 So with that, I'd like to welcome and thank today's presenters. On the line, we have Susan Mulkey, she's a manager of communication and extension for the Canadian-based British Columbia Community Forest Association. Susan has a background in community development, planning and advocacy for rural communities. She's worked as a consultant, a mediator, a facilitator with an emphasis on projects involving citizen engagement, strategic planning, policy development and change management. Susan lives with her family and garden on Kootenai Lake in Caslow. In addition, we have Ron Kresner, who graduated from UBC with a degree in forestry in 1981 and since then has worked in various locations and capacities with the Ministry of Forest, mostly in civil culture and timber-tenures. Ron's been in his current position as a senior timber-tenure forester involved with community forest and wood lot licenses since 2004. His main function is to develop policy, legislation and regulations for these programs and provide guidance to ministry staff and licensees. So we're going to move to the next slide and just going to overview the agenda. These are the two presenters that we just talked about. So we've had some introductions. We're going to move to the formal presentation components of the webinar where we've allowed lots of time for discussion and conversation and then just five minutes for closure. So with that, I'd like to hand it over to Susan. Susan, could you please hit star seven to unmute your audio? There you are. We can hear you now. Great. Thanks very much. Well, thank you and thank you to everyone for managing the technical difficulties. It's my congratulations to Darby and to Kerry and staff there for navigating what's probably one of the most challenging presenters issues ever, which is the technical one. So kudos to you guys and here we go. I'd like to just welcome you and thank you for joining in. This was the last minute on the Committee of Forestry filling the space for someone else who had canceled. So I thank you for being interested enough to join in at the last minute. And it's my pleasure to tell you a bit about Community Forestry. I hear that you can change the slides yourself. So if you're doing that, I will be knowing that you want me to hassle along. So my slides have a lot of pictures in it because I think that the visual aspect of Community Forest really tells our story. And this is the first page has a picture of where I live in the middle there. That's Cootley Lake. We've got some kids and old folks and young folks from here at Proctor and some scenes from Seashell. Just to give you a little bit of an overview of what I'm going to talk about here, just what really is Community Forestry. And to tell you a little bit about Community Forestry around the world, to get a context, I'm going to talk about the Community Forest Agreement, which is what the tenure is we have here in British Columbia. I'm going to tell you about what we see as some of the benefits and talk some about my association, the Community Forest Association, and then what we're up against in the world right now. So a definition, you can see it there. It's really all about not unlike the title of the talk today, it's really about local people having a stay in the management over the local resources for the benefit as they define it. Community Forestry is happening all over the world and it's been going on, BC is a bit of a latecomer to it, it's been going on in Nepal and India for almost 40 years. And governments really recognize that particularly in developing countries as a tool for reclaiming degraded ecosystems, recognizing that it's local people who have the greatest investment in the stewardship of local land. And it's also seen as an incredible way for local people to find an income and their livelihoods off of the land surrounding their community. I've traveled a bit with Community Forestry down in the states, most of the land is private, but here in the city of Arcada, they've been managing some pieces of land that they've purchased for over 50 years. And you can imagine it's there in California and it's lots of high visibility for the politics around forestry. Nepal, it's a lot about the assistance for local people. I visited a number of places where they're using the Forest Stewardship Council certification to make paper. In the bottom slide there on the right hand side, you can see the Lukabark and that's what they use to make the certified paper. It's just a beautiful product and really makes a difference in people's lives. Here I am in Montenegro where they're using Community Forestry as a tool to repatriate the land that was taken over during the communist area and giving it back to communities. So in BC it's not a new thing even though the program is somewhat new. 1945 there was a Royal Commission and actually I believe there were two actually but started back in 1945 recommending that municipalities should be able to manage the land around their local community. First one started a mission but it wasn't until 1998 that the government of the day said let's give it a try, let's do a pilot program. And there were I think 80 communities that expressed interest. There were 10 communities that were granted the right to have an experimental community forest that really captured quite a range of different approaches and models to what a community forest would be. Then in 2003 there was the Forest Revitalization Plan and a take back