Michael Howlett DO ideas matter?

Jeremy Rayner Policy network configurations and

resistance to policy change
in the Canadian forest sector

Abstract: Conflict and controversy have been a prominent feature of the politics of the
Canadian forest sector for over a decade, but with little apparent effect on Canadian
forest policies. To help understand the role of ideas in the policy process, this paper
focuses on the configuration of policy subsystems in the sector, arguing that “cap-
tured” and ”clientelistic” policy networks have been able to resist criticisms emerg-
ing from fractious policy communities. Until such time as a coherent and consistent
alternative forest policy paradigm emerges to urufy the community, it is likely that
the present disjuncture between ideas and interests in the forest sector will continue
to characterize forest policy development.

Sornrnaire : Depuis plus d’une decennie, le debat politique dans le secteur forestier au
Canada a ete fortement marque par le conflit et la controverse, sans toutefois avoir
beaucoup d’impact visible sur les politiques forestieres du pays. Pour mieux cerner
le r61e des idees dans la definition des politiques, cet article examine la configuration
des sous-systemes decisionnels du secteur et soutient que les structures decision-
nelles captives et favorisant la clientele ont resist6 aux critiques des groupes antago-
nistes. L‘actuelle divergence entre les idees et les interets dans le secteur forestier
caracterisera probablement la definition des politiques forestieres jusqu’g ce qu’on
leur trouve une solution de rechange coherente capable de faire l’unanimite au sein
des collectivites interessees.

The historical pattern of Canadian

forest policy
The general pattern in Canada has been for forest policy to develop through
a four-stage process. This involved a transition from an early stage of unreg-
ulated exploitation to a period where governments licensed resource users
in order to generate resource rents. This second period was then followed by
the development of early efforts to ensure long-term conservation of forest
resources - usually through efforts to avoid damage to the resource by fire
Michael Howlett is professor in the Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University
Jeremy Rayner is professor in the Department of Political Studies, Malaspina University-
College.

C A N A D I A N PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION / A D M I N I S T R A T I O N PUBLIQUE D U C A N A D A

VOLUME 38, N O . 3 ( F A L L / A U T O M N E ) , PP. 382-410
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE I N THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 383

and pest and to ensure that cutovers were left in a condition to promote nat-
ural regeneration of tree cover. In the fourth and present period, efforts to
promote longer-term exploitation of timber resources have been augmented
by policies designed to encourage artificial regeneration of cutovers to com-
mercially desirable tree species and have been cemented by the establish-
ment of long-term timber management agreements with producing firms.
In the first stage of unregulated exploitation, tenure arrangements did not
usually exist but amounted to reservations of specific tree species for use by
the French and British navies in jurisdictions where these species occurred in
abundance. During this era, however, the exploitation of Canadian forests
for settlement purposes began, and demand for timber grew as export mar-
kets opened. The ensuing competition for accessible resources led to govern-
ment regulation of the industry both to enforce exclusive cutting privileges
and to prevent monopolization of forest lands. A realization on the part of
governments that substantial revenues could be generated from the indus-
try for the privilege of removing timber from Crown lands led to the cre-
ation and enforcement of specific forest tenure and licensing policies and to
the introduction of stumpage and ground rents. In implementing these latter
policies the transition from unregulated exploitation to the second stage of
regulation for profit and revenue enhancement occurred.
In the third stage, the era of conservation, governments began to regulate
the industry to minimize the accidental or careless destruction of the
remaining forests. Relatively unfettered small-scale competition had by this
time given way to largescale forest operations, which dominated existing
markets and resource supplies and which cut increasingly larger amounts of
timber. In this era, efforts were made to inventory the resource, to provide
some protection against loss to fire and pests, and to ensure that the forest
was left in a condition that would allow natural regeneration to take place.
In addition, governments moved to provide the industry with adequate
resource supplies to justdy the capital requirements of large-scale forest pro-
cessing plants. Long-term leases were extended to companies that agreed to
establish production facilities in the jurisdiction concerned and to abide by
existing forest legislation and conservation regulations.
The present and fourth stage of timber management was ushered in by
government attempts to regulate company harvesting practices to ensure
that timber supplies are not wasted or damaged by the harvesting activities
themselves. This stage was also precipitated by a gradual shift from a reli-
ance on natural regeneration to artificial regeneration by planting seedlings
of commercially desirable species and restricting the growth of competing
vegetation. Key elements in this present regime involve the creation of cut-
ting plans and management units on existing tenures, the shift from volume-
based to area-based timber supply agreements, and the imposition of quota
regimes restricting entry into the forest sector. More recently, in most juris-
384 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

Table 1. Chronological pattern of Canadian forest policy development

Profits/
Unr e p la ted revenue Conservation Management
New Brunswick pre-1837 1837 1883 1937
Ontario pre-1849 1849 1898 1947
Quebec pre-1849 1849 1909 1974
Saskatchewan pre-1872 1872 1906 1947
Alberta pre-1872 1872 1906 1949
Manitoba pre-1872 1872 1906 1952
Fed./NWT/Yukon pre-1872 1872 1906 -
Newfoundland pre-1875 1875 1955 1970
Nova Scotia pre-1882 1882 1921 1977
B.C. pre-1888 1888 1910 1947
PEI pre-1938 - 1938 1969
Source: Michael Howlett, ”Forest Policies in Canada: Resource Constraints and
Political Conflicts in the Canadian Forest Sector” (Ph.D. diss., Queen’s University,
1988).

dictions, this has also involved the reorganization or “rationalization” of

leases into large-scale, contiguous areas of land under different forms of for-
est management agreements or licences and some extension of government
regulations to privately held forest lands. In addition, there has been increas-
ing recognition of the potential value of other forest resources, including the
recreation value of mature forests and some attempt to plan for optimal
mixes of uses.
The pattern of policy development in the relevant jurisdictions is encap-
sulated in Table 1.l
At the present time, it is striking that despite the appearance of new
groups and actors and the considerable controversy generated by their
attempts to promote policy change, the fundamental features of provincial
forest policies have remained remarkably stable over the past fifty years.
That is, Canadian forests remain managed primarily for the purposes of
commercial timber production through incentive-based tenure arrange-
ments with large forest products corporations. We shall refer to this as the
sustained-yield timber management paradigm. Although other interests
have increasingly had their concerns recopzed by placing legitimate con-
straints on how sustained-yield timber management can be conducted, they
have not been able to alter the fundamentals of the paradigm itself. During
the past twenty years, for example, environmentalists have certainly made
their presence felt in the forest policy sector. They have been responsible for
many incremental changes: the preservation of high-profile landscapes
from logging to restrictions on the maximum size clearcuts, some of which
have had serious local impacts on the industry and on timber-dependent
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 385

communities. Yet, the basic change that environmentalists seek to achieve is

a shift from policies aimed at achieving sustainable output levels of spe-
cific forest products to a policy that sustains native forest ecosystems. This,
however, has yet to be recognized as a valid policy goal in any Canadian
jurisdiction, even less to be implemented on the ground. To a lesser extent,
since minor environmental demands can be somewhat easier to accommo-
date within the prevailing paradigm, much the same is true for the policy
goals of recreational forest users, First Nations and others. To explain why
this is so and to assess the prospects for change, we employ a relatively
new conceptual framework: one that distinguishes between a central pol-
icy network, where policy decisions are made, and its setting in a wider
policy community, where ideas about forests and timber circulate and
develop.

Sectoral subsystems and policy change

Recent comparative research into the general basis of industrial policy
development in North America and Western Europe has provided several
insights into the policy-making process at the sectoral level, which can help
overcome the limitations found in much of the existing work on Canadian
forest policy making. This approach focuses on the idea that sectoral policy
making is undertaken by “policy subsystems,” which effectively control the
policy formulation stage of the policy cycle?
The type of subsystem that exists in a given sector or issue area is of major
significance in understanding the dynamics of policy formulation within

[Tlhere is evidence that the configuration of some of

the policy networks found in this sector are stifling
interaction between new visions of sustainableforestry
found in policy communities and the established
timber management paradigm

that area. This is because the fate of competing policy options on the institu-
tional agenda is largely a function of the nature and motivation of key actors
arrayed in policy subsystems?
In Canada, where the closed and informal nature of many policy formula-
tions is especially well described by the concepts of network and commu-
nity, Michael Atkinson and William Coleman have developed a scheme for
classifying policy networks based on the two critical questions of whether or
not interests are centrally organized and whether or not the state enjoys the
capacity to develop policies independently of other interests - in other
words, whether the state enjoys a high or low level of autonomy from soci-
etal actors4 Table 2 provides a taxonomy of network types based on the
386 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

Table 2. A taxonomy of policy networks

Numberltype of participants

One major Two major Three

State societal societal or more
agencies POUP groups groups
State-directed Bureaucratic Clientelistic Triadic Pluralistic
reln t ions

