10 July 2015

Richard GarneauResolute Forest Products Company111 Duke Street, Suite 5000Montral, Quebec, H3C 2M1, Canada

Dear Mr. Garneau:

When the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) was signed, it was with the expectation that NGOs and the forestry industry were unified in our purpose to change the status quo and to embark upon a true journey of change to better align environmental, social and economic priorities in the Boreal Forest one of the great forest landscapes on our planet. That spirit of cooperation is clearly present in every NGO and industry participant in the CBFA except for Resolute Forest Products. After five years of effort, it has become increasingly clear that Resolute alone has chosen to take a different path.

Therefore, it is with great disappointment that ForestEthics, effective immediately, no longer recognizes Resolute as part of the CBFA and no longer considers Resolute subject to the benefits and protections of the agreement.

The marketplace has recognized Resolutes rogue status, and in turn paper, pulp and lumber buyers are moving away from Resolute. Resolute claims that this is the result of an anti-Canada campaign. You know that is false. Major buyers of forest fiber are not moving their purchasing away from Tembec, Tolko, Canfor, or any of the nearly two dozen CBFA industry members who are in good standing. Only Resolute has inspired a broad reaction in the marketplace in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Major customer companies cannot afford to associate their extremely valuable brands with Resolute. Moreover, I believe that customers will continue to reject Resolute, for the following reasons:

For the past five years, the NGO signatories to the CBFA have struggled to make any progress with Resolute and have been met at every turn by disregard for the stated goals of the agreement. Contrast this with the significant progress made between industry and NGO signatories toward joint solutions in non-Resolute tenures across the Boreal.

Resolute is so hostile to conservation that not one NGO member of the CBFA is currently willing to work with your company.

Resolute failed to come to any multi-party conservation agreements under the auspices of the CBFA to protect forests in the tenures that you control, despite at least three attempts to do so in Ontario and Quebec. No other company has a similar record of failure. For example, in the final hours of the latest round of negotiations on mutually agreed conservation and logging proposals, the team of mediators proposed a process to resolve the deadlock. The NGOs agreed to participate in this last ditch effort at agreement, one that would have required each of us to reconsider what we were prepared to accept as a basis for addressing the impasse Resolute refused to even entertain the offer.

Resolutes litigious nature is well known, and the latest examples of using litigation for intimidation and personal attacks are alarming. In addition to taking the unheard of step of suing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certifier, Rainforest Alliance, you also personally sued the individual certifiers, permanently impacting their lives. You chose to not follow the procedures outlined in the voluntary certification scheme that you opted into and publicly committed to. Instead, you have attempted to intimidate the Rainforest Alliance, individual certifiers, and potential future certifiers with your lawsuit. The recent settlement sealed Rainforest Alliances audit report, a decision antithetical to the transparency that is a foundation of the FSC. This is the kind of aggression, intimidation, and personal attack that is unique to Resolute and the kind of behavior that is diametrically opposed to the collaborative spirit required by the CBFA.

Resolute is also engaged in a lawsuit against Greenpeace Canada and once again Resolute is personally suing individual non-profit employees as well. The goal is clearly to do as much personal damage as possible through a deliberate strategy of litigation-based intimidation. Again Resolute stands alone in taking this kind of approach.

Resolute is engaged in a campaign to defeat legislation currently being considered in Ontario to restrict the use of the very kind of intimidation lawsuits that your company has become synonymous with.

You have repeatedly laid blame for mill closures and mill reductions at the feet of environmentalists and the requirements of environmental legislation, despite having a stated corporate consolidation strategy to close mills which has nothing to do with the environment or environmentalists. This action is instead a function of decreasing demand for newsprint in addition to other reasons cited by independent observers, including offers of subsidies and potentially cheaper labor in the US, inability to satisfy customer needs, a marketplace desire for non-Resolute forest products, and advantageous anti-union laws in other jurisdictions.

As the Forest Stewardship Council made clear in its recent letter to you, once again Resolute is distinguishing itself as an outlier. Having agreed to a variety of terms by becoming part of FSC, you have now decided to violate those parts of that agreement that you no longer care to observe. This is the same pattern we have seen in the CBFA: Resolute remains true to your word and your commitments only until they become inconvenient.

Resolute has proven conclusively that you are unwilling and possibly incapable of collaboration, which is a mandate of the CBFA.

ForestEthics has respected the process of the CBFA, has supported the goals of the CBFA, and has ceased campaign activities against all industry members of the CBFA for the last five years to allow collaborative processes the chance to succeed. And for the most part these efforts are succeeding but not with Resolute. We reaffirm our commitment to support collaborative approaches to better balance environmental, social, and economic priorities in the Boreal and to avoid marketplace or other campaigns that could interfere with these processes with the exception of Resolute Forest Products. In all other regards, we will continue to jointly participate with FPAC members in meetings with government, meetings with market place leaders, in conferences, and at other appropriate public events to describe and celebrate the successes jointly achieved by the CBFA across all of its six goals as implementation continues.

Five years of inaction, delay, litigation, and dysfunction make clear that Resolute has no intention of attempting to live up to the ideals and goals that all members of the CBFA agreed to. As such, ForestEthics no longer considers Resolute to be part of the CBFA, and Resolute is no longer subject to the benefits and protections of the agreement that we have abided by for the last five years.

We hope the day comes when Resolute changes its course and decides that it wants to collaborate for solutions in the Boreal. Our strong suspicion is that this day will not come until new leadership is established at the company. When that day arrives, we remain ready to work with Resolute.

Sincerely,

Todd PagliaExecutive DirectorForestEthics

cc: CBFA ENGO Caucus; Boreal Business Forum; Forest Products Association of Canada; Resolute Board of Directors

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