PRESIDENT’S MESSAG

Softwood agreement unfair to Canadians

by Dave Haggard

Phe softwood lumber quota agreement ; between Canada and the United States is costing us jobs. I.W.A. members lose their livlihoods when mills close or have to take down time when they don’t have US. export quota.

is December several companies will have extended Christmas shutdowns because of this. Despite over 11 years of so-called “free trade” agreements, most Canadian lumber producers still don’t have complete tariff-free access to the U.S. market. .

These restrictions have been particularly hard on British Columbia’s Coast region where sawmills that don’t have quota can’t ship to the U.S. unless they pay punitive tariffs. Some com- panies can’t get their hands on tariff-free quota and many of our mills in the Interior also face pro-~ duction curtailments when their quota runs out.

We say that the quota agreement should be allowed to expire in 2001 and that Canadian stakeholders should get their act together to fight for improved access to the U.S. market.

The possible permanent closure of the J.S. Jones sawmill in Boston Bar, is a prime example of what’s wrong with the quota agreement. It is a modern, viable mill — one that can compete with similar producers south of the border — but it can’t ship lumber to the United States, largely

because it lacks quota. Ifthe mill goes down, it will likely be the death of Boston Bar.

Jones can’t get its hands on existing quota which is con- trolled by quota- holders who most benefit from the agreement. The foxes are guarding the chicken coop and they won’t let the other foxes get a taste.

The SLA has cre- ated quota haves and

uota have nots.

ven the quota haves are not free from cur- tailments and clo- sures. It also treats different regions and different wood products dif- ferently, thus creating unfairness between Cana- dian producers. Other tariff reclassifications by the U.S. Customs Department, (including those on pre-drilled studs and rougher header fascia) have caused further production shutdowns and job losses for our members. ;

Although we can’t get rid of the SLA for another 15 months, we have to set the stage for what might happen next. We have to get our- selves organized to take on the protectionist U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Prices, which is the driving force behind the quota agreement.

In mid-December we appeared before Douglas Waddell, one of the head honchos at the mission of the Canadian embassy in Washington, to let the Canadian government and the industry know that we are cautiously optimistic that we are

well-positioned to deal with any potential coun- fo eee duty action the Coalition might bring against Canada.

We told Waddell that there have been large changes over the past five years and that a countervailing duty would be unlikely to take place immediatel; if it occurs at all. Stumpage and other costs in B.C. have sharply risen since the last countervailing duty was launched seven years ago and that takes away a big part of an argument that our fata is subsidized.

We've got some impor- tant players lining up on our side of the issue. In the U.S. large lumber buyers like the National Association of Home Builders and Home Depot are aggressively sup- porting the free flow of lumber into the United States.

Now it’s time for the Canadian industry to get offits butt and go out there to argue for freer and fair trade in lumber. After all, they are the ones who supported “free trade” and workers are the ones who have made them more than competi- tive.

And we told Waddell, there also has to be a clearly defined Canadian commitment to freer and fair trade. We have to turn up the heat on the Coalition and work with American customers to battle against protectionist forces that punish our industry and our members.

LANDS AND FORES

Endangered species plan an improvement

by Kim Pollock

don’t think that the federal government very often gets it right when it comes to designing environmental action. And I don’t think they got it right with the recently-released endangered species plan. But, with one very significant exception, they have come remarkably close.

Close because a number of the key elements our union has pushed for since the beginning are finally there.

The government’s disastrous Bill C-65 finally crashed under the combined weight of a coalition of communities, industry, agricultural groups, resource-users and I.W.A. CANADA. That bill, you'll recall, had none of the safeguards needed to protect workers and communities such as:°

¢ assurances that workers and communities could participate with other stakeholder repre- sentatives in framing a species recovery plan;

° requirements that social and economic impacts have to be considered in the recovery plan;

e provisions to ensure that green extreme groups would not enjoy unlimited access to the courts as a means to tie up and stop economic activ- ity;

e financial compensation to workers and com- munities whose livelihood is disrupted by a species recovery plan.

Well, it’s almost all there in this plan.