Society-dominated Participatory Captured Corporatist Issue

relations networks
Modeled after M. Howlett and M. Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and
Policy Subsystems (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995).

number and type of participants and whether the network is dominated by

the state or by societal members.’ This taxonomy incorporates questions of
power and the exclusive character of policy networks without unnecessarily
multiplying network types6
On the basis of the dual criteria of location of policy-relevant interests and
knowledge, we find eight basic types of policy subsystems. A “bureau-
cratic” network represents the case where principal interactions among sub-
system members take place exclusively within the state. At the other
extreme, an ”issue” network is one in which, as Heclo suggested, the rinci-
pal interactions take place among a large number of societal actors. Inbe- ?
tween these two extremes, there are six other possibilities. ”Participatory”
networks represent those in wluch state actors play a major role but are
dominated by societal members. ”Pluralist” networks are those where a
large number of actors are involved in the subsystem but state actors are
dominant.’ When there is only one major societal actor facing the state, two
common types of networks exist. In ”clientelistic” networks, the state domi-
nates the societal actor, w h l e in ”captured” networks the reverse is true?
When two societal actors face the state and if the state dominates the sub-
system, the network can be termed ”triadic.”” When societal actors domi-
nate the state, the situation is more akin to a traditional “corporatist”
network.”
It is important to note that all these different networks are construed as
being essentially interest-based. That is, participants invest resources in these
networks in order to further their own interests, which are essentially
material and “objectively recognizable” from outside the network. Policy
networks, however, are immersed in larger knowledge-based policy commu-
nities. These communities include a variety of policy actors who may or may
not be represented in policy networks. All members of a policy community
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 387

Table 3. A Taxonomy of policy Communities

Number/fype of ideas
One major idea Two or more
Yes Hegemonic Bifurcated
Network/community
members united
NO Fractious Anarchic
community community
Adapted from Howlett and Ramesh, Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems.

share a common concern for, and knowledge about, a particular policy

domain." Networks are based on the exchange of valuable resources, such as
information and influence between participants, and those who have little or
nothing to exchange will usually be excluded. In this sense, networks com-
prise a subset of community members who have established more or less reg-
ular and routinized interactions with each other.I3
Policy communities may be united around a central set of core policy
beliefs and members may agree on the essentials of a policy ~aradigm,'~ or
they may be characterized by disagreement over the fundamentals of policy
making in a particular sector. Basic policy community configurations are set
out in Table 3.
In this model, four different types of policy communities exist. When
policy network and policy community members are in basic accord with a
dominant set of policy ideas, then a "hegemonic" community is said to
exist. At the opposite extreme, when there is no dominant set of ideas and
both policy network and policy community members are divided, the
result is an "anarchic" community. Inbetween, when policy network and
policy community members are united behind competing sets of ideas,
one can expect a "bifurcated" community to exist. Similarly, when there is
a dominant set of ideas but policy network and policy community mem-
bers differ on its merits, one can also expect to find a divided or "frac-
tious'' community.
A significant reason for distinguishing between policy networks and pol-
icy communities in the study of policy subsystems relates to understanding
why and how policies change over time.15 Although the reasons for changes
in subsystems are little known,16most existing studies have tended to focus
on exogenous sources of change. Thus, for example, the effects of wars, elec-
toral realignments and economic crises provoking change in a variety of
subsystems, have been highlighted.17 More recent work, however, ha5
tended to focus on sources of policy change endogenous to existing sub-
systems. This has been the case with work emphasizing the ability of exist-
388 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

ing subsystems to learn from past experiences and the experiences of other
subsystems,18for example, and with analyses focusing on the types of polit-
ical mobilizations and counter-mobilizations that occur as policy images
and venues are altered in the course of ongoing policy conflict^.'^
However, little empirical work exists that attempts to evaluate these fac-
tors and, in the process, highlight the dynamic element of the relationships
between policy networks and policy communities. In other words, there is a
need to analyse more carefully the manner in whch material interests and
policy ideas interact in the process of policy change. In such analyses, a rea-
sonable hypothesis is one that can anticipate three different types of political
tension and conflict present in sectoral policy making. First, there will be con-
flict within policy networks as the material interests of actors in policy sub-
systems conflict. As will be shown below, this type of conflict is the stuff of
day-to-day policy making within an established policy regime or paradigm.
In itself, this first type is not sufficient to lead to significant policy change
because it occurs largely within an existing, established policy network and
is usually resolved by redistribution of benefits and resources. A second type
of conflict takes place in the policy community rather than in networks and is
related to changes in ideas about how policy should be made, as well as its
ends or goals. This "ideational" conflict is also expected to be a part of nor-
mal policy making except in the circumstance where a hegemonic policy
community exists. Like the first type, t h s second type of conflict is also
unlikely to be a sufficient cause of major policy change because it does not
necessarily result in changes to the existing policy network.
The third type of conflict, however, is quite different and involves conflicts
between policy networks and policy communities as the members of policy
communities demand a voice within existing policy networks. These
demands are likely to take on more force as the knowledge or value base
changes within the policy community. How and to what extent the policy
network will ultimately be altered to reflect the new ideas, however, depends
on its internal configuration. State dominated policy networks in democratic
societies, for example, should be much more receptive to ideational change
than would those dominated by a narrow set of societal actors.
While many of the present day conflicts in Canadian forest policy can be
seen as intranetwork or intracommunity in nature, there is evidence that the
configuration of some of the policy networks found in this sector are stifling
interaction between new visions of sustainable forestry found in policy
communities and the established timber management paradigm. Thus, at
the present time, Canadian forest policy is in the midst of a major upheaval,
buffeted by changes in both the material and epistemological bases of policy
making. While some subsystems show signs of change, others do not, result-
ing in much of the apparent confusion noted by outside observers of the
sector.
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 389

The configuration of contemporary

Canadian forest policy subsystems
Clientelistic and captured forest policy
networks
The identification of the key actors involved in most natural resource policy
networks is relatively straightforward. Since network membership is based
on material interests, it follows that the major actors are those involved in
the generation of surplus from natural resource activity. The expropriation
of surplus in the form of rents, profits and wages involves the interaction of
societal actors concerned with the activities of rent collection, profit maximi-
zation and wage employment. These three activities form the fundamental
interests of the specific social actors identified with them; that is, landlords,
capitalists and workers. These groups or classes have been able to influence
the policy process through political associations formed to represent their
interests, which interact in sectoral policy networks. In the Canadian forest
sector, these associations are labour unions, forest industry associations and,
because of the extensive presence of the state itself in the area of land and
resource ownership, the Crown and its administrative agencies charged
with forest regulation at both the federal and provincial levels?' Since their
interests tend to be mutually exclusive, these three actors will usually be in
conflict with each other.
Other groups share common concerns with members of these networks
but do not have the same material interests. These groups vary from prov-
ince to province but typically include academics, lawyers, recreationists,
environmentalists, native groups and sometimes representatives of the fish-
ing and tourism industries. Increasingly, owners of small woodlots in the
east, independent logging contractors in the west, timber-dependent com-
munities and especially small business associations from these communities
have emerged as interests separate from the large integrated companies. All
these groups make up the forest policy community, but tend to be excluded
from existing forest policy networks whose origins predate the existence of
many recent policy community groups.
The primary member of the Canadian forest policy network is business.
Although divided both sectorally and by jurisdiction, the forest industry
and especially the pulp and paper industry, has long had a strong position
on appropriate government policy towards the forest sector and has clearly
articulated its interests in maintaining and enhancing profits through its
business associations. In the case of the pulp and paper industry, the indus-
try has been represented since 1913 by a national organization, the Montreal-
based Canadian Pulp and Paper Association.21The lumber industry, on the
other hand, did not have an authoritative national organization until very
recentlyz and tended instead to rely on provincial associations and, espe-
390 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

Table 4. Employees covered by collective agreements by industry - 1991

Unionization
Membership Paid workers rate (%)
Logging 29,418 44,989 65.4
Sawmills 31,272 109,367 28.6
Pulp and paper 82,425 109587 75.2
Statistics Canada, Annual Rcport of the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology
Under the Corporations and Labour Unions Returns Act - Part 11 Labour Unions, 1991
(Ottawa: Ministry of Industry,Science and Technology, 1993), p. 24 (Cat. no 71-202).

