Elaboration, Consultation and Approval of Forest Management Plans. The adapted forestry regime applied on the Agreement Territory has specific provisions for forest management plan elaboration, consultation and approval processes. The Québec Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife is responsible for defining the directives to get these processes under way when a new planning exercise is launched, for verifying compliance with these directives and for providing the inputs required through the processes. After the Agreement was signed, the forestry-related planning process was implemented in keeping with the transitory measures of Schedule C4, as envisaged, over a horizon designed to replace the regular mechanisms as of 2005. This period of transitional measures was extended an additional three years, until 2008, for the reasons mentioned in this report. The forest management plan elaboration, consultation and approval process finally took tangible form in the 2008-2013 GFMP preparation exercise. Preparing these general forest management plans put all of the Agreement’s forestry-related provisions to the test. Our analysis shows that for the 2008-2013 GFMPs, it was not the provisions that were the problem but the availability of directives and inputs to implement the process at the right time. Not only did the joint GFMP elaboration process begin late, the resulting processes were carried out in a difficult context and an overly short period of time. The assessment’s main finding in this regard is stakeholder consensus on the importance of getting clear directives and inputs at the right time in order to optimize the forest management plan elaboration, consultation and approval processes. All stakeholders wish to see more rigour on this point in the future. Recommendation 2 Ensure that the Agreement development, consultation and approval process for forest management plans is clearly interpreted, better timed and consistently implemented.