of 20% of the allocated annual allowable harvest from the major forest companies which then a portion of that came to Community Forest. I'll show you how the program really did expand at that point. And last year the Round Table on Forestry really recommended more community forest. There's a lot of communities that don't have one but who would like one. Which reminds me Darby I was supposed to ask about the poll. Yeah would you like to do that now or should we? Maybe this is a good segue back to that. Sure, absolutely. Darby has set up a couple of questions just to get a bit of an idea where the participants on this poll come from. Darby do you want to show those now? Simple question. Yeah please attendees if you could just click on the appropriate one for you. Do you have a community forest in your community? Yes, no or not sure. About 11 of us have responded there. It seems you have gone back. I'll go over to the next question. Sorry that's the same one. Here we go. Our next question. If you have a community forest in your community how successful has it been? Yeah please indicate which one is most appropriate, highly, moderately, somewhat, a little or not. About two there. Okay so I can go back. Go back to the presentation. There we are. Okay great. Thanks very much. Next poll. You seem to have moved themselves around. Now audience please, attendees if you could please not touch those arrows at the bottom left hand corner. That's just for our presenters for Susan and Ron. Thanks. Okay so I'd just like to tell you what the province in their wisdom of why they wanted to create more community forests and strengthen the program. What their objectives are. They see that there's a benefit in long-term management of a particular area and that managing for community priorities whatever they may be is a good thing. Diversifying the tenure fabric, the quilt of ten years in British Columbia that there's strength and diversity. There's power in the community being involved in their, in these forest management decisions. Again the wisdom of the environmental stewardship. They think there's some power in communities being forced to be managed by communities that lends to innovation and greater safety in the forest. And certainly strengthening relationships within the community and in quite a, quite a number of our community forests strengthening the relationship between the native and non-native community. Community forests are a renewable forest license, a long-term career license so it means it's renewed on, before the end of that I think it's renewed every ten years. But it goes on in perpetuity. It's area-based which means it's not just like in other forest licenses, it's volume-based. So the licensee would be able to access a particular target of volume but it could be anywhere in the timber supply area. Community forests, it's, it's, there's an area that's designated and it has an annual allowable harvest identified. So it doesn't change over time. If it does, it's with participation of the community. The community forest agreement provides on the, the holder with the exclusive right to harvest there. They're the only ones nobody else can come in. And an opportunity to manage for a full range of values. It still is pretty much a timber tenure but we do have a right to manage for the other values that are within that designated area. And even though we have that right to manage beyond timber, we still follow all of the same rules of the provincial forest management. Here you can see how the program has expanded and the, the, the big leap there where you can't really see the, the dates underneath it. But there, you can see the big leap with 25 and, or 26 and 28 in the blue section of communities that were invited to participate in the program. You can see over time how the, the green area is getting bigger. And then this orange area at the end is a full long-term tenure where the green area still speaks to that probationary status that was in the, the pilot program. It's a bit of a holdover. But you can see how communities are transitioning to the long-term as the program matures. So here we are now. 54 communities are involved in the program at, at some stage of application, still in that probationary period or in the long-term. And still it looks like it's a lot of cubic meters a year, a lot of hectares, but we are still very, very small, being 1.5% of the provincial harvest. There's an application process that's required. The steps are that a community expresses interest. That interest goes to the minister and to his staff. If there's a, an area where, where that can be appropriate for a community forest and there's agreement to move ahead, the minister will invite a community to apply. That means that there is an application process where the community has to really both get organized, sit down together, and identify what it's going to be for them. How do they want it to look? What are the values? What do they want to achieve? And how will they organize themselves? So you can see once again that the pictures try to describe some of the values that that management plan would, would need to incorporate. That picture in the middle there with the tents in the lake, that's the Caslow Jazz Festival. And it, the, our community forest sits right behind looking down on that. So in that management plan, it within the application process, one of the things that a community must decide is how they will be organized. How will their