British Columbia

Victoria
should push

company
on jobs,
says local

Continued from page 1

“We want the general public to know the
real state of the forests,” said Lyn Kistner,
camp chair at Fletcher-Challenge’s Renfrew
Logging Division where some 70 people are
expected to lose their jobs.

Kistner, who proposed the resolution, —

said the local is also looking at more public
activity to highlight the layoff and the need
for the government to put pressure on the
company to maintain jobs.

The local vote is the latest expression of
the protest over the layoffs which were
announced by Fletcher-Challenge two
weeks ago. Citing a shortage of logs, the
New Zealand-based multinational said that
some 425 jobs would be cut in a corporate
rationalization program.

It is expected to include closure of the
Victoria Plywood plant and layoffs at the
Youbou and Tilbury mills and the Renfrew
and Caycuse logging divisions.

The first 25 layoffs were expected to come
at Youbou March 3 with more cuts coming
across the other operations in April.

Fletcher-Challenge president Ian Donald
has maintained that “critical” log shortages
forced the layoffs, but the IWA-Canada
noted in a letter to Premier Bill Vander
Zalm last week that logs were being
exported by another company from the
same lake in which logs for the Youbou mill

omed.

Ao cher-Challenge was also fined last
year for its wasteful logging practices in the
io this week, IWA-Canada president
Jack Munro met with Donald in an effort to
head off the layoffs. But Donald stated after
the meeting Tuesday: “Nothing I’ve heard
today would make me believe that we can
withdraw those termination notices.

Donald also refused a union request to
hold off on the layoff notices until after the
government makes a decision on whether or
not to restrict exports of logs that Fletcher-
Challenge could buy on the open market
and use. The major companies have tradi-
tionally spurned the open market, opting to
obtain logs from their TFLs and cutting
back on their operations when they are not
available. gore: dae

But that also implies responsibility,
Munro told reporters following the meet-
ing. “A major corporation, not only
Fletcher-Challenge, if they are going to be
allowed to harvest the public’s timber in this
province, then they have to ... provide
manufacturing jobs,” he said. :

So far, there has not been substantial
pressure brought to bear on the company to
fulfil that responsibility although members
of Local 1-80 are hoping to change that.

The only thing the forests ministry has
agreed to do is to conduct an audit of SN aE
46 to determine if timber harvesting was
carried out properly according to a logging
and management plan.

Forests Minister Dave Parker said Feb.
28 that the ministry was currently selecting
someone to carry out the audit and drafting
terms of reference.

The audit is expected to cover the last 10
years, including the time the TFL was held
by B.C. Forest Products which Fletcher-
Challenge took over in 1987.

+

*

Provincial Notes

Parker facing
united demand

KAMLOOPS — Forests Minister
Dave Parker continues to be hammered
with demands for a royal commission
into the forest industry despite his testy
rejection of an inquiry as only a “delay-
ing tactic.”

On Monday, Parker told a meeting in
the Stockmen’s Motor Inn, the fifth in a
series of public information sessions
called by the forests ministry, that the
demand for a royal commission was only
“coming from environmental coalitions,
the Opposition and Natives.

“What a royal commission would do
is delay and that’s the agenda of these
people,” he told the 175 people who
packed the meeting.

But the call for the inquiry has come
from far more distant quarters since the
sessions began in Smithers last month.
Parker convened the public meetings in
the face of growing opposition to the
government’s Bill 28 which proposed to
extend Tree Farm Licences under corpo-
rate control to vast areas of the province.

Groups as diverse as the Truck
Loggers Association and the Cowichan
Regional District have echoed the
demand for a full inquiry into the indus-
try before the government proceeds with
applications from a number of forest
conglomerates to extend their existing
TFLs or open new ones.

They were joined by locals of the
IWA-Canada and the Pulp, Paper and
Woodworkers of Canada who appeared
at the meeting here.Feb..27. —
_ “We were astonished to hear the min-
ister say he did not believe there was any
need for a thorough investigation of the
forest industry,” said TWA-Canada

Local 1-417 representative Warren Oja.

“To us who work in the industry, the
need is both obvious and urgent.”

Garry Worth, president of the PPWC
local at the Weyerhauser pulp mill, told
the minister: “It’s not too late yet to
ensure the survival of B.C.’s forests and
our industry — we urge this govern-
ment to abandon its moves to privatize
our forests.”

5 In a brief presented to the meeting,
Jim Biro, from the Kamloops branch of
the Communist Party, called on the
Social Credit government to repeal Bill
28 and to “abandon its plans to turn over
the bulk of our forest lands to a few
major companies.”

The bill, he said, “passed through the
legislature with minimum publicity (and)
will. .. turn over an estimated $14 billion
worth of Crown timber to a small
number of multinational corporations
which now dominate the forest indus-
Toye

Biro called for a moratorium on log
exports until a royal commission inquiry
has been conducted.

