
good local groups, includinghere in Nova Scotia, some people
trying to save old growthforest who've been camping out
(15:04):
in an area with endangeredlichen for the last 50 days.
So I lurk there to see what'sgoing on and also to kind of get
a sense of what's happening outthere on the political front.
And, as a result, the secondpost every day, every time I
looked for the last few monthshas been this Forestry for the
(15:27):
Future campaign and, as I said,I tried to avoid it.
I didn't want to look, and thenone day I thought I really
better have a look to see whatthis is all about.
And the more I looked, the moredistressing it was and the more
annoyed I was.
So eventually I decided perhapsit's time to write about it,
(15:48):
because one of the things that Ihave been focusing on in my
writing over the last few yearsis also corporate capture of our
governments by large extractiveindustries and associations and
PR campaigns that the rapidlydiminishing state of our forests
(16:12):
being duped into thinking thatthis campaign, forestry for the
(16:49):
Future, which is a creation ofthe Forest Products Association
of Canada and some very smart PRpeople, was on the right side
of things and they were sharingit and filling out the survey
and congratulating the peoplebehind this campaign for being
on the right side of history.
And indeed that was even acouple of friends of mine and I
said why would you fill out thatsurvey?
(17:10):
And they said oh well, it'sreally important that they know
that we really care.
I said, yes, but what do youreally care about?
And they said climate changeand the forests.
And I said have you lookedclosely at the messaging in
there?
It's very, very slick messagingand it is easy for busy people
who are just scrolling throughsocial media to think that this
(17:33):
really is a well-intentioned,selfless campaign.
And it's not.
It's just PR.
Or in the, I'll quote one ofour forest champions in Nova
Scotia, nina Newington, who'sone of those camped out in the
woods in Nova Scotia trying tostop cutting in an area with
(17:53):
endangered species.
It's bullshit.
Jan Sumner (17:57):
Well, that was the starting point for us to
initiate this conversation withJoan.
I must confess that I had been.
The survey kept coming up on mysocial channels as well and,
for lack of you know, maybe Iwas scrolling and eating lunch
or doing multiple things.
I thought, well, I'll fill itin, because surely they'll like
(18:20):
to hear if it's a survey andthey're seeking opinion.
I'm happy to provide my opinionand would like to do that.
And after seeing it for the10th or 11th time, I thought,
okay, I'm going to go in andfill it out.
But a very shortly, maybe intoquestion two or three, started
to abandon the idea because itdidn't give any ability to
(18:42):
provide an alternate opinion.
It was like it was alreadypreordained.
Having hooked you on theclimate change and the forestry
angle, I didn't seem to be ableto get in there and explain.
Now, I'm not saying allforestry is bad or anything like
that.
I actually wanted to talk aboutsome of the issues and put some
of that forward, and it seemedto box me in and didn't allow
(19:04):
that.
So when I saw Joan's article, Ithought, oh, my goodness,
there's something larger here tohave a conversation about.
And again, I kept seeing themessage, even though I had
abandoned trying to fill outthis survey, and I think I tried
it one more time and then Ithought, no, I just there's no
room there to provide any nuanceof opinion.
(19:26):
So I thought, well, what betterway to have than the
conversation with Joan and hearwhat she had to say about it in
terms of thinking through thelens of, especially when we're
seeing not a shutdown, but thatwe aren't able to share stories
from traditional fact-checkedmedia or even some of the other
(19:49):
media that's emerged that isstill using fact-checking and is
good journalism.
We're not able to share that onMeta and these social channels,
and it's very, very frustrating,especially when we've had some
natural disasters or things likethat, and we need to share that
information for people to staysafe, and we can't do that where
Facebook, for example, is verymuch part of the social fabric,
(20:14):
especially in northerncommunities that need to share
this data, and we can't.
And so this is frustrating.
And yet, at the same time,we're seeing advertisements like
the FPAC survey being able tobe abundantly shared and, as Joe
was saying, coming up second inyour feed.
So maybe we could walk throughsome of the questions just to
(20:35):
get a sense of where I'm going,which is this idea that you
can't divert from the path thatit's intended to take you on.
Joan Baxter (20:53):
I do have the survey printed out.
I haven't been able to find itagain online in the last week or
so.
I have not been getting thatcampaign on my social media feed
.
But I was into about the fourthquestion when I thought this is
not a survey, this is apush-pull, and I've seen
industry do a lot of theserecently when they need to get
(21:16):
answers, to pretend that theyreally have a lot of public
support and they need to go tothe policymakers on this.
But the first thing thathappens with this survey is that
they ask you to share youremail so that they can share the
results of the survey, and thenyou can make sure you're the
first to hear about newopportunities to support
Canada's net zero future.
So you know right away.
(21:37):
They're obviously trying to geta mailing list and a list of
contacts and I'm sure there's alot of demographic research that
will go into that.
Question two on a scale of oneto 10, with being no knowledge
at all and 10 being an experthow familiar would you say you
are with sustainable forestrypractices in Canada?
Well, first of all, nowhere issustainable forestry practices
(22:02):
even defined in the survey.
So that seems like a ratherludicrous question.
What do you mean by that?
So people can choose betweenone and 10.
I'm being an expert.
Question three would you sayyou have a positive opinion of
forestry practices in Canada, anegative opinion, or that you
(22:24):
don't know enough about thesector to have an opinion there
you go from positive to negativeon a scale of five.
So again you wonder whatthey're going to do with this.
If people say they don't knowanything about anything, are
they going to discount theiropinions?
We don't know what's going tohappen with the results of this.
It's being done for an industryassociation.
(22:45):
Over time, would you say, youropinion of the sector has been
getting better, worse or hasn'treally changed.
You can choose between gettingbetter and not really changing,
getting worse, and I note thatthere's never any room for any
comments on any of thesequestions.
So now we're up to questionfour on any of these questions.
(23:07):
So now we're up to questionfour.
Question five is where Iapparently gave the wrong answer
.
It's compared with othercountries that produce a lot of
wood and forest products, likeCanada.
Would you say Canada is a worldleader about average or below
average when it comes tosustainably managing our forests
?
About average or below averagewhen it comes to sustainably
managing our forests.
So you can choose A worldleader, b about average or C
(23:30):
below average.
And I clicked below average.
And then I got a lecture, thenext page.
Now I'm not sure if I hadclicked it is a world leader, if
I would have got the samecorrection or not, because I
couldn't go back.
I got a correction telling medid you know?
(23:51):
Canada is actually recognizedas a global leader in
sustainable management of ourforests.
So apparently I had the wronganswer, which is not the way
surveys are done or serioussurveys are done.
And then there's a long PRparagraph explaining how
wonderful Canadian forestry is,and this particular line I found
(24:17):
interesting.
We have the toughest and most,some of the toughest and
well-enforced regulatoryframeworks in the world, but
Canadian foresters operating onpublic land, where 90% of
Canada's forests are located,must submit a comprehensive 150
to 200 year forest managementplan for approval by provincial
(24:39):
governments before a single treeis harvested.
Now I cannot speak for what'shappening on Crown land in other
provinces, but I can tell youthat I have my computer full of
photographs of massive clearcuts on Crown land in Nova
Scotia.
And Nova Scotia is unique,except for Prince Edward Island
(24:59):
in Canada, in that only 30% ofthe province.
Less than 30% of the provinceis crown owned, so that land is
extremely precious.
We've given a huge chunk of itto a consortium of mills and
forestry companies to managecompanies to manage, and we
don't know how much they'repaying to harvest the trees, but
(25:26):
they are definitely clearcutting although we don't use
that word anymore in Nova Scotiawe call it variable retention.
So 10% variable retention andthen you have to leave that
famous clump of 30 trees.
That's representative of whatyou cut down, which is, I guess,
where moose are supposed to goand hang out and bears and
things.
So if they have to submit a 150to 200-year forest management
(25:49):
plan in Nova Scotia, I canassure you that nobody's looking
at it and maybe in 150 to 200years, if they left the forest
alone, it might grow back.
It might.
So then we come to there's onlyseven questions.
We come to question six.
When thinking about whatmatters most to you, how would
(26:09):
you rank the followingpriorities of Canada's forest
sector?
Now, this is where it getsreally into the push-pull
business, where they give you nooptions except their selected
answers.
So you're supposed to drag anddrop to rank the options.
There are quite a few of them.
(26:31):
Sustainably managing our forestsis one partnering with
Indigenous peoples, producingmore environmentally friendly
alternatives to everydayproducts, minimizing the impacts
of natural disturbances, suchas wildfires, to our forests.
Providing green jobopportunities for Canadians.
That's an interesting one,because I'm not quite sure which
the green jobs are.
They're talking aboutConverting wood waste to
(26:52):
biofuels to reduce our relianceon fossil fuels.
Another very contentious oneMaximize the carbon capture
potential of our forests orstrengthening our forests
against climate change.
Nowhere in there is a mentionof, in fact, biodiversity is
never mentioned once in thesurvey, but never mentioned in.
(27:12):
There is one option to suggestthat maybe we should leave the
forests alone a little bit torecover.
So that was question six.
Question seven To what extent doyou think forestry can support
a net zero carbon future and ourcollective fight against
(27:32):
climate change?
And there are five options forthis one.
Sustainable forestry iscritical in our climate change
fight.
Again, sustainable forestry isa very loosey-goosey term and
there's been a lot ofgreenwashing being done with
that term.
Sustainable the sustainableforestry is somewhat important
(27:55):
to fighting climate change.
Sustainable forestry has asmall role to play in fighting
climate change.
Forestry is not a factor infighting climate change.
