, OVer 95 per cent of B.C. forest lands are N Owned. Shortly after the Second d War, the Forest Act was amended to for the establishment of Forest Man- ent Licences. They were later renamed arm Licences and, as such, were d to a handful of giant corporations, F © of them covering millions of acres of ‘st lands. : - “Ate ‘Sto private companies for long periods me, the companies would manage the 8 os thus ensure a perpetual yield f hi reforestation and modern pratices. urn, the forest companies would pay Crown for the use of these forests Ugh a system of charges — primarily Page fees — and taxes on their opera- © Tesults today prove that this system nure has failed miserably. On the con- é talienated the publicly-owned forest a a few huge corporations. The larg- : een Bloedel, which has made €ds of millions of dollars in profit, ©xported capital abroad to set up a pe complex in Brazil, buy out forestry me *S In western Europe and build é Teanufacturing plants in Alabama. Fi ae Farm Licences have brought € point where the forest resource a evastated without adequate re- tp acdonala Royal Commission's problen: Proposed that the solution to ta Ge e plaguing the forest industry ate oe tenure for forest licences to Panies to 80 years. That, says e€-added industry under Ploedel. ; 1 theory was that by granting forest. Successive Social Credit governments have initiated policies which are devastating B.C.‘s forests and have brought in the present crisis. The future. . .is in doubt unless a major overhaul of the industry takes place. the report, would provide more incentive to ~ companies to invest in long-term planning and development. The proposal offers no real solution. On the contrary it would compound the present problems. It should be recalled that when the Forest Management Licences (now Tree Farm Licences) were first adopted in the late 1940s, they were granted in perpetuity, and for many years they operated that way. But that did not bring about large-scale capital investment in manufacturing or pro- cessing of wood products. Nor did it result in reforestation on the scale needed to ensure a perpetual yield, which was supposed to be the purpose of the licences to begin with. It brought large scale investment in plants to produce raw and semi-processed products on a larger scale, decimating B.C. forests. Extension of the present Tree Farm Licences from their present 21 years (which mmm are presently renewed without any diffi- culty) to 80 years would only further entrench the present tenure system and compound the crisis in the forest indus- try. British Columbia needs a radical over- haul of its forest pol- icies, not policies which will further tighten the grip of the big monopolies on the resource. The Science Council of Canada in a recent report declared: “We forests to degener- ate to a dangerous point. We have been ne felling, selling and shipping timber for so long that today a $23 ‘billion industry is facing economic stagna- tion.” The Jan. 24, 1985 issue of Maclean’s quoted a leading forester as saying, “Our forest companies have to start acting like civilized people instead of pigs.” If they did, it would be contrary to their nature which is to strive for maximum profits no matter what the cost. University of B.C. forestry professor John Walters put it in the strong-. est terms when he addressed the Associa- tion of B.C. Foresters. The forests, he said, were being “gang-raped by the provincial and federal governments.”’ He should have added the forest companies. ; Bringing about the changes needed will not be an easy task. But if the industry is to be saved, if tens of thousands of jobs for B.C. woodworkers are to be saved, that task must be undertaken soon. And those who must lead the fight for such changes are the woodworkers, the labor movement and the communities which depend on the forest industry. ; Here, in the opinion of the Communist Party of B.C., are the three major areas in which deep-going changes are required. It is a program that takes as its starting point - that B.C.’s greatest economic strength is its forests and that we must build on that to ensure a brighter future for our province: Reforestation: Action Ottawa and Victoria to immediately launch a major reforestation program in B.C. farin excess of anything up to now. The forest companies must be made to pay a major share of the cost. This is all the more urgent in view of the near-catastrophic state of the resource. At a time when experts tell us the world demand for wood products is grow- ing and that by the year 2000, the demand is’ expected to grow by 82 per cent, B.C.’s raw earotal base is declining. This cannot be allowed to continue. In addition, a massive - feforestation program over the next few years would provide tens of thousands of have allowed the is needed by badly-needed jobs in the forest industry. The B.C. Professional Foresters said in a report last year that the plantable backlog could grow two million cubic metres of wood worth up to $200 million annually, would create 2,500 direct and 5,000 indirect permanent jobs, as well as temporary — employment of up to 15,000 person-years during replanting projects. The association recommends that $160 million be spent in ‘the next year for current forest areas which need restocking, and $75 million to start catching up on the backlog of understocked lands. That sum, they proposed, be increased up to 25 per cent in each of the next five years. This program would at least be a start on the massive job of rebuilding B.C.’s forest industry. New products for more diversified mar- kets: Restoring the health of B.C.’s forests would by itself not be enough to meet B.C.’s problem. Along with a healthy resource we need to adopt a policy of diversifying B.C.’s markets on the basis of expanding the range of products produced from the forests. Woodridge Reed, a major forestry research agency, recently delivered a report which is sharply critical of the activities of the major forest companies in B.C. It said: “The forest industry must change its outlook. Value added products are the wave of the