Environment

Take on transnationals
to save B.C. forests and

maintain long term jobs

Lyn Kistner, an organizer for IWA Canada Local 1-80, spoke to
the 800 participants at the State of the Islands conference held
in Nanaimo last weekend. He challenged corporate control of
B.C.’s publicly-owned forests and called for local, democratic
decision making enshrined in a new forest policy. The text of

that address is reprinted below.

am a logger, and like some 75,000
other men and women in this province, I
have made my living and supported my
family in the forest industry.

The problems of working in the forest
~ industry led naturally to becoming active
in my union. For many years I was Camp
Chairperson at Port Renfrew, and I am
presently an organizer for IWA Canada
Local 1-80.

As a trade unionist, dealing with the
immediate problems and the long term
future of working people and their
communities that are based on the forest
industry, I have also had to face the
growing environmental disaster in our
woods which threatens my industry and
our way of life.

My experience in the woods, in the
union, and with the environmental
movement has made me a very political
person. I have come to two basic
conclusions.

First, that long term stable jobs in this ~
industry, as well as forests for all people
and all uses, requires a new and
democratic forest policy in B.C. that will
re-order the power structure as we know it
and assert the public interest over the
private interest of transnational
corporations.

Second, that the way forward to a
democratic forest policy requires a united,
grass roots movement of workers and the
community for political change. And we
don’t have a hell of a lot of time to waste
arguing over details. There will be a
provincial election within a year, and we
need to get rid of Vander Zalm, Parker
and the rest of the Socreds but we also
need to get the kind of forest policy we
need.

I want to tell you how I have come to
these radical conclusions. These
conclusions come right out of the living
and working experiences in Tree Farm
License 46.

TEL 46 is the biggest forestry operation
on southern Vanouver Island. It is a forest
management disaster. It is a disaster for
workers and Island communities. It is
what happens when a foreign
transnational corporation puts maximum,
short term profit first, and the public

6 e Pacific Tribune, November 6, 1989

interest and workers’ interests comes
second, or not at all. TFL 46 shows what
is wrong in general with foréstry in B.C.

To understand the disaster in TFL 46,
you have to appreciate what a tree farm
license is to begin with. It is a huge area of
publicly owned forest which is granted to
forest companies for a renewable period
of 25 years. The province approves an
annual allowable cut (AAC), charges a
very modest stumpage fee, sets some very
minimal standards for reforestation and
after that the company manages that land
as if it owned it.

It can even sell the license. And two
years ago TFL 46 was sold to Fletcher
Challenge, a New Zealand based
transnational corporation which overnight

has become a dominant force in the forest -

industry.

When Fletcher Challenge bought out
B.C. Forest Products, there was a public
assurance given to the provincial
government that B.C. forest jobs would be
maintained. Barely a year later, Fletcher
Challenge announced 425 layoffs, citing
log shortages and overcut of the AAC by
B.C. Forest Products.

We now know that in four of the five
years between 1983 and 1988 there was
significant overcut in TFL 46. In 1987, the
overcut was close to 30 per cent.

Of course this overcut is not simply the
result of corporate irresponsibility.
Beginning i in 1983, the provincial forest
service has been decimated, with a 50 per
cent reduction in those public sector jobs.
Government monitoring and auditing has
all but ended. We have the forest industry
fox in charge of counting the chickens.

As a result of this government
complicity with corporate irresponsibility,
we have no reliable inventory of old
growth timber, or harvestable second
growth.

IWA members and local communities
were fed lies. In 1985 when our union met
with the industry and the forest service to
discuss the terms of a five year
Management Working Plan for TFL 46
we were told that there was 53 years of
economically accessible old growth stands
at the current AAC. We were told that
timber supply and manufacturing output

LYN KISTNER

were in balance and that carrying out the
plan would maintain stable employment
in TFL 46.

Well, tell that now to the 425 [WA
members and their families who have
been sent down the road by Fletcher
Challenge!

