Youbou report an incomplete ‘farce’

It was the report that wasn’t.
Commissioned by the provincial
overnment to investigate what
appened to the infamous “Clause
7” -a legal clause which tied timber
from TimberWest’s TFL #46 to the
company’s now defunct Cowichan
Lumbermill in Youbou - Victoria
lawyer and report author Daniel
Gelb said he didn’t have enough
time to finish what government
asked him to do.

“We'd like to know what the hell
is going on here,” reacted national
president Dave Haggard. “How can
they make the workers and their
community wait for a so-called report
that’s incomplete? This is a farce.”

Gelb delivered his report on May
81, saying he ran out of time to
examine 11 boxes of documents. He
also claims he had insufficient time
to conduct interviews on who or
what left the clause out.

In 1997, Clause 7 was deleted
from the TFL when a renewal
agreement was written. It wasn’t
supposed to be, and that’s the vital
link that would have forced
TimberWest to operate a
manufacturing facility.

I.W.A. Canada Local 1-80
president Bill Routley said the
government has an obligation to

explain and be fully accountable on
the Clause 7 issue.

Even though the union launched
a civil suit against the government
on May 4 (see article on page eight),
Routley says it’s up to the provincial
government to give some straight
answers.

“Tt shouldn’t be up to the members
in the I.W.A. to foot the bill (for the
lawsuit) to discover what happened,”
he said in an interview with the
Lumberworker.

He said Gelb could have been
given more time or could have asked.
for more help during his
investigation period which began
months earlier.

“He had those 11 boxes (of
documents) for a long time,” said
Routley. “Certainly the I.W.A. would
ask why he didn’t have enough time.”

Gelb told the government he
needed more money and time to do
the job.

The local union sent a letter to
Premier Gordon Campbell, calling
for a public inquiry under the
Inquiries Act, which would give an
inquiry commissioner the power to
subpoena witnesses.

The official version of the Ministry
of Forests, as supplied by former
minister of forests David Zirnhelt,

and as filed in the government’s
statement of defence, is that it was
a bureaucratic error.

“One bureaucrat who Gelb talked
to said they (the Ministry of Forests)
discovered the clause was missing
and they would have put it in prior
to signing the renewal over to
TimberWest (in 1997), had they
discovered it,” said Routley.

The government actually has
correspondence in which it wrote to
the company, asking it to
reincorporate Clause 7. It refused
to.

“By negligence or incompetence
we believe the government or the
government’s bureaucrats messed
up and it’s our members who have
had to pay the price,” said Brother
Haggard. “It’s also the communities
in the Cowichan Valley that pay the
price and the province itself that
pays the price with lost jobs and
lost tax revenue from the economic
activity those jobs created.”

Routley noted that appurtenance
clauses have been missed in license
renewals on at least three occasions
in recent years and that, in at least
one case, a company agreed to put
the clause back in voluntarily.

“In the case of TimberWest when
the government asked them the

same question, the company
refused,” he added.

“We think it is inexcusable for the
company to have acted in this way.
They should have agreed to put the
clause back in.”

“It seems to me that, with all of
the attention focused on issues
surrounding the Youbou closure,
now we would have a policy
statement by the government (in
writing) suggesting what
government is supposed to do about
appurtenance clauses when they
come up for renewal,” he said.

Since there has been no statement,
Routley believes that there is no
such policy in place, and that the
clause may have been very well left
out at the bureaucratic level, as per
the government’s statement of
defense.

“That’s why we need a full public
inquiry,” said Routley. “There should
not be any guessing games on our
part — the government must come
clean.”

The local union filed its lawsuit
in the B.C. Supreme Court in early
May. “If we can get the inquiry going
it will shorten the number of paths
that we need to take to discover the
truth and seek fairness for our
members,” said Routley.

Union Sues Gov't

continued from page two

Brother Routley also said the
government has, by its own
admission through the Ministry of
Forests, said that there is some form
of negligence or that bureaucrats
didn’t do their jobs.

“They told us that it is government
bureaucrats not doing their jobs and
that’s why we lost the clause that’s
connected to the Youbou mill, to the

_ TFL and to the forest,” said Routley.
“And now we’ve got these people out
of work. And it’s irresponsible of
government to say ‘we’ll tell you
after the election.”

In fact, the government’s own
statement of defence to the I.W.A.
lawsuit, filed on August 13, said
people responsible for the drafting
of the replacement licence
inadvertently omitted Clause 7 from
the appurtenance clause.

