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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Gov't ‘velvet glove’
Cost public millions

in uncollected fees

Continued from Page 1

He placed the government’s loss there at
1.3 million to $2 million and said losses
elsewhere could total another $8 million. In
addition, he said, six small contractors, who
blew the whistle on the scandal, may have
lost between $4.5 million and $6.3 million
Cause of similar practices at other sorting
grounds.
The first reaction of the Socred govern-
ment to the Friedmann report was to
unch a campaign to discredit the
Ombudsman and to confuse the public by
T€sorting to various manoeuvres. But with
Its diversions, the government has not
been able to cover up one salient fact: a
Significant quantity of the timber that
Passed through the Shoal Island sorting
yard between 1978 and 1981 was not scaled,
and B.C. Forest Products has never been
billed for stumpage on the unscaled logs.
The fact that the Socred government
allowed Crown timber to be delivered to the
Orest companies free of charge and has not
to this day sent them a bill in an attempt to
Tecover millions of dollars owed to the pub-
C treasury makes the whole thing smell to
igh heaven. The Vancouver Sun made a
Similar point in an editorial Feb. 27: “If the
80vernment doesn’t seek to collect from
-C. Forest Products, the suspicion will
8TOw that there’s more to the matter than
meets the eye — and the nose will soon
sniff it out,”
__ Actually the amount of money involved
i the ombudsman’s report is small com-
Pared to the estimated total of unpaid royal-
ae by B.C.’s giant forest companies for
Town timber. This week NDP opposition
leader Dave Barrett said in the legislature

The “labor-democratic alliance” known
as Operation Solidarity and the Solidarity
Coalition must be maintained and streng-
thened to counter Socred attacks on
democratic and trade union rights, states
the B.C. branch of the Communist Party
of Canada.

Criticism of the movement’s leaders
Must be made in light of the Kelowna
accord which “ended the mass strike
Movement against the government while
leaving the broad social issues, particularly

_ the crisis in education, unresolved,” the
party contends.

But “leftist tendencies” which paint an
unrealistic picture of the state of the mass
~ people’s movement must also be coun-
tered. And progressives should recognize
that the “main enemy remains the Socred-
Employers Council-Fraser Institute alliance
which is imposing (its) right-wing program
on B.C,” states the CP in the draft resolu-
tion for the upcoming provincial
convention.

The draft, which will be mulled over,
criticized and amended by all Communist
Party clubs prior to the 25th biennial con-
vention Apr. 6-8, also addresses the ques-
tion of political alliances in civic,
provincial and federal elections, the fight
for peace and the tasks of building the
party.

When finalized and adopted at the con-
vention, the resolution will set an ambi-
tious course of action to guide B.C.’s
Communists during the next two years.

that the B.C. government is short $750 mil-
lion in forestry fees it should have received
in the last five years, and charged that some
forest companies are getting free logs and
paying no royalties or stumpage.

Producing figures for gross sales by the
forest industry and comparing them with
revenues to the provincial coffers in timber
fees, Barrett charged it was “‘a stinking, rot-
ten scandal which has lost the B.C. people
three-quarters of a billion dollars and added
to the serious economic situation in B.C.”

He gave the example that in 1980 gross
forestry sales totalled $1.06 billion on which
the government collected 28 per cent or
$300 million in revenues from the industry.
In 1983, gross forestry sales were up to
$1.197 billion but government revenue fell
to only 11.6 per cent, or $139 million in
forest revenues.

What happened to account for the dras-
tic change in revenues from the forest indus-
try in recent years? The answer to that
question exposes the real scandal — that in
recent years the Socred government has
given huge financial concessions to the
major forest monopolies at the expense of
B.C.’s taxpayers who are being forced to
pick up the bill through higher taxes and
cutbacks in social services, education and
loss of jobs.

As early as 1974, a forestry ministry
report on stumpage payments said calcula-

tions on the West Coast were “unreliable”

and prices were “generally underesti-
mated.” The companies didn’t like the find-
ings so the government did nothing about
correcting the situation.

In 1980, a policy paper on stumpage from
the forestry department noted “the system
also yields itself to be used as a tool to

The 15-page document devotes consid-
erable attention to the Solidarity fight-
back, which, it notes “generated a level of
mass political action of the working class
and its democratic allies never before
achieved in the province’s history.

“The major achievement of the Solidar-
ity movement was that it demonstrated the
power of united mass political action, by
labor and the people,” states the draft at
one point; elsewhere, it notes, ““The expe-
riences of 1983 bear out the projection
in the party’s program — that the path to
progressive change in Canada requires the
building of a labor-democratic, anti-
monopoly alliance, under the leadership
of the working class.

“In the fight to defeat the Socred
government’s drive the Solidarity move-
ment became the recognized opposition to
the government and forced the govern-
ment to deal with it directly,” the resolu-
tion notes.

