Environment

irresponsibility. =
My experiences fighting forasane **-

forest policy in TFL 46 and justice for

the workers at Fletcher Challenge have

led me to the inescapable conclusion that

we can not save our forests without taking

on and dismantling the power structure.
My hope for the future is based in the

fact that 95 per cent of the timber

producing land is owned by the public,

Unless we make qualitative
changes in this industry, the
demand for logs to meet
manufacturing capacity
together with the decline in the
quality and average log size as
the old growth forest is used
up will mean that the total
area of forest land clear cut
each year will grow and grow.

I eR 3 Sh RE nN! MARS UB nae) LN
and we therefore have the ultimate power
to assert the public interest over it.

But the contrasting fact which we have
to confront is that only 8 forest companies
harvest 81.4 per cent of all timber. When
inter-corporate ties are taken into account,
86.5 per cent of the AAC on the B.C.
coast is partially controlled by 3 corporate
groups. The clear trend is for this
concentration of power to increase. Of the
current applications for extending the
TFLs under Bill 28, 76 per cent of the
additional AAC will go to the top 6
corporations, and 37.8 per cent to
Fletcher Challenge alone.

Too many statistics will only blurr the
essence of the matter. Our forest industry
is completely dominated by a handful of
transnational-corporations, and it is their
established markets and international
investment decisions which determines
their policy decisions about our forests.

For example, the majors get maximum
return on investment from the pulp sector
in which B.C. is well positioned in
international markets. This industry bias
is reflected in the use of plantation
forestry, in the lack of silviculture for
sawmill logs, in the wasteful practice of
chipping good sawmill logs. In their
candid moments they will admit that they
see sawmilling in B.C. as in decline, and
future profits are more and more in pulp.

Another example is the semi-raw
material nature of the industry as a whole.
This province has almost half the total
timber harvest in Canada, but less than a
quarter of the manufactured forest
products. In terms of value added per
cubic meter cut, B.C. reaches only 40 per
cent of the Ontario product, and just 16
per cent of the California product.

Our role in the international market is
to be the hewers of wood and the makers
of pulp and that’s why Fletcher Challenge
is now here. Fletcher Challenge did not

. come to Canada so that it could
contribute to value added production.
Fletcher Challenge did not come to
Canada so that it could ensure wilderness
protection and recreational uses in our
forests.

And there won’t be any real change
until the transnational corporate
monopoly on our forests is broken up!

I want to turn now to the kind of new
forest policies we must have. We need
democratic control of our forests in order
to secure long term economic and
environmental stability.

This goal is not only achievable. It is
absolutely necessary.

The first step towards that goal would
be a properly constituted Royal
Commission to provide an inventory of
what we have left, and to examine all of
the issues.

The second step would be the

legislation of sustainable forest practices
and the absolute requirement of
"sustainable yield.

That must mean properly managing. the
old growth forest we have left, including
the preservation of important wilderness
areas. A word here on issues like the
Carmanah. Personally, I endorse the
call to save this watershed, because I
believe it is unique. But when there are
proposals to remove forest land from
production, the interests of the workers
must be considered. We need overall
solutions that protect wilderness and
guarantee jobs as a condition of holding
timber rights.

It must mean a lower AAC and a lot
more planting so that the harvestable
forest base grows instead of shrinking.

It must mean intensive silviculture. It
must mean environmentally sensitive
logging practices, using selective logging,
thinning and much smaller clear cuts.

None of this is very radical. It is now
being successfully done in Sweden.
Swedish legislation requires reforestation
according to a minimum number of plants
per hectare in harvested areas and
understocked areas, and their forest base
grows each year! Their legislation requires
intensive silviculture, protection of wildlife
and sensitive species of plants.

A third step would be legislated
requirements for value added production,
and an outright ban on the export of logs.
In other words investment to bring timber
to its highest end value must be a
condition of holding timber rights. In
addition, a negative value added tax
which declines as more jobs are produced
with harvested timber might talk some
sense into a few forest companies. ~

I believe we can maintain, and in fact
increase, forest industry jobs in B.C. and
preserve the old growth, lower the AAC,
and protect more wilderness areas. But
this can only be done by a whole new
economic strategy based on value added
production. A recent federal/provincial

study, for example, showed that a $600
million capital investment into making
joinery products would create 4,000 jobs
in B.C.

This brings me to the fourth step and
the nub of the problem. To get
democratic control of our forests the
present, massive tree farm licenses must be
broken up.

