RESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Lessons to be learned
from Ontario NDP loss

by Gerry Stoney

ollowing the election results of the On-

+ ~~ tario provincial election in June, we in

» the I.W.A. in British Columbia should

‘ take a step back and consider what

the results mean for the New Democ-

ratic Party in British Columbia. After

the Ontario NDP government has gone down
to defeat, what does it mean for workers?

I think it means that there is a new mean-
spiritness out there, especially amongst the
working middle class which is feeling frustrat-
ed, for a complex variety of reasons, and feels
its standard of living is sliding backwards.

When working people feel frustrated, it is
legitimate to exhibit anger against somebody
or something. If there is one group of people
that has reason to complain, it is woodwork-
ers. Life over the past five years has been
tough on us.

But before lashing out, we should look
back. The Ontario NDP inherited a govern-
ment and an economy that went from bad to
worse. The devastating recession of the early
1990’s and the free trade agreements gutted
the province’s manufacturing base and the tax
base as well.

Now that the ultra right-wing Conservative
government of Mike Harris is in power, work-
ing people are in for more of a fight than ever
before. Harris has vowed to take away all pro-
gressive labour legislation introduced by the

Rae government
and roll back pro-
tection in occupa-
tional health and
safety. He is also go-
ing to stop employ-
ment equity pro-
grams.

During the elec-
tion campaign, B.C.
Liberal leader Gor-
don Campbell sent
his main political
strategist back to
join the Harris team
and liked what it
saw. After all,
Campbell and Har-
ris are ideological
twins.

They both believe
that it is time to
bash government. Campbell, like Harris is out
to eliminate and privitize the public service.
Harris is out to sell off Ontario Hydro, a
lynch-pin in the Ontario economy. Campbell
has also said that he will sell off numerous
crown corporations and roll back public sec-
tor wages.

Like Harris, Campbell vows to gut the
Labour Relations Code and take away anti-
scab laws and automatic certification proce-
dures. Like Harris, he also wants to reduce
WCB premiums for employers and, as a re-
sult, cut benefits for injured and disabled
workers.

Of special concern to I.W.A. members is the
fact that the Campbell government doesn’t
have any policies on forestry other than being
on record as being opposed to Forest Renew-
al B.C., which will plough over $2 billion back
into the forest over the next five years.

Over the last decade
and a half we in in the
union have been trying
to change the way the
government adminis-
ters the forest industry.
We are tired of chaos
and mismanagement
and we need to turn
the corner. For these
past years, previous
governments have not
had a plan and com-
mittment to reinvest in
the forest industry.

Forest Renewal B.C.
is a great step in that
direction. And it comes
from legislation that
only an NDP govern-
ment would put into
place. Therefore we
have to fight to see that the Gordon Campbell
machine does not dismantle it.

Like Mike Harris, Gordon Campbell is not
out to serve the interests of working people.
He is out to clobber workers. We should nev-
er let ourselves be fooled.

We should acknowledge our frustrations
and deal with them in a constructive way. But
there is nothing to be gained from by bashing
the Mike Harcourt government and replacing
it with a right wing government of Gordon
Campbell.

The world is changing too fast and too furi-
ously to think that we will be able to pick up
the pieces in the future if the NDP loses pow-
er in the province.

Think about what has happened in Ontario.
Watch what happens to Ontario workers and
then remember that the same things could
happen in British Columbia.

LANDS AND FORES'

Big environmental groups
turn into big business

by Kim Pollock

~) nvironmentalism has become big business.

* The big environmental groups have be-
t | come multinational corporations in their
| =~ own right. As such, they need to finance
| ‘=== their expanding operations. Since the main
.. source of their revenue is contributions,
mainly from middle and upper-class urbanites,
there is a constant need for “causes” and “crises.”

In the highly competitive world of environmen-
tal big business, donors are unlikely to give to
“give from the heart” when there is merely a prob-
lem in need of solution: they will more likely to
give when there is a threat to the earth, its lands,
its forests or - even better - life on this planet as
we know it. There’s more money to be made
standing out on the logging roads on your princi-
ples than in sitting down and working out a com-
promise.

People living in cities are accustomed to seeing
the environmental impact of industry and human
settlement, used to the looming threat of nuclear
war promising global devastation and bombarded
with stories of ecological damage.

In the United States, particularly, these same
folks have lost faith in politics and politicians to
solve their problems. They've turned instead to so-
called non-governmental organizations that claim
to act independently of government and industry.

In the late eighties and early nineties these
groups’ memberships and revenues increases dra-
matically.

