WORDS HIDE TRUTH
PLANTERS PROBLEM GUARDIAN AGENDA
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a dystopian society in which language is used to control people. In Orwell’s fictional world, vocabulary is constrained and new words are created in order to simplify and manipulate people’s understanding of the world around them. Orwell suggested that the well-known connection between language and worldview could also be used to manage human behaviour.
It was only three years ago that I started hearing the word fibre used instead of forest with confusing frequency. This word appears on industry and government websites and it is used regularly by timber company representatives. Last week, Minister Doug Donaldson described the lands he is in charge of as feedstock in my community newspaper. One could be forgiven for thinking that the timber industry, with the province’s help, is attempting to replace the notion of a forest - and everything that word means - with vague abstractions. The term fibre conjures up Metamucil, while feedstock summons the mental image of food for livestock. Why are government and industry employing these euphemisms, rather than just saying forest? The purpose is two-fold: to change how we view these complex living systems and to prevent us from acting to defend them. If forests can be rebranded as stands of consumable objects (which the terms fibre and feedstock achieve), then the work of obtaining social license to destroy them has already been done. If an ecosystem is merely feedstock for a pellet plant, what on Earth else would you do with it? If a tree falls in a fibre, no one will hear it because it doesn’t exist.
Natural forests, including those that have burned or are full of decay fungi, provide food and medicines and mitigate floods. Forests also store and sequester carbon in soil and plant tissues, and old forests are particularly good at this, while beetle-killed forests provide critical structures for wildlife.
The founding belief of modern forest management - that natural forests are a commodity - is among the root causes of declining ecosystem health in B.C. Under this belief system, old growth is in the way of plantations that can provide a predictable flow of wood and revenue. Burned or beetle-killed forests are waste. Paired with corporate control over public lands, the conceit that people can and should manage complex ecosystems has led us to where we are today.
Emerging research confirms that B.C.’s productive old growth forest is all but gone. Companies are being awarded licenses to harvest in remaining primary forests to feed pellet plants. The Council of Forest Industries, whose member companies have levelled most of the economically valuable old growth on the coast and in the interior, are demanding that the province set aside the remainder in a “working forest landbase” (read: available for harvest), according to their Smart Future report.
As a part of their ongoing efforts to ensure continued access to B.C.’s last primary forests, those in power are trying to reduce these ecosystems to objects so that the public won’t fight for them. We will not abide lies of omission that obscure the truth of what natural forests are and we won’t stop defending them. Natural forests will always be more than fibre or feedstock; and in nature, there is no such thing as waste.
What is the B.C. government’s planning policy in bringing thousands of planters from all over Canada to the Northern Interior of B.C. during this horrendous pandemic? There is no testing being done nor would it help in this situation.
We, in the north, have been so careful with physical distancing, hand washing etc. because we are terrified of a virus outbreak in our area where we don’t have enough medical services for ourselves. We certainly don’t have anywhere enough for thousands more. Is this an experiment in herd immunity at our expense?
Our people, be they in the small mill towns, First Nations, farmers, ranchers or loggers have so far done a very good job keeping the virus down to the minimum. I am so angry at our govt. for initiating this endeavour. We are being told that the planters will be closely monitored. Will they be monitoring workers day and night out in the communities where they are staying? Bringing thousands of planters in and not expecting a huge outbreak will be like hitting a bee’s nest with a bat and not expecting to get stung. These planters will not stay in their motel rooms nor will there be anyone monitoring them to be sure they do. They are mostly university students doing what they do in summer - making money for tuition and partying after a hard year’s work. We do not have medical services to help them if they get sick or make us sick. I am quite sure Dr. Bonnie Henry, John Horgan and Adrian Dix, good people as they are, have never been in the north in tree planting season. Someone in government had better get a grip on reality and think of the ultimate price.
I laughed when I read Trudy Klassen’s column detailing what it was like to live in the culture she was born into. At the end, she exhorts everyone to practice tolerance and kindness in order to combat the concern that someone else (she calls them guardians) who were not elected would be the final arbiters in disagreements.
Correct me please if I am wrong but wasn’t Trudy one of a group of people who parked their cars in the parking lot of the school district office and honked their horns in protest so that the school trustees were not able to conduct the business they were elected for? At a time when the trustees were working very hard to ensure that education could be delivered, was that tolerant or kind?
Again, correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t Trudy also one of the people who was unsuccessful in her bid to become a school trustee? I seem to remember that she home schooled her children so it is unlikely (but of course not impossible) that she or her family had a close tie to the old school name. I am just musing and I may be wrong but it seems to me that perhaps Trudy used this issue to create further dissent and to raise her profile in anticipation of another bid for school board. If that is the case, I certainly hope the people of Prince George will remember her intolerance when it comes to the next election. Does it ever occur to her that the First Nations may look at her as one of those “unelected guardians?” properly. We won’t even mention the fact that they could also start fires.