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British Columbia

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Inquiry

Continued from page 1

The fact is that the very opposite is true.
The province’s forestry resources are being
devastated and wasted on a scale never
before known in history. At stake is the
future of the resource and tens of thousands
of jobs as well as the survival of many cities
and towns which depend on the forest
industry.

In a letter to the Vancouver Sun Dec. 30,
1987, the Communist Party warned of this
rape of our forests. The Sun refused to pub-
lish that letter. (It was published in the
Pacific Tribune Jan. 13 issue.) The letter
challenged the Sun to publish some of the
facts about the growing crisis in the forest
industry which was revealed in a series of
articles in the national edition of the Globe
and Mail in December.

Peter Buck is a former MacMillan Bloe-
del forest engineer who worked in the
Queen Charlottes where M-B holds Tree
Farm Licence 39. TFL 39 covers 7,000
square kilometres of lush forest land on the
mainland, Vancouver Island and the Queen
Charlottes. What are the facts recently
revealed by Buck and other foresters?

In 1986, M-B followed a policy of
“highgrading” — taking out only the most
profitable logs and leaving less profitable
wood to rot in the forest. That year, M-B
left 22 percent of its harvest, or 640,000

cubic metres of wood, to rot. According to
Globe and Mail writer Christie McLaren, in
a feature article from the Queen Charlotte
Islands, “the amount of wood left by Mac-
Millan Bloedel to rot would fill 320,000
pickup trucks stretched bumper to bumper
on the Trans-Canada Highway from Van-
couver to Saskatchewan.”

MacMillan Bloedel paid no royalties on
the wasted wood which deprived provincial
revenues of an estimated $6 million. If used,
this timber would have provided hundreds
of additional jobs and would also have pro-
vided the raw material for many small
oe operations presently starving for
ogs.

M-B has not been the only company
wasting usable wood but it has consistently
wasted more than twice that of two other
major companies — Crown Forest Indus-
tries which wasted 11 percent of its harvest,
and Western Forest Products, which
wasted 17 percent. Although the forest
companies have a long record of mowing
the forests for maximum profits and with-
out regard to the provinces welfare, the
latest splurge of wasteful practices was sanc-
tioned and encouraged by the Socred
government in order to allow forest com-
panies to increase their profits, Making
money is the name of the game.

KEL KELLY

Court cases for 19 people arrested for
halting mining exploration in Strathcona
Provincial Park were adjourned until
March 8 following court appearances in
Campbell River Feb. 23.

Friends of Strathcona member Ann
Cubitt said in an interview from Courte-
nay that the adjournments had been
sought by the 19 who told the court they
were not yet ready to enter pleas. Only
one man, Dave Fraser of Denman
Island, entered.a not guilty plea.

Several of those charged were success-
ful in having the bail restrictions which
prohibited them from going within five
kilometres of Cream Silver Ltd.’s drill
site lifted, Cubitt said. One of them,
Rolph Schultz, who had been on hunger
strike in Campbell River jail to protest
the restriction, has now been released
from custody.

The court appearances followed an
early morning rally outside the court-
house in Campbell River where more
than 100 people gathered to demonstrate
support for those arrested. Several
speakers, including Friends of Strath-
cona member Kel Kelly, Valhalla Wil-
derness Society representative Colleen

COLLEEN McCRORY

Rally backs arrested
as cases go to court

McCrory, Aa-woo band chief Russell
Kwocksistala and UFAWU organizer
Frank Cox pledged their support to the
campaign. Kelly and Kwocksistala are
among those arrested. —

A total of 38 people have now been
charged with mischief for disrupting
exploration drilling by Cream Silver
Mines Ltd. in the south central part of
the historic park. Five were arrested fol-
lowing demonstrations at the drill site
over the weekend.

Another 18 people are scheduled to
appear in court Mar.1].

Cubitt said that a number of environ-
mental groups as well as trade unions
and Native organizations were meeting
Tuesday to continue the work. of the
coalition which was set up at the Strath-
cona Lodge meeting Feb. 10,

The Friends of Strathcona were also
scheduled to meet with Environment
Minister Bruce Strachan and Comox
Social Credit MLA Stan Hagen Tuesday
night. Cubitt said that Friends would
again be putting forward its demand for
a halt to drilling by Cream Silver and a
full public inquiry into the boundary
changes in the park.

In 1981, the Ministry of Lands and
Forests, acting for the Socred government,
issued instructions that forest companies
would be allowed to abandon more wood
than usual and to concentrate on cutting
high-grade timber in order to increase their
profitability. The total waste of the forest
harvest stood at three percent in 1981. By
1986 it had risen to 11 percent.

In a memo in 1981 announcing the new
policy, T.M. (Mike) Apsey, then deputy
minister of forests and lands, wrote: “We
must be prepared to practice some sympa-
thetic administration (of forest policy).”
Apsey, who launched the new policy of
forest waste on behalf of the Socreds, now
leads the B.C. Council of Forest Industries,
the industry’s main lobby group.