cially in the modem era, on the large association in British Columbia to carry
out its lobbying and other activities. Thus, the most important organization
representing lumber industry concerns to government and elsewhere has
been the Council of Forest Industries of British Columbia whose member-
ship is dominated by the large, integrated operators in the coastal region.=
In keeping with this interest, forest sector capital has, above all else, desired
a private sector solution to problems perceived to exist in the industryz4and
has resisted efforts to expand subsystem membership by contesting the
legitimacy of environmental group participation in the allocation of forest
lands and by organizing local industry support to counter grass-roots envi-
ronmentalism.
The second important actor in the Canadian forest policy network is
labour, although labour plays a minor role in the network compared to
industry. By 1991 the entire forest products industry was highly unionized,
although some sectors had lower levels than others. As the figures in Table 4
reveal, the capital-intensive pulp and paper industry was highly unionized,
as was the logging sector. The sawmill sector, however, remains bifurcated
with a relatively small number of highly unionized, capital-intensive opera-
tions often directly linked to pulp and paper operations and a large number
of very small, often family-run, non-unionized mills.
It is also the case, however, that even the unionized sectors remain divided
by sectoral representation, by region and by national affiliation. In 1992-93,
the four largest pulp and paper unions were the Canadian Paperworkers
Union (Canadian Labour Congress), with 70,000 members in 296 locals; the
Federation of Paper and Forest Workers (Confederation of National Trade
tJnions), with 14,000 members and 169 locals in Quebec; the Pulp and Paper
Workers of Canada (Confederationof Canadian Unions), with 7,200 members
and 17 locals in B.C.; and the United Paperworkers International Union
(AFLCIO-CLC), with a total of 1,750 members and four locals (three in
Ontario and one in Manitoba)?’ In the woods industry, the International
Woodworkers of America had 51,216 members and 65 locals in 1985. The
Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union had about 17,000 members, mostly in
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 391

Ontario and Newfoundland. Woodworkers in Quebec were split into three

unions, besides those in the Federation of Paper and Forest Workers Union -
about 2,500 in the National Federation of Building and Woodworkers Union
(Confederationof National Trade Unions);3,422 in the Quebec Woodworkers
Federation (Independent); and a small number in the one Montreal local of
the National Brotherhood of Joiners, Carpenters, Foresters and Industrial
Workers (Canadian Labour Congress). Small associations of less than 50
members exist in B.C. - such as the Northern Interior Woodworkers Associ-
ation and the Cariboo Woodworkers Association - some in company unions
and some loosely affiliated with the 6,513-member Christian Labour Associ-
ation of Canada (Independent).%As a result, labour has not emerged as a
major player in policy subsystems, focusing its efforts at the firm rather than
at the policy level through the collective bargaining process.
The third major actor in the present-day policy network is government.
The primary organization utilized to implement forest policies in Canada
has been the administrative department, and the process of development of
these agencies in each jurisdiction underlies the gradual extension of gov-
ernment regulation in this sector. Although forest departments have usually
been combined with the administration of lands in several long-lasting
departments of lands and forests, in recent years there have been two oppos-
ing tendencies apparent in terms of administrative reorganization. One ten-
dency has been for larger omnibus departments of natural resources to
emerge, encompassing regulatory authority for a variety of natural resource
sectors including forests, mines and energ. The other tendency has been for
single-purpose forest ministries to develop.
This is only a very general pattern, however, as there have also been
efforts to combine forest administration with such areas as tourism, water
resources or parks and, in Saskatchewan, Alberta and at the federal level, to
combine forestry with environmental protection. At the federal level, reflect-
ing the ambiguous nature of the federal role in forest policy formation, a
variety of idiosyncratic organizational forms have been used - from the orig-
inal Department of the Interior to the more recent Ministry of State for
Forests and Mines. The need for greater coordination of increasingly sophis-
ticated policy regimes has also been evident in efforts made at the intergov-
ernmental level to develop effective forestry structures. At this level, forestry
issues have been addressed since 1960 both in the context of other natural
resources issues in the Canadian Council of Resource and Environment Min-
isters and in the creation of a specific Canadian Council of Forest Ministers
in 1985 (see Table 5).
Government administrative agencies themselves have become more
sophisticated. The development of single- or dual-purpose administrative
agencies displayed a much greater effort to monitor and control forest
administration, but more recently organizational changes represent
392 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

Table 5 . Pattern of deuelovment of forest administrative agencies

Type 111
Type 1 Type 11 (Natural Type IV
(Lands) (Forests) resources) (Environment)
Newfoundland 1930 1970 1992
Nova Scotia 1848 1926 -
New Brunswick 1824 1913 1966
Prince Edward Island 1897
Quebec 1841 1905/1993 1979
Ontario 1841 1906 1972
Manitoba - 1930
Saskatchewan - 1930 1991
Alberta 1930 1949/1986 1975 1993
British Columbia 1874 1945 -
Federal 1867 1960/1990 1966/1993 1970
Michael Howlett, "Forest Policies in Canada: Resource Constraints and Political Conflicts
i n the Canadian Forest Sector" (Ph.D. diss., Queen's University, 1988) and Annual
Reports, various years.

increased efforts to integrate forestry planning activities with natural

resource and environmental planning in general. The strength of these
administrative agencies is a key variable in arriving at a classification of con-
temporary Canadian forest policy networks. As the discussion above has
shown, labour is a weak - in fact, virtually nonexistent - player in forest
policy networks. The major actors are governments and industry. Depend-
ing on the strength of the two actors in each jurisdiction, therefore, Canadian
forest policy networks will either be "captured" or "clientelistic" in charac-
ter. In jurisdictions where the industry plays a significant role in the econ-
omy and society (such as in New Brunswick or British Columbia) a captured
policy network, in which industry interests predominate, exists. In jurisdic-
tions where the industry remains much less important (as in Alberta, Prince
Edward Island or Saskatchewan) or less well-organized (as in Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland or Manitoba) or is in a state of relative decline (as in Ontario
or Quebec), a more clientelistic policy network is found.

A fractious policy community

Four sets of problems that occupy members of contemporary Canadian for-
est policy subsystems can be identified. First, a timber management regime
raises important questions about who is going to manage. Second, awarding
greater responsibility to licensees for management raises questions, espe-
cially those concerning the appropriate division of management costs
between landlord and licensees. Third, problems may result when the tran-
sition to a policy of timber management requires new administrative forms.
Here the increasingly wide range of objectives that timber managers are
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE I N THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 393

being asked to achieve - the desire for multiple use or integrated resource
management -has tended to promote the model of a comprehensive agency
responsible for natural resources. Finally, while it may seem obvious that the
present policy is organized around an unusually clear goal - sustainably
managed forests - in practice, matters are not so simple. Is the goal, in fact,
to sustain the volumes of timber being cut when the policy is put in place, or
is it to meet projected future demands for wood fibre of a particular quality?
Is it to maintain a particular level of employment in the industry as a whole
or to maintain that level of employment in existing communities? Are
Crown forests primarily "fibre farms," or is there a variety of different and
perhaps mutually incompatible uses that has to be sustained if society is to
maximize the benefits it receives from forested land? And, even if we accept
the professional forester's claim that modern forestry has the tools to deliver
any particular mix of resource benefits that society can agree upon, what are
the long-term ecological consequences of operating with such a society-
centred concept of ~ustainability?'~
Of these four sets of concerns, the first three are largely intranetwork in
nature. That is, they relate to the existing organizational configuration of
present-day subsystems and feature essentially distributional conflicts over
the costs and benefits of existing policies. The fourth concern, however, is of
a quite different character and relates to the ideational basis of the contem-
porary timber management paradigm. Since both policy network and policy
community members are in disagreement over many elements of the exist-
ing timber management paradigm, Canadian forest policy communities
should be classified as fractious.

Canadian forest policy subsystems and

contemporary forest policy issues
Disputes over the meaning of sustainable forestry have become the major
source of friction between forest policy networks and forest policy commu-
nities. As we will argue, potential ambiguity surrounding the central goal of
forest policy is especially important given the character of most provincial
forest policy networks. The granting of authority to private corporations to
perfom government functions (i.e., Crown forest management) depends on
a broad measure of agreement between government and corporations about
the way this authority is going to be exercised. Where such agreement is
found, network members will tend to settle minor policy differences
amongst themselves as a series of technical questions, successfully exclud-
ing the concerns of the wider policy community as irrelevant to the smooth
implementation of a settled policy. Major disagreement over policy goals,
however, will cause tension between the partners and may tempt them to
recruit allies from the wider community. These disagreements politicize
technical forest management disputes and bring in previously excluded
394 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

members of the wider policy community. Such disagreements inevitably

render the policy network less effective, but provide the only serious oppor-
tunity for a significant change in forest policy paradigms. In discussing the
major issues of contemporary Canadian forest policy, then, we will pay par-
ticular attention to the demonstrated capacity of networks to settle the issues
internally or, conversely, the frequency with which disputes escape from
network control into wider forest policy communities.

