RESIDE MESSAG

B.C. forest renewal plan
helps change status-quo

by Gerry Stoney

arch’s announcement of the
| British Columbia Forest Renewal
Program has been a long awaited

one. The announcement is a sig-
" \nificant accomplishment for
~ everyone in the province but I
am not sure that enough people fully appreci-
ate why it was so necessary.

For the last couple of years, the IWA has
been talking about some of the problems this
industry and the province could face unless
we were prepared to do some pretty bold

stuff.

Study after study, whether it was the gov-
ernment’s Timber Supply review or reports by
various industry consultants, were saying
very clearly that it we (the forest sector and
the government) continue to follow the sta-
tus-quo, we were going to take a major hit.

The only thing that differed from one study
to the next was the question of when. Some
said the hit would happen within a couple of
years, others said that we had at least a
decade or two.

But every study predicted the same immedi-
ate casualties. Forest workers and forest de-
pendent communities would face enormous
job loss and hardship.

Changing the status-quo is never easy, but
what the Forest Renewal Plan does is lay out
a permanent and continuous commitment by
government to invest in the potential and
strength of the forest sector.

That commit-
ment is significant
because, in the
past, previous gov-
ernments talked
about special funds
and dedicated
spending in the for-
est sector, but
those were only
line items in a bud-
get. They would
change with each
new fiscal year,
each new cabinet
shuffle, or each
new re-organiza-
tion within a min-
istry.

This legislation is

methods, and many
other new concepts.

We are not talking
about simply doing
more things like basic
silviculture. We are
talking about intensive-
ly managing forest
lands on a year-round
basis, with new
forestry crews that
come from and are
based in local commu-
nities.

The IWA, along with
all of the other inter-
ests around the Forest
Sector Strategy Com-
mittee table, expects to
play an active and
equal role in the design

going to change
that pattern dra-
matically by giving permanence and continu-
ity to the investments that will guarantee a
future for the industry. As a result of the legis-
lation, B.C. is going to have the wherewithal
to promote intensive silviculture and value-
added and training in ways that we previously
only talked about.

Basic silviculture will still be there but in ad-
dition to that, the announcement commits all
of us to a long list of measures that will add
quality jobs, enhance our forests, protect the
environment, stabilize forest communities,
and position the forest sector to be as relevant
in the future as it has been in the past.

There is no question that our support for
this initiative will require a leap of faith for
woodworkers and their communities. The
kind of work and the kind of jobs that are be-
ing thought of with this new initiative will in-
volve new skills, new techniques, new

and launch of this new
work.

When adjustments to forest industry em-
ployment levels occur in the future, we ex-
pect that the Forest Renewal Plan will
provide necessary support for the existing
workforce.

We know that to achieve new work and
proper support for workers and their commu-
nities, there will involve the same kind of ne-
gotiations that has brought us to this point
and this announcement.

We in the union have been around long
enough to know that there will be alot of give
and take in that process, but ultimately the
outcome will be one that reflects a balance of
all the interests around the Committee table.

We are proud that our union played a role in
the lead up to the Forest Renewal Plan. I
know that IWA members across B.C. are pre-
pared to support our continued involvement.

ANDS AND FORESTS

Environmental extremists
no catalyst for change

by Kim Pollock

e’re into a period of transition
where many people are urging
change. Sometimes it’s hard to tell
/ which changes are necessary and

| which are simply expressions of
SS someone’s destructive agenda.

But the same goes for those who resist change.
Sometimes it’s right to oppose measures that are
not needed or helpful. But sometimes people re-
sist change out of fear or because they too have
secret motives.

How, then, should we judge the various claims
and counter-claims about what's good for our
forests, our industry and ourselves?

Some people say rely on science.

There’s still a sheen of “objectivity” or “neutrali-
ty” that surrounds scientists and their work. But
anyone who believes in scientists’ objectivity
should spend some time in a room full of scientists
or review accounts of their conferences and con-
ventions. There’s no more agreement there than at
an IWA-CANADA Convention!

Just one example of scientific judgement: at a
recent Parliamentary hearing in Ottawa a biologist
who has written a book on the subject of “temper-
ate rain forests” claimed that:

eclear cutting has effects on the forest matched
only by volcanic eruptions;

elightening strikes only kill “a single tree or
small cluster of trees”;

ewind blowdowns can take down trees only
“over an area the size of an office building”;

eclearcutting in British Columbia eliminates ea-
gle trees (provincial legislation actually forbids the
cutting of eagle trees);

ethere are no such things as naturally occurring
single age stands of timber, a claim that is contra-
dicted by the existence of large stands throughout
Canada that have regenerated after fire or blow-
down.