But it’s a big “almost,” because apparently miss- ing in my quick read of the plan, released two weeks before Christmas Eve, is compensation.

The government has gone as far as conceding that species protection and their habitats “directly affects the lives of rural Canadians as the primary landowners and land users where these species are found” and committing to a “fair and balanced approach” that involves stakeholders in the process.

Further, the feds now agree that “protecting species is everybody’s responsibility and nobody should be asked to bear an unfair part of the load.”

We should be clear that this is light years ahead of where Bill C-65 was taking us.

But the plan, which has not yet been written into the legal language of an actual bill, stops short of offering compensation, “redress,” “financial assis-

tance” or other meaningful help to workers and

communities who might be impacted by a species recovery plan. The far- thest it goes is to indicate that “compensation should ensure fairness so that particular individu- als do not have to bear the costs associated with a public good” and that this “compensation may take | various forms, such as land swaps or assistance in changing to alternative land uses or land man-

agement practices.”

That all sounds like compensation for the own- ers of land, perhaps tenure holders, but not work- ers or communities. And that’s just not enough.

Now, I’m not saying that this plan is not better

than C-65. I’m not even saying that there will nec- essarily be impacts that

It would likely have spawned creative measures, such as so-called variable-retention timber har- vesting, to combine owl habitat and timber har- vesting, on at least a portion of the millions ofacres of federal forest land taken out of production.

It would have eased at least some of the hard- ship, at least of the woods andustey, workers who lost their jobs and homes because the U.S. Endan-

gered Species Act required no protection for work- ers.

Now, after its dismal first attempt with C-65, the Canadian federal government is moving toward providing that kind of protection. These are things that we fought for or supneried from the start of the discussions of a federal bill, through the awful days of Bill C-65 and through this whole second round of discussions:

e The plan outlined by environment minister David Anderson agrees that species protection needs to be based on stewardship and incentives, not restrictions on land use or prohibitions. ¢ Workers and other

result from the protection. of species and their habi- tat in a situation where there are many “checks and balances” as appear to be built into this plan. But ultimately we just have to look to the U.S. Pacific Northwest to know what might poten- tially happen when sweeping measures are imposed to protect a

The door is finally open to some form of compensation for workers and communities who are denied the ability to make a living on the land.

affected stakeholders could be involved at both stages in the pro- posed two-part recovery

lanning process —

oth the information gathering and the species planning pro- cess.

e A species action plan would need to con- sider, among other things, “the estimated

species.

There, with the injunctions and subsequent legal plans that protected the northern spotted owl, the best: estimate — by University of Washington soci- ologist Robert Lee — puts the ultimate job impact at 28,000. And even that harsh figure underesti- mates the impact on a handful of especially forest- dependent communities, where the 1993 U.S. For- est Ecosystem Management report notes that those statistics mask the hardship that individuals and communities will be confronted with inthe years ahead because of the injunctions already in force. Many more job losses would be coming says the report.

Indeed, with that kind of devastation to workers and their workplace, no amount of “compensation” would ever undo the damage. But just the simple application of “price tag” would almost certainly reduce the appetite, if not of the most habitat-rav- enous greens, at least of budget-conscious politi- cians and bureaucrats.

It would likely have speeded up development of the science that proved that owls need much less habitat to survive than environmentalists first

claimed.

cost” and the “socio-eco- nomic implications” of species recovery. .

° Federal government support would be avail- able to those involved in recovery planning and implementation. z

¢ Planimplementation studies would determine whether, as time passes, the plan is still necessary.

The door is finally open, at least, to some form of compensation for workers and communities who are denied the ability to make a living on the land.

It’s a door we need to kick a little wider open. It’s important now that we're not forgotten when reg-" ulations are written to create the mropases federal stewardship fund and proposed compensation fund. We need lobby our local governments; our local Members of Parliament and any federal Cab- inet ministers we can. ?

This plan is not perfect — I'm quite sure I could wind up embarrassed that I was ever this close to saying it’s OK. But right now we've come so far from C-65 that I can’t help but be pleased — and amazed.

Public Policy for I.W.A. CANADA.

Kim Pollock is the Director of Environment and |

4/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1999