Ownership and control: the development

of tenures
Spurred on by the early example of British Columbia, most provinces by the
1960s were pursuing a policy of promoting sustained-yield timber manage-
ment by means of an incentive-based tenure system in which long-term tim-
ber rights to Crown land were granted in return for a commitment to
sustainable forestry practices. Regulated by the submission and approval of
area-based management plans at fixed intervals when the tenure was
renewed, the idea was to give tenure holders quasi-property rights in perpe-
tuity provided they demonstrated their ability to grow new crops of trees to
replace those they cut.
It was soon clear, however, that all was not well. A series of concerns was
raised, especially by professional foresters, about the effectiveness of man-
agement regimes. Foresters occupy an anomalous position in the forest pol-

Although the tenure system lies at the heart ofthe

contemporary Canadian forest policy regime, conflict
over competing uses forforest land is the issue that has
captured the most public attention in recenf years

icy community. On the one hand, their professional status is given statutory
recognition - most provinces require a registered professional forester to
”sign off” a forest plan as a symbolic commitment to professional care of the
resource - and their career opportunities are correspondingly enhanced by a
policy of timber management. Yet, they increasingly find themselves work-
ing for organizations, whether public or private, in whch their indepen-
dence of judgment and freedom of action are greatly restricted by
organizational cultures. While an independent forestry profession might, in
theory, provide a bridge between network and community, in practice, for-
esters’ careers lie within the network itself. Nevertheless, as custodians of
the key legitimizing idea1 of sustained-yield management, foresters’ criti-
cisms, however muted, carry weight.
As early as the 1960s, before the paradigm was completely in place in
many jurisdictions, foresters were heard arguing that, on the most basic per-
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 395

formance indicator of all, future wood supply, Canadian forest management

seemed to be coming up short. During the 1970s, alarming statistics about
regeneration failures and ”not satisfactorily restocked” (NSR) lands began to
circulate. Although a dwindling land base, poor management practices and
weak regulation were all raised as contributory factors, criticism focused on
the basic relationship between government and licensees, the incentive-
based tenures.28Clearly, it was said, the incentives were insufficient. Across
Canada, attempts were made to reform the forest tenure system by rethink-
ing the incentive structure. Two examples illustrate the fate of this reform
movement.
Faced with a declining forest products industry, characterized by older
plants and significant short-term wood supply shortages, New Brunswick
pioneered one solution: extra spending on forest management funded by
federal-provincial agreements. Initially channeled through the programs of
the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, the money was eventu-
ally consolidated into a subsidiary agreement under the federal-provincial
General Development Agreement.29The leverage that accompanied these
agreements was soon demonstrated. The extra spending was accompanied
by policy review, notably the New Brunswick Forest Resource Study under
the direction of R.E.Tweeddale in 197130 and a study of management prac-
tices undertaken by G.L. Baskerville in 1983:l More emphasis has been
placed on securing wood from private land, and the Crown has attempted
to become a residual supplier in the event of shortfall. As a result, New
Brunswick, with its patchwork of private and Crown forests, has made sig-
nificant modifications to the policy of area-based tenures while remaining
within the same broad policy framework as other provinces.
In New Brunswick, a captured policy network was able to take advantage
of the relatively precarious situation of the industry and launch a significant
state-directed policy initiative. However, the details of the new policy were
settled by intranetwork negotiation, which actually consolidated the para-
digm of intensive timber management. The situation was different in Que-
bec where a clientelistic policy network delayed the transition to area-based
management. Although legislation as late as 1974 had begun the process of
reform:* by 1984 only one-third of the old volume-based timber limits had
been revoked.%However, a crisis in Quebec’s pulp and paper industry dur-
ing the recession of the mid-1970s provided an opportunity for reform. Fed-
eral-provincial agreements were concluded, and the accompanying policy
reviews linked potential timber shortages to the archaic tenure system. In
1985 all existing timber licences were abolished without compensation and
replaced with the now-familiar “evergreen” licences.34Moreover, while the
Crown moved to the position of residual supplier (as in New Brunswick),
licensees are, in addition, obliged to reforest cutovers on public lands at their
own expense.
396 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

Although the picture varies in minor detail from province to province,

tenure reform remains the area in which forest policy networks operate most
successfully. Legitimized by the professional forester’s commitment to sus-
tained-yield fibre production, the system of granting large area-based
licences carrying responsibility for planning and silviculture is now in place
in all Canadian provinces with significant industrial forest activity. The
observable differences between provinces are in large part attributable to the
differences found in existing policy networks. Where captured policy net-
works exist, governments launched their own tenure policy initiatives
within the sustained yield paradigm in order to restructure the industry.
These initiatives have generally attempted to manipulate the incentive for
industry to invest in intensive silviculture either on private land or on their
Crown tenures by restricting access to Crown forest land. However, pre-
cisely because captured networks are very difficult for outsiders in the pol-
icy community to penetrate, industry has often been able, as in New
Brunswick, to mitigate the impact of these policy initiatives by retaining
access to secure tenures equal to or greater than their wood supply require-
ments. Where clientelistic networks exist, on the other hand, states have
been able to bring in major tenure reforms with substantial impact on the
industry. In neither case, however, have these reforms resulted in a change
in the existing timber management paradigm, nor have they involved any
significant interests other than established network participants.

Land-use planning
Although the tenure system lies at the heart of the contemporary Canadian
forest policy regime, conflict over competing uses for forest land is the issue
that has captured the most public attention in recent years. Obviously,
deciding how much Crown land to devote primarily or exclusively to for-
estry is a vital policy question, especially in mainly western provinces where
the Crown is the dominant forest landowner. The shift to a policy of timber
management has intensified land-use conflicts since the sustained-yield cal-
culations in forest management plans make clear the industry’s dependence
on existing supplies of mature timber while the second-growth forest
matures. Local shortages of accessible timber have forced companies into
new areas (often involving new technology that allows harvesting of previ-
ously undesirable species such as the aspen of northern Alberta) or have
made them very sensitive to competing incompatible uses for existing
mature forests.
At the same time, however, competing demands on the land base have
intensified. Not only has an expanding population directly withdrawn more
land from forestry but new demands related to tourism, recreation and
aboriginal land claims have created the potential for additional very large-
scale withdrawals connected with park and wilderness designation and
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE I N THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 397

with aboriginal treaty settlements. Park and wilderness conflicts with for-
estry have become especially intense as park proposals have moved from
the immediate post-war stress on high elevation, or very remote sites, to
contemporary concerns with the preservation of under-represented ecosys-
tems and old-growth forests - the very areas that industry had planned to
cut while waiting for the second growth to mature. Land ownership con-
flicts related to land claims have on occasion delayed logging activity
although, for the most part, these disputes have centered on the question of
compensation for past timber removals from areas claimed by native
groups.
Clientelistic policy networks have been able to develop comprehensive
"zoning" models for land use, with the archetypal case being that of Alberta.
On this model, a hierarchy of dominant land use designations is elaborated
from some basic distinctions (the "green" [forested] and "white" [settled]
areas in Alberta) giving guidance for integrating different uses in lower-
level planning areas. The state-directed, clientelistic character of the forest
policy network is crucial to the success of such plans. In Alberta, for exam-
ple, this land-use planning system was set up to accommodate pre-emptive
policy decisions by the state, such as the forest industrial strategy for the
north undertaken in 1986. Resolution of potential conflict with other uses,
such as recreation or oil and gas exploration, is undertaken by interagency
planning teams operating under political direction. Public involvement in
land use designation has generally been poor; the weak and disorganized
policy community in Alberta was completely bypassed b the network in
the development of the northern pulp and paper industry.3 T
Attempts to apply this model to provinces where networks are different,
especially those where networks have been captured by the industry, have
usually generated more political controversy than governments have been
able to tolerate. The captured network found in British Columbia provides a
good contrast in this respect and illustrates how concern for the rights of
existing tenure holders and the dependence of the state on the corporate sec-
tor for policy implementation can frustrate efforts at comprehensive plan-
ning. British Columbia long resisted efforts at comprehensive land use
planning due to concern about the effect of "withdrawals" on the industry
and the legal obligation to compensate a licence holder whose Annual
Allowable Cut is reduced by more than five per cent.
Controversy intensified after the passage of the new Forest Act of 1978.
On the government side, the first of the periodic forest and range resource
analyses, mandated by the legislation, revealed serious supply shortfalls
ahead, which would be exacerbated by reductions in the forestry land base
for parks. Stressing the "multiple use" requirements of the act, the Ministry
of Forests launched a program, Integrated Resource Management, which
relied on interagency planning teams to resolve local resource use conflicts
398 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

together with limited and discretionary public involvement opportunities.