Forestry is negativelyimpacting our fight against
climate change.
Now I think I might have thoughtit would be really interesting
to see forests are critical inour climate change fight, not
(28:17):
forestry.
But that wasn't an option andthat's it.
The survey is over and you havejoined.
The last page tells you you'vejoined thousands of Canadians
coming together to supportCanada's sustainable forest
sector Once again, we're notsure where or what that is and
(28:38):
learn more about what we'redoing to support a net zero
carbon future.
And there they ask you for yourname, email address, postal
code and you can join to receiveemail updates about the
campaign and issues.
So that is the survey, whichnow I haven't found on my feed
for the last few days, butthat's only one of the posts
(29:00):
that were showing up on thesocial media feeds.
There was another one thaturged you to send a letter to
your MP a pre-written letter toyour MP to support sustainable
forestry.
Jan Sumner (29:15):
I didn't get that one.
I did go through the surveyagain and was able to navigate
all the way to the last questionwhere, if you said that
forestry was not part of theclimate solution or was
negatively impacting things, youagain got a lecture on did you
know that United Nations hasjudged this to be yeah.
(29:36):
So, depending on how youanswered those questions, you've
got a corrective message comingback to you.
But, I guess, to my point, Iwasn't able, like you just said,
I wasn't able to say thatforests are an important part of
the equation, but notnecessarily forestry, and so it
didn't allow you to, it didn'tgive you an array of options, it
(30:00):
was just it was all speakingthrough the lens of forestry,
and so even the definitionsweren't clear.
So, for example, things likesustainable forestry I mean
we've had many people on thepodcast talking about whether
sustainable forestry meanssustained yield, whether
sustainable forestry meanssustained yield, which is very
(30:21):
different than what, I wouldhazard to say, many Canadians
think of sustainable forestry asbeing.
We're sustaining the forest andhaving a healthy ecosystem, and
that's not necessarily what itmeans.
It means that you can stillpredict that you will have trees
to harvest in a hundred years.
So it's a.
It's a very different not tosay that companies are not
(30:42):
required to manage for otherelements in the forest, like
pine, marten or certain birdspecies or endangered species.
Many of these are requirementsin a forestry plan, but if you
don't get it right and if yourmanagement tools don't work and
you can just look at caribou westill can see caribou ranges
(31:05):
collapsing across canada, yetcanada has yet to step up and
say hang on a second.
The management prescriptionsare not working and we're still
seeing a decline.
So it would.
It would suggest that ourforestry's uh not happening at a
sustainable level for all thespecies, for example.
Joan Baxter (31:25):
Yeah, yeah and, as I say, the take action post
which I received about it wasabout 50 50 whether I got the
survey or the take action emailyour mp post uh gave you a form
letter which I actually wrotethis.
It's a masterpiece of deceptionbecause it talks about, it
prescribes adjusting harvestingschedules to favor older, insect
(31:50):
damaged and high risk stands,and there are phrases like they
ask them to help push thegovernment to get rid of
regulatory barriers.
So when you talk aboutregulations as regulatory
barriers, I find that a red flagbecause basically it means
(32:14):
they're trying to get access tothings that they haven't had
before.
Get access to things that theyhaven't had before and in fact,
their prescription of what theywant to do to the forest is
exactly the opposite of whatmany real forest experts say
should be done, which is toactually maintain more on-site
(32:36):
biomass after harvest, reduceharvest schedules and levels and
decrease the production ofshort-lived forest products,
which is exactly what, at leastI can say here in Nova Scotia,
is what industrial forestry isall about and that they're
calling sustainable forestrybecause they are certified in
mainland Nova Scotia undersomething called the Sustainable
(32:59):
Forestry Initiative, mainlandNova Scotia under something
(33:26):
called the Sustainable ForestryInitiative, which is from this
whole campaign wasn't butthey're being very clever about
it.
Kaya Adleman (33:30):
It's a lot of coded language I find it very
interesting that in the surveythey're saying that Canadian
forestry is sustainable becauseit's subject to all of these
regulations and rules and it hasthe strongest, most robust laws
(33:54):
for forestry in the world, andthen in the letter to that
they're asking people who seethat social media advertising.
They're asking for these peopleto ask their politicians to
remove those same barriers.
So it doesn't really make anysense to me.
Jan Sumner (34:13):
Well, having rules doesn't make something
sustainable.
It means that you have to,you're required to do some
things.
It doesn't necessarily mean itresults in sustainability, and I
would be hard pressed to find acompany that had lost their
license because they didn't meetthe requirements.
I mean, maybe that's happened,I'm not sure.
(34:33):
If somebody knows of one, I'dbe delighted to hear about that.
I know that doesn't tend tohappen, and so, unless you're
seeing, well, I'll even stepoutside of forestry.
As I said, in terms ofendangered species, we're not
seeing a lot of enforcementaround caribou prescriptions
across the country.
Yet we know that caribou arebeing decimated by the
(34:54):
disturbance levels going up, andforestry is part of that
disturbance regime.
And so if we were trulymanaging sustainably, we
wouldn't have hairbrush rangescollapsing.
And even if you said it's notall due to forestry, you would
still have to take a much moreprecautionary approach, because
if you have other disturbanceshappening in that forest
(35:15):
management unit, then you needto back off on the disturbance
from forestry Because you can'tlet it get over that 35%
threshold.
So, to my mind, the evidence isclear.
We're not actually harvestingsustainably, otherwise we
wouldn't have all of theseendangered species, especially
caribou, and so we need to finda way.
(35:36):
If we're going to argue that wehave the world's best forestry,
then let's step up and do thatjob.
And so I think that we've gotthis very big question for us,
and especially in light ofclimate change, I think you flag
a few things there.
In terms of their language,they're arguing for more access
to fiber, and that was certainlyone of the messages I saw very
(35:58):
clearly come out last year.
When we had all the forestfires across Canada was like oh
see, this is the very reason weneed to get out there and
harvest and harvest more andfaster.
And we saw the same thing withall of the insect infestations
and the surges in those, andwhat was happening?
It was like, oh, the solutionis harvest more.
And, as I said, michelleConnolly disabuses us of that
(36:22):
notion and why that is not theanswer.
So those would be some of mythoughts on why this message is
skewed.
It seems to be skewed and Ithink there are ways to make
forestry more sustainable.
I'm not sure if it can beconsidered sustainable in an
(36:48):
intact ecosystem, because you'vetaken down trees and you regrew
trees, but you didn'tnecessarily regrow a forest.
Those are just some of myoff-the-top-of-my-head thoughts.
Joan Baxter (36:58):
I mean especially when I'm looking at eastern
North America where we have theWabanaki Acadian forest system,
the indigenous forest systemthat stretches from Maine
through parts ofifer, multi-agedconifer and hardwood forest
(37:25):
ecosystem, which was very fireresistant, very fire resistant.
It was multi-aged, it alwayshad the mixture of trees in
there.
So we have had forest fires inthe past but we tended to have
forest fires where there's beena lot of logging done and
they've replanted or they haveallowed the regrowth of conifers
(37:46):
and then sprayed withherbicides to kill off the
hardwoods and the broadleaftrees which are good in the
spring to kind of counter theforest fires.
So now that they've kind ofborealized the forests in
eastern north america, made themless fire resistant, now
they're claiming that theyshould do more of the same to
(38:09):
make them more fire resistant.
It just doesn't logically, itjust doesn't make sense.
But having spent a lot of my thelast few years looking at PR as
opposed to, which is propaganda, I'm very concerned about PR
and propaganda.
In fact I'm just reading afabulous book, which I highly
(38:31):
recommend, called Manipulatingthe Message by Cecil Rosner, who
used to be head of Fifth Estate, looking at how journalism has
been overtaken by PR and so PRand communications people now
outnumber journalists like eightor nine no, it's higher 120,000
(38:51):
.
Far, far by a factor of about10 or 12 outnumber journalists
in Canada and at the same timewe're having these right-wing
politicians come along andundermine everybody's faith in
the media.
So it's increasingly difficultfor us to counter these kinds of
slick and expensiveindustry-funded campaigns and I
(39:15):
think it's it's a reallydangerous trend.
So this PR campaign also meansthey're directly reaching the
audience through Facebook.
They don't even need to answerjournalists, which is why Forest
Products Association of Canadadidn't bother responding to me.
I sent them questions.
(39:36):
Nor did they respond to theNational Observer journalist,
max Fawcett Atkinson, who alsowrote about this campaign.
They don't need to becausethey've got their audience
direct through social media andI think that's a really
worrisome trend, not just forthe future of democracy but also
(39:56):
for the future of theenvironment, because there's
just so much disinformation outthere and I think this kind of
campaign really needs to be.
I mean, you look, there wereHalifax Examiner and the
National Observer called it out.
Meanwhile, their media partnersthey're boasting on their
website, the Forestry for theFuture website, about how many
main big Canadian publicationshave published Forestry for the
(40:21):
future.
Articles, and it's dozens ofarticles, have been published
and documentaries and so on thathave been done.
Plus, they have their ownpodcast called this was my
favorite Canadian forestry cansave the world, and it's into
season two, and they also havetheir own documentary.
(40:42):
Well, I don't.
Propaganda, in my opinion,should not be defined as a
documentary.
But this is what's happening.
Is this blurring of the lines,of the source of the information
, which is why I reacted sostrongly to this campaign,
because it's very indicative ofwhat's going on in the oil and
gas sector, in the preciousmetals mining sector.
(41:06):
They're just going directly tothe public with their PR and it
works.
Kaya Adleman (41:12):
Unfortunately, I'm curious if maybe you could
speak to, like you mentioned,the survey, for instance, was a
(41:33):
tool to show policymakers thepublic sentiment about Canadian
forestry.
