Trees are going the way of cod
Dear Editor:
In 1992, federal Fisheries Minister John Crosbie reasoned with struggling fishermen that he “didn’t take the fish from the damn water, so don’t go abusing me.”
Today in British
Columbia, the forest minister is under similar attack; his party taking flack from unions, workers and industry for decades of over-harvesting, uplifts, inflated annual cuts, and the overall mismanagement of our greatest crown asset.
Are B.C.’s trees going the way of Newfoundland’s cod? As we mourn one controversial political leader, we cannot help but recall that moratorium and make comparisons to our forests crisis and crippled industry wondering what is the plan?
In 1945, when the Sloan Report laid the policy foundation for the Forest Act, including granting industry full access to our forests through tenure to ensure the taxpayers of B.C. a “perpetual supply of raw material for forest industries, with consequent stability of industrial communities and assurance of permanent payrolls,” it’s doubtful he had today’s depleted industry in mind.
By granting industry carte blanch access to 466 community watersheds, numerous parks, and even protected areas like Great Bear Rain Forest, we still lost 50,000 jobs and 125 mills in two decades.
While radical, to save the remnants of the forestry industry we must first save the forest. Our forests have been permanently, radically altered, now our forest industry must follow.
This is not a partisan issue. Former Liberal forest critics, MLAs and one-mill town mayors need to stop finger pointing at the current government; they are suffering from amnesia if they believe this crisis sprung up when the NDP came to power.
In a week that mourned the loss of a politician who had to make the hard decisions and place a moratorium on the cod fishery to save the species and salvage an industry, Premier John Horgan and his NDP/Green coalition are going to have to get offensive in their forestry reforms. The NDP cannot continue to play the defense while pitting forestry workers against academics, unions against environmentalists, local governments against licensees while industry invests offshore. Regional planning committees and local councils that are accountable to First Nations and communities are a start in the development of a ‘new’ forestry game.
Perhaps Horgan needs to borrow a move from Crosbie’s playbook before another 50,000 job are lost.
It’s time for this province to make a stand and take the offensive, no more minor window dressing alterations to professional reliance, no more minor tweaks to forest practices, no more going back on new policies like slash pile penalties. Taryn Skalbania Peachland