Three Northern Ontario forestry companies have united with Aboriginal communities to offer youth a chance to gain insight into wood harvesting operations.
Bowater Canada, Tembec and Weyerhaeuser in conjunction with Outland Reforestation Inc. and Confederation College, are launching an expanded version of the First Nations program.
Last year, Bowater sponsored 18 youth from nine First Nation communities. This year, they sponsored 30.
The companies approach elders and parents in the First Nations communities where they operate and ask them to supply names of youth who would be interested in learning more about forestry. Once the company has the names, they are given to Thunder Bay’s Outland Reforestation operation, a silviculture company headed by David Bradley. He, in turn, hires them for summer employment.
The students get work brush sawing, planting trees and performing other duties. They are given tours of the woodlands and harvesting operations, pulp plants and saw mills.
They are also toured around areas that have been clear cut, with five years’ and with 15 years’ growth, respectively.
“They can see how it grows,” says Niels Carl, superintendent, Aboriginal business development with Thunder Bay’s Bowater Canadian Forest Products Inc.
“It is a real eye opener for some of them. They will know the business from the ground up.”
Confederation also provides the participants with academic experience, and health and safety training.
Graduates of the program come back as camp leaders. For the first time since the program opened five years ago, First Nations youth are heading up some of the newcomers. There is a real camaraderie, Carl says.
As much as the Aboriginal youth are learning the way of the forest through the company’s eye, company officials are equally getting a taste for First Nations culture. Aboriginals have reverence for the land and it helps companies to understand the need to be mindful of trap lines areas and sacred grounds.
First Nations are becoming more involved in the forestry sector. They want to be consulted and rightfully so, Carl says. It is important to give both parties a chance to build trust and form relationships. Who knows, he says, First Nations people may be the next generation of foresters.
Over the next 20 years, the Aboriginal working-age population is expected to grow three to five times faster than its non-Native counterpart.
As the aging workforce retires more jobs will come open and companies such as Tembec expect to get most of their workforce from the Aboriginal communities.
“Last year was the first time we had to hire people to work on equipment near Kapuskasing,” Rick Groves, Tembec’s chief forester for Ontario operations recalls.
Technicians and tradespeople are hard to come by now and the future is only going to get worse. Already the industry is crying for electricians, millwrights, instrumentation technicians, heavy equipment operators and mechanics.
Tembec has been very pleased with the success of the program, Groves says, and plans to expand it to northern Québec.