governance, what kind of a governance model will they choose? What we say about community forest is that there's no cookie cutter approach. So there is a full range of structures everywhere from nonprofit societies and cooperatives to limited companies that are in corporations where the license is held by municipality, a holding company is created, and then there's an arms link corporation. There's also some limited partnerships which are the preferred model these days for native, non-native partnerships. It's very complex in the choice that people make around their, their governance model, trying to preserve certain rights and privileges that a municipality may have or a First Nation may have within tax structures, such as. And then there's different board models. Some of them are, some of the community forest boards are represented only by municipal officials. Some of them are from appointees from the municipal officials to sit on the, the board. Some of them just represent chief and council. And then, of course, in a place like CASO, we have a, a, a a society where the members are selected from the membership. However, a seat is set aside for the regional district to appoint someone and one from the village to appoint someone. So the point here is that there's a lot of different options and I get a lot of calls from people saying, so what's the best one? And that's really up for the, the community and their specific situation to make that determination. These logs, these big pumpkins here from Herot Proctor Community Forest just down on Putney Lake. So I'd like to talk just a bit about the benefits. And of course, those benefits are going to vary from community to community. Whoops. Jump in here. Attendees, if you could please not touch the, the audio, video components on the left, including switching the slides. Unfortunately, we've lost Susan's video line that the seat seems to have gone on us. So we're just going to leave it blank at this time. So. I could try again. Sure, if you don't mind there. I just clicked on it. I'll see if it, if it shows up. Great. Thanks Susan. Please keep your seat. Okay. So benefits. You can see that there, that there's a full range of them. As I said, it depends from community to community how an individual community will make their priority. I'll tell you a bit about that range. Or the Cheslotta Carrier First Nation. They have a community forest up by Burns Lake. Unfortunately, they had a huge fire this year. And as to the extent, I know that it hit some of their plantations and to some of their, their standing timbers. So that's going to be something really heartbreaking. I know it's already heartbreaking, but it will be heartbreaking to see what happens up there. The new development. But in the meantime, it's been an incredible opportunity for their people. And you can see what Mike Robertson, who's been somebody who has worked with them for a long time, did at home. The community forest really leveraged a connection for them that they, they had lost out on through politics and, and events of years ago. It's an incredible thing. West Bank First Nation too, they've got people who are going to work and keeping their equipment up to date because they know that the community forest will have work for them. Whereas in the past, maybe they wouldn't keep their truck licensed or in good repair to be able to go to work. It's really made a difference for them. A great story from likely that they're 70 kilometers from Williams Lake and their ambulance, you could see the road going by when you're in it in the back because of the holes in the floor. So some of the profits from their community forest, they bought a first response vehicle. That's quality of life. And then there's down in Harrop, Proctor as I said down here on Cootley Lake. In the mid-1990s there were huge arrests, demonstrations and arrests when Spokane Forest products wanted to put a logging road in. Most of these people there were arrested. I can, I can help you. Next slide please. Keep going. Okay. Just, just if you could show me that hole in there. Okay. And again. And the next one. Okay. So here's the first load of logs coming out of Harrop, Proctor once they got their community forest agreement. Basically they said, if this land is not going to be put into a park, then if it's going to be in the working forest, then we want to be the ones to manage it. And we will manage it for water quality, quantity and timing of flow. That's their priority. If they don't make any other money past that, they're happy if they've been able to put their, their management system in. And they're actually some of the most innovative with the value added part of community forestry as well. So there's their benefit they prioritized, which was water. Here's Burns Lake with some, some students. It's an incredible opportunity for long-term trials. Because of the long-term aspect of the tenure, there's a lot of room for seeing what happens over time, did in some of the area-based tenures. It's more like a research forest in that way, which in a volume-based tenure, it's just not possible in the same way. Burns Lake has also been really a leader in putting in infrastructure for recreation and tourism. And because of some of the liability issues, they couldn't put actual mountain biking trails on the community forest. But what they did with some of their profits was buy some land, which then could be turned into mountain biking trails. But I think