_ Enriched by successful campaigns to curtail log-
ging on public lands in the Pacific Northwest,
these green groups have found a bonanza in forest
protests. In British Columbia, the green groups
capitalized on the excessive forest practices that
flourished under the old Social Credit govern-
ment’s policy of “sympathetic management”: be-
lieving the forest sector to be a dying “sunset in-
dustry,” the Socreds — now Liberals and Reform
Party - told forest companies “anything goes.”

The green organizations’ very success might yet
be their downfall. If groups tend to turn into what
they fear or hate the most, green groups are turn-
ing into multinational corporations: undemocratic
organizations that care most about the bottom

line, not people. In her
recent book, Cloak of
Green, Canadian journal-
ist Elaine Dewar surveys
seven of the country’s big
environmental organiza-
tions: she finds them “not
democratic, not repre-
sentative and not trans-
parent,” that is, secretive
and manipulative.
Altogether,” she con-
\ | cludes, “those who had
contributed their money
or hearts to these groups
to affect the causes of clean air and water had
been doubly used. Both their tax dollars and chari-
table dollars supported a facade of critical inde-
pendence from governments and business. The in-
formation they put out had to be treated
skeptically - it could not be said to come from an
independent source.”

federal government, with its free trade agenda? Or
is it big business, quick to make at buck at the ex-
pense of workers and their communities? Or is it
all three at once?

The tragedy of all this is that in their hustle to
raise money, environmental organizations seem to
have abandoned the true objective of the exercise,
which is to ensure that human needs are met as
sustainably as possible.

This is clear in the greens’ forest policy, for
sure.

After all, when you consider the current global
reality and compare alternatives, wood is clearly a
green industry.

With the current growth of world population,
for instance, there will be a constant growth of de-
mand for basic shelter, that is, building materials.

The available choices for building in most of the
world are wooden studs and panels, steel studs,
aluminum siding, concrete, brick and glass.

Of these only wood is a renewable resource that
does not draw down

Dewar found that the
groups, including
World Wildlife Fund
Canada, Friends of the
Earth Canada, Western
Wilderness Committee
and others involved in
forestry issues across
the country, were
linked closely to the
federal government and
to big business.

Environmental groups
have abandoned the
objective of ensuring
that human needs are
met in sustainable way

the finite resources of
the earth. Conducted
properly, as it is almost
everywhere in Canada
today and will increas-
ingly be as new forest
management and tim-
ber harvesting rules
take effect, forestry is a
renewable resource.
The others are all non-
renewable resources.

One particularly in-
teresting corporate link: Adam Zimmerman, chair
of Noranda Forest Products when that company
owned MacMillan Bloedel, was also and at the
same time chair of the World Wildlife Fund Cana-
da. Curious, indeed, especially when you realize
that Noranda Forest and its parent Noranda Inc.
are also both subsidiaries of Brascan, which also
has considerable holdings in Brazil and sometimes
itself a green-group target.

It would be interesting to calculate how much
Noranda and MacMillan-Bloedel have earned as a
result of the spotted owl injunctions and resulting
escalation of timber prices. if

‘And if Zimmerman was representative of atti-
tudes in MB’s board room, it makes you wonder
what was behind the company’s recent easy capit-
ulation in the face of the Clayoquot Sound Scien-
tific Panel report. Certainly it wasn’t concern for
jobs or communities on Vancouver Island.

Certainly we should consider the source when
we hear green groups’ criticisms of forest prac-
ticeS. When they speak, are we hearing the voice
of concerned citizens? Or are we hearing from the

z Wood also has the
environmental advantage of consuming much less
energy. Several recent studies have shown that
from production through final use and reuse or re-
cycling, wood is several times more energy effi-
cient than its potential substitutes.

From this perspective, Canadian wood is as
“green” as any: our forest standards are increas-
ingly as good as any in the world and improving as
our knowledge of ecology and integrated resource
management grows. If we don’t harvest timber
here and if demand for wood is not superceded by
demand for less environmentally-sound substi-
tutes, then the growing demand for wood will be
satisfied from places like the Russian Far East,
Chile, Indonesia or Brazil, less democratic govern-
ments and less stringent or enforcable rules.

So it’s clear that it’s not for strictly environmen-
tal reasons that the green groups have launched

their noisy anti-logging campaigns.

Kim Pollock is the Director of I.W.A. CANADA’s
Environment and Land-Use Department.

SLL

4/LUMBERWORKER/AUGUST, 1995