Parties differ on forestry
But parties differ on how to manage forests in the post- mountain pine beetle era
After almost a decade in the doldrums, the forest industry is steaming back into the B. C. economy, with companies clamouring for more wood from forests that have been devastated by the mountain pine beetle.
Two forces — one economic, the other environmental — define the issues facing British Columbia’s forests: The beetle destroyed so much timber that the province stopped trying to keep an inventory of what’s left until the epidemic died down; and now that the industry is recovering, those areas that still have healthy, green timber are coming under increasing pressure to supply wood to mills that are now starved. There are no feel- good solutions.
“The writing is clearly on the wall: The Interior has a lot less fibre to work with,” said Ben Parfitt, resources analyst at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Decisive action needed
On the coast, the decline of the sawmill sector has led to an increase in raw- log exports and a shortage of sawmill byproducts, forcing companies like Harmac Pacific pulp mill in Nanaimo to chip whole logs as there are no longer enough sawmills to provide a wood chip supply. The Liberals introduced new export policies earlier this year that supporters say will lead to more wood being made available for local mills, but one operator, Mill & Timber, is considering closing its Port Moody sawmill, citing increased exports as the reason.
With British Columbia’s most valuable renewable resource facing health and supply crises, Parfitt fears that unless the party in power after May 14 takes decisive action, the decline of our forests will accelerate.
“My fear is that it could be off the radar screen in the coming election. That would be a big mistake.”
The New Democrats released their forest policy Monday at Prince George, the heart of the Interior forest industry and one of the regions hardest hit by the beetle, and it’s no surprise forest health is one of the party’s top priorities. Party leader Adrian Dix pledged to gradually ramp up spending over five years to $ 100 million a year by 2017 in order to complete needed inventory work and to double the re- planting rate on Crown lands damaged by the beetle. They will begin by investing $ 30 million more this year.
“Seventy- four per cent of the land base has inventory that is out of date,” NDP forest critic Norm Macdonald said. “Clearly these are areas we have to improve on.”
The NDP will also put some of that money into research to understand better how the forests are changing.
On the coast, the NDP intends to tackle the log export issue but says it will be done in consultation with industry. The coast traditionally exports about one million cubic metres of logs a year but over the last few years that has mushroomed to six million cubic metres a year. Macdonald said the NDP intends to use regulations already in place to bring that tally down.
“There’s no easy fix,” he said. “Much of the manufacturing capacity we had in certain parts of the coast is not there any more. It means we have to create a situation where it makes sense to have a manufacturing facility. That’s what has to happen.”
During the downturn, coastal companies were not harvesting their allowable cut. The result is that there is now an undercut of unharvested wood that the NDP could redirect to companies that pledge to create manufacturing jobs, Macdonald said.
The NDP also intends to bring back a jobs protection commissioner, with a mandate of stepping into situations where manufacturing plants are closing down. The province had a jobs commissioner in the 1990s, and while some of the solutions to keeping coastal forest companies afloat meant allowing more log exports, in other situations, such as Macdonald’s own town of Golden, the jobs commissioner steered new investment into the community.
Skills- training needed
When manufacturing plants go down, the government gets pulled in eventually, Macdonald said, citing Burns Lake and Mackenzie as examples.
“The approach has been haphazard. We are saying government is inevitably involved. The government response needs to be professional and consistent.”
The NDP also intends to bring in a broader skills- training plan to address the provincewide shortage of skilled workers. Industry fears the NDP plan will lead to a formalized ratio of apprentices to journeymen that will increase their costs.
The B. C. Liberals also place forest health as a top priority but have delayed needed inventory work until the beetle epidemic is over. The resulting inventory will then be more accurate, the Liberals say. The Liberals also brought in tighter controls on log exports in January.
The Liberals intend to continue with their current forestry strategies, said Steve Thomson, minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.
In the mountain pine beetle damaged forests those policies revolve around two issues:
• Updating the forest inventory now that the beetle has mostly run its course, to find out how much healthy timber remains. Thomson believes the inventory work will reveal there is more timber available than the old inventories indicate.
• Creating new types of forest licences, which the province has already embarked on, to increase utilization of wood that has been left to rot or be burned after logging.
Creating licensing opportunities for marginal timber, Thomson said, is a strategy “to ensure that we get full utilization of waste, and to make sure that we create the business- tobusiness relationships and the supply chains between the saw log industry and other users — the pellet industry, the bioen-ergy industry — to make sure we get the full value from the land base.”
The Liberals signalled the direction they want to take forestry in February when they introduced legislation that would allow forest companies to roll over their volume based timber tenures into more secure area- based tenures. The logic was that by gaining more control over the area where they harvest their trees, forest licensees will have an incentive to invest in the land. However, the legislation was withdrawn after the government encountered broad public opposition.
“With some of the misperception and information that was out there around what area based management was, and what the intentions were, we withdrew that in favour of an enhanced public consultation process, which we have said we will run this summer,” said Thomson.
“It would be our intention to still bring forward the required legislative tools to enhance area- based management following that process, but would be informed by that process.”
With both major parties saying they intend to address forest health issues, forestry is unlikely to produce an election wedge issue, said Rick Jeffrey, president of the Coast Forest Products Association.
“Everybody knows we need to spend money on inventories,” he said. “Both parties are saying the same thing. It’s a matter of how much and how fast.”
The B. C. Conservatives say the next government will be faced with managing the damage caused by the beetle.
There is no way around it: B. C.’ s annual allowable cut is going to have to come down and sawmills will close as a result of the pine beetle epidemic, said Tom Birch, the party’s candidate in Shuswap, who works in the forestry sector. The solution is not to ramp up logging, but to get more value from the wood that remains, he said.
Everybody knows we need to spend money on inventories. Both parties are saying the same thing. It’s a matter of how much and how fast.
RICK JEFFREY COAST FOREST PRODUCTS ASSOCIATION
“We either close the mill and get to a sustainable level or we close them 10 years from now and we are finished until the trees regrow 20 years later,” Birch said. The Conservatives would focus on changes that will encourage higher- grade logs to go to higher- value uses. Developing more small- tenure community forests and changes in the stumpage system to identify valuable logs are steps the party intends to take along the path to a value- added forestry sector, he said.
“At this point we are really coming in to manage the damage,” he said of forest policy in the post- beetle era. “We have taken our ministry of forests down from 4,000 employees to 3,000 and then given them a double mandate to do lands and natural resources as well. It can’t be managed the way we are going, so we have to look at other things.”
Forest protection
The Green Party of B. C. says it intends to approach the forest health issue by taking forestry in a totally new direction, away from the current industrial model of churning out raw logs and two- by- fours, toward increasing the number of jobs, protecting the ecological integrity of our forests, and focusing on local demand for wood products.
It intends to use policy levers to encourage the development of value- added industries and industries that rely on secondgrowth rather than old- growth logs.
Party leader Jane Sterk said the Greens have not laid out a specific legislative agenda but would create a Royal Commission-like process based on community expectations and expert opinion to examine new directions for forestry.
“We would ask that commission to come forward with a proposal for how we could develop a long- term plan for the changes that we think need to happen in terms of both the health of the forest and the ability to get economic value out of forest products,” she said.