] Export
of logs
blasted

Continued from page 1

Japan, and their protest has
sharply escalated with the
closure of wood and pulp mills
and the layoff of thousands of
workers across the province. On
Sept. 2 several woodworkers
from Vancouver and the Island
halted log shipments for one day
at Berry Point in Burnaby.

The union has attacked weak
provincial legislation which has
allowed forestry companies to
greatly increase log exports
because of the downturn in the
domestic wood processing: in-
dustry. The increased exports
now include No. 1 grade logs
normally processed in B.C.,
which means jobs are exported
along with the logs, the union
has charged.

“Tt is time to discard the
selfish short term gain of a fast
buck for forest companies and a
mere handful of jobs for wood-
workers that are created by in-
creased log exports. It is ab-
solutely essential that we em-
bark on a long term plan which
would require that all quality
logs be manufactured in our
own mills,’’ said Local 1-217
president Doug Evans in a re-
cent issue of the Barker, the
local’s paper.

It was in that spirit that the
jobless workers from Port
Alberni and other Island centres
converged on the Port Alice
operation, to temporarily halt
the shipment of logs to Japan by
| Western Forest Products.

That forest company’s ac-
tions are particularly significant
since the corporation plans to
close its Wood Fiber pulp mill
near Squamish next February,
according to Local 1-85
spokesman Monty Mearns.

“It’s IWA regional policy
that we condemn the export of
logs wherever it happens,”’
Mearns explained. Neither he
nor Foxcroft were certain of the
figures involved, but, said Fox-
croft, ‘‘We are against the ex-
port of logs — period.”

(Last July NDP forestry
critic Bill King released figures
showing that log imports had in-
creased more than 10 times in
the first half of 1982 over the
amount shipped in the last half
of 1981).

The union is not simply con-
cerned with the current layoff
Situation as affected by the ex-
ports, ‘‘we’re also looking at the
future,’’ said Foxcroft.

““A few years ago, we were
told we were overcutting. Now
we're exporting jobs along with
logs,”’ he said, citing the long
term damage to the industry if
the exports continue.

The local also plans to fight
the injunction, said Foxcroft, in
the hope that it can be overturn-
ed or at least limited in its scope.

Bypassing as it does the LRB,
and granted wide-range applica-
tion solely on the arguments of
one of the parties — the ship-
ping companies—the injunction
revives the spirit, if not the let-
ter, of the sixties and the union-
busting legislation of that

“TI think everyone can
understand the importance of
this case,’” Mearns told the
Tribune.

i}

U.S.-Canada wood tariff dispute
is ‘a symptom of a deeper crisis’ —

By MAURICE RUSH
With about one third of the pro-
vince’s 96,000 forestry workers laid

off, the moves being made in the °

U.S. to impose tariffs on Canadian
lumber poses a grave threat to
B.C.’s number one industry. But
more than that, it puts the spotlight
on the severe crisis facing B.C.’s
forest industry which goes far
beyond the immediate issue of U.S.
trade restrictions.

The immediate threat stems
from the fact that the right wing
Reagan administration is engaged
in a world-wide drive to shift the
burden of the economic crisis to
other countries. This is taking the
form of increased pressure on its
trading partners to lift trade restric-
tions and allow U.S. goods freer
access to markets, and through
protectionist measures which are
aimed at Canada’s auto industry
and the forest industry.

Hearings into charges that
Canadian forest companies are be-
ing subsidized and are thus able to
sell forest products cheaper on the
U.S. market, will be investigated by
the International Trade Ad-
ministration (ITA), an agency of

' the U.S. Department of Com-

merce. The ITA will make a
preliminary decision by next March
7 and could decide to impose an in-
terim duty at that time.

Whether or not the federal or
provincial governments subsidize
the forest companies through low
stumpage rates or forms of forest
tenure such as tree farm licences is
not really the issue, although it is
being made so by the U.S. The fact
is that the stumpage system andtree
farm licences have been in effect
for many years, and have been
severely criticized by various
organizations including the Com-
munist Party.

But why is the U.S. raising it
now? Obviously because protec-
tionist forces in the U.S. want to
shift the growing crisis they face in
their forest industry onto the Cana-
dian and B.C. forest industry. This
move by the U.S. should be con-
demned and fought by the Cana-
dian and B.C. governments, by the
unions and the public as being
against Canadian interests and as
an anti-Canadian act.