These claims were flatly contradicted by other
scientists, For the record, they are the views of
Dr. Elliott Norse, who was appearing before a Par-
liamentary committee hearing into clear cut log-

ging in Canada.

He was representing Greenpeace. Of the scien-

tists who opposed his
views, some teach at
Canadian universities,
some work for forest
companies or forest-
based agencies.The
point is that there is no
certainty in science.

Nor in the environ-
mental movement.
Greenpeace, for in-
stance, has grown rapid-
ly from a_ small
Vancouver-based orga-
nization that worked
against whaling, nuclear testing, uranium mining,
toxic chemical spraying and.... poor forest prac-
tices. As a teenager in 1970 I paid $3 to hear Joni
Mitchell and James Taylor raise money for Green-
peace’s early campaigns.

But today Greenpeace operates in 30 countries
with an annual budget of over $150 million.Fifty-
five million of that is

Indeed, we should consider for a moment the
environmental groups’ targeting of Canada. Most
of Germany’s forest products - yes, even trendy
German greens use toilet paper and live in wooden
houses - comes from Sweden, where, in the words
of a Swedish government forestry report,
“clearcutting is the required method of timber har-
vesting.”

Germany also gets Russian timber. According
to a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, the
former Soviet Union’s desperate economic situa-
tion is driving liquidation of a vast network of eco-
logical reserves, threatening species like the
Siberian tiger.

British Columbia is doubling the area covered
by parks to 12 percent of its land base. Ontario is
implementing the sweeping recommendations of a
massive environmental assessment, based on four
years of hearings and study by the provincial Envi-
ronmental Assessment Board.

Yet it is Canada, which supplies a relatively
small portion of Germany’s wood and paper prod-

ucts, not Sweden or

raised in Germany,
where the organization
is extremely influential
and powerful.

This kind of interna-
tional reach is usually
the domain of multina-
tional corporations.
When they reach
across borders to effect
people far from their
own neighbourhoods,

Greenpeace has the same
reach as multinational cor-
porations and has crushed

organizing drives of its
own workers

Russia, that has been
singled out. Makes you
wonder.

Finally, though we
should wonder, too,
about those who say
“stop all change”.
When you scratch these

arguments, you usually
find representatives of

the forest majors or the
right-wing political par-

we call it imperialism.

And when they spend huge amounts to crush orga-
nizational drives by the people who work for
them, as Greenpeace has done to its own employ-
ees in Canada, we call it union busting.

The fact that Greenpeace has this kind of track
record and these kinds of interests means that it’s
just that much harder to take at face value its views
on forestry. Isn’t it at least possible that Green-
peace is speaking on behalf of its extreme hunger
for funds, not the best interests of the forests?

Patrick Moore, for one, thinks so. Moore was a
founding member of Greenpeace who worked on
early campaigns against whaling and uranium min-
ing. Today he represents the Forest Alliance of
B.C. Of Greenpeace’s current targeting of Canadi-
an clear-cutting logging, he warns that “the clear-
cut free slogan is an advertising slogan and a
fundraising slogan; it is not the basis for an inter-
national negotiations on sustainable forestry prod-
ucts,” adding that:”It’s just to raise money, it’s just
anad slogan.”

ties.

But wasn’t it these same companies and their
government backers - Liberal, Conservative and
Socreds (remember, a coalition of Liberals and
Conservatives) - that got us to where we are today?

If there hadn’t been years of inattention to the
needs of our forests and we hadn’t ignored the
concern of thoughtful and modest scientists,
would we be quite such easy prey today for ex-
tremists and zealots like Greenpeace?

It really all comes down to the need for balance:
balance between our concern for sustainable man-
agement of our forests and our need for jobs, sta-
ble communities and a sound provincial economy.

It’s easy to fight change. But it’s smarter to ac-
knowledge it and ensure that we're in a position to
fend off the worse and benefit from new circum-
sce and opportunity. Go ahead, take my word
for it.

Kim Pollock is the Director of IWA~-CANADA’s
Environment and Land-Use Department.

4/LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1994