Reject Hydro’s
plan says CP

VANCOUVER — The B.C. provin- .

cial committee of the Communist Party
this week called on the National Energy
Board to “reject giving carte blanche
approval to the present energy policy of
the Social Credit government” which
proposes private sector development of
energy for export.

behind you, on this issue.”

Rancher John McNamer (far right) gestures to other opponents of the
Cache Creek dumpsite during demonstration Feb. 24 against Wastech
Services’ plans to dump 300,000 tonnes of Greater Vancouver garbage
annually on a landfill near the Interior community. The protest included
residents stopping a mock GVRD waste truck from entering the site in a
symbolic protection of the area’s watershed and general environment.
Distributed was a letter to McNamer, a spokesperson for Cache Creek
Area Residents United, from Wastech’s lawyers threatening an injunction
and court action for damages if the waste company’s garbage trucks are
halted when the dump opens. Bonapart Band chief Terry Morgan also
addressed the rally, teling the participants, ‘‘We stand beside you, not

TRIBUNE PHOTO — BILL CAMPBELL

The CP made the call in a “letter of
comment” filed with Louise Meagher,
secretary of the National Energy Board.
The party had earlier called on the NEB
to postpone hearings into B.C. Hydro’s
application for extension of its export
licence but filed the letter when Meagher
turned down the request.

The hearings are scheduled to open
March 6in Vancouver and will hear B.C.
Hydro’s application to extend its licence
to export power to Washington, Oregon
and California until September, 1990.

In the letter to the board, B.C. CP
leader Maurice Rush warned that the
application was “no ordinary applica-
tion” and would also involve getting a
commitment from the NEB authorizing
the large-scale export of power “as

envisaged in the new policy enunciated
by Energy Minister Jack Davis.”

“In the view of the Communist
Party,” he said, “the NEB should not
give sweeping authorization to the pri-
vate sector to build dams at every site in
the province to export power to the U.S.
We also believe that the private sector
should not be allowed to develop power
generation plants all over B.C. based on
the firing of coal and natural gas for
export to the U.S.”

Rush also declared the party’s opposi-
tion to the re-activation of the Burrard
Electrical Generating Plant and called
for a moratorium on the operation of the
thermal plant, located near Ioco on Bur-
rard Inlet.

Earlier, the Central Fraser Valley
Regional District and Regional Hospital
District registered their concern about
plans to re-activate the plant to generate
power for export.

Because of the geographical location
of the plant, the board stated ina letter to
Meagher Feb. 15, “any pollution gener-
ated on Burrard Inlet ... moves east in
the valley directly to our area.

“We are particularly concerned about
the warmer parts of the year when the
movement of air may be insufficient to
move pollution out of the Fraser Valley.
Air temperature inversions can occur,
trapping thick pollution in the valley and
creating serious breathing problems for
people with lung conditions,” the letter
stated.

_of government to ensure protection of

Protect fishing
industry: council

PRINCE RUPERT — City council-
lors voted here Feb. 20 to lobby the fed-
eral and provincial governments to stick
to their guns and enact landing require-
ments for West Coast salmon and
herring that will protect the fishery
resource and industry jobs.

The council motion followed repres-
entations to the ‘city: from the United .
Fishermen and Allied Workers Union °
and the Amalgamated Shoreworkers
and Clerks who warned that the industry
was threatened by U.S. negotiators’
demands and outlined their union’s
efforts to defend their jobs.

Until last year, export regulations
were in place which called for processing
of herring and most species of salmon
before they could be exported. But U.S.
processors successfully challenged the
regulations before the General Agree-
ment on Tariffs and Trade which ruled in
January 1988 that the regulations consti-
tuted an unfair trade practice.

Although the ruling was not binding,
the federal government agreed last year
to drop the regulations rather than risk
trade retaliation from the U.S. Since that
time, an industry advisory committee
has sought to devise new landing and
grading requirements that would be con-
sistent with GATT.

But in talks with the U.S. earlier this
year, Canadian negotiators quickly
withdrew the committee’s proposals
when they ran into U.S. opposition,
prompting members of the advisory
group to walk out of the talks in
Washington. Negotiations are still con-
tinuing.

At the council meeting, both UFAWU
representative Jim Rushton and Clerks’
business agent John Kuz declared that
their unions would “not stand idly by as
fish go in trucks to another country.”

Rushton noted that the talks had
shown the U.S. objectives in getting
access to a vital Canadian resource.
“Anybody who thought the Americans
weren’t after our fish now know they
are.”

He said the unions would be seeking
support among various groups and levels

the industry.

Pacific Tribune, March 6, 1989 « 3