Do you know what are the othergoals of the campaign?
Or maybe you could speak to thepresentation that FPAC gave to
the Maritime Lumber Bureau thatyou mentioned in your article.
Joan Baxter (41:42):
Yes, fortunately, that is online.
So in June 2023, derek Nyborg,who's head of the Forest
Products Association of Canada,spoke to the Maritime Lumber
Bureau yeah, and he describedthe program and tactics.
So we're in warfare territoryhere and I'll just list them, if
(42:05):
that's okay, because they'retoo wordy for me to remember.
So there will be cross-platformdigital advertising, earned and
paid media relations, which isreally worrisome.
Of course, the media are introuble, so they take any money
(42:28):
they can get from anything andany content they can take Out of
home advertising which is intransit, shelters and airports.
They have money, obviously.
Multi-medium flagship contentthe Capturing Carbon documentary
, canadian Forestry Can Save theWorld podcast, animated video
shorts and creative assetproduction, tiktok and Instagram
, influencer partnerships,indigenous partnerships,
(42:48):
community development andreal-time knowledge building Let
me see Saturate targetaudiences and increase public
opinion of the sector, and tocreate a more amenable
environment to advance thesector's policy priorities.
Well, any industry's policypriorities are going to take
(43:20):
precedence over other prioritiesfor me, which would be the
health of the forests.
So it was a deliberate and verywell thought out and no doubt,
very, very expensive campaigndesigned to help the industry
get exactly what it wants, whichis more access to the forest
and to be able to do more ofwhat they want in what's left of
the forests.
Kaya Adleman (43:38):
Do you know how much money they've spent on this
?
Joan Baxter (43:43):
forests.
Do you know how much moneythey've spent on this?
I wasn't, because that was oneof my questions that I had asked
.
I didn't get that back, but Ibelieve in the National Observer
article he also gave somefigures in the hundred.
I think was in the hundreds ofthousands, but he also was able
to get some figures that show it, described it as a very
expensive campaign.
Some figures that show itdescribe it as a very expensive
campaign.
(44:03):
No-transcript.
Jan Sumner (44:10):
I think they also received some funding from
Natural Resources Canada topromote Canadian forestry.
I don't know how that is spent.
I mean, we don't have a line ofsight into that, but I don't
know if Natural Resources Canadacan provide that information or
if they have no-transcript.
(45:08):
Yeah, we've talked about that onthe podcast a few times.
Actually, I think for Canadiansit's very hard to know how our
forests are being managed whenthe governments that are there
to that are, that are actuallysupposed to be monitoring and
making sure the forest ishealthy, are not able to enforce
or aren't enforcing and notholding accountable companies.
I know they, as I said, I knowthey have a lot of requirements
(45:31):
and I know they have to jumpthrough hoops, and I've sat at
forestry tables where they arebeing required to do some things
, and sometimes they're beingrequired to do things that I
think are uh, you know, notreally very productive, but
there's a lot of times thatthings are uh, there's not an
enforcement of the, of the thethings that would actually
(45:51):
measure sustainability.
Joan Baxter (45:52):
so, yeah, well, I think.
I think another one of theissues in Canada with almost all
environmental regulations ismonitoring.
Our government departments aretiny compared with the reach of
industry and I know here in NovaScotia the Department of
Environment is tiny.
Natural resources andrenewables is much bigger, but
(46:16):
they do almost all of it'salmost all self-reporting from
industry and they have very fewresources to go out and actually
inspect and it's usuallybecause of annoying citizen
scientists who make it theirbusiness to go and try to find
the endangered species when anarea is slated for cutting and
(46:36):
then, when it is slated forcutting, sit there and camp out
in the winter and get arrested,that you see any publicity over
some of these issues.
So in other words, theregulations are there, may be
there, but the monitoring isvery, very weak, very weak, and
enforcement is very weak.
Jan Sumner (46:58):
Yeah, I think that's true.
I think the monitoring dollarsare not there.
The federal government, I think, just got an increase in being
able to do some analysis at amore macro scale.
Right now they look at a30-meter scale to assess whether
or not there's been disturbance.
And I've been advocating for along time and Wildlands League
(47:21):
has been advocating for a longtime that we get somewhere down
at a 4-10-meter resolution sothat we can actually see some of
these roads and the disturbancefootprint, because roads can be
like 3 meters across and so ifyou're at 30 meters you just
don't see it.
So, finding a way to actuallyget that data and have canadians
be able to see it I mean youcan see it on google if we could
(47:42):
start to train some folks ongoogle on how that might happen,
um, you know, that would bemaybe a good outcome.
So, joan, you keep keepmentioning this protest that's
going on in your neck of thewoods.
Joan Baxter (48:00):
It's just the most recent one.
I mean, it's an area they'rereally pushing to get it as a
protected area and it's just agroup of really engaged people.
There's the Healthy ForestCoalition here in Nova Scotia.
Really engaged people there'sthe Healthy Forest Coalition
here in Nova Scotia.
That's a very loose assembly ofa lot of different groups that
know a lot about forestsactually and forestry and who
(48:24):
have been really trying veryhard in recent years to get the
government to pay attention tothe dire state of forests in
Nova Scotia.
And you don't.
We were talking aboutmonitoring and being able to see
what's really going on.
If you don't spend a lot oftime on Google, you don't know
(48:47):
what's going on unless you takea plane.
And when you take a planeacross Canada it can be quite
startling what you see.
Anybody who tells you thatwe've been doing it sustainably.
And you know there's so muchforest.
There's more trees now thanthere were, you know, 100 years
ago.
Yes, but what trees and in whatstate are those trees?
(49:07):
And if you fly over Nova Scotia, it's absolutely shocking how
the province has been justbasically scalped.
It's really quite shocking.
So I mean in parts of theprovince where I was writing
about new gold mines, open pitgold mines.
They said to me well, they'vealready clear-cut it, they might
(49:30):
as well mine it now.
You know, it's just kind ofreached a state of despair.
And we don't have caribou, wehave the mainland moose, our
(49:53):
endangered species, and ofcourse the forestry lobbyists
will say, well, that's becauseof the deer bringing a parasite
that kills the moose, butthere's also very little habitat
left.
It's been so carved up.
And then what's happened morerecently here, speaking of
disaster capitalism, well, okay,forest Products Association
here is really playing on theclimate change and wildfires.
In Nova Scotia we had Fiona,which decimated.
I'm looking out my window rightnow at what happened to my
woodlot.
It was flattened.
(50:15):
So what's happened since thenis that the forestry industry in
Nova Scotia has gone around andtold everybody that they should
absolutely clear everythingthat's left and get it out of
there, Because if not, there'llbe a forest fire risk for them.
So they're using thisopportunity to dupe landowners
into just clear cutting whateverwas left, instead of leaving
(50:36):
some of that for habitat andletting it regrow.
So it's really been disastercapitalism around here.
So this is how climate changejust feeds climate change,
coming in and pretending thatthey're the big champions of the
climate, when in fact we knowfrom recent calculations that
(50:57):
Canada's forests are now biggeremitters than they are
sequesters of carbon.
Jan Sumner (51:03):
When you speak to those calculations, are you
referencing the Federal AuditorGeneral report?
Joan Baxter (51:11):
No, I'm actually referencing the recent
peer-reviewed study.
By Julie Bowen and others, yeah,and also I'm looking at the
2023 analysis by Barry Saxefragfrom the National Observer.
He said we've so weakened ourforests through decades of
(51:32):
business-as-usual industriallogging and fossil-fueled
climate shifts that it switchedto hemorrhaging carbon dioxide
instead of absorbing it.
And there was a peer yeah, theJanuary 2024 peer-reviewed study
about the forest-relatedemissions are being
underreported in Canada, aboutthe forest related emissions are
(51:56):
being underreported in Canada.
Between 2005 and 2021, forestryin Canada represented a net
source of carbon and not, as thegovernment and industry would
claim, a net carbon sink.
So those are the things that Iwas referencing.
And again, in the whole FPATcampaign and all of the articles
(52:19):
that have been written becauseI've made myself read them I
haven't listened to the podcast,but I read some of the
summaries I don't see any ofthose issues being addressed.
So there's no nuance.
There's none of the other sideof the story is coming out,
which is why you need journalismand not PR.
Jan Sumner (52:45):
So one of the reasons we wanted to have Joan
on the podcast was definitely tospeak with her about this void
that we have in the landscape,that it's getting almost, maybe
even accidentally, but it's.
It's being filled by publicrelations materials that are not
fact-checked, not like thepublications that follow
journalistic standards andfact-check their stories before
they get released and so whathappens in that.
(53:06):
But the other reason wasbecause she brings a solid
credentials in terms of forestryand Nova Scotia and we have not
yet had anybody on the podcasttalking about the issues around
forestry in Nova Scotia.
So this was a fantasticopportunity to meet with her and
talk with her, and she speaksvery eloquently about the
forestry and the protests thatare ongoing in Nova Scotia
(53:30):
because she wrote a book on it.
Kaya, what did you think ofthat first session with her?
Kaya Adleman (53:36):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, this is like so up
my alley in terms of likeinformation, and so I really
found it.
I just found the whole conceptreally fascinating, especially
as a young person, because I doconsume a lot of content and I
do get a lot of my informationfrom social media.
I mean, of course I consumeinformation on social media, of
(53:58):
course with a critical lens.
I like to.
If I see something, I like tofact check it with an article or
a paper that followsjournalistic standards and
journalistic practices andethics.