They need to be phased out, bought
out where possible maybe just legislated
out. And in their place we need much,
much smaller Forest Licenses and area
based tenures.

This could include community or
municipally owned forest licenses; Native
owned forest licenses; an expanded
woodlot program; and a mix of company
held Forest Licenses, TFL’s and the
auction of mature timber by the forest
service to the highest bidder.

In IWA Canada Local 1-80 we have
already come to the conclusion that TFL
46 should be taken away from Fletcher
Challenge*and that municipalities and the
workers should be given a chance to
manage forests and to control their own
destinies. We said in our brief to Dave
Parker at Parksville that this would give
an incentive to manage the forest for the
long term good and stability of our forest
towns, not for the short term profits of a
single corporation.

You’re most likely thinking that I
represent unionized workers who work for
the transnationals in the present TFLs
and that their jobs might be threatened by
what I’m proposing. Well, I think their
jobs are now threatened. But more
important, the condition of any new form
of forest tenure must be the guarantee of
long term stable jobs and support for
communities, with all that this entails.

I want to stress that a more democratic
forest industry must uphold workers’
rights. In the union, we see the necessity
of a different type of forest industry. But

. we will not sacrifice our jobs, our union

rights, our wages and living standards, or
our pensions. I hope that we can count on
your support in this regard.

I also believe that if we are going to
make the turn we need to value added
production, the public itself must get

We each have a role to play in
building a united movement.
When we're divided Fletcher
Challenge will rule the day.
When we get togther, we can
take the initiative. We need to
take the intiative now, so that
when and if we secure a new
government, there will be real

change.

ESR EIS SE I A ATTA POE NR ET TES
involved. The labour movement has called
for the nationalization of at least one
major forest company, and I support that
call provided that the workers and the
public would have a say in how it
operates.

It seems to me.that Fletcher Challenge,
this foreign owned company which now
has large tracts of our forests on the coast
and in the Interior, would be a good
target for public ownership.

Now that, I would agree, is a bit more
radical. But hell, it wouldn’t be nearly as
radical as what Fletcher Challenge has
done. Two years ago it was in New
Zealand. Then it bought Crown
Zellerbach, one of the top five or six
companies in the province. Then it bought
B.C. Forest Products, the second biggest
company in the industry. From nowhere
it is equal to MacBlo as the biggest forest
company and it immediately rationalizes
and shuts down mills and logging camps
and lays off workers. That is really
radical.

As I mentioned in the beginning, we
need both a new forest policy, and a grass
roots movement to ensure that a new
government carries out that policy.

I think that my union, [WA Canada,
has an important contribution to make to
that movement. I won’t gloss over the
problems, or the obvious contradictions
that still exist between union policy and
some demands for withdrawing land from
forest production.

But at our national convention in

September there was an environmental
policy adopted which is a real step

forward. The policy which was

unanimously adopted commits the union
to and I quote “the establishment and
maintenance of fully sustainable forestry
... forestry that leaves to future

’ generations of Canadians a rich

endowment of fish and wildlife, soils
capable of supporting varied ecosystems,
and commercial forests managed so as to
provide many more jobs and the wide °
range of the forest recreations that
Canadians value.” The report committed
the union to the goals of the Brundtland
report.

A key part of this policy is for the
establishment of environment committees
in every local union to monitér company
activities, and to take up all of the issues
related to forest practices and the
environment.

IF see these grass roots union committees
as an important bridge today between the
union and the environmental movement,
and in the future as a way to ensure real
workers’ control in the forest industry.

Those of us in the union who believe in
that environmental policy and who
understand the larger struggle for a new
society that it implies, have a job to do to
see that the union plays the positive role
that it must.

In closing, I want to say to you that our
job will be a lot easier with a greater
appreciation in the community that there
can not be any solution to the
environmental crisis in our forests which
does not include the workers in the
industry. .

{ We each have a role to play in building
a united movement. The workers and the
union have to demand a new forest policy
and a political process to democratize
decision making on forest policy.

You in the community also need to call
for new policies, and for a process on
forest policy decisions which ensures that
the workers and the union have a say.

When we’re divided Fletcher Challenge
will rule the day. When we get together,
we can take the initiative.

We need to take the initiative now, so
that when and if we secure a new
government, there will be real change.
This conference and the Tin Wis
Conference before it, I believe, are the
building blocks for the new political
movement we need.

For the B.C. environment, and for the
jobs and well being of the workers I

represent, it is a matter of survival.

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Pacific Tribune, November 6, 1989 e 7