For many years the Communist
Party in B.C. warned that it was a
serious mistake to depend so com-
pletely on the U.S. market for
lumber, pulp and newsprint and
that to continue to do so would
make the B.C. forest industry and
B.C. woodworkers the victims of
every economic downturn in the
U.S. Last year about 71 percent of
B.C.’s lumber exports and about
two-thirds of B.C. newsprint went
to the U.S. '

Heavy dependence on the U.S.
market has also determined the raw
material nature of wood products
produced in B.C. B.C.’s forests
have been devasted, without ade-
quate reforestation, to meet the

|

-_Make Canada
Nuclear-free
in 1983

A happy and
peaceful New Year

Vancouver Island
Regional Ctte, CPC

|

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— DECEMBER 17, 1982—Page 4

demands in the U.S. for wood pro-
ducts which are not labor intensive
and do not return the greatest
benefits to B.C.

The Communist Party has
repeatedly urged that B.C. markets
for wood products be diversified
and that a program of manufactur-
ing and processing be undertaken
to give B.C. a wider range of forest

ce

products to sell on the world’s
markets.

The crisis that B.C.’s forest in-
dustry now faces goes far beyond
the immediate threat posed by high
U.S. tariffs. The fact is that the
forest industry in the U.S. has
undergone a vast expansion and
now produces more wood products
than the U.S. needs and the U.S. is
engaged in a drive to find markets
for surplus wood products around
the world. While B.C. lumber is
still popular on the U.S. market it
faces increased competition from
U.S. products. The same is true of
newsprint. Even if the present drive
to impose tariffs is defeated, B.C.’s
forest industry will face a growing
market crisis if it continues to de-
pend for its prosperity on the U.S.
market and the unstable U.S.
economy.

This point was underscored at a
seminar of leading U.S. forest
companies held in Portland,
Oregon in June, 1982. A paper
presented by the vice-president of
Weyerhaeuser Company, the
largest forest firm, pointed out that
the market no longer demands
enough timber to keep the entire
U.S. industry alive, and that export
markets are vitally important to
keep the U.S. forest industry work-
ing. Two other papers presented at
that seminar made these points:
B.C. forest companies won’t see
their slumping lumber sales

revitalized by the U.S. housing .

market, and B.C. newsprint

manufacturers will ‘‘have to look
elsewhere for sales’’ because U.S.
producers have increased produc-
tion sharply. ‘

It’s obvious from the above
facts, that the crisis B.C.’s forest
industry faces it not only the im-
mediate crisis brought on by the
collapse of the U.S. market and the
threat of new tariffs. The more

FOREST

a eememnme!
INDUSTRY

serious crisis we must face, if B.C.’s
forest industry is to have any
future, is the need for a complete
overhaul of the forest industry and
the adoption of new policies which
will aim to diversify wood pro-
ducts exports to more countries

 gppatatanintsla og yan: a mata oth ated elt gee ce

New Year’s Greetings

May 1983 be a year
of_ peace and friendship
throughout the world.

around the world, includir
socialist and third world countri

Those new policies should tum
the industry to manufacturing
processing and the establishm
of such new industries as furnit
manufacturing, prefab housi
fine paper products, fibres 2
other processed wood produ
the launching of a program
wood conservation to get a bettef
use of our forests, and the under-
taking of a comprehensive pro
gram of reforestation; a comple
overhaul of B.C.’s forest legislé
tion to end the present tree farm
licenses and restore control of th
resource to the people of B.C.

The fight for these new polici
must go hand in hand with the figh
to defeat the attempt by the Reagan
administration to shift the crisis i
the forest industry in the U.S. ont
the backs of B.C. woodworkers.

Maurice Rush is B.C. provinci
leader of the Communist Party. —

Celebrate traditional ‘Malanka’
Ukrainian New Year
Sat., Jan. 15, 1983, 7 p.m.
Ukrainian Hall, 805 E. Pender

Sumptous holiday fare, entertainment by
AUUC Jubilee Choir and Dovbush Dancers.
Two orchestras. Limited seating, advance
tickets only, $15 at Global Imports, 253-3032,
Ukrainian Cultural Centre, 254-3436.

OS OS HOG OTR OSE: OSA IOGR FR OFA OLR HOF OLR SR GR OTR SOL GR OLR SR IOGR OTR SOG OTR OSH OSA

; o

Association of United
Ukrainian Canadians

Season’s Greetings
To our members, |
friends and supporters

MAKE CANADA A
NUCLEAR-WEAPONS FREE
ZONE

— not a nuclear weapons
testing zone.

B.C. Provincial Committee
Communist Party of Canada

a