. Tell them now that neither B.C. Forest
Products or Fletcher Challenge operated
TFL 46 on a sustained yield basis. You
overcut, and you concentrated the AAC
for the entire TFL in the most economical

Long term stable jobs in this
industry, as well as forests for
all people and all uses,
requires a new and
democratic forest policy in
B.C. that will re-order the
power structure and assert
the public interest over the

_ private interest of

transnational corporations.

blocks. When those blocks are stripped

bare, there is suddenly a timber supply
crisis.

Tell them also that when big
corporations merge and rationalize, that
workers lose jobs.

One of the first things Fletcher
Challenge did when it took over B.C.
Forest Products was to cancel the 16,800
hectare intensive silviculture program of
bush control, spacing and pruning that
operated in 1987.

We made so much noise over the ©
layoffs this year that Fletcher Challenge
reluctantly agreed to spend one million
dollars in TFL 46 this year. That program
is now coming to an end and there is at
this time nothing in place for next year.

Between overcut and the abandonment
of silviculture, is it any wonder that
coastal mills now have an estimated 30
per cent production overcapacity in
relation to timber supply.

This means high unemployment and a

dead end future for communities like
Youbou, Lake Cowichan and Duncan, to
name a few where my members are
concentrated.

I could tell you a lot more about what’s
wrong with TFL 46. I could tell you
about the absolutely unacceptable waste
in the past. I should also say that as a
result of the political action taken by IWA
members, there is less waste today.

I could tell you about the grapple
yarding practices which leave huge gouges
in the earth and contribute to soil erosion,
and also contributes to waste.

I could tell you about the unnecessary
road building which is now accounting for
six per cent of the.land base in TFL 46.

I could tell you about the clear cuts,
which are far too large and unacceptable
to you, and to the public of this province.

But make no mistake: unless we make
qualitative changes in this industry, and
soon, the demand for logs to meet
manufacturing capacity taken together
with the decline in the quality and average
log size as the old growth forest is used up
will mean that the total area of forest land
clear cut each year will grow and grow.

That means there is an even bigger
disaster in our forest industry waiting to
happen. We have here a fine local
example of Dr. David Suzuki’s forecast of
environmental and economic havoc, if we
don’t act decisively in the next 10 years.
Suzuki is right. For forest industry
workers, it is a matter of survival.

The best estimate is that we have now
cut 80 per cent of the old growth forest in
B.C. Although the companies claim that
there is up to 50 years of old growth cut
left, the more sober estimates are 15 to 20
years. In 1987, Peter Pearse, estimated
that there was 17 years of old growth
forest left.

The provincial AAC is supposed to be
70 million cubic metres. But last year
there was 90 million cubic metres cut, and
there is a manufacturing capacity in B.C.
to use 100 million cubic metres. And
that’s before the new pulp mill and
sawmill capacity presently planned.

To satisfy that demand, as we know,
the Socreds have now passed Bill 28
which allows the Minister of Forests the
right to roll over Forest Licenses into Tree
Farm Licenses to put up to 69 per cent of
the total AAC under the control of tne
big companies who own TFLs for 25 year
periods. That can only mean more
overcut, more waste, more clear cut, in
short, disaster.

Pearse also estimated that there will be
a 20 year gap before second growth can
fill the manufacturing gap left by the end
of the old growth forests. Ocean Falls will
only be the first of a lot of ghost towns in
this province and there will be a number
of near ghost towns not very far from
Nanaimo.

The end of old growth has another
important relationship to jobs. The
plantation trees that replace the old
growth are managed on a short rotation
and are simply a poorer quality log. Many
of the value added wood manufactured
products that we could introduce into our
communities need the higher quality log
that only an old growth log can provide.

To be honest, we don’t know how
plantation forests will work over the long
haul. A plantation forest is not the same
as an old growth forest with its complex
eco system. I’m not a biologist, but I
know the inside of a forest, and I know
that a forest is not made up of a single
species. And that’s another important
reason to stop the total decimation of the
old growth forests.

But what can we do over the next 10
years for the survival of the old growth
forest and for the survival of forest
industry communities?

We can’t afford illusions that we can ,
turn the situation around just by a process ©
to solve land use conflicts, or by bringing
back the forest service, or by stopping Bill
28, or even with a new government that
won’t turn a blind eye to corporate