The Forest Practices Board (Board) is British Columbia’s independent forest and range watchdog. On behalf of the public, it monitors and reports on forest and range practices on public land. One of the main ways it does this is through field-based compliance audits of forest and range licensees.

The purpose of this guide is to help licensees prepare for a Board audit and discuss how to conduct their practices to avoid issues most commonly found in past audits. This guide answers some frequently asked questions and provides potential auditees with background information on the audit process.

This paper presents the submission of the Forest Practices Board to the Natural Resource Road Act Project, in response to the Discussion Paper of October 2011. The Board makes submissions on three points:

1. Resource roads legislation is needed.
2. There is a need for a public watchdog.
3. The new legislation must regulate government, not just the private sector.

The Forest Practices Board offers this submission based on its experience and expertise with resource roads in the forestry sector and with the public watchdog model.

The Forest Practices Board is an independent agency of the Government of British Columbia. The Board was created in 1995 under the Forest Practices Code and was continued under the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act.

The Forest Practices Board was asked to perform an assessment of the Oil and Gas Commission's (OGC) compliance and enforcement (C&E) framework, comprising the structures, processes, systems and documentation used to deliver and support the OGC‘s work in ensuring industry compliance with legal and permit requirements.

This report provides an overview of the Board’s compliance and enforcement auditing results published in 2010. The practices included in these various reports occurred between October 2005 and July 2010. These audits tell the public if the practices of forest and range licensees and government met legal requirements, and whether government’s enforcement was appropriate. The Board plans to issue a summary of its audit results on an annual basis.

The Forest Practices Board initiated this review of its communications, capacity & execution of its mandate, and future focus, to both compare it to a similar 2006 survey and prepare for a strategic planning session in September 2010. The terms of reference included:

• Advise on the content of survey questions to be administered by telephone.
• Conduct a telephone survey of up to 24 key stakeholder representatives.
• Compile and analyze survey results.
• Provide a report summarizing the survey results and describing the key findings and issues arising from the survey.

This report provides the telephone survey results and analysis within the areas of communications, mandate and future focus for the Board.