“They (the preuncial government)
have had all kinds of opportunities.
It’s been a least 6 months since they've
known that this (Clause 7) went
missing,” said Routley on May 4.

Routley noted the arrest of several
workers and community supporters
outside the Youbou mill just days
before was an example of workers
being taken to jail “in the passion of
the moment.”

He told the Lumberworker that
the union is not condoning illegal
acts but that it “completely
understands the anger of the people
impacted by these decisions” both
with the company ramping up log
exports and the government saying
up, to that point, that the clause
went mysteriously missing and it
could only commisson a report.

He noted that politicians in the
Cowichan Valley Regional District
from “all political stripes” have been
in support of helping the workers
keep the mill in Youbou.

Routley said a report prepared for
the provincial government indicated
there was no urgent need to close
the operation and that an investment
of $10-12 million and a log flow from
the public license would supply the
mill and boost profits.

Instead, Routley said TimberWest
is exporting about 1 million cubic
meters of wood annually while it is

dislocating B.C. workers.
Brother Haggard spoke out
forcefully against the increase in log

exports and TimberWest’s efforts to
get rid of any log export restrictions
on private lands.

“It’s unacceptable that companies
like TimberWest have been lobbying
on a consistent basis for the right to
export more off their private lands
and they also want to do it (export)
off their public land,” Haggard
pointed out to the media. “It’s
unacceptable and it should be
unacceptable to the people of this
province.”

Also at the press conference were
Ken James and Roger Wiles,
members of the Youbou Timberless
Society, a group of workers and
community supporters founded as
an entity separate from the union,
during the last weeks of the Youbou
mill’s operation, to represent
displaced workers and forest-
dependent communities in the
Cowichan Valley.

James, a former committee

. member, mentioned that although

TimberWest says that the Youbou
mill has nothing to do with raw logs
exports, he believes to the contrary
— a belief consistent with many
I.W.A. members.

He said that TimberWest, if
allowed to keep the TFL, can offer
public logs to traditional private
wood buyers. Those sales would
meet sawmiller’s needs and allow
the company to export surplus
private logs.

In an interview with the
Lumberworker, Wiles said he has
never been “that politically involved
until now” and didn’t fully appreciate
the importance of a union before.

Now that he has lost his union
membership due the Youbou
shutdown, he’s putting energy into
the Youbou Timberless Society.

“What we are doing here isn’t just
for the Youbou Mill,” he said. He
said that the society is involved in
the fight to save Youbou as both
moral and social justice issues.

“We've hit a nerve. It goes beyond
the union movement. It encompasses
social justice as a whole. The public
is on side with us. Our membership
is open to all.”

“TimberWest has no idea of what
true community is — with all their
literature they talk about what a
community-minded company they
are,” said James. “They have no
concern about what goes on in
communities. Their only concern is
in (the) investors’ bottom line.”

a

e On July 27, I.W.A. Local 1-3567 members from Fraser Mills delivered a

petition to save jobs to B.C. premier Gordon Campbell's office at the
Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre.

Workers fight against
Fraser Mills closure

International Forest Products
Limited is bound and determined to
oversee the permanent closure of
its Fraser Mills sawmill in
Coquitlam, B.C.

The operation, which is rooted
deep in the I.W.A.’s history, is
scheduled for permanent closure on
October 31. It employs about 300
Local 1-3567 members.

On April 18 Interfor president
and CEO Duncan Davies, who is
pushing for tenure and timber
pricing changes in the province,
announced the Fraser Mills closure.
Interfor claims that an upcoming
timber shortage due to the proposed
“Great Bear Rainforest” on the
central coast, will see log supplies
drop off to Fraser Mills.

‘the union says Fraser Mills is a
cost-effective sawmill and has grown
frustrated over the new
government’s inaction in assisting
workers keep their jobs and run the
operation.

Either find logs to run the mill or

force the company to sell it toa
company that can buy the mill at a
reasonable price, said Local 1-3567
president Sonny Ghag, in an
interview with the Lumberworker.

The local union is waiting for the
government’s review of Interfor’s
timber supply which was promised
by outgoing president Ujaal Dosanjh
during the April/May election
campaign.

“They (the government) have not
completed the audit they were going
to do,” said Brother Ghag. “We’ve
been waiting for that.”

Despite letters sent to premier
Gordon Campbell from national
1.W.A. president Dave Haggard and
Ghag, after its May 16 election
victory, the government has
remained silent on the issue.

On July 27 about 100 workers
and supporters from Fraser Mills
joined with Ghag and local union
financial secretary Brian Harder
outside the premier’s office at the

continued on page forty

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LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 2001/9