The forest industry is absolutely funda-
mental to the health of the BC economy, yet
past governments have allowed our once
unrivalled natural resource base to be
depleted without thought for- the future.
Unless we make a serious sustained com-
mitment to reforestation and to intensive
silviculture, the forest resource will be
inadequate to sustain existing industry, let
alone create new jobs which we so badly
need. :

The Forest and Range Resource
Analysis released by the Ministry of
Forests in 1980 was the first comprehensive
inventory of the forest resource. The Report
estimates that the old growth forest will be
largely exhausted within the next 10-20
years and that the result will be a 33%
decline in the total provincial timber harv-
est. This means the direct loss of some
30,000 jobs and another 100,000 jobs
province wide when indirect jobs dependent
upon the forest industry are taken into
account. In some areas the “fall down
effect” of logging off old growth forest will
be even greater. For example, it is estimated
that the Allowable Annual Cut on the Queen
Charlotte Islands will fall by 60% over the

@
Socreds Double

Log Exports

pic from North Island Gazzette

‘crow on beard the freighter “Grasd Weed” ta Pert Alice and returned with thees novel
(Pits Irexs tho friendly seamen. Ths loggers were plcketing the ship to protest the expert of
fogs to Jopan bet malntaloed cordial relations with the idled chip's crew.

Waller Pranceyk Photo
gususuxanossuesonauananonauaasonanecssausscsvocene

As this issue goes to press, we learn from
NDP Forest Critic Bill King that log
exports in January and February, 1983 are
up 87% over the same period last year. The
percentage of peeler and fir is also
increasing.

Exports from private land are increasing
even more rapidly; about 5 times more than
in 1982, almost all fir.

King says, “In 1982 we exported logs
worth more than 100 million dollars and as
a result, lost the equivalent of 500 full time
manufacturing jobs from our forest indus-
try. This year we are doubling that

insanity”.

NDP
_ FOREST POLICY

next 30 years, threatening the loss of two in
every three jobs.

The long term productive forest base of
BC is about 35 million ha. 600,000 ha. are
Not Satisfactorily Restocked, ie., the logged
off old growth has not been replaced by
planting or natural regeneration. The back-
log NSR lands increase by 25,000 ha. per
year, the consequence of planting only one
hectare of land for every three logged.

Clearly we cannot continue as we have.
Without a major commitment to reforesta-
tion and to intensive forest management,
jobs will disappear and single industry
communities will enter into an irreversible
decline. Action must be taken, both to
protect existing jobs and to significantly
expand employment opportunities. Refores-
tation creates immediate employment in
site clearing, planting and other silvicultu-
ral practices such as juvenile spacing, and
reforestation will ultimately expand
employment in logging and secondary
forest based manufacturing.

The present government launched a Five
Year Forest Program with great fanfare in
1980. A $135 million Forest and Range Fund
was established to provide continuous new
funding over and above current spending,
and a commitment was made to increase
spending by one third in real terms within
five years. The NDP supported this initia-
tive, but our hopes for a real improvement
were disappointed.

The 1982 provincial budget wiped out the
Forest and Range Fund to make up for cuts
in regular Ministry of Forests spending.
Regular ministry spending fell from $190.8
million in 1981-82 to $144.6 million in
1982-83. Had the Fund not been wiped out,
$65 million would still be available this year
to enhance reforestation and job opportuni-
ties in silviculture.

The Social Credit government took the
short term, expedient route of cutting back
on a vital investment in the future of our
economy. The consequences of this decision
will be felt both now and in the future. In
effect we have lost two years’ catching up
with the backlog. The original Five Year
Forest Program called for 83,000 ha: to be
planted per year by 1985. The current
ministry estimate is that this target will not
be met until 1987. The same holds true of
other silvicultural objectives such as site
clearing and spacing.

An NDP government would increase
spending to get us back on target and to
create jobs. Reforestation is probably the
single most productive way of creating jobs,
particularly given that many unemployed
forest workers have the skills to begin
reforestation work without delay.

We will restore the Forest and Range
Resource Fund as a continuous source of
new funding for reforestation and we will
make significant new investments beyond
those envisaged in the current ministry
program. Our objective will be to plant two
million seedlings per year by 1987, double
today’s level. This objective will permit us to
reforest the backlog lands within 10-15
years and make sustained yield forestry a
reality in British Columbia for the first time.

The central commitment of the NDP is,
then, to.a major, ongoing reforestation
program which will allow us to make a
smooth transition from a forest economy
based upon old growth to a new sustained
yield forest economy based upon intensive
management of our precious, limited
resource base, Such a program is essential to
the continued existence of our forest
industry and will create new jobs
immediately, and scope for expansion inthe
future.

-believe that the provision of hospital care is

Socreds Plan
Health Charges

VANCOUVER — NDP Health Spokes-
man Dennis Cocke at a news conference in
Vancouver released draft legislation and
the official Health Ministry 1983-84 plan
showing the provincial government has
decided to implement major hospital and
other fee increases similar to those recently

announced in Alberta. :

In the package released by Cocke is the
official 1983-84 Ministry of Health plan. The
plan includes three items for revenue gener-
ation. These are:

1. Alberta-style daily hospital fees,
increased user fees, medicare premiums, etc.

2. Implementing new health fees — pub-
lic health inspection fees for restaurants
and food service outlets. These have been
independently confirmed by the Health
Ministry to have been set at some two to
three hundred dollars per food service outlet
per year.

8. Expand revenue possibilities from
other existing programs. Specifically menti-
oned are medicare patient visit charges,
that is extra-billing by the provincial
government for doctors visits. Also menti-
oned is “means testing” for long term care
patients. ‘

Cocke said that these fees planned by the
Socreds are nothing more orlessthana “tax
on the sick.”

Cocke said, “The fees will amount to a
two-tier medicare scheme — reasonable
care for the wealthy, and substandard or no
care for the unemployed and low-income
families. 4

“The NDP has pioneered public health
care programs, including medicare and
hospital insurance. Canadians can be proud
of these programs because until now, noone
went without care or suffered financial ruin
on account of illness.”

Cocke said the Socred fee increases “vio-
late the principles of universal accessibility
which are at the heart of Canada’s public
health programs.”

Cocke said the Socreds forget that
patients do not choose when to go to hospital
— they are sent there by their doctors.
“Hospital patients are not a juicy revenue
soruce, ripe for the plucking by Socred
taxmen in Victoria.”

Cocke said that if the NDP is elected, it
will scrap the Health Ministry 1983-84 plan.
“There will be no $20 per day hospital
charges as proposed by the Socreds, no
extra-billing by government or doctors, no
public health inspection fees.”

The Health Ministry documents also
propose ‘increased use of private manage-
ment in the institutional services field’.

Cocke said, “When the Socreds talked
about privatization, we had no idea they
were referring to hospital facilities. I do not

a suitable area for private profit. There are
other more productive places for private
industry to invest.”

The health Ministry plan also includes
more management control of bargaining
and labour relations, policies to limit the
influx of new physicians to metropolitan
areas, and less financial control at the local
board level with more control either at the
central level or regional manager level.

Cocke said these latter policies are “part
of the centralizing trend in government
under the Socreds. They have abused the
restraint program on all fronts in order to
take more authority unto the cabinet and
executive offices in Victoria.”

Cocke said the NDP is opposed to this
trend because there is no evidence that the
Victoria bureaucracy makes better deci:
sions than locally elected people. |

Cocke added that the NDP proposes to
return to the consultative and decentralized
model of health care planning andtorestore _
publice hospital and medical care services.

6/Lumber Worker/April, 1983