these pictures are just from some of the wreck trails right on their community forest. McBride is another one of our, our long-term community forest. That top picture there shows the view from the village that's their community forest. Part of their management plan says that their harvesting plans, their harvesting activities will not negatively impact the tourism visual quality objectives that they have. They rely a lot on tourism, and they want it to look really beautiful. So it's got to be a lighter touch or in some creative, innovative layout so that it doesn't show. And they do quite a bit in the value-added arena as well. The posts and rails out of feeder that otherwise would have been just put on the waste pile, they're putting people to work through these small value-added operations. One of our great stories is what's going on out in seashells on the Sunshine Coast. The community forest there has a partnership with a local log home builder where they let them go out into a new area that will be set for harvest. They hand-picked their trees that they want to turn into their product. They are, you see the sling in the upper left-hand picture there. It's handled very carefully and then pressure washed so that the bark comes off. And it just turns into these beautiful, beautiful high-end homes sold all over the world. But they're using low-grade cedar. They're using a small amount and putting 22 full-time employees to work. And then the community forest for the special handling and that opportunity to go in first get quite a markup from the market-based price. It's really a win-win and quite a partnership that a lot of community forests would like to see come to their town. The picture here is Quinelle Lake where they went to get some beetle. Quinelle Lake is a big area for a likely community forest. And the manager sent the loggers who lived right on the lake there to manage that block saying, go home every night and tell me if you'd like to see. And I think Pat Bell really captured that in his comment that community forests own the principle of social license and have a real opportunity to pilot ideas and innovate. And we really aspire to that. So I'd like to tell you about BCCFA, which is the organization I work for. There's really just two of us who have contract positions. My partner, Jennifer Benchers, she's our executive director, lives here in Caswell as well. The fact that the two of us live here in Caswell means that's the home base for the Community Forest Association. We are a nonprofit society and I get my direction from our members. And we started with 10. We now have 50 members. I'm trying to click again, Darby. I'll help you along. Here we go. There we are. So we have two main functions. We work with Ron Greschner and his colleagues on provincial policy trying to make the best situation for community forests that we absolutely can in collaboration with the provincial government. And then we have a role in education and networking for our members. To put on an annual conference this year, we were in West Bank. It was the first time we were ever hosted on the traditional territory of one of our members. And it was a great opportunity for people to get together. I think some of our best sessions are where we've got a roving mic where people just share stories on a subject. Everybody benefits so much from the experiences of others. One of the things we did last year, we were contacted at the beginning of September to see if Community Forests were interested in contributing wood to the Olympic podium. It was an amazing, unequivocal, yes, by my members. And 14 of the 23 podiums were made out of wood donated by Community Forests. It was an incredible moment of pride for everyone. Those are the kids from likely sending off the wood from the likely Community Forests. What's going on for Community Forests now of what my job to focus on? We're working with the provincial government to see how we can make that recommendation from the working roundtable to create more Community Forests agreements. It's native and non-native communities who are interested in this. As I said before, there were 80 at the beginning who wanted one. I think there's, in my latest estimate, there's at least 40 who have expressed interest, 40 additional communities in BC who have expressed interest to be involved in the program. There's also a point around the size. Economies of scale play a big factor in forestry and really to provide the goals of the community for the benefits, a lot of them could be bigger. They range from 1,000 cubic meters in Banfield to 22 in Herotproctor to, I think, 50 or 60 in McBride. There's some that are larger that are potential that have just come in from transfers from tree farm licenses that belong to First Nations. But I think that everyone would agree that 20,000, which is the average, is just too small to really be efficient. In administrative efficiencies, we describe ourselves as sometimes the square peg in the round hole because we are small and we work under the same legislation that all of the major licensees do and because we're area-based. There's some ways that we're working with the provincial government to see if we can streamline how we have to do our work so that there's some cost benefits through our administrative structure. And also, we're learning more about carbon, about potential in biofuels and potential in value added. Now that the program has been there for over 10 years, people