But yeah, I think one thingthough that stands out to me is,
especially because we'retalking about this void of that
kind of information on socialmedia platforms, is, if you
(54:20):
actually look at thatpresentation that Joan talks
about and then it's also linkedin her article% like 50% of
people either don't know theindustry enough to have an
opinion or don't know theindustry at all of these people
(54:42):
that they surveyed.
So that's definitely interestingto me, especially now we're
seeing this, you know, onesidedness of PR materials being
the only information you'rereceiving about Canadian
forestry.
You know, could this becreating an opinion among those
(55:02):
40 to 50% of people aboutCanadian forestry?
That's missing a lot of thecontext that those sources that
are now blocked from metaplatforms provide.
I think it definitely sets thecase for Canada to revise its
(55:25):
Online News Act, for meta tocompensate journalists
accordingly, because they do doa lot of very hard work and they
do, you know, doing thatresearch.
They deserve to be compensatedfairly for that work.
And they do, you know, doingthat research.
They deserve to be compensatedfairly for that.
But yeah, I think it justspeaks to a growing, a growing
problem in today's society and Iwould like to see some, some
(55:46):
resolution to that, as wediscussed earlier.
Jan Sumner (55:49):
Yeah, it would be great if they could reach an
agreement, like Google did,because I mean, I don't know if
it's an increase in PR.
I know this is a newishcampaign for the Forest Products
Association of Canada.
Maybe there have been othercampaigns et cetera but when
it's happening against abackdrop, where you don't have
(56:10):
media who are reporting onforest and forestry issues, then
it can seem like it's the onlyvoice out there, and that is
that's dangerous.
So it would be great to havethe voices of good journalism
reporting again on forest andforestry issues.
Yeah, yeah.
And I will also share it.
Kaya Adleman (56:29):
Yeah, and I will also just add as an aside I
loved going through the surveywith Joan and I do think it's
funny how she makes that comment.
Like this is not any surveythat follows rigorous research
standards, and I just couldn'thelp but think of when I was
doing my own honors thesis workat McGill University.
(56:52):
I used a survey for myqualitative research methods and
I had to go through an ethicsreview board.
I had to submit my survey to anethics review board, I had to
go back and revise it multipletimes and it would be
interesting to see if thatsurvey went through, you know, a
university academic reviewboard to see if it would, if it
(57:14):
would pass through.
Jan Sumner (57:16):
Yeah, I was one of the things because I took the
survey at least I tried to acouple of times and I was hoping
that, you know, a lot of timesthey'll say if you want to say
something else or you want towrite something in, because it
didn't give me some of theoptions that I thought could be
there.
And again, I'm not a no forestryat all kind of person.
(57:37):
I'm like how do we do forestry,where do we do it and how much
of it do we do and how do weconduct our forestry operations?
And so I think those are validquestions to try and answer and
I was hoping to participate withthat kind of a mindset, not
just answer how great isforestry and how great could it
be and how much greater, youknow.
(57:57):
It just felt so skewed and Iwas really looking forward to
being able to answer some of thequestions, because I do think
that there are some great waysthat forestry can be aiding us
in climate change and wildfires,et cetera.
But this survey quote unquotedidn't allow me to engage in
that kind of way, so it was abit of a frustrating exercise.
Kaya Adleman (58:19):
Yeah, I agree.
Jan Sumner (58:20):
Anyway, we've got part two coming up with Joan, so
goodbye for now.
Kaya Adleman (58:25):
Yeah, see you next week.
Jan Sumner (58:29):
If you like listening to the clear cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kai andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.
Kaya Adleman (58:40):
You can also become a supporter by going to
our website atwwwwildlandsleagueorg.
Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
on your favorite podcaststreaming platform.
It would really help thepodcast and stay tuned for new
episodes by following us onsocial media.
Jan Sumner (59:01):
That's at Wildlands League on Instagram, twitter and
Facebook or LinkedIn, of course.
Kaya Adleman (59:07):
See you next time.
Welcome to T the Clear Cut.
Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, ExecutiveDirector at Wildlands League.
Kaya Adleman (00:08):
And I'm Kaya Adleman, Carbon Manager at
Wildlands League.
Jan Sumner (00:14):
Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation
organization working onprotecting the natural world.
Kaya Adleman (00:21):
The Clear Cut is bringing to you the much-needed
conversation on Canadian forestmanagement and how we can better
protect one of Canada's mostimportant ecosystems, as our
forests are reaching a tippingpoint.
Jan Sumner (00:41):
Well, Kaya, it's another Monday.
I know when you're hearing this, it probably won't be a Monday,
but today for Kaya and I it isa Monday.
It's rather foggy here inScarborough and I don't know
what's the weather like in yourpart of the country, kaya.
Kaya Adleman (00:59):
Sweltering.
It's very sunny and hot.
Jan Sumner (01:02):
Oh, really Well.
I was just out in Alberta.
We were in Canmore, which is abeautiful town and all around
you could see mountains, and itwould say it was 18 degrees.
But because it's higherelevation, you're closer to God
or the sun or something, andtherefore it feels like you can
get a burn just about any time,and the air is thinner and I had
(01:26):
a bit of altitude sickness when.
I yeah, when we were, we wereout for a hike and just I was
finding it hard to breathe and Ihadn't actually put two and
four together and got sick.
So it was a bit of a shock whenI couldn't, couldn't make out
all the way in the hike, whereason Saturday I was out.
(01:46):
Well, as you know, I do somerefereeing for soccer and I was
out as a soccer referee and didthe 5K and the whole game and no
problem.
But those mountains werekicking my butt.
Kaya Adleman (01:58):
Yeah, it's people who are able to adapt to that
quickly.
All the respect in the world toyou guys, yeah.
Jan Sumner (02:05):
Anyway, I was out spending time with some of our
friends within the CPAS family,the Canadian Parks and
Wilderness Society, meeting withfolks across the country, and
we actually ended up talking alittle bit about forestry on the
podcast and that means Ibelieve we're going to try and
get in a couple of episodesbefore summer break, so we'll
(02:27):
see how that goes.
But it was good conversationsand I'm happy to be home and
even if it is foggy and a littlebit overcast here, but I was
also encouraged to see that wemight get to see some Northern
Lights later this week as well.
Yeah, so there you go.
Anyway, we're going to be doingsome of the recording for the
Joan Baxter episode, and thatepisode is with a reporter who
(02:51):
has reported all over the worldon forestry, has written books
and was working with a largeproject last year called
Deforestation Inc.
Um, called Deforestation Incand, uh, it was over 300
journalists, and these are allgood reasons to interview Joan
Baxter.
That being said, uh, she's also, uh, beyond just being a great
(03:12):
writer for the Halifax paper, um, she's also very well-spoken.
So I think you're going toenjoy this episode.
I know we enjoyed theconversation with her and she's
got a lot to say, enjoyed theconversation with her and she's
got a lot to say, and I'll justremind people from our
perspective that the clear cut,the podcast, is about bringing
all kinds of voices to the tablethat don't normally get heard
(03:34):
or only get heard, you know, for15 minutes of fame.
Or maybe it's a book that getspublished or it's an online
piece, but you don't get achance to dive into the issues
like we do on a two-part episodewhere you really get the
freedom to just allow the personto speak about what those
issues are.
Everything from, you know, theHonorable Harvest with David
(03:56):
Flood to a conversation that wehad early on with François
Dufresne, the head of FSC forCanada, and now we're getting a
chance to talk to Joan Baxter,who's worked on forestry issues
for over 30 years, and so it's atrue treat to be able to step
into that world with her.
Kai, what did you think of allof this?
Kaya Adleman (04:17):
Yeah, I mean I was just going to say, while we're
on the subject of news media andthat we're bringing together
voices that may not be heard, wewill talk a little bit about
journalism forest journalismmore specifically, and its
presence in the information ageof today.
So I think one thing that mightbe important for people that we
(04:38):
don't fully flesh out in theinterview is that last year,
canada enacted a law Bill C-18,also referred to as Canada's
Online News Act which requiresbig tech companies to compensate
media outlets if they want tocontinue to host Canadian news
content on those platforms.
(04:59):
So, in response to this law,google and Meta, which is
Facebook and Instagram, havestated that they were going to
block Canadian news content fromtheir platforms.
And while Google has sincereached a deal with the Canadian
government, links to news arestill blocked on Facebook and
Instagram in Canada actually alot, because I have lots of
(05:26):
family in the States who love toshare links to articles for
things that are happening downthere or things that are
happening up here that they hearabout, and I can't see them if
it's on Facebook Messenger.
So my dad will send me a linkand I'll try to open it, and it
says you can't see this.
So that means you can't see anynews media sources on Facebook
platforms about Canada's forests, anything that comes from like
(05:50):
the Globe and Mail or theHalifax Examiner, which Joan
writes for and I think this isjust some additional context.
Especially in today'sinformation age, what does this
mean that you can't see news onsocial media platforms?
These are statistics fromStatistics Canada.
(06:11):
In 2023, the majority ofCanadians got their news slash
information from the internet,television or social media, and
the majority of young peopleaged 15 to 34 reported getting
news or information from socialmedia or the internet, and a
significant proportion of thepopulation aged 34 to 54 also
(06:31):
preferred to get informationthrough the internet and social
media.
So if you can't get news onsocial media from sources that
follow, you know journalisticstandards and ethics.
What does that mean?
What are the implications?
So it's important context tohave for this.
Jan Sumner (06:47):
Yeah, I'm really glad that you raised all of that
, because journalistic standardsmean that you have to fact
check it.
So you can't just take somethingand publish it because somebody
sent you a nice news release,you actually have to fact check
and make sure that it's true.
