Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will give you a bit of context for the Alberta Forest Products Association, or AFPA.

We represent 29 forestry companies in Alberta, and our members range all the way from publicly listed companies to family-run businesses that have been passed down from generation to generation. Our members sustainably harvest timber, mostly on public land, and make high-quality products that are in demand here in Canada and around the world. We also play a significant role in managing, sustaining and caring for Alberta's forests.

Sustainability is the key to our business. While companies that are 80 to 100 years old are the exception to the rule in other industries, they're the norm in forestry. It's only possible because companies plant decades in advance, plant more trees than they harvest and take care of the land. In Alberta, forestry companies plant over 100 million seedlings annually and grow roughly three trees for every one that's harvested.

For many years, we've been deeply concerned about the situation in Jasper. While our members don't typically operate in the park, they operate on adjacent lands, caring for and managing those forests. Unhealthy forests in the park affect neighbouring forests and increase the risk of fires and pine beetle infestations that know no borders or boundaries.

The other day, I dug up a newspaper article that we wrote in 2017 predicting that the next major fire would be in Hinton or Jasper. Sadly, we were right. We had expressed concern about the combination of pine beetle, increasingly warm, dry summers and unmanaged forests within the park. We had talked about how fires are a natural part of the forest cycle in this area of the world, but they're dangerous around communities and people, even more so when we have hot, dry summers and increasingly volatile fires.

The majority of forests across Canada have evolved through disturbance. It's certainly prudent to extinguish fires from a community safety perspective, but this has resulted in unnaturally old forests and volatile conditions. We believe that harvesting and replanting forests is a safer alternative to fires. Old, uniform forests are much more at risk of fires than forests with a more natural mix of age composition. We can create that mix through active forest management.

We also believe there's a fundamental flaw in the Government of Canada's approach to forest management. This flaw is the belief that overmature forests should not be managed, even if they are aging and at risk of catastrophic fires. This was exactly the situation in Jasper, and sadly that risk was realized. Not only does the belief that forests should be preserved in an unnatural state seem to be entrenched in national parks policy, but it has extended to provincial lands through legislation like the Species at Risk Act.

Right now, in Alberta, companies are prevented from managing and operating in large tracts of older, overmature forests because of caribou. The reality is that, just like in Jasper, these forests are at risk of catastrophic fires. When those fires happen, it will be bad for communities, caribou and the sustainability of industries operating on the land base.

For us, this exercise isn't about looking back. It's about forging a collaborative path forward, one that protects the communities we live in and love, the land we cherish and the forests that sustain us. We believe unequivocally that this path involves more active management of our forests—looking at which areas are at risk of becoming the next Jasper and taking steps such as harvesting and replanting with younger trees, which are much less at risk of fire.

We believe it involves taking a hard look at any policies or legislation preventing this work. Policies for national parks and the Species at Risk Act are in urgent need of reform. We believe this path involves a co-operative approach and open communication. Conversations on the management of our forests need to happen among all levels of government, indigenous communities, industry and other users of the land. They need to leverage the expertise of foresters and people who live on the land, as well as the perspectives of local communities. They need to happen urgently.

Let's not waste this opportunity to begin those conversations.

Thank you.