Stand up for B.C.!
1. Visit ALL websites listed in this paper.
2. Write to B.C. Premier Campbell and let him know how strongly you feel about keeping public lands in public hands
3. Write to Trade Minister Pettigrew and let him know how strongly you feel about keeping parks & public lands out of the GATS agreement
Liberals plan to give away half of B.C.
The provincial Liberal government is moving to privatize, deregulate and give away our public forestsand provincial parks to corporate interests
On January 22, 2003 the Liberals announced that 45 million hectares of Crown land, an area the size of Sweden and half the landmass in BC, will be handed over to private corporate interests as part of a designated industrial land base called the 'Working Forest.' Originally an election promise to logging companies, the 'Working Forest' covers all forested lands in BC, outside of parks and pro- tected areas.
The 'Working Forest' would ensure that logging corporations and other industrial interests would have guaranteed access to all forested land in British Columbia outside of parks and protected areas. In a nutshell, the 'Working Forest' confers private, corporate rights over our public lands. Under this legislation, future generations would be severely limited in their ability to provide for:
The only way the rights of the public could prevail over corporate rights under this legislation would be if financial compensation or equivalent land swaps (likely taken out of existing provincial parks) were given to the corporations and private interests, who would have an expectation of profit from these public lands.
Stan Hagen, Minister of Sustainable Resource Management, said that it is possible that any commercial forest land lost to a new park would have to be replaced with land from an existing park!
On January 22, 2003 the provincial Liberals announced the give-away of 45 million hectares of public lands, half of the landmass of British Columbia, to private corporate interests. This initiative, called the 'Working Forest', is the most anti-environmental legislation in BC's history.
This giveaway of all forest land outside of parks and protected areas in British Columbia is unprecedented in Canada and is in direct violation of Gordon Campbell's promise to "vigorously defend the Crown's ownership of provincial land and resources".
In fact the provincial government is prepared to mortgage the future of British Columbia to provide short term economic benefits to timber companies, at the expense of endangered species, wild salmon, sustainable forestry and basic democratic rights.
Ninety-two percent of British Columbia is public (Crown) land. Legally, the public and First Nations own these lands AND the trees. The logging licenses granted to the timber companies only give them the right to ACCESS our public lands for logging, NOT ownership over the land or resources.
The 'Working Forest' does nothing to address the main causes of instability and job loss in the forest industry. It does not address the increasing export of raw logs, the overcutting of valley bottoms or the mechanization of mills and forestry jobs. The 'Working Forest' does not address the real problem with the forest industry: the non-diverse, low value-added pulp and lumber orientation of British Columbia's logging industry (making it susceptible to cyclical commodity price fluctuations); the tenure stranglehold of a few large companies; and softwood lumber tariffs imposed by the United States.
Industry writes rules on when and where to log public lands
The Forest and Range Act, better known as the Results Based Code (RBC), is intended to replace the Forest Practices Code. Expected to be phased in by 2005, the RBC reduces government and public oversight of timber companies logging on public lands, and cuts environmental safeguards.
Despite numerous submissions from the public and environment groups regarding the RBC, the Liberals ignored all public concerns and sat down behind closed doors with logging executives to write a code that met industry approval.
The RBC diminishes government monitoring of forest activities, (exacerbated by cuts of over thirty percent to Ministry of Forest staff), reduces public consultation, produces unenforceable results, dramatically decreases protection for "non-timber resources", such as endangered species, and significantly reduces corporate accountability.
Even Dr. George Hoberg, the UBC Forestry professor who headed the two month 'public' consultation process, remarked that "there was general agreement that many of the results statements were vague, unmeasurable, and unenforceable."
gov't info at www.resultsbasedcode.ca