have established a number of communities for us to establish themselves and they're ready for the next stage of exploring opportunities. Some of the projects that we're focusing on right now within BCCFA is a value-added fiber supply trying to connect value-added manufacturers with community forests to just see where the synergies are. This is an exciting project and we hope to be starting this up soon. I talked about the square peg in the round hole, forest management, some of the planning tools and development tools that have been developed for larger 10-year holders. So we're working with the Alex Fraser Research Forest and UBC to adapt those and make some tools that will create some more efficiencies for community forests as we do from the beginning of the application through to subsequent long-term planning for the operating area. Governance, as I said, there's no cookie-cutter approach but there's something that my colleagues, Jen and I, have been trying to do off the corner of our desk since 2003 which is do an analysis, first do a compilation of all of the different models that are being used and the different policies that have been put in place by communities and get them all in one place. Do an analysis over the different governance structures, the organizational models and do a bit of an analysis on them to see where the benefits and challenges are in the different approaches. I get calls and e-mails every week for do you have a template for how to hire a manager or do you have some board development work? It would be nice to have that all in one place. So the Forest Management and Governance is a project we've just started. And then as it's read through all of these three components, we are working with UBC to develop a really proper extension program. In the states with their universities, they have a function where there's an extension person that is attached, it creates a liaison function between the field of the community for us and the university. It's really exciting and there's been lots of take-ups at the universities for this. They just started this week a community and Aboriginal forestry component. So it's very, very exciting and also very long-term that's something we're really thrilled about. I skipped. So Robin Hood, our president says it's probably the best way that we don't just work in community forestry, we live it. You can imagine that if you're on a community forest board or if you're a manager and you live in a rural community that if somebody has an opinion about what's going on in the community forest, they may tell you about that opinion at the grocery store lineup, at the hockey game, at the beach, at the pub. There is no getting away from it and sometimes it'll take you out of the back of your knees. It's not always easy. In fact, one manager said it's the hardest thing he's ever done, but it also is a pretty amazing thing when you stand down and look up and say, hey, this forest surrounding our community is managed by the community. It's a rare opportunity and there's not a single community that has said no when they were offered the opportunity. Everybody has said, yes, we'll take it on, even with those risks. And that's what I have for you today. This picture actually is from Bella Cula, a couple of big brown guys walking on a trail. So Darby, that's it for the presentation. Great, Susan. Thanks very much for an excellent presentation there. Yes, we'd like to turn now to the discussion portion of this presentation. Please, right now, I'd also like to remind you that Ron Greshner is also available here. I'll switch this back over to me in a second here. Ron Greshner is also available here for questions. He's from the Ministry of Forests and Range. There are a few discussion questions here to encourage just that, questions and discussion. If you do have a question, could I ask you right now to please go up to the feedback button that I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation and just please change the indicator from green to what is purple. And at that point, we will address you and the presenter can speak to your question. Does anyone have a question out there? Great, Rick Bromf. Rick, if you could please hit star 7 on your phone line and that should unmute the audio line for you. And please ask your question. Any troubles there? If you just hit star 7 on your phone line, that should get you there. Great, please go ahead. Just on all the pictures that you have on there, it all shows these mostly saw logs except for some of the host logs. But one of the challenges is trying to deal with the non-saw log portion of these licenses. And I'm just wondering what the association, if they're doing marketing in the area of trying to find a home for some of the non-saw log portion. It's a really good question. It's like people just show pictures of their smiling baby and not the one that's crying. Yeah. Within our value-added project, there's a huge component there on the biofuel function. At our conference last year, we had Ken Dave, they asked the research for us who gave a great presentation on some research that they had done on small-scale biofuels and what you needed, how to do it, how far it was economical to transport it, when you should chip, how to chip it, how to transport it. And as far as the community forest, marketing anything, we don't serve nature as a marketer for our members. Everybody does their own marketing. But within our value-added project, we