Preservationists who accepted these opportunities often found that the
terms of reference were drawn up to exclude a preservation option as
incompatible with multiple use, and that they were effectively being co-
opted into writing a logging plan. They responded by intensifying their
campaigns for high-profile park designations outside the ministry's plan-
ning process with the result that British Columbia resource use conflicts
have drawn international attention.36The backlog of outstanding disputes
eventually prompted moves in the direction of comprehensiveness. The Wil-
derness Advisory Committee, formed in 1985, held public hearings and
made a series of recommendations on specific areas and matters of policy.37
The Forest Act was amended to create wilderness designations within pro-
vincial forests, and the committee's proposals provided the political impetus
that allowed a number of deals to be struck, including the federal-provincial
agreement on a new national park for South Moresby.%
However, high-profile disputes, such as those in the Carmanah and the
Clayoquot, continued to evade resolution through the ministry's own plan-
ning processes.39For their part, district forestry staff were frustrated because
participants in local planning exercises continued to raise issues, such as
clearcutting, that were considered to be matters of "policy," which could not
be dealt with in local plans.
A change of government and effective tactics by the excluded members of
the community, including a very successful boycott campaign in key export
markets, eventually prompted a significant departure from the piecemeal
approach. Following up on a recommendation by the Forest Resources Com-
mission in 1991, comprehensive land use planning was undertaken in the
form of the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE)." In his
former role as provincial ombudsman, CORE commissioner Stephen Owen
was an outspoken critic of the administrative fairness of the timber manage-
ment planning process. The commission operated through four "shared
decision-making" tables at which all members of the policy community
were represented in contentious areas of the province. Although only one
table came close to a consensus, Owen produced land-use recommendations
for all four regions, increasing protected areas to the twelve per cent figure
recommended in the UN (Brundtland) report on environment and economy.
His proposals have been endorsed in broad outline by the government.
The response from the policy network illustrates very clearly what is hap-
pening in British Columbia. Industry has worked closely behind the scenes
to modify Owen's proposals and successfully altered the boundaries of pro-
posed protected areas to preserve access to particularly valuable timber
while accepting the main thrust of the CORE proposals as a political fait
accompli. This is network business a s usual. Organized labour and timber-
dependent communities, never a very secure part of the network and faced
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 399

with job losses and mill closures, have been carefully worked by high-profile
government negotiators exploiting the traditionally close links between this
constituency and the governing party. Their opposition has been overcome
with an ambitious job-retraining program and some reallocation of licences.
The environmental movement has been split between a number of high-pro-
file activists who have been given enhanced access to decision makers in
return for publicly endorsing the CORE process and many grass-roots mem-
bers who are resisting what they see as co-optation.
Land-use planning in British Columbia thus illustrates one area in which
policy community ideational disputes can spill over and affect policies
developed in existing policy networks, even captured ones. Although this
has not occurred in Alberta under a clientelistic network, the wider policy

In plan after plan, even in jurisdictions where public

involvement was taken seriously, key environmental
issues, such as clearcutting,logging in old-growthforests
or broadcast application of pesticides, were declared to be
matters of policy, outside the scope offhe local planning
process

community in B.C. has had sigruficant impact on both procedural issues, the
first step in breaking network decision-making monopolies. Three impor-
tant factors in their success should be noted. The first has been the involve-
ment of other government agencies in land-use planning, such as
environment, parks and native affairs. These agencies have an active interest
in encouraging groups in order to enhance their own role at the bargaining
table, and their efforts seem to have gone some way towards creating a sep-
arate land use policy network in the province that is clientelistic rather than
captured. Second, opponents of the timber management paradigm used a
simple idea, the “twelve per cent solution” for protected areas, as an effec-
tive counter to the dominant ideas of sustained-yield timber management.
And, third, there has been sophisticated exploitation of political links
between the governing party and key affected interests (e.g., organized
labour) who might be expected to oppose the changes.

Forest management planning and

environmental impacts
In sharp contrast to land-use decisions, issues around forest management
practices show networks still firmly in control. To understand why this
should be so, we need to understand how forest management planning is
conducted. Perhaps the most noteworthy characteristic of contemporary for-
est policy - and certainly the most important contribution of professional
400 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

forestry - is the emphasis on management plans. Canadian legislation gen-

erally makes acceptance of a management plan a requirement for the
approval or renewal of a forest tenure on Crown land. In provinces where
private and Crown land is combined in a single Tree Farm Licence area, such
as in British Columbia, this requirement is extended to the private lands in
the licence area. Otherwise, planning on private lands is linked to tax-based
incentive structures to place private woodlots under approved management
plans.
To simplify somewhat and ignore minor differences in the various juris-
dictions, the planning process first involves identifying the area of produc-
tive forest available after “netting down” for areas too ecologically sensitive
or economically inaccessible for logging. An attempt is then made using
inventory data and standardized yield tables to estimate the growth of the
remaining trees over the period of the plan. In theory, this volume of fibre,
the ”increment,” is what can be removed while sustaining the yield of the
forest in perpetuity. This volume is then allocated to specific cut blocks
scheduled for harvest over the life of the plan in a way that meets various
constraints on how logging can be conducted. These constraints may be
environmental, such as adjacency requirements that restrict logging on one
block until neighboring blocks have reached a required condition, or they
may be economic, relating to road building or logging systems.41
Three related features of this emphasis on planning are important for our
purposes. First, the whole process, though based on statutes that require
regular approval of plans, is highly discretionary in nature. It is not just that
many planning decisions are matters of professional judgment, though ths
is important, but more significant still is the large number of conflicting
goals that provincial forest policies are supposed to achieve. Those responsi-
ble for setting licensees’harvest levels are usually directed to consider social
and economic objectives, as well as ecological ones, and are given extensive
discretion in how to reconcile them.*
Second, the planning process and the plans emerging from them have
become extremely technical. The process itself is characterized by extensive
negotiation between the licensees and the relevant bureaucracies. This cul-
ture of negotiation is one of the most important and enduring features of the
policy networks that have been created around forest management plan-
ning. The wider community is seen as largely irrelevant to the planning pro-
cess itself.43
Third, and notwithstanding this emphasis on techmcal negotiation, forest
management planning has become a major focus for public involvement.
Predictably, despite some lip-service to the idea of using local knowledge to
improve planning, the networks’ understanding of the role of public partici-
pation is largely consultative and does not result in major subsystem modifi-
cations. The aim is to provide early identification of problem areas and to
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 401

work towards a consensus position within the general parameters of the

total cut allocation, thereby giving affected interests some "ownership" of
the plan. In general, the provinces have consistently added public involve-
ment opportunities to forest planning only as a matter of policy and proce-
dure, thereby frustrating efforts to apply substantive legal standards to
them. Ironically, the only legal rights of appeal usually belong to licensees,
since the licence is treated as a contract. In British Columbia, for example,
Macmillan Bloedel successfully appealed the reduction of allowable cuts on
its Tree Farm Licence 44,which covers much of the west coast of Vancouver
Island.44Although the provincial government moved swiftly to amend the
Forest Act to prevent further appeals from licensees, the case itself, which
turned on the inability of the chief forester to provide adequate grounds for
his decision, revealed the extent to which the provincial forest service has
devolved planning responsibilities to major licensees.
The environmentalist component of the policy community has found the
forest management planning process particularly unrewarding over the past
twenty years. In plan after plan, even in jurisdictions where public involve-
ment was taken seriously, key environmental issues, such as clearcutting,
logging in old-growth forests or broadcast application of pesticides, were
declared to be matters of policy, outside the scope of the local planning
process. In British Columbia, for example, licensees were deemed to have
"responded" to public concerns about contested aspects of their plans sim-
ply by referring to the relevant policy.
The attempt to use public involvement as a bridge between network and
community has failed because it overlooks the basic difference between the
two. Networks exist because the members have something to offer each
other. In this way, they facilitate social and economic exchange. In the case of
forest management, broad grants of public authority are exchanged for the
capital and technical capability the state lacks. At the surface, this character-
istic of a network is manifested in the hostility and impatience of managers
with the vague generalities of many public submissions to timber manage-
ment planning exercises. The public, they say, simply lacks the technical
skills to take part. At a deeper level, this attitude reflects a quite rational
reluctance to admit anyone to the network who has nothing to exchange.
Chronically short of funds and overstretched by the number of issues they
must monitor, environmental organizations and other interested members
of the policy community have found it difficult to overcome this crucial bar-
rier to genuine participation. Even with major licence applications, few
organizations possess the expertise or can afford to hire the consultants
needed to be involved at the same level as the licensee and the state. In most
jurisdictions, operations can continue even when plans expire, robbing com-
munity members of the power to bargain through obstruction.
Consequently, as the environmental critique of the timber management
402 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

paradigm matured without having significant impact on management prac-

tices, a classic fractious policy community has been created. In response,
many environmentalists have rejected participation in planning as chroni-
cally unbalanced and now advocate more legalistic approaches to policy
change. A particularly ambitious example of this approach was the attempt
to apply Ontario’s Environmental Assessment Act to forestry operations,
and this was strongly endorsed by a coalition of environmental groups, For-
ests for Tomorrow, which became an official intervenor when the Ministry of
Natural Resources’ assessment was referred to public hearings. Ontario’s
Environmental Assessment Act, whch is modeled very closely on American
legislation, requires proponents of any “undertaking” with potentially sig-
nificant environmental impacts to prepare an environmental assessment
comparing alternatives to the undertaking and alternative ways of going
about the undertaking in terms of impacts and mitigation. Although the
ministry of natural resources successfully argued that the assessment should
apply to the planning process itself, rather than to actual plans, environmen-
talists saw the requirement for comparison of alternatives as an effective
way of getting their concerns onto the policy agenda and forcing the minis-
try to justify its commitment to practices, such as clearcutting, under public
cro~s-examination4~ In any event, the hearings dragged on for nearly five
years and resulted in a decision that vindicated the ministry by placing the
burden of proof on its opponents and rejecting proposed alternatives as
untested.“
In British Columbia, the New Democratic Party government moved to
implement another recommendation of the Forest Resources Commission
that there be a statutory code of forest practices. Industry, under pressure
from a surprisingly successful campaign to boycott B.C. forest products in
key export markets, decided not to fight this proposal. The result is a numb-
ingly complex Forest Practices Code, which is not itself a statute but rests on
enabling legislation and which continues to grant extensive discretion to for-
est managers to vary the code’s provisions according to circumstances.
Biodiversity provisions, a key component drawn up by unusually broad
technical consultation, which have serious implications for industry costs
and cut levels, have been steadfastly resisted both in public and behind the
scenes. The biodiversity provisions were not proclaimed along with the rest
of the code but are still promised in a version yet to be finalized.47