The policy of “highgrading” or “‘cream-
ing” the forests has paid off in huge profits
for the forest companies. All major forest
companies reported huge increases in earn-
ings for 1987, breaking all-time records.
Leading the parade is MacMillan Bloedel
which recently announced 1987 profits of
$280.6 million, more than double the $133.6
million it chalked up in 1986.

The profit bonanza was due not only to
scandalous waste of forest resources, but
also to exaggerations by the government of
the supply of standing prime timber. This
enabled them to justify cutting excessive
amounts of high-value virgin timber and the
large scale exportation of prime logs.

Last week, the IWA-Canada ran full
page ads stating that in the first nine months
of 1987, the B.C. government allowed the
export of 2.4 million cubic metres of raw
logs. This was enough to operate at least
four sawmills for one year. ““That’s a lot of
jobs”, says the ad. The forest companies are
also deliberately exaggerating the amount
of virgin forest left, claiming that there is
enough to last six or seven decades and
therefore a larger cut is being allowed.
However, this figure is contradicted by
Peter Pearse, a leading forest economist and
head of the last Royal Commission.

“The government is telling us we’ve got
72 years of old-growth timber left. I think
the evidence is overwhelming that that’s an
exaggeration,” he said. A recent study adds
that at the current rate at which trees are
cut, B.C. will run out of virgin timber in 17
years.

Dr. Pearse noted that at least one-quarter
of the forestry-based jobs in B.C. will disap-
pear in the coming decades, adding to the
job losses resulting from labour-saving
technology currently being introduced.
However, he said, many new jobs could be
created in industries that turn raw wood
into finished products as well as in the
labour-intensive field of reforestation.

The current investigation of MacMillan
Bloedel’s operations stem from complaints
from some foresters, Native organizations
and civic leaders who charge that the forest
company in its Queen Charlotte operations
is wasting enormous amounts of usable, cut
wood and has failed to report the waste in
violation of the Forestry Act. The legisla-
tion provides that withholding of such
information could result in the cancellation
of the tree farm license.

These allegations have led to the
announcement recently that the RCMP is
investigating the charges. Since then, the
matter has been taken out of the hands of
the RCMP with the announcement by
Forests Minister Dave Parker that the firm
of T.M. Thomson and Associates Ltd.
would conduct a probe of M-B’s operations
in the Queen Charlottes.

The public will not be satisfied with what
appears to be manoeuvre by the govern-
ment to protect the giant forest monopoly
from full public exposure of its damaging
forestry practices.

Parker himself can be said to be in a
conflict of interest. In 1985, before he
became minister, the company for which he

demanded into forest scandal

worked as woods manager , B.C. Timber,
was criticized in a provincial ombudsman’s
report for highgrading the best timber from
the Nass Valley where the company held
Tree Farm Licence No. 1.

Forestry experts charged that the policies
pursued by B.C. Timber (which later
became Westar Timber Ltd.) in 1985,
including inadequate reforestation, resulted
in decimation of the forest resource in the
Nass_ Valley. The man who was woods
manager of the company during that period
is now the Minister of Forests and is respon-
sible for announcing new forest policies.

Recently, Parker introduced a number of
changes to the Forest Act which made
major new concessions to the forest indus-
try. Among them was a provision to extend
the term of Tree Farm Licences to 25 years
or in perpetuity, and to eliminate the
government-operated Timber Supply Areas
(TSAs) by turning them over to holders of
Tree Farm Licences which already control
60 percent of the forests on the coast.

The Crown-owned forests in the FSAs
were operated by the Forest Service.
Timber on them was put up for auction on
the premise that this would help smaller
operations. These timber stands are now to
be privatized. The timber in the TSAs is
valued at $600 million, which is an outright
gift to the forest companies.

Last week, the convention of the Associa-
tion of B.C. Professional Foresters in Victo-
ria. was shaken by charges by leading
foresters of a lack of ethical practices in the
industry. Particularly singled out for criti-
cism were the logging practices in Tree
Farm Licence No.1! which devastated the
Nass Valley.

Some foresters demanded at the conven-
tion that the association speak out against
unethical practices in the industry. Said one
of them: ““We are very unhappy with what
the association did — they did not carry
out their mandate which is to ensure that
B.C.’s forests are properly managed. If the
association does not look after our forests
who else will? The companies haven’t and
the government hasn’t.”

These statements by leading foresters are

~ a powerful condemnation of the govern-

ment and the forest companies. But the
public cannot expect the foresters — with
honorable exceptions — to bite the hand
that feeds them. The fight to save B.C.’s
forests and jobs must be taken up by the
public and public-spirited organizations,
and the unions in the forest industry.

It will not be enough to make cosmetic
changes. What is needed is a full public
airing of the province's forest policies and
practices. This can only be done by setting
up a royal commission with full powers to
conduct public hearings and to probe every
aspect of policy and practice in the forest
industry.

The economic future of the province and
the livelihood of tens of thousands of
woodworkers depend on it.

Pacific Tribune, February 24,1988 « 3

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