Core protest Continued from page one “There has to be a (working) forest land base set aside — a place where you can go logging in the morning and know where you can go harvesting timber in this province,” added Broth- er Stoney. The union president said that a bad CORE report on Vancouver Island will only set the stage for the same thing to happen in the Cariboo and Koote- nay regions of the province where CORE is taking place. “The price of this CORE is just too _ high to pay,” said Stoney. He then di- rected his speech to Premier Mike Harcourt, a long time recipient of the IWA’s support. He told the Premier that before one more job is eliminated from the forest industry, there has to be a good paying union job to take its place. Dave Haggard, president of Port Al- berni local 1-85 told the rally that “the people in Victoria and Vancouver have got to understand that the re- source base communities are the backbone of this province.” Brother Haggard said that people need to be reminded that resource workers pay taxes to support many of the services which are enjoyed by the whole province such as education, medical care, and infrastructure. Without a strong resource sector those services will erode. He said that rallies in several com- munities on Vancouver Island prior to the rally in Victoria brought forth the same message that people are no longer prepared to see their families and communities destroyed by insen- sitive bureaucrats. “We will take no more!” shouted Haggard. “We will compromise no more. Stephen Owen has failed in his mandate. He has not done the job that you (Mike Harcourt) have asked him to do....our communities have suf- fered enough.” Ken Georgetti, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, said that “ we want an increase in employment on Vancouver Island, Mr. Harcourt.” “If land-use decisions are to be made, we in the labour movement de- mand that workers be treated fairly and with dignity,” said Georgetti. Premier Harcourt took to micro- phone and told the rally that “we will not make changes that forget you and your families as we have in the past and we are going to have a sustain- able future for forest workers, fami- lies, and communities.” The Premier added: “as we go through these difficult changes and the land-use decisions that have to be made, we have to do it together...we have to have transition plans, we have to have new jobs that can be creat- ed...being worked out at the local lev- el? That sounded like what the crowd wanted to hear. Port Alberni mayor Gillian Trumper read out some resolutions from the Vancouver Island Community Coali- tion. Those resolutions made it clear that Island communities can accept no more than a 12% set aside of their lands. Rod Visser, a small business opera- tor from Campbell River told the rally that people from the resource depen- dent communities are “hard working, honest, decent, family people” whose “existence is intrinsically tied to the land — we're the true environmental- ists.” eIWA-CANADA president Gerry Stoney told the sea of people that there has to be a working forest land base set aside. Cindy Fox, a forester with Canadian Forest Products told the rally that “nobody cares about the forests as much as the real people who live and work in the forests each day.” She urged urban British Colum- bians “to come to rural B.C. — get to know us and talk to us.” The rally was sponsored by the Van- couver Island Community Coalition, municipalities, Regional Districts, Chambers of Commerce, Economic Development Commissions, forest and pulp and paper unions, Canadian Women in Timber, SHARE groups on Vancouver Island, and the forestry, agriculture, mining, and aquaculture sectors. i, IWACANADA Locat 1-424 ¢Over 6,000 people showed up for the rally in the forest dependent community of Williams Lake on March 18. Williams Lake adds voice to protests by Kim Pollock Director, IWA-CANADA’s Environment and Land-use Department Forest workers’ fight for a fair land- use deal opened on a new front in the B.C. interior last week. About 6000 demonstrators gathered in Williams Lake with a message for the province’s Commission on Re- sources and Environment: no land-use plan is acceptable if it neglects the needs of workers, their families and their communities. “It’s time the voices of the taxpay- ing working people were heard,” urged independent logging contractor Tim Menning. “We will not stand aside to let ur- ban-based preservationists tell us how to run our land-use.” The rally was organized by the Cari- boo Communities Coalition, a group representing several sectors from the recently-failed Cariboo-Chilcotin CORE Round Table. That table failed to reach agree- ment after 15 months of negotiations toward a hoped-for consensus deal on land use for the region. Just as did CORE’s Vancouver Island process be- fore it, that table ended with negotia- tors far apart on the key land use issues. And like their brothers and sisters on Vancouver Island, representatives of forest workers and communities were left frustrated with CORE, Com- missioner Stephen Owen and the CORE process, as well as with well-or- ganized, well-funded, urban-based en- vironmental groups. “Mr. Owen has never felt the rain on his lunch box and neither have a lot of people on that CORE staff,” said Rod Visser of Campbell River, a SHARE group representative who brought a warning of what to expect based on his experience of Vancouver Island’s CORE process. Visser warned that Cariboo activists will have to deal with urban British Columbians’ relative lack of under- standing of forest communities and 2 k= z 18 8 Ey 8 g 3 g 8 z forest issues: “He said that rural British Columbians have to tell urban B.C. “that we have a unique identifi- able way of life that’s worth preserv- Evidence that the provincial New Democrat Party government is con- cemed about the growing opposition to CORE was provided by Cariboo MLA and B.C. Agriculture Minister Dave Zirnhelt, who urged a “made-in- Cariboo” solution to regional land-use disputes. “Outsiders often don’t know what they're talking about ..... But they can put a lot of pressure on us,” he warned. Zirnhelt repeated a promise that any CORE report will not be imple- mented without a full assessment of its job impact and a transitional pro- gram based on investments in land, workers, communities, value-added production and increased timber sup- ply through intensive silviculture. “There will be no action on land use until workers are assured of opportu- nities to stay in their communities and pursue their life hopes and aspira- tions,” Zirnhelt pledged. As well the minister promised .a two-year extension of the Cariboo’s mountain pine beetle-kill harvest pro- gram. The crown also heard from Forest Alliance president Jack Munro, who said that CORE “is the single threat to our standard of living,” and reminded Cariboo-Chilcotin forest workers they should “not be anti-any- thing”, but make clear that the main thing they oppose “is a climate in B.C. that allows preservationists to take land, jobs and communities away from working people.” Financial secretary Wade Fisher of IWA-CANADA Local 1-425, which has participated in the Cariboo Communi- ties Coalition, said the Local Union was pleased with the turnout and the seriousness of participants. “In spite of the cold, in spite of a lot of people having to come a long way to be there, we got the kind of tumout, that will get government’s attention. People know what happened on Van- couver Island and they’re determined not to let it happen here.” 2/LUMBERWORKER/APRIL, 1994 .