Conclusion - ideas, interests and the

potential for change in contemporary
Canadian forest policy
Forest policies in Canada have changed only very slowly over long periods
of time. The present sustained-yield timber management regime is no excep-
tion to this rule. Change has been incremental and has been undertaken only
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 403

in reaction to crises clearly recognized by the relatively closed govemment-

industry dominated captured or clientelistic policy networks, which have
grown up within the existing paradigm. In the most recent era, the issues
recognized as crisis-provoking have included the need to preserve and
enhance the resource base as supplies diminish, the need to develop and
maintain a stable industrial base, and the need to preserve or enhance access
to important markets. Disagreements between network and community
members over these issues have resulted in a transition from a hegemonic to
a fractious policy community, but with little apparent impact on policy out-
comes.
As such, beyond the specific question of the nature of provincial resource
bases and of the state of industrial forest technology, the key factor in deter-
mining the politics of the forest policy network in any given jurisdiction has

fMluch of the existing pressure for forest policy change is

animated by a powerful set of competing ideas emerging
behind criticisms of the existing timber management
paradigm and reflecting global and transnational,
specifically American, concerns about sustainable
ecosystem management

been the extent of unity or fragmentation of the three main materially inter-
ested network actors. Labour has remained the weakest actor, fractured along
many lines, including region, religion and production process. Business has
emerged as the dominant player "capturing" the network in most jurisdic-
tions where forestry is a significant economic activity. In those provinces
where the industry was either young and poorly organized, insignificant or
already declining, responsibility for managing change rested with govern-
ment agencies in clientelistic policy networks, since industry was either too
ill-organized or too prone to seek temporary competitive advantage at the
expense of other firms in undertaking a leading role in policy development.
Neither type of network is ideally suited to further anticipatory policy
change of the kind that would transform the existing timber management
paradigm. Captured networks are simply not interested. Captured networks
have served to stabilize the mature forest industries of New Brunswick and
British Columbia, for example, by promoting better integration between
pulp and sawmill operations or by ensuring a reasonably level playing field
in access to wood supplies for association members. However, since the
main burden of policy implementation falls on the industry itself, any antic-
ipatory policy that calls into question the assumption of a harmony of inter-
est between public policy and private advantage will meet intense and
effective opposition from within the network.
404 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

While the fragmentation of the industry characteristic of clientelistic net-

works allows for some pre-emptive policy initiatives from the state, these
remain within the confines of the existing paradigm. Such fragmentation
also causes difficulties implementing new initiatives, however limited.
Hence Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, for example, have found difficulties
in coordinating the activities of larger licensees and smaller operators who
are required to cooperate over the management of the same tracts of forest,
despite the fact that such a change in no way alters the existing management
paradigm.
'There is no question that much of the existing pressure for forest policy
change is animated by a powerful set of competing ideas emerging behind
criticisms of the existing timber management paradigm and reflecting global
and transnational, specifically American, concerns about sustainable ecosys-
tem management.48However, despite the increasing sophistication of these
ideas, they have not yet resulted in the articulation of an alternate forest pol-
icy paradigm. The major changes that have actually been implemented in
Canada, such as planting unregenerated cutovers under the Forest Resource
Development Agreement, improving inventories or reducing harvests to
long-term sustainable levels, are firmly rooted within the old paradigm. In
British Columbia, where change seems most evident, roots are not deep.
With the exception of the land-use plans noted above (and even these have
yet to be given the force of law), measures to conserve biodiversity have
been resisted by the industry; tenure-reform has amounted to some very
small-scale experimentation with community-controlled licences, and it
remains to be seen how the government proposes to respond to the eloquent
plea for recognition of First Nations' traditional ecological knowledge made
by the Clayoquot Sound Scientific
To a very great extent, therefore, forest policy networks in Canada at
present exist in considerable tension with the policy communities in which
they are embedded. Objections to the existing paradigm are rife, and ele-
ments of what might become a new paradigm of managing forests for eco-
system sustainability are beginning to be articulated within these policy
communities. However, it is also the case, of course, that the new paradigm
has not yet triumphed w i t h the policy community, which remains torn
and divided over many of these issues. Indeed, whether the community will
develop a consensus around the elements of a new paradigm is in itself a
significant question requiring further empirical research.50Nonetheless, it
should be noted that even if it was to emerge as a relatively consistent set of
ideas, this ecological forest paradigm will be seriously at odds with the
material basis of policy networks, and rather than a transition to a new hege-
monk policy community, such a development would only presage the tran-
sition from a fractious to a bifurcated one.
Within the existing fractious policy community, however, both existing
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 405

types of forest policy networks continue to undertake reactive policy initia-

tives in response to the changing balance of social forces and market condi-
tions and avoid, if not obstruct, proposals for major policy change.
Overcoming the considerable inertia generated by the very success of such
incremental adjustments remains the strongest challenge to the adoption of
any new ideas put forward by members of the Canadian forest policy com-
munity. Regardless of whether or not an alternate policy paradigm emerges
over the short term, given the existing disjuncture between policy networks
and policy communities, any and all policy initiatives originating within the
networks are likely to continue to be challenged by members of policy com-
munities, but with little impact on resulting policy decisions. The troubles in
the woods are far from over.

Notes
1 All Canadian governments, except Prince Edward Island, the federal government, and the
governments of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, have gone through these stages in
the development of their forest policies. Since all land on PEI had been sold to absentee
landlords early in the province’s history, the provincial government until recently had very
little forest to administer. Without rents to collect and with only a small forest base to begin
with, the province never passed through a stage of regulation for profit and revenue
enhancement. Nevertheless, after 1938 the province began to reacquire abandoned agricul-
tural lands and gradually began to regulate the cut of timber from private iands, adopting
most of the tenets of a general conservation strategy,After 1969, with the aid of federal fund-
ing the province began to promote a regime of intensive forest management on private
lands and moved into the era of timber management. In the case of the federal government,
the pattern is also quite different. The government never encountered a situation of unregu-
lated exploitation, having inherited a regime of regulation for profit and revenue enhance-
ment from the united provinces of Canada and the maritime provinces in 1867.This regime
was generalized to federal lands in the Dominion Lands Act of 1872 and was replaced by a
regime of conservation policies after 1906. As the extent of federally controlled forest lands
was substantiallyreduced by the transfer of control over natural resources to the three Prai-
rie provinces in 1930, however, this conservation strategy was never supplanted by a regime
of timber management. Retaining ownership only of poor quality and inaccessible timber-
lands in the NWT and the Yukon or of very limited areas of forest contained in national
parks, Indian reserves or Armed Forces bases, the federalgovernment continued to practise
conservation policies on its remaining lands. See Michael Howlett,”The 1987 National
Forest Sector Strategy and the Search for a Federal Role in Canadian Forest Policy,” in
CANADIAN PUBLICADMINISTRATION 32, no. 4 (Wmter 1989).
2 In his 1977 work on comparative trade policy, Peter Katzenstein referred to policy networks
as those links which joined the public and private sector or state and societal actors together
in the policy process. See Peter J, Katzenstein, “Conclusion: Domestic Structures and Strate-
gies of Foreign Economic Policy,” Infernafional Organization 31, no. 4 (Wmter 1977), pp. 879-
920. Although he did not move beyond coining the term, other writers combined earlier dis-
cussions of policy subsystems with elements of organizational and anthropologicalanalysis
to develop the concept. See, for example, H. Brinton Milward and Gary L. Walmsley, “Policy
Subsystems, Networks and the Tools of Public Management,” in R. Eyestone, ed., Public Poi-
icy Formation (Greenwich JAI Press, 1984).
3 See Michael Howlett and M. Ramesh, Studying Pubtic Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Sub-
systems (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995).
406 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