And so Joan talks about thisand gets into this.
(07:09):
What happens in a world whereyou don't get to see the media
that is using ethical journalismstandards and fact
checkingchecking their articles?
And that goes for all thetraditional media, like you said
, like the Global Mail, torontoStar, vancouver Sun, whoever it
is out there writing aboutforestry and forest issues, and
(07:33):
other forms of media like theNational Observer and other
papers, the Narwhal, et cetera.
It's a big challenge, I guess,in terms of this, and so I
wonder what happens in that.
And Joan talks about this,because then the other piece
that you've got coming is youhave everybody else out there
writing public relationsmaterial which can be shared,
(07:57):
and we speak very specificallyabout one of those.
And when we talk about you can'tshare media, journalistic,
fact-check media.
You can't share media,journalistic, fact-check media
around forestry and forestissues.
That has a significant impactwhen you're talking about
wildfires, so people wanting tostay safe or understand what the
risk is or understand what thechallenges are can't make
(08:18):
decisions If you're in acommunity you can't access that
you can't see it on thetraditional social media
channels like Instagram orFacebook, and that is a problem.
It's a significant risk.
So I hope they get that sortedout, because it's creating this
void of information andincreasing risk.
(08:39):
So I would like to see how thatgets resolved.
But anyway, maybe we should cutto the conversation with Joan,
because she lays out the issuesmuch better than I do just
rambling on about them.
Okay, good morning, kaya, goodmorning.
Looking forward to thisconversation with Joan.
Joan, can you give us a littlebit about yourself so the
(09:02):
audience knows who you are andmaybe even why we're talking to?
Joan Baxter (09:06):
you?
Okay, well, let's see Shortversion.
I am a Nova Scotia journalistand author.
I am now back living innorthern Nova Scotia and I
actually am surrounded by whatremains of our forests after
Fiona and 50 years of industriallogging.
And I have been contributing,mostly since I've come back to
(09:32):
Canada, to the Halifax Examiner.
I have had a couple of itemsalso, so there was one in the
National Observer and theNarwhal and the Energy Mix, but
I was out of the country for along time.
I was reporting for the BBC fromWest Africa for many, many
years and a host of otherinternational media for
(10:00):
international NGOs focused onenvironmental, social justice
issues, land grabbing,extractive industries, people's
rights on land and wrote reportson those things.
And in addition to that I havealso worked as a science writer
for international researchorganizations, most recently the
(10:22):
International Center forResearch in Agroforestry, which
recently joined up with theCenter for International
Forestry Research.
Both of those are called CGcenters.
They're part of aninternational network of mostly
agricultural resource researchcenters scattered around the
world.
So for that I was based inKenya and it gave me the chance
(10:46):
over many years to do a lot oftraveling and learning from
farmers, agroforesters, peoplewho live in and around forests
in Asia and in Africa, and thatwas a very long learning
experience and it was also verysad to watch how much their
(11:07):
forest resources have beendecimated over the years by
large extractive industries, biglogging operations, both for
Europe and for Asia.
And yeah, before that, I guessI started out in the tropical
forests of Guatemala where I dida master's in physical
anthropology studying spidermonkeys, and then graduated to a
(11:30):
tropical research institute inMexico where I was looking at
howler monkeys and part of thebig ecosystem there.
So yeah, over the years mywriting and career has taken me
into a lot of forests and it'sbecome increasingly distressing
to see what's happening toforests and woodlands around the
(11:52):
world and to the people whodepend on them.
Jan Sumner (11:57):
So to say that you know a little bit about trees
and forestry is kind of anunderstatement.
Joan Baxter (12:03):
Yeah, but it's amazing how much there is to
know.
The more you learn, the moreyou realize how complex it is
and how we've underestimated thecomplexity and diversity of the
systems and how fragileactually they can be, shouldn't
be, but what we're doing to themmakes them more fragile.
Yeah.
Jan Sumner (12:23):
It's interesting.
We had a similar thread comethrough in our conversation with
Michelle Connelly fromConservation North, talking
about the complexifying agentsin a forest and how complex the
systems are.
It was very interesting just tohear about how fire and insects
(12:44):
are actually complexifyingagents in a boreal ecosystem.
So, yeah, interesting to hearthat repeated.
We now have qualified to beable to run commercials on our
podcast.
This may not seem like a goodthing for some people, but for
(13:04):
us at the Clear Cut it's a verygood thing.
It means that you, our public,are now downloading over a
thousand copies of each episodea month, which is fantastic, and
it puts us into a new bracketwhere people want to actually
advertise on the podcast.
We are going to do our verybest to make sure that the ads
that run on the podcast aresomething that may be, do our
(13:25):
very best to make sure that theads that run on the podcast are
something that may be ofrelevance or of interest to you,
and hope that you can listen tothese ads and see them as a
marker of success and your faithin the podcast.
So thank you so much forlistening to the Clear Cut.
I know that, kaya and Iappreciate it so very, very much
.
Thank you, kaya.
Did you want to start in or?
Kaya Adleman (13:46):
I mean, I was thinking we could maybe get into
why we're interviewing Joan inthe first place, how we came to
this, and that was because Joanwrote a very interesting article
that grabbed our eye in theHalifax Examiner, of which she
has written many, which she haswritten many, but this one
(14:07):
specifically centers around theForest Products Association
Forestry for the Future campaign.
Maybe do you want to talk alittle bit about that.
Jan Sumner (14:13):
Yeah, jill take it away.
Joan Baxter (14:14):
Well, I tried to avoid it for a very long time
and it popped up.
I mean basically it popped up.
(14:42):
I mean basically I have.
It's led to a lot of spread ofmisinformation which and there
are no fact checked articlesbasically on Canadian meta sites
anymore.
So I've been boycotting it.
However, I confess I do lurkthere because there are really
good local groups, includinghere in Nova Scotia, some people
trying to save old growthforest who've been camping out
(15:04):
in an area with endangeredlichen for the last 50 days.
So I lurk there to see what'sgoing on and also to kind of get
a sense of what's happening outthere on the political front.
And, as a result, the secondpost every day, every time I
looked for the last few monthshas been this Forestry for the
(15:27):
Future campaign and, as I said,I tried to avoid it.
I didn't want to look, and thenone day I thought I really
better have a look to see whatthis is all about.
And the more I looked, the moredistressing it was and the more
annoyed I was.
So eventually I decided perhapsit's time to write about it,
(15:48):
because one of the things that Ihave been focusing on in my
writing over the last few yearsis also corporate capture of our
governments by large extractiveindustries and associations and
PR campaigns that the rapidlydiminishing state of our forests
(16:12):
being duped into thinking thatthis campaign, forestry for the
(16:49):
Future, which is a creation ofthe Forest Products Association
of Canada and some very smart PRpeople, was on the right side
of things and they were sharingit and filling out the survey
and congratulating the peoplebehind this campaign for being
on the right side of history.
And indeed that was even acouple of friends of mine and I
said why would you fill out thatsurvey?
(17:10):
And they said oh well, it'sreally important that they know
that we really care.
I said, yes, but what do youreally care about?
And they said climate changeand the forests.
And I said have you lookedclosely at the messaging in
there?
It's very, very slick messagingand it is easy for busy people
who are just scrolling throughsocial media to think that this
(17:33):
really is a well-intentioned,selfless campaign.
And it's not.
It's just PR.
Or in the, I'll quote one ofour forest champions in Nova
Scotia, nina Newington, who'sone of those camped out in the
woods in Nova Scotia trying tostop cutting in an area with
(17:53):
endangered species.
It's bullshit.
Jan Sumner (17:57):
Well, that was the starting point for us to
initiate this conversation withJoan.
I must confess that I had been.
The survey kept coming up on mysocial channels as well and,
for lack of you know, maybe Iwas scrolling and eating lunch
or doing multiple things.
I thought, well, I'll fill itin, because surely they'll like
(18:20):
to hear if it's a survey andthey're seeking opinion.
I'm happy to provide my opinionand would like to do that.
And after seeing it for the10th or 11th time, I thought,
okay, I'm going to go in andfill it out.
But a very shortly, maybe intoquestion two or three, started
to abandon the idea because itdidn't give any ability to
(18:42):
provide an alternate opinion.
It was like it was alreadypreordained.
Having hooked you on theclimate change and the forestry
angle, I didn't seem to be ableto get in there and explain.
Now, I'm not saying allforestry is bad or anything like
that.
I actually wanted to talk aboutsome of the issues and put some
of that forward, and it seemedto box me in and didn't allow
(19:04):
that.
So when I saw Joan's article, Ithought, oh, my goodness,
there's something larger here tohave a conversation about.
And again, I kept seeing themessage, even though I had
abandoned trying to fill outthis survey, and I think I tried
it one more time and then Ithought, no, I just there's no
room there to provide any nuanceof opinion.
(19:26):
So I thought, well, what betterway to have than the
conversation with Joan and hearwhat she had to say about it in
terms of thinking through thelens of, especially when we're
seeing not a shutdown, but thatwe aren't able to share stories
from traditional fact-checkedmedia or even some of the other
(19:49):
media that's emerged that isstill using fact-checking and is
good journalism.
We're not able to share that onMeta and these social channels,
and it's very, very frustrating,especially when we've had some
natural disasters or things likethat, and we need to share that
information for people to staysafe, and we can't do that where
Facebook, for example, is verymuch part of the social fabric,
(20:14):
especially in northerncommunities that need to share
this data, and we can't.
And so this is frustrating.
And yet, at the same time,we're seeing advertisements like
the FPAC survey being able tobe abundantly shared and, as Joe
was saying, coming up second inyour feed.
