RESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Our Ontario members are
fighting the good fight

by Gerry Stoney

9 fa left-wing government in Canada began
' to impose by law its most cherished and
extravagent leftish dreams, what would
i happen? First, representatives of big and
i small business would scream long and
__. loud. They would be much assisted in the
process by their apologists in the media, Terry
Corcoran of the Globe and Mail, and his
cronies, who are legion.

Second, if that did not produce an immedi-
ate and total surrender, large and small busi-
ness would begin to cancel expansion plans,
close down expendable operations, and so on.
There would be, as there often has been, a
“capital strike.”

So the Ontario Federation of Labour and its
affiliates, including I.W.A. CANADA members
working at the Total Distribution Systems
packing plant in London are to be congratu-
Jated for doing the equivalent - for responding
to extreme right-wing measures by a carefully
considered, measured, withdrawal of labour
in political protest.

When Premier Harris abandons the assault
on labour rights that have been detailed in
these pages, when he stops his savaging of in-
jured workers by ripping at Ontario’s Work-

ers’ Compensation,
when he reconsid-
ers the insult to
democracy that lies
at the heart of the
enormity of his
“Omnibus Bill,”
when he begins to
learn fairness in the
tax system, when
he stops down-load-
ing on municipali-
ties, when he aban-
dons the attack on
the province’s
health care system,
and the poor then
only can Ontario
labour feel free to
call off its with-
drawal.

I.W.A. CANADA
members should know that labour is not
alone in its struggle. Leaders of the Catholic,
United and Jewish faiths joined the Ontario
Federation in a Call for Social Justice: a
Joint statement of moral and ethical con-
cern. Their statement highlighted workers’
rights, the need for good health and education
programs for all. The statement read in part:
“In particular, we urge the Government not
(to) resolve the fiscal deficit by creating a so-
cial deficit in its place.”

It is true, as right-wingers are fond of re-
minding us, that such plans are cropping up in
many places around the world. But it does not
follow from that, as the right would have us
believe, that we have to give in to this “race to

the bottom.” On the
contrary, it follows that
wherever this ugly,
anti-human tendency
shows up, as it has in
France, labour has an
obligation to resist it
vigorously, as French
labour is now doing.

Alberta hospital
workers had to do it
this year in response to
Klein’s determination
to wreck that prov-
ince’s health care sys-
tem.

And British Colum-
bian workers have had
to do likewise several
times, as when Premier
W.A.C. Bennett. whom-
ped up his “Labour
Court” in 1971, and when his son, Bill Bennett
staged his sneak attack in 1983, calling it “re-
straint.” In 1987 we walked out in protest
against Bill Vander Zalm’s attack on labour
laws.

And if British Columbians don’t pay atten-
tion to what is happening in these other
provinces, and vote accordingly, they may
well have to do so again. Fortunately, recent
polls suggest that the lessons of Ontario and
Alberta are not entirely lost on the B.C. elec-
torate.

So the Ontario Federation of Labour has the
full support of I.W.A. CANADA in its cam-
paign against Harris’ frenzied war on every
gain made by generations of working people.

LANDS AND) FORESTS

Time to get concerned about
endangered species law

by Kim Pollock

. ur union has long recognized the need
, to manage our forests sustainably and
} to manage for values other than timber
j harvesting.

As long ago as 1939, for instance,
I.W.A. President Harold Pritchett was
warning of the need for sustainable harvest levels,
reforestation and conservation of forests.

In the forties, we called for a forest practices
law that would regulate the way that timber har-
vesting was planned and the way people logged.

And our national Forest Policy called for “sys-
tems dedicated not only to sustainable forestry,
but to the conservation of valued life-forms and
the protection of the spiritual values of our
forests.”

The more values for which we manage, of
course, the higher the cost.

We can protect and preserve many elements of
the forest. But in nearly every case, it adds to for-
est companies’ costs of doing business and ulti-
mately reduces harvesting or manufacturing em-
ployment.

Nowhere has this been more clear than in the
area of endangered species legislation.

Particularly in the United States’ Pacific North-
west with the northern spotted owl, preservation
of a species and its habitat have cost forest work-
ers and their communities dearly.