4 M. Atkinson and W. Coleman, The State, Business, and Industrial Change in Canada (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1989) and M. Atkinson and W. Coleman, "Strong States and
Weak States: Sectoral Policy Networks in Advanced Capitalist Economies," British Journal of
Political Science 19, no. 1 (Spring 1989),pp. 47-67.
5 On these criteria, see Frans Van Waarden, "Dimensions and Types of Policy Networks,"
Europan Journal of Political Research 21, no. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1992), pp. 29-52.
6 The images and definitions of various kinds of policy subsystems found in the literature are
often contradictory and can be overly elaborate. Grant Jordan has spent a good deal of effort
cataloguing and categorizing the images and metaphors used to describe policy subsystems
involved in policy formulation. See Grant Jordan,"Iron Triangles, Woolly Corporatism and
Elastic Nets: Images of the Policy Process," Iournal of Public Policy I, no. 1 (Spring 1981), pp.
95-123; Grant Jordan, "Policy Community Realism versus 'New' Institutionalist Ambigu-
ity," Political Studies 38, no. 3 (Fall 1990), 470-a; Grant Jordan, "Sub-governments, Policy
Communities and Networks: Refilling the Old Bottles?" Journal of Theoretical Politics 2, no. 3
(Fall 1990), pp. 319-38; and Grant Jordan and Klaus Schubert, "A Preliminary Ordering of
Policy Network Labels," European Journal of Political Research 21, no. 1 / 2 (Spring/Summer
1992),pp. 7-27.
7 Hugh Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," in A. King, ed., The New
American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Research, 1978).pp. 87-124.
8 John P. Heinz, et al., "Inner Circles or Hollow Cores," lournal of Politics 52, no. 2 (Summer
1990), pp. 356-90.
9 Marver H. Bernstein, Regulating Business by Independent Commission (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1955).
10 Andrew S. McFarland, "Interest Groups and Theories of Power in America," British Journal
ofPolitical Science 17, no. 2 (Summer 1987), pp. 129-47.
11 Alan Cawson, "Pluralism, Corporatism and the Role of the State," Government and Opposi-
tion 13, no. 2 (Summer 1978),pp. 178-98.
12 Peter M. Haas, "Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordina-
tion,'' International Organization 46, no. 1 (Spring 1992), pp. 1-36.
13 Evert A. Lindquist, "Public Managers and Policy Communities: Learning to Meet New
Challenges," CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. 35, no. 2 (Summer 1992),pp. 127-59.
14 Jane Jenson, "Paradigms and Political Discourse: Protective Legislation in France and the
United States Before 1914," Canadian Journal of Political Science 22, no. 2 (Summer 1989), pp.
35-58. For an application of the concept of a policy paradigm see Heclo, "Issue Networks
and the Executive Establishment," in King The N m American Political System; Peter A. Hall,
"Policy Paradigms, Experts, and the State: The Case of Macroeconomic Policy-Making in
Britain," in S. Brooks and A.G. Gagnon, eds., Social Scientists, Policy, and the State (New
York Praeger, 1990); or Michael Howlett, "Policy Paradigms and Policy Change: Lessons
h m the Old and New Canadian Policies Towards Aboriginal Peoples," Policy Studies Jour-
nal22, no. 4 (Winter 1994).
15 Paul Sabatier, "Knowledge, Policy-Oriented Learning, and Policy Change," Knowledge,
Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 8, no. 4 (Winter 19871, pp. 649-92; and Paul A. Sabatier, "An
Advocacy Coalition Framework of Policy Change and the Role of Policy-Oriented Learning
Therein," Policy Sciences 21, no. 2/3 (Summer/Fall 1988),pp. 129-68.
16 On policy development and change, see Michael M. Atkinson, and William D. Coleman,
"Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance," Governance 5, no.
2 (Summer 1992),pp. 15460.
17 Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, Gilbert K. St. Clair and Brian Woods, "Explaining Change in Policy
Subsystems: Analysis of Coalition Stability and Defection over lime," American Journal of
Political Science 35, no. 4 (Winter 1991), pp. 851-80; and John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alterna-
tiues and Public Policies (Boston:Little, Brown and Company, 1984).
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 407

18 See Colin Bennett and Michael Howlett, “The Lessons of Learning: Reconciling Theories of
Policy Learning and Policy Change,” Policy Sciences 25, no. 4 (Wmter 1992).
19 See especially Frank Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, “Agenda Dynamics and Policy Sub-
systems,” Journal of Politics 53, no. 4 (Winter 1991), pp. 1044-74; and Frank R. Baumgartner
and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1993).
20 Primary responsibility for the resources on provinaal Crown lands rests, of course, with the
province. With respect to forest policy, major variations existed between jurisdictionsboth in
terms of the length of time each policy regime was left in place and in terms of the specific
point in time at which a new regime was instituted. In other words, different governments
adopted similar mixes of policies, usually in the same order or sequence, but not at the same
times. Such a four-stage categorization has never been explicitly stated in the abundant liter-
ature on Canadian forest policy. However, it is implicit in some accounts, most notably in
A.J. Herridge, ”The Development of Forestry Policy,” Forestry Chronicle 40, no. 4 (April
1964), pp. 425-28 and W.R. Smithies, The Protection and Use of Natural Resources in Ontario
(Toronto: Ontario Economic Council, 1974), pp. 5-18. Somewhat similar conclusions about
the development of forest policy in the United States have been expounded by Richard
Alston and by Gerard Griffen, in the case of Newfoundland. See Gerard Gordon Griffen,
”The Development and Present Status of Forest Policy in Newfoundland,” (M.A. diss., Uni-
versity of New Brunswick, 1979), pp. 13-33 and Richard M. Alston, The lndividual and the
Public Interests: Political Ideology and National Forest Policy (Boulder: Westview, 1983). Peter
Pearse has also made a similar analysis for British Columbia. See Peter Pearse, Forest Policy
in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Forest Economics and Policy Analysis
Project, 1985), pp. BCS-BC13.
21 By 1980 the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association represented the interests of sixtyifour
companies in the Canadian pulp and paper industry. See William D. Coleman, “The Emer-
gence of Business Interest Association in Canada: An Historical Overview.” Paper presented
to the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, 1985; and William D. Coleman,
Business and Politics: A Study of Collective Action (Montreal: McCill- Queen’s Press, 1988),pp.
144-71.
22 The Canadian Forest Industries Council, the first national association, was formed in 1983 as
a federation of provincial associations joined together to oppose the threat of US. counter-
vailing tariff action against Canadian softwood lumber imports. For a list of the member
associations,see Canadian Forest Industry Council, Canadian Forest Industries 1986 Data Book
(Ottawa: Canadian Forest Industries Council, 1986), p. i.
23 In 1986 provincial associations included the New Brunswick Forest Products Association,
the Nova Scotia Forest Products Association, the Quebec Forest Industries Association, the
Quebec Lumber Manufacturers Association, the Ontario Lumber Manufacturers Associa-
tion, the Ontario Forest Industries Association, the Alberta Forest Products Association, the
Interior (B.C.) Lumber Manufacturers Association, the Cariboo Lumber Manufacturers
Association (B.C.), the Council of Forest Industries of British Columbia - Northern Interior
Lumber Section, and the Council of Forest Industries of British Columbia. Manufacturers of
various wood products have also formed associations in several provinces, as have truck
loggers, and businesses involved in retail and wholesale lumber operations.
24 See, for example, Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, Response to Challenges and Choices,
the lnterim Report of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Developmental Prospects
for Canada (Montreal:Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, 1984), p. 8. The positions con-
tained in this document parallel earlier positions outlined by industry representatives in an
extensive questionnairesurvey carried out by the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Can-
ada in the early 1970s.See K.M. Jegr and K.M. Thompson, The Canadian Pulp and Paper lndus-
try: Threats and Opportunities, 1980-1990 (Montreal: Pulp and Paper Research Institute of
Canada, 1975).
408 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

