False promises and shattered dreams
Red Stripe Mountain north of the Brooks Peninsula provides visual proof that clearcut logging is ecologically unsound. note the massive erosion of the mountainside's soils. Photo by Adrian Dorst
Less and less employment gained from more and more trees cut
Foreign industry giants were given exclusive "tree farm" rights to harvest B.C. timber based on the promise that they would provide jobs.
Since 1950, despite increases in the harvest levels, the ratio of people employed in the B.C. forest industry to volume of wood cut has dropped in half. Between 1981 and 1993, while total employment in B.C. rose by 250,000, 24,400 direct jobs were lost fewer forest workers in relation to wood harvested (less than one job for every 1000 cubic metres of wood cut ) than the rest of Canada, the United States or any country in Europe.
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The Forest Resources Commission (FRC) has accurately called the multinationals-
based industry a "major dis-employer in B.C."
-Victoria Times Colonist, Oct. 19, 1993
On Vancouver Island, direct forestry employment dropped by 50% over the last 15 years. In 1991 - before recent industry lay-offs, only 7.5 percent of Vancouver Island's total labour force was directly employed by the forest industry. Communities like Crofton, Chemainus, Honeymoon Bay, Youbou and Sooke - where old growth forests have largely been logged out - have all been hard hit. In Port Alberni, MacMillan Bloedel laid off almost 1,500 wood workers as part of its "restructuring" programme. Over 4,000 forest industry jobs have been lost in Port Alberni since 1980, contributing to a record rate of unemployment of 27% (over 3,500 people). Unemployment Insurance payments in Port Alberni for 1990 totalled $27 million!
What has caused the loss of forestry jobs? A report by NDP MLA Corky Evans notes that it's mostly due to "increased mechanization in logging and sawmilling operations." MacMillan Bloedel refers to the changes as "restructuring". Preservation of ancient forests has not been a factor in the job losses on Vancouver Island.
Click on image for detail.
Distant wood processing and little value added manufacturing
The forest companies that are granted Tree Farm License privileges promised to build wood processing mills in B.C. They did, but their investment spawned plants which only minimally process the wood. And much of the wood is not being processed in the communities near where it's cut.
At present, 90% of the trees cut on the northern half of Vancouver Island is milled outside that region. Almost 50% of the wood cut on Vancouver Island is shipped off the island to be milled, primarily to the Lower Mainland. Even there, the industry is not doing a good job of creating value-added jobs.
"Despite having the highest quality, highest volume forests in Canada, the
British Columbia timber industry produces 45% less value added to wood products
than the rest of Canada."
- Herb Hammond, RPF Seeing the Forest Among the trees.
Most of B.C. wood products leave the province as large dimensional lumber, cants and minimally manufactured wood (raw pulp, wood chips and two-by-fours). There are over forty mills that have been identified in Washington and Oregon which re-process B.C. wood into higher valued-added products.
"I would suggest that one way out of the box that we're in would be to do
everything possible to extract every job in the forest-then in the sawmill and
then in the remanufacturing plant-from every stick that we harvest... Because
there is the opportunity to create probably 10,000 to 20,000 remanufacturing
jobs by the year 2000."
-Corky Evans, NDP MLA - Reported in The Georgia Straight Nov.5-12,1993
The continued export of raw logs from B.C. is the most blatant contradiction to the forest industry's promise of manufacturing jobs. In 1992-93, 1.3 million cubic metres of wood were exported as raw logs from B.C. - wood that could have provided about 650 direct milling jobs. At that same time, MB invested in at least five large plants in the southern U.S.
"1991 saw an incredible round of MB layoffs in B.C. By mid-summer, Monty
Mearns (second vice-president of IWA Local 1-85) was telling the press: "How
many job losses do we experience before we challenge MacMillan Bloedel's right
to tenure?"
Victoria Times Colonist, Oct. 19/93
Think about it...
At one time people could not understand why environmentalists wanted to stop the logging in parts of Madagascar's ancient tropical rainforest. Growing in the forests was a seemingly inconsequential flower, the rosy periwinkle. That flower, threatened with extinction by logging of its forest habitat, now provides the drugs which result in 99 percent remission amongst children suffering with acute lymphocytic leukemia and 80% remission in Hodgkin's disease.
The forest industry on Vancouver Island has traditionally cut down and destroyed Pacific yew trees as a "waste" species. Taxol, a drug from the bark of the yew, now provides a cure for many cervical cancers.
What yet undiscovered medical cures might we lose if we cut down the last of the ancient forests?
Tree cutting taxes less than B.C.'s forest management costs
Stumpage is a payment that logging companies make to the provincial government for the wood they cut on crown land. It's based on the fact that people must share the profits that the companies make through logging them. Stumpage ought to provide at the very least enough revenues to run the B.C. Forest Service, which manages these forests.
Unfortunately the stumpage formula has never been fully based on the true market value of the wood, as it is in the United States where wood is valued by competitive bidding. During the period from 1983 to 1992, at the same time as the volume of timber cut rose at an unprecedented rate, the B.C. Forest Service ran at a net loss of $711.8 million.
What changes it will take to make Vancouver Island's communities and forests sustainable
- To preserve biodiversity-the Island's natural heritage of wild plants and animals
- To sustain ecosystem functions including maintenance of pure water and fish habitats, stabilization of soils and production of pure drinking water
- To provide opportunities for recreation and eco-tourism
- To allow scientists to learn more about how forest ecosystems and species function