hope to be able to at least get some information on our website to tell us what products people have available. But I will tell you one thing that I heard. From West Bank, they had, Ron, help me if you can remember the numbers, but they had 3,000 piles that would have been flash-burned last year. This year, they had three because they shipped everything down to the coast with chips. So that's a lot about proximity to market and the whole thing, but it does talk about potential. Yeah, and the stuff they were shipping down to the coast was for feeding nurseries down there that grew vegetables and stuff. Well, a lot of times it's not viable, and it's difficult for these community forests to, especially the ones with a lot more non-salog material. Like within the beetle areas? Well, the beetle areas and also in the transitional forests with the hemlock, the poor-quality hemlock. So everybody always wants your salogs, but they don't want your non-salogs too often. Yeah, well, it's really a challenge and it's one thing that, within a business plan for a community forest, you're going to have to look at if there's a lot of your volume that is not marketable. Community forests have to run as a viable small business first and foremost. You can have all the dreams you want, but that's an important baseline reality that everybody has to face. So the, you know, I guess what I'd like to say is I think that there's a lot of opportunities to be explored. The Green Heat Initiative on David Dubois has a lot of information about small-scale on heating things. He says, start small, teach your school, heat a municipal building, and maybe there's a partnership for a community forest. At least to reduce some of that stuff that would otherwise go into the CD flash pile. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Rick, for your question. Are there any other questions out there? Again, if you could use the feedback indicator to indicate you have a question. That'd be great. The Capital Forge, if you could please hit start seven and ask your question. And also, Susan, if you could please try and re-establish your video. Hope there you are. I can see Ron. Okay, there. It is working again. Kathy, are you at start seven? Are you there? I think I'm there. Great, we can hear you. Please, please. Go ahead. I guess a follow-up on Rick's question. I'm from Vanderhoof, and we definitely are in the heart of the mountain pine beetle issue. We don't have a community forest, and it's something that we've talked about over the years, numerous times, but I'm finding right now that there seems to be a lot of competition between the nature licensees, the First Nations, the woodlot owners, all the various people trying to make a living on the forest. A lot of competition for what wood we really do have out there, and so it seems to me for the municipality to sort of get involved in a community forest, maybe just adding more pressure and perhaps impacting the survival of some of the other folks that are out there. That's possible. It's a fixed land base, so there's only so many trees and so much area, so if a community forest is created, then that volume had to come from someplace else. Whether that be for a First Nations or for a municipality. How does a community forest, in terms of all inner workings of it, how does it compare with woodlot and the responsibilities of a woodlot owner? Ron, do you want to take that one? Yeah, I can handle that one. Yeah, so in essence, they're the same in terms of the way the ministry looks at it, they have to follow the same rules under the Forest Act and under the Forest and Range Practices Act. So all of this is different in size. They're both area-based tenures. A woodlot is maxed out in size in tier of 1200 hectares maximum on the coast, they're 800 hectares maximum. The only difference that we have is some of the planning under FERPA. Woodlots have to do what's called the Woodlot License Plan, the forest has to do what's called a Forest Stewardship Plan, but essentially the content requirements of those plans are more or less the same. So when you look at one verse to the other, they both have the same responsibility. Any area that they harvest, they have to re-forest and bring back to what's called a free-to-grow state. They both have to have management plans. They both have to prepare, like I said, these Woodlot License Plans are forest stewardship plans, and they both have what's called an allowable cut that gets figured out, and then they have a five-year what's called a cut control period to manage that cut. So are they challenged by the size of their areas as well to make it viable? Woodlots are a community forest. Well, it sounds like community forests need to get larger, and I'm wondering if that's the same concern with the Woodlots. We haven't really had that issue come up from the Woodlot focus. As you can appreciate, Woodlots are typically managed by a family or a person just to support that one or two people in doing so. And also when the Woodlot program was originally initiated, the plan of them was just to be a... It was typically for ranchers to be another source of income in case, you know, when the ranching side of their industry was suffering, they could go towards their Woodlot and garner some extra income, but it was never thought to be their sole source of income. It would just be sort of an added income. So we never looked at it in that light, and I guess because of that, the proponents that got these Woodlot licenses understood that, and so there hasn't been any issue in terms of... At least I haven't heard any issues in terms of that they're not being the proper size for them to be viable for their purposes. Maybe it's, again, more of a local issue, but it seems like some of the Woodlot owners in our area seem to be struggling at the moment. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, our area was hard hit because of predominantly pine up there with the mountain pine beetles, so now for the most part, a lot of those Woodlots that are up there are standing dead trees, and obviously, and because of the world economy too, the market pricing of timber has gone down considerably, so everybody in the logging industry right now is suffering because of that. Thanks. Thank you, Dan, for your report. It's not a great time to be in for us. It's Darby here again. I'm just going to interject here. Please, if you could not use the arrows on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, just for presenters still at this time, that the presentation is available through the handouts in the top right-hand corner. You can download the presentation from there at the PES. Darby, was there anything more? I appreciate your input. Thank you very much. Great. Thanks very much. If you don't mind just changing your indicator back to green, that would be wonderful, and I see that. You have a question. Could you please hit start seven and ask your question? I have a question for Ron. You were mentioning that the primary difference between a community forest and a Woodlot is generally their maximum size, so can you repeat those please? Okay, so for a Woodlot license, they have a maximum size in the forest act. So on the coast, their maximum size is 800 hectares. And in the interior, their maximum size is up to 1200 hectares. And for community forest, there is no maximum size nor minimum. Thank you very much. Are there questions out there? Jim's out. There we are. Sarah, please. Could you hit start seven and ask your question? Hi, Debra. It's Chris. Hi, Chris. I'm in Sarah's office. I had a question just about what is the governance model that seems to work best for local governments? Well, that's a really good question. There's a few different variables that contribute to how best to respond to that. Like I said, we haven't really done the full analysis, but I can tell you a little bit about some of the issues that have come across my desk through the year. It seems to be that the provincial government's preferred model for an invitation is to go have more of a government to government, local government to provincial government relationship with inviting a municipality. So the municipality says we have the license in our name. We need to have control. So a number of them have gone that model. Revelstoke Forest Corporation started up in the early 90s when they bought a tree farm license, a local tree farm license, and they're not in the community forest. You just called. What do you mean what? They're not in the community forest program, but they are one of our members and kind of our grandfather. The point is that they adopted a model that a lot of communities have subsequently adopted where they have a holding company. The municipal government creates a holding company and then an arms length management corporation. It gives the municipality the it's still managed under the the board is appointed by the council but the municipality is protected by any liability. So is that like holding company above sort of like a parent company and then underneath it is the arms length management company? That's right. And then the board is at both levels or just at the parent? As far as I understand it's just I don't know the answer to that. I think sometimes it's the same. Some municipal governments just have the arms length corporation without that holding company as in the case of McBride. I believe Burns Lake has the same model that Revelstoke has. So it's like it's an in Canadian incorporated company or a provincially incorporated company that may have counselors sitting as board members? Yes. Or a council has appointed board members. I think there's some mix and match there. And definitely within Burns Lake they have a seat for the Soaton. They have a seat for the other Burns Lake Indian Band. But it's still the municipal government still holds the license. So it just mitigates some of the liability issues towards the municipality but as for the board members, do you find in your experience do you see them taking out board insurance? As far as I understand most community boards have board insurance. Certainly that's my experience. I haven't heard of anybody not getting it. Okay. And just one last question here. From what you've seen, is there any correlation between the governance of the municipality changing every three years and the board or do they usually keep the same board of directors on the corporation? Or does it change with the political side of things? I would say that that is really up to individual communities. We've seen both. And that's one of the questions. We posted this as one of the discussion questions. You might be seeing it on your screen right now. Do you think the 84th organizations should be governed by local politicians or structured as arms length from politics? And there's some critical questions around that. One of the things is the new trade and investment, the TILMA, the provincial