25 Canada, The Directory of Labour Organizations in Canada 1985 (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply
and Services, 1985), pp. 48,78, 159, 189; and Canada, Directory oflrtbour Organizations in Can-
ada, 1992/1993 (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1985), pp. 25,73,107,47, 131.
26 Canada, Ministry of Labour, The Directory of Labour Organizations in Canada 1985 (Ottawa:
Ministry of Supply and Services, 1985),pp. 78-9, 182,222-24,62-3. Despite this fragmenta-
tion, however, in 1985 the individual membership figures for the Canadian Paperworkers
Union (CPU) and International Woodworkers of America (IWA) mean that together they
would have comprised the seventh largest union in the country and the third largest indus-
trial union, following only the three large public service unions: the Canadian Union of Pub-
lic Employees (CUPE), the National Union of Provincial Government Employees (NUPGE),
and the Public Service Alliance (PSA), the service-oriented United Food and Commercial
Workers International Union, and the industrial United Steelworkers of America, and
United Auto Workers (UAW), now Canadian Auto Workers (CAW).bid., p. xxiii.
27 Richard Gale and Sheila Cordray, “What Should Forests Sustain? Eight Answers,” Journal of
Forestry 89, no. 5 (May 1991),pp. 31-6.
28 For an early example, see John W. Kerr, J. Harry, G. Smith and David Little, Reforestation
Needs in the Vancouver Forest District (Vancouver:U.B.C. Faculty of Forestry, 1960).Summing
up the debate is F.L.C.Reed, “Wood Supply - A Growing Concern,” Forestry Chronicle 62, no.
4 (August 1986), pp. 335-38.
29 For a detailed account of the negotiation process see Donald J. Savoie, Federal-Provincial
Collaboration: The Canada-New Brunswick General Development Agreement (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s Press, 1981), pp. 48-52. About $61 million was spent in the first Forestry Subsidiary
Agreement, which extended for six years. A second $37.5 million Forestry Subsidiary Agree-
ment was signed in 1980 and extended to 1984. New agreements bringing 542.3 million of
federal funding (matched by a $35.2 million provincial contribution) were signed for the
period 1984-89 under the Forest Resource Development Agreements program, rising to
$50 million for 1989-94. Canada, D e p a r t m t ofFinance. Estimates Part 111, 1993/94, vol. 4 ”For-
estry” (Ottawa: Department of Finance, 1993).
30 Synopses of the twelve background reports on areas such as manufacturing, pulp and
paper, labour mobility, education and transportation are contained in New Brunswick,
Report ofthe Forest Resources Study (Fredericton: Legislative Assembly, 1974), pp. 312-57.
31 G.L. BaskerviUe, Good Forest Management: A Commitment to Action (Fredericton: Department
of Natural Resources, 1983), p. 8.
32 Lands and Forests Department Act R.S.C. 1974, c. 26 and An Act to Amend the Lands and
Forests Act R.S.C. 1974, c. 28. See Roland Boyer, “Comment” in Canadian Pulp and Paper
Association, ed., Recent Forest Policy Developments in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Bruns-
wick, Quebec, and Ontario (Montreal: Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, 1975),pp. 54-65
and Roland Boyer, “Point de Vue de 1’Indushie Forestiere,” Forest Conservation 39, no. 2
(1973), pp. 8-9. The pre-1970s system was also critiazed by foresters (who preferred a
regime of tax incentives and harvesting regulations) as unnecessary and overly taxing of
government resources. See Gilbert Paille, “Une Solution de Rechange a l’Abolition,” Forest
Consemation 39, no. 2 (1973), pp. 10-11 and J.M. Pouloit, “Un Systeme Ma1 Adapte a Nos
Besoins Presents,” Forest Conservation 39, no. 2 (1973),pp. 5-7.
33 Three seasoned observers blamed the excessive costs of required compensation and the
resistance of the industry for the failure to carry through on the 1974 reforms. See Peter
Pearse, Forest Policy in Canadu (Vancouver: UBC FEPA, 1985),p. Q-7; C.H. Gairns, Provincial
Charges f o r Timber in Canada: August 1982 (Regina: Saskatchewan Parks and Renewable
Resources, 1982), p. 39; and J. Harry Smith, “Variations in Implementing Sustained Yield
Forestry in Canada-Quebec,” Forestry Chronicle 53, no. 1 (January 1977), pp. 15-19. Partially
as a surrogate measure, the government began to involve itself in the forest industry
through arms-length holdings companies. This was the case with DOFOR, itself owned by
the government-controlled Societie Generale de Financement, which had large investments
RESISTANCE TO POLICY CHANGE I N THE CANADIAN FOREST SECTOR 409

in Donohue and Domtar, and the provincial Caisse de Depots et Placements, the investment
wing of the Quebec Pension Plan, which had large holdings in several major forestry com-
panies, either directly or through the subsidiaries of its holdings - as is the case with the
caisse’s holdings in Canadian Pacific Investments and CP’s holdings in Great Lakes Forest
Products.
34 Quebec, Ministry of Energy and Resources, Building a Forest for Tomorrow: The Forest Policy -
June 1985 (Quebec: MER, 1985), p. 26. Federal assistance included $120 million for subsi-
dized modernization of pulp and paper facilities, $182.2 million in “Round 1” federal-pro-
vincial agreements and federal forestry programs for 1983-92and $154.2 million for “Round
2” (1988-96), with roughly comparable amounts in matching provincial funding. Quebec,
Ministry of Energy and Resources, ”Modemisation et Developpement de l’Industrie des
Pates et Papiers 19851990’’ [MER mimeo] (1984), p. 1; and Canada, Department of Finance,
Estimates, pp. 56-7.
35 Contrast the generally self-congratulatory discussion in Mark H. Johnston and Susan C.
Calp, “Forest Land Use Planning in Alberta,” Forestry Chronicle 62, no. 5 (October 1986), pp.
470-3 with the account in Larry Pratt and Ian Urquhart, The Last Great Forest: Japanese Multi-
nationals and Alberta’s Northem Forests (Edmonton: Newest, 1994).
36 Jeremy Wilson, “Wilderness Politics in British Columbia: The Business Dominated State and
the Containment of Environmentalism,” in William Coleman and Grace Skogstad, eds., Pol-
icy Communities and Public Policy in Canuda (Toronto:Copp Clark Pitman, 1990), pp. 141-69.
37 British Columbia, Wilderness Advisory Committee, The Wilderness Mosaic (Vancouver: Wil-
derness Advisory Committee, 1986).
38 British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Managing Wilderness in Provincial Forests: A Policy
Framework (Victoria:Ministry of Forests, 1989).
39 It should be noted that the political settlements for the South Moresby and Temagami
(Ontario) disputes were achieved despite the vocal opposition of both industry and profes-
sional foresters. See “South Moresby: A Retrospective” [editorial], Forestry Chronicle 66, no. 3
@me 1990), 207-8.
40 British Columbia, Forest Resources Commission, The Future of Our Forests (Victoria: Forest
Resources Commission, 1991).
41 A concise introduction to the goals and techniques of forest management planning is pro-
vided in Gordon Baskerville, ”Understanding Forest Management,” Forestry Chronicle 62,
no. 4 (August 1986), pp. 339-47.
42 This is emphasized in resource lawyers’ critiques of the forest management planning pro-
cess. For example, see Joan Vance, Tree Planning: A Guide to Public Involvement in Forest S t m -
ardship (Vancouver: British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre, 1990) and see the
submissions of the intervenor group, Forests For Tomorrow, at the Class Environmental
Assessment of Ember Management Hearings in Ontario, 1987-1994.
43 For a clear statement of the problems with this whole approach, see ”Integrated Resource
Management: The Issue is Fairness,” in British Columbia, Office of the Ombudsman, Annual
Report (Victoria: Office of the Ombudsman, 1988), pp 30-2 and Kim Brenneis, “An Evalua-
tion of Public Partidpation in the British Columbia Ministry of Forests,” Forest Resources
Commission Background Papers (Volume 1) (Victoria: Forest Resources Commission, 1990),
which contains valuable comparative material for other provinces.
44 See further details in “Re: Tree Farm Licence 44,”Decision of the Appeal Board, September 14,
1992; Sierra Club v. ChiefForester ofBritish Columbia, [1993] S.C.B.C. [unreported].
45 For a complete account of the background and a discussion of these issues, see Julian
Dunster and Robert Gibson, Forestry and Assessment and Jeremy Rayner, “An Experiment in
Regulation: The Class Environmental Assessment of T i b e r Management in Ontario.”
Paper presented at the 61st annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,
Laval, 1989. (Toronto: Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy, 1989).
410 MICHAEL HOWLETT, JEREMY RAYNER

46 Ontario, Environmental Assessment Board, Reasons for Decision and the Decision, Class Envi-
ronmental Assessment by the Ministry of Natural Resources for Timber Management on
Crown Lands in Ontario, Toronto, 1994.
47 The Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act (Bill 40)was proclaimed in June 1995. For
a more detailed discussion of recent development in British Columbia, see Ken Lertzman,
Jeremy Rayner and Jeremy Wilson, “Learning and Change in the British Columbia Forest
Policy Sector: A Consideration of Sabatier’s Advocacy Coalition Approach,” Canadian lour-
nu/ ofPolitica1 Science (forthcoming, March 19%).
48 Robert G. Healy and William Ascher, “Knowledge in the Policy Process: Incorporating
Environmental Information in Natural Resources Policy Making,” Policy Sciences 28, no. 1
(Spring 1995), pp. 1-19.
49 British Columbia, The Scientific Panel for Sustainable Forest Practices in Clayoquot Sound, Report
3, First Nations’ Perspectives (Victoria: Cortex Consultants, March 1995).
50 On this question, generally, see Thomas R. Rochon and Daniel A. Mazmanian, ”Social
Movements and the Policy Process,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political Science
and Sociology 528 (September 1993), pp. 75-87.