So maybe we could walk throughsome of the questions just to
(20:35):
get a sense of where I'm going,which is this idea that you
can't divert from the path thatit's intended to take you on.
Joan Baxter (20:53):
I do have the survey printed out.
I haven't been able to find itagain online in the last week or
so.
I have not been getting thatcampaign on my social media feed
.
But I was into about the fourthquestion when I thought this is
not a survey, this is apush-pull, and I've seen
industry do a lot of theserecently when they need to get
(21:16):
answers, to pretend that theyreally have a lot of public
support and they need to go tothe policymakers on this.
But the first thing thathappens with this survey is that
they ask you to share youremail so that they can share the
results of the survey, and thenyou can make sure you're the
first to hear about newopportunities to support
Canada's net zero future.
So you know right away.
(21:37):
They're obviously trying to geta mailing list and a list of
contacts and I'm sure there's alot of demographic research that
will go into that.
Question two on a scale of oneto 10, with being no knowledge
at all and 10 being an experthow familiar would you say you
are with sustainable forestrypractices in Canada?
Well, first of all, nowhere issustainable forestry practices
(22:02):
even defined in the survey.
So that seems like a ratherludicrous question.
What do you mean by that?
So people can choose betweenone and 10.
I'm being an expert.
Question three would you sayyou have a positive opinion of
forestry practices in Canada, anegative opinion, or that you
(22:24):
don't know enough about thesector to have an opinion there
you go from positive to negativeon a scale of five.
So again you wonder whatthey're going to do with this.
If people say they don't knowanything about anything, are
they going to discount theiropinions?
We don't know what's going tohappen with the results of this.
It's being done for an industryassociation.
(22:45):
Over time, would you say, youropinion of the sector has been
getting better, worse or hasn'treally changed.
You can choose between gettingbetter and not really changing,
getting worse, and I note thatthere's never any room for any
comments on any of thesequestions.
So now we're up to questionfour on any of these questions.
(23:07):
So now we're up to questionfour.
Question five is where Iapparently gave the wrong answer
.
It's compared with othercountries that produce a lot of
wood and forest products, likeCanada.
Would you say Canada is a worldleader about average or below
average when it comes tosustainably managing our forests
?
About average or below averagewhen it comes to sustainably
managing our forests.
So you can choose A worldleader, b about average or C
(23:30):
below average.
And I clicked below average.
And then I got a lecture, thenext page.
Now I'm not sure if I hadclicked it is a world leader, if
I would have got the samecorrection or not, because I
couldn't go back.
I got a correction telling medid you know?
(23:51):
Canada is actually recognizedas a global leader in
sustainable management of ourforests.
So apparently I had the wronganswer, which is not the way
surveys are done or serioussurveys are done.
And then there's a long PRparagraph explaining how
wonderful Canadian forestry is,and this particular line I found
(24:17):
interesting.
We have the toughest and most,some of the toughest and
well-enforced regulatoryframeworks in the world, but
Canadian foresters operating onpublic land, where 90% of
Canada's forests are located,must submit a comprehensive 150
to 200 year forest managementplan for approval by provincial
(24:39):
governments before a single treeis harvested.
Now I cannot speak for what'shappening on Crown land in other
provinces, but I can tell youthat I have my computer full of
photographs of massive clearcuts on Crown land in Nova
Scotia.
And Nova Scotia is unique,except for Prince Edward Island
(24:59):
in Canada, in that only 30% ofthe province.
Less than 30% of the provinceis crown owned, so that land is
extremely precious.
We've given a huge chunk of itto a consortium of mills and
forestry companies to managecompanies to manage, and we
don't know how much they'repaying to harvest the trees, but
(25:26):
they are definitely clearcutting although we don't use
that word anymore in Nova Scotiawe call it variable retention.
So 10% variable retention andthen you have to leave that
famous clump of 30 trees.
That's representative of whatyou cut down, which is, I guess,
where moose are supposed to goand hang out and bears and
things.
So if they have to submit a 150to 200-year forest management
(25:49):
plan in Nova Scotia, I canassure you that nobody's looking
at it and maybe in 150 to 200years, if they left the forest
alone, it might grow back.
It might.
So then we come to there's onlyseven questions.
We come to question six.
When thinking about whatmatters most to you, how would
(26:09):
you rank the followingpriorities of Canada's forest
sector?
Now, this is where it getsreally into the push-pull
business, where they give you nooptions except their selected
answers.
So you're supposed to drag anddrop to rank the options.
There are quite a few of them.
(26:31):
Sustainably managing our forestsis one partnering with
Indigenous peoples, producingmore environmentally friendly
alternatives to everydayproducts, minimizing the impacts
of natural disturbances, suchas wildfires, to our forests.
Providing green jobopportunities for Canadians.
That's an interesting one,because I'm not quite sure which
the green jobs are.
They're talking aboutConverting wood waste to
(26:52):
biofuels to reduce our relianceon fossil fuels.
Another very contentious oneMaximize the carbon capture
potential of our forests orstrengthening our forests
against climate change.
Nowhere in there is a mentionof, in fact, biodiversity is
never mentioned once in thesurvey, but never mentioned in.
(27:12):
There is one option to suggestthat maybe we should leave the
forests alone a little bit torecover.
So that was question six.
Question seven To what extent doyou think forestry can support
a net zero carbon future and ourcollective fight against
(27:32):
climate change?
And there are five options forthis one.
Sustainable forestry iscritical in our climate change
fight.
Again, sustainable forestry isa very loosey-goosey term and
there's been a lot ofgreenwashing being done with
that term.
Sustainable the sustainableforestry is somewhat important
(27:55):
to fighting climate change.
Sustainable forestry has asmall role to play in fighting
climate change.
Forestry is not a factor infighting climate change.
Forestry is negativelyimpacting our fight against
climate change.
Now I think I might have thoughtit would be really interesting
to see forests are critical inour climate change fight, not
(28:17):
forestry.
But that wasn't an option andthat's it.
The survey is over and you havejoined.
The last page tells you you'vejoined thousands of Canadians
coming together to supportCanada's sustainable forest
sector Once again, we're notsure where or what that is and
(28:38):
learn more about what we'redoing to support a net zero
carbon future.
And there they ask you for yourname, email address, postal
code and you can join to receiveemail updates about the
campaign and issues.
So that is the survey, whichnow I haven't found on my feed
for the last few days, butthat's only one of the posts
(29:00):
that were showing up on thesocial media feeds.
There was another one thaturged you to send a letter to
your MP a pre-written letter toyour MP to support sustainable
forestry.
Jan Sumner (29:15):
I didn't get that one.
I did go through the surveyagain and was able to navigate
all the way to the last questionwhere, if you said that
forestry was not part of theclimate solution or was
negatively impacting things, youagain got a lecture on did you
know that United Nations hasjudged this to be yeah.
(29:36):
So, depending on how youanswered those questions, you've
got a corrective message comingback to you.
But, I guess, to my point, Iwasn't able, like you just said,
I wasn't able to say thatforests are an important part of
the equation, but notnecessarily forestry, and so it
didn't allow you to, it didn'tgive you an array of options, it
(30:00):
was just it was all speakingthrough the lens of forestry,
and so even the definitionsweren't clear.
So, for example, things likesustainable forestry I mean
we've had many people on thepodcast talking about whether
sustainable forestry meanssustained yield, whether
sustainable forestry meanssustained yield, which is very
(30:21):
different than what, I wouldhazard to say, many Canadians
think of sustainable forestry asbeing.
We're sustaining the forest andhaving a healthy ecosystem, and
that's not necessarily what itmeans.
It means that you can stillpredict that you will have trees
to harvest in a hundred years.
So it's a.
It's a very different not tosay that companies are not
(30:42):
required to manage for otherelements in the forest, like
pine, marten or certain birdspecies or endangered species.
Many of these are requirementsin a forestry plan, but if you
don't get it right and if yourmanagement tools don't work and
you can just look at caribou westill can see caribou ranges
(31:05):
collapsing across canada, yetcanada has yet to step up and
say hang on a second.
The management prescriptionsare not working and we're still
seeing a decline.
So it would.
It would suggest that ourforestry's uh not happening at a
sustainable level for all thespecies, for example.
Joan Baxter (31:25):
Yeah, yeah and, as I say, the take action post
which I received about it wasabout 50 50 whether I got the
survey or the take action emailyour mp post uh gave you a form
letter which I actually wrotethis.
It's a masterpiece of deceptionbecause it talks about, it
prescribes adjusting harvestingschedules to favor older, insect
(31:50):
damaged and high risk stands,and there are phrases like they
ask them to help push thegovernment to get rid of
regulatory barriers.
So when you talk aboutregulations as regulatory
barriers, I find that a red flagbecause basically it means
(32:14):
they're trying to get access tothings that they haven't had
before.
Get access to things that theyhaven't had before and in fact,
their prescription of what theywant to do to the forest is
exactly the opposite of whatmany real forest experts say
should be done, which is toactually maintain more on-site
(32:36):
biomass after harvest, reduceharvest schedules and levels and
decrease the production ofshort-lived forest products,
which is exactly what, at leastI can say here in Nova Scotia,
is what industrial forestry isall about and that they're
calling sustainable forestrybecause they are certified in
mainland Nova Scotia undersomething called the Sustainable
(32:59):
Forestry Initiative, mainlandNova Scotia under something
(33:26):
called the Sustainable ForestryInitiative, which is from this
whole campaign wasn't butthey're being very clever about
it.