relationships that BC and Alberta have now about municipal governments have to advertise openly on any contracts over $70,000 and I think $200,000 for infrastructure. So if you have a community for us that you're wanting to put local people to work but you're bound by that municipal law or policy that you have to advertise openly, it creates quite a challenge. It's something that in a town or community for us like they have and because they have a society there or CASO has a society, it's not bound by those rules. So that could possibly be a strength to not go with the municipal license. But the other point around politics I think is the likely community for us. It's actually the likely Hatsville community for us. And it's a limited partnership between the photo creeps challenge and the community of likely. And they're structured that the band has their own governance on chief and council where they appoint three people to the limited company board. Then the community of likely has a society where they elect a board for their society and then send three people to the limited partnership board. What happens there is that it's the limited partnership board which is the real management of the community for us. It's separate from politics then. You know that the chief can't come in there and say I want things to go this way. It creates a buffer. The likely community has to work through their own circle first before their voice is then taken to the limited partnership board. And if you would ask those two entities, the photo creeps bands and likely they would say they have the perfect model. When politics are involved you could ask other communities maybe seashells or McBride that it can be a really big challenge. Do you see these community force corporations maybe having a broader mandate in the future for more general economic development activities for communities and first nations? I think that's the goal and it's happening. Burns Lake owns a little sawmill. They once owned a broadband internet company. They've made lots of investments up there. Some good, some that turned out to be not so good. I think there's also different ideas about how to approach that. That's why it's really on a huge campaign to attract some kind of value added manufacturer not unlike that seashells that we have with the log home company. Is that something that should that new company be owned by the community force corporation or should it be something that's separate and independent where a partnership could be set up? I know Herot Proctor is working on buying a kiln and a small mill and to have that just be an arm of their community forest. It's really so much about who sits around the table and has good ideas for their community it seems to me. It's very personal to each community. Thank you. Thanks, Chris, for all your questions there. Can you have another question? Yeah, it's just another point of clarification for Susan. You mentioned that the Likely Board has six participants three are from the Hatchel Band and three from the Likely Community Forest Society. How does that work for voting? They work in a consensus model. They've never voted. They have a fall back to consensus. They've never used it. All right. Thank you very much. I hope we do. We've got a few more there. Angela, please, if you could Yeah, please start seven. If you could hit star seven to unmute your phone and then ask your question. That should work now, I hope. Yes, we can hear you fine. I'm curious to know if any of the community forest folks have worked with an organization called Enterprising Non-profits to help them build board capacity or sort of the whole non-profit enterprise building? To my knowledge, I certainly have worked with Enterprising Non-profits and I have sent information about that network out to them but I don't know if anybody has taken up on that. Thank you. A little bit here and ask a few of the discussion questions. I know one of them was already spoken to shortly and it's what stories of strengths and weaknesses can you tell about community forests in your area? Does anyone in the audience or any of the attendees wish to speak to that? Anybody here? Anything else? Are there any community forests on the call? Please hit star seven to unmute your phone and you can speak Susan and Ron for answering the questions there and Susan for the presentation and for the apologies to the attendees for some of the technical challenges at the beginning with that I'd like to pass it to Karina Prigmore. Just a final reminder that if you wanted to take any of those pathways of presentations, the handouts that are available in the top right corner to the end of this webinar so you may wish to download those now if you haven't already and just really to echo what Derby has already said I want to thank for your patience while we work through the technical which is the beginning of this webinar and thank you to all the participants for joining us and to the presenters for the valuable information that they've shared today. A reminder that we will follow up with a survey and we would really value any feedback that you have on today's webinar but also on future topics that you may find of interest in your community. So with that we're going to say goodbye and thank you. Thanks everyone. Well good work you guys. Okay and again sorry about the challenges there at the beginning. Yeah for you guys that worked out okay. Well thanks a lot. The conference has been muted.