future, and basic lumber, pulp and newsprint pro- duction is passe.” Peter Drake, spokesman for Woodbridge Reed said, “if we continue to concentrate on construction _ grade lumber we are going to be ina hell of a fix.” He added that it is possible to increase the current level of millwork in B.C. from $500 million to $1 billion and create 5,000 direct jobs at the same time by extending the range of products to include ladders, doors, win- dow sashes and treated wood products. And that’s only a limited range, he admit- ted. Much more can be done in manufactur- ing and processing of wood products in B.C. In his famous report in 1946, Chief Justice Gordon Sloan devoted a special chapter on the need for processing of wood products and produced charts showing how much value would be added to B.C.’s econ- omy, and more jobs created by processing. One chart showed that if it takes one man- day of work to produce 1,000 board-feet of lumber, those same logs manufactured into fine paper and sanitary products could pro- vide 12 to 14 person-days of work. Last year, when Premier Bill Bennett returned from a visit to the Orient, he told the Board of Trade how excited he was to visit a factory which was manufacturing sewing machine frames from B.C. lumber. ’ He failed to ask the question: Why can’t we do that here? There is a wide range of products which could be produced apart from those already mentioned above. There have been propos- ° als for a furniture industry and a prefabri- cated housing industry. The problem is that the Socred govern- ment and the present owners of the large forest companies are tied to policies of quick profits and they see the U.S. market with its demand for raw and semi-processed products — lumber, pulp, newsprint, wood chips — as the source of quick turnover and quick profits. That’s why Don Lans- kail, chairman of the Council of Forest Industries in B.C. rejected the study by Woodbridge Reed when he said “Construc- tion grade lumber is the bread and butter of the industry and if you don’t look after it there’s no point having any icing.” To this spokesman for the forest companies, any- thing beyond two-by-fours or pulp and newsprint is “icing”. In essence, he took the industry’s position that we should continue to turn our backs on manufacturing and processing and produce almost exclusively for the.U.S. market. _ It should be abundantly clear that the policy of the forest companies is to produce raw and semi-processed products mainly for the U.S. market. The major forest com- panies, some of which are U.S.-owned, have a vested interest in keeping the forest indus- try raw material-based. They are supported in this policy by the Socred government. If B.C. is to make a turn toward manufactur- ing and processing of wood products in B.C. the major forest companies will have to be nationalized, starting with the major one — MacMillan Bloedel. By diversifying, B.C. can open up a wider market for its forestry products. B.C. should look to expanding its market to third world countries, to other advanced capital- ist countries which have no forestry base and. require manufactured wood products. We should look to expanded trade with the socialist countries which are today some of the most dynamic and expanding markets in the world. And we should look to a large expansion of the Canadian market for wood, paper and other advanced wood products. There are always some people who say: where will the money come from for capital investment in such new processing indus- tries and to nationalize some forest compan- ies like M-B? First of all we have to determine B.C.’s priorities — and forestry should be at the top of the list. The Socred government had no difficulty finding $2°billion-to build the Revelstoke dam which we didn’t need. Bennett is now talking about spending $3.2 billion to build the Site C dam to export hydro to the U.S. The Socreds had no difficulty finding $2 billion for the northeast coal deal to export our coal to Japan. And they found no diffi- culty deciding to spend close to $2 billion on Expo. One has to ask: which is more important? _ Some of these billions used to reorganize the forest industry on the basis outlined here would be the most important investment which could be made in the future of B.C. and in creating large numbers of permanent jobs for B.C. workers. Change forest tenure: As long as most of B.C.’s best forests land are in the hands of a few giant corporations which have a vested interest in blocking the kind of policies needed to overcome the backwardness of the forest industry, the changes needed can never be implemented. The present Tree Farm Licence system should be abolished. Forty years of experience have proven that the interests of the province and its people are not served by turning over public forest lands to private corporations. Maximum, quick profit is their king and that does not - correspond to B.C.’s long range needs and interests. The present plight of the forest industry must be laid at the door of the big corporations and the Tree Farm Licence system. ; For many years, a substantial portion of B.C.’s forest lands have been managed by the Forest Service under a form of tenure known as Public Sustained-Yield Units. Under this tenure, the Forest Service has managed the forests, carried through re- forestation (although more could have been done) and auctioned mature timber stands to the highest bidder. The Commu- nist Party proposes that the Tree Farm Licences be phased out and that Crown- owned lands be integrated into an expanded Public Sustained-Yield Unit system, man- aged by an expanded Forestry Service committed to a program of reforestation, research and silviculture, and the sale of mature timber by auction. In this way B.C.’s Crown lands can be _ returned to their rightful owners, the people of B.C. and forestry policies adopted which will be in the interests of B.C. and not serve _ the profit greed of the forest monopolies. Maurice Rush is B.C. provincial leader of the Communist Party of Canada. PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 25, 1985 « 7