Kaya Adleman (33:30):
It's a lot of coded language I find it very
interesting that in the surveythey're saying that Canadian
forestry is sustainable becauseit's subject to all of these
regulations and rules and it hasthe strongest, most robust laws
(33:54):
for forestry in the world, andthen in the letter to that
they're asking people who seethat social media advertising.
They're asking for these peopleto ask their politicians to
remove those same barriers.
So it doesn't really make anysense to me.
Jan Sumner (34:13):
Well, having rules doesn't make something
sustainable.
It means that you have to,you're required to do some
things.
It doesn't necessarily mean itresults in sustainability, and I
would be hard pressed to find acompany that had lost their
license because they didn't meetthe requirements.
I mean, maybe that's happened,I'm not sure.
(34:33):
If somebody knows of one, I'dbe delighted to hear about that.
I know that doesn't tend tohappen, and so, unless you're
seeing, well, I'll even stepoutside of forestry.
As I said, in terms ofendangered species, we're not
seeing a lot of enforcementaround caribou prescriptions
across the country.
Yet we know that caribou arebeing decimated by the
(34:54):
disturbance levels going up, andforestry is part of that
disturbance regime.
And so if we were trulymanaging sustainably, we
wouldn't have hairbrush rangescollapsing.
And even if you said it's notall due to forestry, you would
still have to take a much moreprecautionary approach, because
if you have other disturbanceshappening in that forest
(35:15):
management unit, then you needto back off on the disturbance
from forestry Because you can'tlet it get over that 35%
threshold.
So, to my mind, the evidence isclear.
We're not actually harvestingsustainably, otherwise we
wouldn't have all of theseendangered species, especially
caribou, and so we need to finda way.
(35:36):
If we're going to argue that wehave the world's best forestry,
then let's step up and do thatjob.
And so I think that we've gotthis very big question for us,
and especially in light ofclimate change, I think you flag
a few things there.
In terms of their language,they're arguing for more access
to fiber, and that was certainlyone of the messages I saw very
(35:58):
clearly come out last year.
When we had all the forestfires across Canada was like oh
see, this is the very reason weneed to get out there and
harvest and harvest more andfaster.
And we saw the same thing withall of the insect infestations
and the surges in those, andwhat was happening?
It was like, oh, the solutionis harvest more.
And, as I said, michelleConnolly disabuses us of that
(36:22):
notion and why that is not theanswer.
So those would be some of mythoughts on why this message is
skewed.
It seems to be skewed and Ithink there are ways to make
forestry more sustainable.
I'm not sure if it can beconsidered sustainable in an
(36:48):
intact ecosystem, because you'vetaken down trees and you regrew
trees, but you didn'tnecessarily regrow a forest.
Those are just some of myoff-the-top-of-my-head thoughts.
Joan Baxter (36:58):
I mean especially when I'm looking at eastern
North America where we have theWabanaki Acadian forest system,
the indigenous forest systemthat stretches from Maine
through parts ofifer, multi-agedconifer and hardwood forest
(37:25):
ecosystem, which was very fireresistant, very fire resistant.
It was multi-aged, it alwayshad the mixture of trees in
there.
So we have had forest fires inthe past but we tended to have
forest fires where there's beena lot of logging done and
they've replanted or they haveallowed the regrowth of conifers
(37:46):
and then sprayed withherbicides to kill off the
hardwoods and the broadleaftrees which are good in the
spring to kind of counter theforest fires.
So now that they've kind ofborealized the forests in
eastern north america, made themless fire resistant, now
they're claiming that theyshould do more of the same to
(38:09):
make them more fire resistant.
It just doesn't logically, itjust doesn't make sense.
But having spent a lot of my thelast few years looking at PR as
opposed to, which is propaganda, I'm very concerned about PR
and propaganda.
In fact I'm just reading afabulous book, which I highly
(38:31):
recommend, called Manipulatingthe Message by Cecil Rosner, who
used to be head of Fifth Estate, looking at how journalism has
been overtaken by PR and so PRand communications people now
outnumber journalists like eightor nine no, it's higher 120,000
(38:51):
.
Far, far by a factor of about10 or 12 outnumber journalists
in Canada and at the same timewe're having these right-wing
politicians come along andundermine everybody's faith in
the media.
So it's increasingly difficultfor us to counter these kinds of
slick and expensiveindustry-funded campaigns and I
(39:15):
think it's it's a reallydangerous trend.
So this PR campaign also meansthey're directly reaching the
audience through Facebook.
They don't even need to answerjournalists, which is why Forest
Products Association of Canadadidn't bother responding to me.
I sent them questions.
(39:36):
Nor did they respond to theNational Observer journalist,
max Fawcett Atkinson, who alsowrote about this campaign.
They don't need to becausethey've got their audience
direct through social media andI think that's a really
worrisome trend, not just forthe future of democracy but also
(39:56):
for the future of theenvironment, because there's
just so much disinformation outthere and I think this kind of
campaign really needs to be.
I mean, you look, there wereHalifax Examiner and the
National Observer called it out.
Meanwhile, their media partnersthey're boasting on their
website, the Forestry for theFuture website, about how many
main big Canadian publicationshave published Forestry for the
(40:21):
future.
Articles, and it's dozens ofarticles, have been published
and documentaries and so on thathave been done.
Plus, they have their ownpodcast called this was my
favorite Canadian forestry cansave the world, and it's into
season two, and they also havetheir own documentary.
(40:42):
Well, I don't.
Propaganda, in my opinion,should not be defined as a
documentary.
But this is what's happening.
Is this blurring of the lines,of the source of the information
, which is why I reacted sostrongly to this campaign,
because it's very indicative ofwhat's going on in the oil and
gas sector, in the preciousmetals mining sector.
(41:06):
They're just going directly tothe public with their PR and it
works.
Kaya Adleman (41:12):
Unfortunately, I'm curious if maybe you could
speak to, like you mentioned,the survey, for instance, was a
(41:33):
tool to show policymakers thepublic sentiment about Canadian
forestry.
Do you know what are the othergoals of the campaign?
Or maybe you could speak to thepresentation that FPAC gave to
the Maritime Lumber Bureau thatyou mentioned in your article.
Joan Baxter (41:42):
Yes, fortunately, that is online.
So in June 2023, derek Nyborg,who's head of the Forest
Products Association of Canada,spoke to the Maritime Lumber
Bureau yeah, and he describedthe program and tactics.
So we're in warfare territoryhere and I'll just list them, if
(42:05):
that's okay, because they'retoo wordy for me to remember.
So there will be cross-platformdigital advertising, earned and
paid media relations, which isreally worrisome.
Of course, the media are introuble, so they take any money
(42:28):
they can get from anything andany content they can take Out of
home advertising which is intransit, shelters and airports.
They have money, obviously.
Multi-medium flagship contentthe Capturing Carbon documentary
, canadian Forestry Can Save theWorld podcast, animated video
shorts and creative assetproduction, tiktok and Instagram
, influencer partnerships,indigenous partnerships,
(42:48):
community development andreal-time knowledge building Let
me see Saturate targetaudiences and increase public
opinion of the sector, and tocreate a more amenable
environment to advance thesector's policy priorities.
Well, any industry's policypriorities are going to take
(43:20):
precedence over other prioritiesfor me, which would be the
health of the forests.
So it was a deliberate and verywell thought out and no doubt,
very, very expensive campaigndesigned to help the industry
get exactly what it wants, whichis more access to the forest
and to be able to do more ofwhat they want in what's left of
the forests.
Kaya Adleman (43:38):
Do you know how much money they've spent on this
?
Joan Baxter (43:43):
forests.
Do you know how much moneythey've spent on this?
I wasn't, because that was oneof my questions that I had asked
.
I didn't get that back, but Ibelieve in the National Observer
article he also gave somefigures in the hundred.
I think was in the hundreds ofthousands, but he also was able
to get some figures that show it, described it as a very
expensive campaign.
Some figures that show itdescribe it as a very expensive
campaign.
(44:03):
No-transcript.
Jan Sumner (44:10):
I think they also received some funding from
Natural Resources Canada topromote Canadian forestry.
I don't know how that is spent.
I mean, we don't have a line ofsight into that, but I don't
know if Natural Resources Canadacan provide that information or
if they have no-transcript.
(45:08):
Yeah, we've talked about that onthe podcast a few times.
Actually, I think for Canadiansit's very hard to know how our
forests are being managed whenthe governments that are there
to that are, that are actuallysupposed to be monitoring and
making sure the forest ishealthy, are not able to enforce
or aren't enforcing and notholding accountable companies.
I know they, as I said, I knowthey have a lot of requirements
(45:31):
and I know they have to jumpthrough hoops, and I've sat at
forestry tables where they arebeing required to do some things
, and sometimes they're beingrequired to do things that I
think are uh, you know, notreally very productive, but
there's a lot of times thatthings are uh, there's not an
enforcement of the, of the thethings that would actually
(45:51):
measure sustainability.
Joan Baxter (45:52):
so, yeah, well, I think.
I think another one of theissues in Canada with almost all
environmental regulations ismonitoring.
Our government departments aretiny compared with the reach of
industry and I know here in NovaScotia the Department of
Environment is tiny.
Natural resources andrenewables is much bigger, but
(46:16):
they do almost all of it'salmost all self-reporting from
industry and they have very fewresources to go out and actually
inspect and it's usuallybecause of annoying citizen
scientists who make it theirbusiness to go and try to find
the endangered species when anarea is slated for cutting and
(46:36):
then, when it is slated forcutting, sit there and camp out
in the winter and get arrested,that you see any publicity over
some of these issues.
So in other words, theregulations are there, may be
there, but the monitoring isvery, very weak, very weak, and
enforcement is very weak.