That’s because to protect a species you have to
take steps to protect its habitat. With the owl, of
course, that meant protection of huge tracts of the
old growth timber in which the owl appears to
spend a great deal of time.

Since the injunctions of 1989 and 1990 that shut
down much of the forest industry in the western
owl states, scientists have learned a lot about owls
that wasn’t known before. Odds are, for instance,
that Washington, Oregon and California have more
owls than anyone knew when they were listed as
“threatened” in 1990; it also appears that owls are
much less tied to old-growth forests than earlier
imagined and that owls can roost, carry on and
hunt in second-growth forests, especially when the

trees have been “modified” silviculturally for them.

All that came too late for the people who
worked and lived in the forests. For them, the ef-
fects of listing the owl and shutting down federal
forests have been massive and severe, particularly

in the smaller, more rural
communities. In the
words of the official U.S.
federal government study
on the impacts of the
spotted owl plan: “These
communities are likely to
experience unemploy-
ment, increased poverty
and social disruption in
the absence of assis-
tance.”

“Unemployment, in-
creased poverty and so-
cial disruption” there has
surely been; assistance, less so. The best estimates
show that some 30,000 direct forest industry jobs
were lost as a result of the injunctions, with “spin-
off” effects on another 50,000.

So there’s a massive cost associated with endan-
gered species legisla-
tion - not to mention

Meanwhile a whole array of special interest
groups are busy trying to widen the scope of the
proposed law, which Federal Environment Minis-
ter Sheila Copps will bring before Parliament in
June, 1996.

The green groups want “citizen standing” that
will allow them to initiate challenges and actions
on behalf of any species; it was this right in the
United States that made it especially easy to use
the Endangered Species Act to so completely shut
down the forest industry.

As well, they want a wider scope for the law,
which would apply only on federal lands unless
the feds enter into joint agreements with the
provinces.

They also want “critical habitat” listed along
with the species, a move that would effectively
shut industry down without even going through
the motions of a recovery plan.

Finally, the green groups want to scrap the so-
called “null option”
which allows the feder-

the economic cost of
lost wages, lost govern-
ment revenue, lost in-
vestment income and
lost exports.

This is something the
federal government
should be aware of as it
moves toward an en-
dangered species law

All levels of governments
should realize that people,
their jobs and communities
are important too

al environment minister
the option of taking no
action because the
costs are too high and
chances of success too
limited.

So the ball’s in the
air. There’s a chance to
lobby the federal gov-
ernment - in the person

for Canada.

But so far it’s not.

At a recent “consultation” with groups and orga-
nizations interested in the proposed federal law,
the government is proposing something very close
to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, one of the
pieces of legislation that created the mess in the
Pacific Northwest.

In spite of some improvements since the begin-
ning of the consultation process earlier this year,
there is still little protection for workers, their jobs
or communities.

The law is still based on the needs of species
and habitat, with no thought given to need to en-
sure that recovery plans for species do not bring
massive dislocation and job loss in their wake.

The law does require that affected “stakehold-
ers” should be allowed to take part in the develop-
ment of recovery plans. But there’s nothing that
requires them to take into account the plan’s so-
cial and economic impacts or to ensure that seri-
ous impacts are avoided or that those impacted
gain some form of redress. i

It still invokes the so-called “precautionary prin-
cipal,” which essentially means that no action
should be undertaken until someone is absolutely
sure that nothing negative will flow from it, an

ironclad insurance that industry would be stymied.

of minister Copps - to
ensure that communities and jobs are not targeted.
But you can bet that the special interest green
groups will also be lobbying. It’s important, then,
that locals and communities let the feds know that
we don’t need to go down the Washington, Oregon
or Northern California road.

As well, it’s important that we lobby provincial
governments. Most of Canada’s working forest is
on provincial Crown lands: the endangered
species law only has effect on those lands if the
federal and provincial governments enter into a
two-way agreement. The provincial governments
should know that endangered species matter, but
people and jobs matter.

In short, we need to remind governments who
buys Canada’s groceries. The forest industry is
Canada’s major industry and its major source of
export earnings. A federal government that's as
strapped for cash as the current Liberal govern-
ment claims to be should look after spotted owls,
burrowing owls, marbled murrelets and other en-
dangered species - but not kill the golden goose in
the process.

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

ee

4/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1995