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Is it Time for an inquiry into the BC Forest Industry?

By Bob Simpson
In this year’s Throne Speech the Liberal Government claimed that there is “new optimism in our forests” and “new hope” for resource communities. I wonder how many people living in resource communities really feel optimistic and hopeful with the mountain pine beetle epidemic looming over our heads. I wonder how optimistic the log truckers feel about having to work obscene hours on poorly maintained roads for lousy wages. I wonder how hopeful the small tenure holders and smaller manufacturers feel about their relationship with the two major timber companies who now hold over 70% of the long-term logging rights and nearly 70% of the timber-processing capacity north of 100 Mile House.

When the Liberals took power they undertook a massive restructuring of the forest sector. Despite strong advice to the contrary from many sectors, the Liberal’s changed the Forest Act in a way that makes timber rights preeminent over all other forest values and gives the major tenure holders access and freedoms that have facilitated the corporate concentration we’ve seen in the past few years. The Liberals also cut the bond between local timber resources and the communities that depend on them when they removed appurtenancy from the Act (appurtenancy required timber resources to be processed locally). They also cut over 800 jobs from the Forest Service and have dramatically reduced the amount of direct investment in forest health activities.

What’s interesting to me is that the Liberals have to know that things aren’t rosy in the forest sector. They have to know that their forest policy changes have created hardships and generated concern for many groups and for resource communities. They also have to know that they were propagating a lie when they stated that there is “new optimism in our forests.”

The amount of negative feedback the government has been given and the source of this feedback is actually quite amazing. In fact, the initial negative reaction to the Liberal’s proposed changes caused them to abandon their consultation process and invite only the major companies into a closed door session to complete their new policy framework.

More recent criticism has been very pointed. The Federation of Woodlot Associations blasted the Liberal’s forest policy at their AGM in the fall of last year. The Association of BC Forest Professionals wrote the Premier in December last year stating that they had deep concerns about the cuts he made to the Forest Service and calling for more than “minimalist, short-term thinking” with respect to resource management. The BC Cattlemen’s Association has been writing to Cabinet for some time, trying to get them to realize that the new Act has adversely affected ranchers on many fronts, not the least of which is their loss of secure grazing rights. And, the Western Silviculture Contractors Association (WSCA) has called on the government to restore funding to forest health activities as they claim that the “government’s investments in forestry are at their lowest levels in two decades.” (The Ministry of Forest 2003/04 annual service plan supports the WSCA’s assertion when it states: “Reforestation and tending of backlog and current fire and pest areas are at their lowest levels in 20 years.”)

Even the Liberal’s own can’t hold back their criticism. John Brink, a secondary wood manufacturer and BC Liberal Association Riding President for Prince George North, came public early this year with his concerns that the Liberal’s forest policy was hurting the secondary manufacturing industry and that it only favored large corporations at the expense of smaller operators and resource communities. Mr. Brink indicated that he had tried for months to get Gordon Campbell and Forest Minister Mike de Jong to pay attention to his concerns before going public with them.

One would think that with these wide-ranging expressions of concern a responsible government would pause to examine the impacts that their dramatic changes have made on what is still the primary economic driver of the province. The Auditor General might have embarked on this task himself -- if his budget hadn’t been dramatically cut.

We need to take advantage of the fact that the log truck drivers have raised the alarm to pause and reflect on the state of the forest industry in BC. Jim Shepherd, CEO of Canfor, has stated that the log truck drivers’ concerns should be a wake-up call to the major corporations. I believe it should be a wake-up call to us all, and that it is time to do a thorough and independent analysis of the state of the forest industry in this province.