The document discusses Solidarity
developments against a background of the
Socreds’ “long range program” which
aims to wipe out social services, embark
on a wholesale privatization of Crown
corporations and government services and
undermine workers’ standards of living
through low wages and regressive changes
to labor legislation. The aim, states the CP
analysis, is to make “the monopolies in
B.C. more competitive on the world capi-
talist market and to attract capital by
offering conditions for exploitation of
resources and labor similar in many

‘coverup’ |
on stumpage

Politicians’ in
Cat up lo

Priedmann’
catio;

Log scandal brewing
NDP decries a

Ombudsman suspects

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NEWS REPORTS, OMBUDSMAN KARL FRIEDMANN. .

the tip of the iceberg.’

support public policies, allowing incentive
or discriminatory pricing if, and where,
social or political realities or economic poli-
cies so require.” A year later we found out
just what that meant.

In 1981, deputy Forests Minister Mike
Apsey circulated an internal memo, recently
made public, which told the forestry staff to
go easy on cut controls to help forest com-
panies. “We can use the velvet-glove
approach instead of the 10-pound sledge-
hammer,” he said. “‘We must be prepared to
practise some sympathetic administration.”

At the same time, companies were told
they could cut the best wood to realize
greater profits and that other standards pro-
tecting the forests would be relaxed. The
change in policy permeated the whole fore-
stry department and reflected the Socred
government’s right wing pro-big business
bias.

The “go-easy-on-the-forest-companies”
policy was reflected in many other areas as
well. For example, under the Forest Act,
companies can deduct from timber-cutting
fees such costs as logging road construction,
reforestation and many other costly items.

CP draft analyses Solidarity events

respects to those found in Third World
countries.”

The sharpened class struggle repres-
ented by the Solidarity movement suc-
ceeded in winning some concessions,
states the document. The agreement at
Kelowna contained provisions that the
viciously anti-labor bills 2 and 3 would die
on the order paper or be effectively circum-
vented, and other “obnoxious” pieces of
legislation — the threatened labor code
amendments, for example — would be
placed on the back burner.

But, the document argues, “the imme-
diate gains were limited, and more could

‘have been won had the reformist leader-

ship of many large private sector unions
and the top leadership of the NDP given it
greater public support and joined in its
actions.”

The document pinpoints the leader-
ship’s “class collaborationist and social
reformist tendencies,” which, it states, led
to a return to “a position of pure trade
unionism, which holds that unions should
concern themselves only with economic
action where job issues are involved, and
not larger economic and political issues.”

Meanwhile, the provincial NDP held to
its pre-election policy — a policy which
the document maintains saw to the NDP’s
defeat in the May 5 election — of “pure
parliamentarism and avoidance of mass
struggle.

“Tt failed to come out in support of the
strike struggle against the government’s

-B.C. Forest Products case ‘only

Under the Socred’s “velvet glove approach”
the forest companies have been allowed to
inflate these costs and to deduct them from
fees payable to the government, a practice
which has cost taxpayers hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars in recent years.

When logging sub-contractor Ian
Mahood, whose complaint launched the
ombudsman’s investigation, was inter-
viewed recently, he put his finger on the nub
of the problem when he said: “The forests
ministry, which has such a concern to be
nice or kind or whatever the word is to the
majors, has lost the ability to protect the
public interest.”

The Sommers scandal which shook B.C.
in the 1950’s was miniscule compared to the
giant scandal now before B.C., involving
the handing over of hundreds of millions of
dollars in forest revenues to a few giant
monopolies who have the inside track with
the Socred government. Premier Bennett
and his forest minister Tom Waterland
must be held to account and forced to reveal
all the details of this deep-going scandal on
which the Friedmann report only just lifted
the lid.

legislation and attempted to discourage
the fightback movement by statements
that there was ‘nothing to be gained on the
streets’ and that the protest movement
should get back into parliamentary pro-
cess and change the government in four
years.”

What is needed, the CP argues, is “a
new alignment of labor, democratic, NDP
and Communist forces to bring about a
united democratic political alternative
movement which would offer the strong-
est possible opportunity to oust the
Socreds and change the direction of B.C.
politics.” :

For its part, the party will continue to
advance major policies involving the
nationalization of key resources, the
development of a manufacturing sector to
diversify B.C.’s economy, and measures
such as a shorter work week at full rates of
pay, equal pay for work of equal value for
women, and unemployment insurance for
the duration of unemployment, states the
document.

On the peace question, the CP high-
lights two main tasks: support for Solidar-
ity groups aiding world liberation
movements, and the need to increase the
involvement of labor in the peace
movement.

The document also urges Communists
to concentrate on the growth of the party
through more public involvement,
increased ideological work and heightened
efforts among the youth and women’s
movements.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 7, 1984 e 3