Jan Sumner (46:58):
Yeah, I think that's true.
I think the monitoring dollarsare not there.
The federal government, I think, just got an increase in being
able to do some analysis at amore macro scale.
Right now they look at a30-meter scale to assess whether
or not there's been disturbance.
And I've been advocating for along time and Wildlands League
(47:21):
has been advocating for a longtime that we get somewhere down
at a 4-10-meter resolution sothat we can actually see some of
these roads and the disturbancefootprint, because roads can be
like 3 meters across and so ifyou're at 30 meters you just
don't see it.
So, finding a way to actuallyget that data and have canadians
be able to see it I mean youcan see it on google if we could
(47:42):
start to train some folks ongoogle on how that might happen,
um, you know, that would bemaybe a good outcome.
So, joan, you keep keepmentioning this protest that's
going on in your neck of thewoods.
Joan Baxter (48:00):
It's just the most recent one.
I mean, it's an area they'rereally pushing to get it as a
protected area and it's just agroup of really engaged people.
There's the Healthy ForestCoalition here in Nova Scotia.
Really engaged people there'sthe Healthy Forest Coalition
here in Nova Scotia.
That's a very loose assembly ofa lot of different groups that
know a lot about forestsactually and forestry and who
(48:24):
have been really trying veryhard in recent years to get the
government to pay attention tothe dire state of forests in
Nova Scotia.
And you don't.
We were talking aboutmonitoring and being able to see
what's really going on.
If you don't spend a lot oftime on Google, you don't know
(48:47):
what's going on unless you takea plane.
And when you take a planeacross Canada it can be quite
startling what you see.
Anybody who tells you thatwe've been doing it sustainably.
And you know there's so muchforest.
There's more trees now thanthere were, you know, 100 years
ago.
Yes, but what trees and in whatstate are those trees?
(49:07):
And if you fly over Nova Scotia, it's absolutely shocking how
the province has been justbasically scalped.
It's really quite shocking.
So I mean in parts of theprovince where I was writing
about new gold mines, open pitgold mines.
They said to me well, they'vealready clear-cut it, they might
(49:30):
as well mine it now.
You know, it's just kind ofreached a state of despair.
And we don't have caribou, wehave the mainland moose, our
(49:53):
endangered species, and ofcourse the forestry lobbyists
will say, well, that's becauseof the deer bringing a parasite
that kills the moose, butthere's also very little habitat
left.
It's been so carved up.
And then what's happened morerecently here, speaking of
disaster capitalism, well, okay,forest Products Association
here is really playing on theclimate change and wildfires.
In Nova Scotia we had Fiona,which decimated.
I'm looking out my window rightnow at what happened to my
woodlot.
It was flattened.
(50:15):
So what's happened since thenis that the forestry industry in
Nova Scotia has gone around andtold everybody that they should
absolutely clear everythingthat's left and get it out of
there, Because if not, there'llbe a forest fire risk for them.
So they're using thisopportunity to dupe landowners
into just clear cutting whateverwas left, instead of leaving
(50:36):
some of that for habitat andletting it regrow.
So it's really been disastercapitalism around here.
So this is how climate changejust feeds climate change,
coming in and pretending thatthey're the big champions of the
climate, when in fact we knowfrom recent calculations that
(50:57):
Canada's forests are now biggeremitters than they are
sequesters of carbon.
Jan Sumner (51:03):
When you speak to those calculations, are you
referencing the Federal AuditorGeneral report?
Joan Baxter (51:11):
No, I'm actually referencing the recent
peer-reviewed study.
By Julie Bowen and others, yeah,and also I'm looking at the
2023 analysis by Barry Saxefragfrom the National Observer.
He said we've so weakened ourforests through decades of
(51:32):
business-as-usual industriallogging and fossil-fueled
climate shifts that it switchedto hemorrhaging carbon dioxide
instead of absorbing it.
And there was a peer yeah, theJanuary 2024 peer-reviewed study
about the forest-relatedemissions are being
underreported in Canada, aboutthe forest related emissions are
(51:56):
being underreported in Canada.
Between 2005 and 2021, forestryin Canada represented a net
source of carbon and not, as thegovernment and industry would
claim, a net carbon sink.
So those are the things that Iwas referencing.
And again, in the whole FPATcampaign and all of the articles
(52:19):
that have been written becauseI've made myself read them I
haven't listened to the podcast,but I read some of the
summaries I don't see any ofthose issues being addressed.
So there's no nuance.
There's none of the other sideof the story is coming out,
which is why you need journalismand not PR.
Jan Sumner (52:45):
So one of the reasons we wanted to have Joan
on the podcast was definitely tospeak with her about this void
that we have in the landscape,that it's getting almost, maybe
even accidentally, but it's.
It's being filled by publicrelations materials that are not
fact-checked, not like thepublications that follow
journalistic standards andfact-check their stories before
they get released and so whathappens in that.
(53:06):
But the other reason wasbecause she brings a solid
credentials in terms of forestryand Nova Scotia and we have not
yet had anybody on the podcasttalking about the issues around
forestry in Nova Scotia.
So this was a fantasticopportunity to meet with her and
talk with her, and she speaksvery eloquently about the
forestry and the protests thatare ongoing in Nova Scotia
(53:30):
because she wrote a book on it.
Kaya, what did you think ofthat first session with her?
Kaya Adleman (53:36):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, this is like so up
my alley in terms of likeinformation, and so I really
found it.
I just found the whole conceptreally fascinating, especially
as a young person, because I doconsume a lot of content and I
do get a lot of my informationfrom social media.
I mean, of course I consumeinformation on social media, of
(53:58):
course with a critical lens.
I like to.
If I see something, I like tofact check it with an article or
a paper that followsjournalistic standards and
journalistic practices andethics.
But yeah, I think one thingthough that stands out to me is,
especially because we'retalking about this void of that
kind of information on socialmedia platforms, is, if you
(54:20):
actually look at thatpresentation that Joan talks
about and then it's also linkedin her article% like 50% of
people either don't know theindustry enough to have an
opinion or don't know theindustry at all of these people
(54:42):
that they surveyed.
So that's definitely interestingto me, especially now we're
seeing this, you know, onesidedness of PR materials being
the only information you'rereceiving about Canadian
forestry.
You know, could this becreating an opinion among those
(55:02):
40 to 50% of people aboutCanadian forestry?
That's missing a lot of thecontext that those sources that
are now blocked from metaplatforms provide.
I think it definitely sets thecase for Canada to revise its
(55:25):
Online News Act, for meta tocompensate journalists
accordingly, because they do doa lot of very hard work and they
do, you know, doing thatresearch.
They deserve to be compensatedfairly for that work.
And they do, you know, doingthat research.
They deserve to be compensatedfairly for that.
But yeah, I think it justspeaks to a growing, a growing
problem in today's society and Iwould like to see some, some
(55:46):
resolution to that, as wediscussed earlier.
Jan Sumner (55:49):
Yeah, it would be great if they could reach an
agreement, like Google did,because I mean, I don't know if
it's an increase in PR.
I know this is a newishcampaign for the Forest Products
Association of Canada.
Maybe there have been othercampaigns et cetera but when
it's happening against abackdrop, where you don't have
(56:10):
media who are reporting onforest and forestry issues, then
it can seem like it's the onlyvoice out there, and that is
that's dangerous.
So it would be great to havethe voices of good journalism
reporting again on forest andforestry issues.
Yeah, yeah.
And I will also share it.
Kaya Adleman (56:29):
Yeah, and I will also just add as an aside I
loved going through the surveywith Joan and I do think it's
funny how she makes that comment.
Like this is not any surveythat follows rigorous research
standards, and I just couldn'thelp but think of when I was
doing my own honors thesis workat McGill University.
(56:52):
I used a survey for myqualitative research methods and
I had to go through an ethicsreview board.
I had to submit my survey to anethics review board, I had to
go back and revise it multipletimes and it would be
interesting to see if thatsurvey went through, you know, a
university academic reviewboard to see if it would, if it
(57:14):
would pass through.
Jan Sumner (57:16):
Yeah, I was one of the things because I took the
survey at least I tried to acouple of times and I was hoping
that, you know, a lot of timesthey'll say if you want to say
something else or you want towrite something in, because it
didn't give me some of theoptions that I thought could be
there.
And again, I'm not a no forestryat all kind of person.
(57:37):
I'm like how do we do forestry,where do we do it and how much
of it do we do and how do weconduct our forestry operations?
And so I think those are validquestions to try and answer and
I was hoping to participate withthat kind of a mindset, not
just answer how great isforestry and how great could it
be and how much greater, youknow.
(57:57):
It just felt so skewed and Iwas really looking forward to
being able to answer some of thequestions, because I do think
that there are some great waysthat forestry can be aiding us
in climate change and wildfires,et cetera.
But this survey quote unquotedidn't allow me to engage in
that kind of way, so it was abit of a frustrating exercise.
Kaya Adleman (58:19):
Yeah, I agree.
Jan Sumner (58:20):
Anyway, we've got part two coming up with Joan, so
goodbye for now.
Kaya Adleman (58:25):
Yeah, see you next week.
Jan Sumner (58:29):
If you like listening to the clear cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kai andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.
Kaya Adleman (58:40):
You can also become a supporter by going to
our website atwwwwildlandsleagueorg.
Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
on your favorite podcaststreaming platform.
It would really help thepodcast and stay tuned for new
episodes by following us onsocial media.
Jan Sumner (59:01):
That's at Wildlands League on Instagram, twitter and
Facebook or LinkedIn, of course.
Kaya Adleman (59:07):
See you next time.
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