by Jim Cooperman
In its February budget, the BC government announced that it is increasing its $275 million handout to the forestry sector by another $266 million.
Even though there has been outrage over the brutal reductions in public services, no one seems concerned about this give-away of tax dollars to a booming forest industry. Perhaps it is because the public has been hoodwinked to believe in the myth of a BC forestry sector struggling to survive the softwood lumber war? The reality was best stated by forestry consultant Peter Woodbridge in the latest issue of Truck Loggers Magazine, “Improved business levels are generating the profits needed to justify recent high rates of corporate consolidation and funding for mill andproduct upgrading.”
Included in the increase is $50 million announced earlier that goes to assist workers and contractors affected by the Forest Revitalization Plan, which reallocates 20 percent of timber tenure from large companies over to BC Timber Sales and First Nations, with a pittance to communities. The tenure take-back was intended to help solve the softwood dispute by making stumpage determination more accurate. However, on the coast the take-back has resulted in lower stumpage (by $7), not higher, likely because the increased concentration of companies has allowed them to work together to ensure their auction bids are minimized.
Even more absurd is that this “taken back” timber is still available to the companies at an even lower cost than prior to the take-back. As well, under the $200 million allocated for compensation, these companies were paid 25 cents a cubic metre when it was “taken back.”
Sadly, it seems no one is representing the public in the softwood negotiations. If more British Columbians understood the options, they would surely favour higher stumpage fees for the corporations that log our publicly owned forests. In the US all public timber is sold at auctions, so it is really no wonder that US lumber manufacturers cried foul about the Canadian tenure system that resulted in lower priced lumber flowing south. They pushed for the import duties to level the playing field. If the government had brought in an export tax (as is currently being considered) to replace the duties 31⁄2 years ago, a good portion of the over $4 billion now sitting in a US bank account would have gone into provincial treasuries and the dispute would have been solved.
Instead the forest companies now stand to reap windfall profits, as they did in the mid-nineties when the last dispute was “solved” and the duties imposed by the Americans were returned to them. If our federal and provincial governments were truly representing the public instead of favouring forest industry corporations, they would argue that this money should be returned to the owners of forest resources – meaning us. And now Canada may retaliate by placing duties on US goods such as California wine. This could mean the extra money spent by Canadian consumers for US goods might end up in the pockets of lumber companies, if government decides to compensate them for the US softwood tariffs.
Has anyone noticed that forest industry lobby groups such as the Forest Alliance and Share BC have disappeared? No surprise they are gone, as the Campbell government has brought in most of the policies these groups lobbied for during the 1990s. These groups which once claimed to represent forest-dependent communities have now disbanded, just as communities see their mills shut down, forest service offices close and forestry jobs disappear.
Mills have modernized. Only a few workers are needed to operate the computers that help churn out thousands of board feet of lumber in a day. In the bush, feller-bunchers and grapple-skidders replace loggers and increase production. Corporate and government forestry offices no longer need as many technicians and foresters because most planning requirements have been scrapped under the new results-based regulations. It is no wonder forest companies are making profits (last year’s third quarter profits were the highest since 1996), despite the softwood duties.
The provincial Liberal party has been well funded, to the tune of nearly $3.5 million from 1996 to 2002 by forestry corporations. In return, the Council of Forest Industry’s “Blueprint for Competitiveness” became the government’s blueprint. Companies are no longer required to operate mills in regions where they have licenses to log. There are no longer any restraints on industry consolidation; consequently, companies get larger and the workforce shrinks.
Millions in taxpayer dollars are funding marketing initiatives in China and elsewhere; millions more are now going directly to forest companies and workers.
The public needs to know that they are the owners of most of this province’s forests, and thus they urgently need to understand how provincial forestry policies further subsidize corporations, at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment.
Instead of giving more public money to the forestry sector, BC needs policies that reduce corporate control and price our timber at fair market value, such as selling at least half of it at auction. We need to recognize and respect aboriginal title; we need to improve, not diminish, environmental protection. We need to provide more opportunities for community managed forests, and we need to encourage labour-intensive value-added wood manufacturing.
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A former sawmill operator, Jim Cooperman was editor of the B.C. Environmental Report and coordinator of the BCEN Forest Caucus from 1990 to 2000. He lives above Shuswap Lake and is the president of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society. He can be contacted at jkcooperman@yahoo.ca or www.seas.ca