How B.C. got multinational clearcut logging
Clearcut near Carmanah Park. Photo by Linda Thomson
The "modern era" in forest management in British Columbia began in 1947 with the provincial government's introduction of a forest tenure system featuring Tree Farm Licences (TFLs). With it came the loss of the free market system to determine the value of logs and the decline of the small logging companies, which could no longer buy rights to cut timber from the government at public auction. In theory, this decline in free enterprise was to be compensated by a move to "sustained yield" cutting of the forests and a "big industry" buffer to forestry's chronic cycles of boom and bust.
It was argued that this tenure system would provide the long term stability needed to spur capital investment and job creation. The public's forest land was divided into two categories: TFL areas where large companies would have exclusive cutting rights and Public Working Circles which later were renamed Timber Supply Areas (TSAs) where small loggers were to operate on quota system.
Only about 40 very large TFLs were awarded. Most of these went to big companies, some of which had never done business before in B.C. Over the years these corporations went on to acquire most of the cutting rights in the TSAs. This biggest government give-away of wealth in history of the province was not without its graft and scandal. In the case of the TFL in Clayoquot Sound, originally given to B.C. Forest Products and later sold to Fletcher Challenge and then to International Forest Products, the Forest Minister of the time, Bob Summers, went to jail for accepting a bribe. Despite the scandal, this tenure was not revoked.
In February of 1993 (just before its infamous Clayoquot Sound compromise) the
Harcourt government purchased $50 million worth of shares in MacMillan Bloedel -
making the B.C. government the largest single shareholder in MB.
Control of forest tenures in B.C. has become increasingly concentrated. Today,
10 large companies control approximately 70 percent of the cutting rights in
B.C. The gradual increase in corporate concentration is not an accident. It was
the result of government laws and policy, written to favour the corporations.
The companies promised to provide sustainable forestry, community stability and
jobs for skilled workers.
In return, B.C. governments permitted too many saw and
pulp mills to be built (in relation to the volume of timber that could be
sustained) and turned a blind eye to the rapid clearcutting of the old growth
forest and the "falldown", which would inevitably occur when the companies ran
out of high volume, high quality old growth forests and had to rely on lower
volume, lower quality and smaller diameter, 70-year-old plantation grown trees.
The last two forestry commissions in B.C. (Pearse, 1976 and Peel, 1991) both
identified the concentration of corporate control as the major problem affecting
the forest sector. But the multinational forest companies are so powerful that
they have blocked all efforts to change this situation. No government, to date,
including the Harcourt NDP government has had the vision or the courage to act
on these commissions' recommendations for tenure reform.
Adapted from How to Save Jobs in the B.C. woods, WCWC Educational Report Vol.12
No.8, Winter 1993-94
