Forest Practices Act 1985

For the purposes of this Act, a forest practices officer, on production of his or her warrant of authorization, may at any reasonable time and with such assistants as he or she considers necessary enter and remain – on any land on which forest practices are being carried out, to ensure that the forest practices are being carried out in accordance with the certified forest practices plan relating to that land or to ensure that the provisions of this Act are being complied with; or on any land on which, in the reasonable opinion of the forest practices officer, forest practices appear to have been carried out, to determine whether those forest practices were in fact carried out and, if so, whether they were carried out in accordance with certified forest practices plans relating to that land or the provisions of this Act were complied with; or on any land that is a private timber reserve to ensure that the land is being used for establishing forests, growing or harvesting timber or other forest practices.

A forest practices officer, on production of his or her warrant of authorization, may at any reasonable time request any person associated with forest practices that are being (or in the officer's opinion appear to have been) carried out on any land referred to in subsection (1) to do one or more of the following:answer any question relating to those forest practices; produce any record or document relating to those forest practices; answer any question relating to any such record or document.

Any person who – prevents or attempts to prevent a forest practices officer from exercising any power conferred on the forest practices officer by subsection (1) or (2); hinders or obstructs a forest practices officer in the exercise of any such power; or fails to comply with a request of a forest practices officer under subsection (2) – is guilty of an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding 5 penalty units or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months, or both.

A person is not guilty of an offence under subsection (3)(c) by reason of his or her failure to answer any question referred to in subsection (2)(b) if he or she proves to the satisfaction of the court before which he or she is prosecuted for the offence that he or she did not know, and could not with reasonable diligence have ascertained, the answer to the question.

A person is not excused from answering any question if required to do so under subsection (2) on the ground that the answer might tend to incriminate the person or make him or her liable to a penalty, but, except in a case to which subsection (6) applies, the information provided by the person is not admissible against him or her in any proceedings, civil or criminal.

Information provided by a person in response to a question under subsection (2) is admissible against that person in any civil or criminal proceedings if and only if – the question is asked by the chief forest practices officer, or by an officer appointed under section 38 who is authorized under section 47 to make complaints under this Act; and the chief forest practices officer or that officer warns the person, before asking the question, that any information supplied in answer to the question is so admissible.