There are three ways the provincial government should simultaneously proceed as it prepares to expropriate Tree Farm Licenses and restore the forest lands to the people of B.C.
1.) Change the rules on how logging must be done in order to make forestry sustainable.
- Outlaw clearcut logging and require selection harvesting systems.
- Require a minimum employment commitment per cubic meter of trees cut.
- Require that all of the logs produced by a company be sold on the B.C. open market, so
that the wood gets sold to the highest B.C. bidder.
This will encourage value-added manufacturing, giving many entrepreneurs an access to wood they are now denied. The large companies will claim that it is impossible to do this; that they cannot afford to make these improvements and still remain competitive on the world market. If they insist on producing low value wood chips, pulp and two-by-fours, they're probably right. Their choice will be either to change and meet the new rules, which will create more jobs, use the wood more fully and sustain the forests, or abandon their holdings to companies that will.
2.) Formally recognize aboriginal title and proceed to invalidate the Tree Farm
Licences based on the natives' prior claim on the land.
Some of the licensed
land must go to First Nations to give them the land base they need to support
their communities. Some must become needed wilderness preserves. The remainder
must be converted to community managed forest reserves.
3.) Immediately begin making the big companies pay their fair share of taxes.
Over the last few decades they have taken advantage of every tax break and every
government subsidy imaginable. For example, during the years 1983-1992 the B.C.
ministry of forests operated at a total net deficit of 712 million dollars while
MB during the same period posted a 1.8 billion dollar profit. By using tax
loopholes and deferments during the several years that were unprofitable for the
company in the '83-'92 period, MB avoided paying taxes on a substantial amount
of profits made during the good years. Changing higher stumpage and increasing
corporate taxes, will help provide governments with the money needed to retrain
workers and pay for the transition form corporate to community control.
How to regain control of our forests
"The conservation vision sounds great, but it's impossible to take away the Tree Farm Licenses from the multinationals. They were drafted by multinationals' lawyers, and they're tight. It takes 25 years to cancel them. These companies have phenomenal political power. Even the NDP bows to it," said a Port Alberni resident and environmentalist as he was inspecting the vision map during the consultation process WCWC conducted last summer.
He continued, "If the government does manage to pass legislation to expropriate these holdings, the companies will go to court and ask for a zillion dollars in compensation and you know what?"
"What?" we asked.
"They'll get it. The judges are all political appointees, sympathetic to the current system and part of the incredible privilege, profits and power system which is destroying our forests while benefiting the few."
But elsewhere in the world, people fed up with corrupt political and economic systems are bringing about major change.
To eliminate the current forest tenures all the provincial government needs to do is pas a law cancelling them. Our answer - "minimal". The big companies paid only token fees for their licenses and have already realized extraordinary profits on their initial investment. It makes much more sense, anyway, that they be required to buy the wood they need for their mills on an open B.C. log market - like the small business forest enterprises.
No company gives up extraordinary privilege without protesting. But the alternative - to continue appeasing the industry - is to accept declining employment in our forest industry, an uncertain future for our mill towns and an increasingly degraded environment.
