PON

March 20, 1989 50S

Vol. 52, No. 10

DAN KEETON

TRIBUNE PHOTO

&

GEORGE HEWISON

— page 5 —

Flanked by Alberni IWA-Canada Local 1-85 president Earl Foxcroft, Local 1-363 president Sy Pederson urges rally in Parksville Friday to continue the fight for a new system of forest tenure that would end layoffs and wood wastage. Trade unionists, environmentalists, church people, Native representatives and forest company spokespersons presented more than 100 briefs to the forest ministry’s information sessions in Parksville, the final hearing in a series of eight. Rally story,

page 12.

initiatives on the environment

— pages 6, 7 —

By DAN KEETON

PARKSVILLE — The message couldn’t have been clearer. :

British Columbians do not want the province to hand over yet greater amounts of Crown forest land to the multinational forest giants. They do want that land under democratic control, preferably by local communities.

And they want a royal commission into the entire question of how the harvesting of the forest resource is carried out.

That was the message Forests Minister Dave Parker received from the vast major- ity of the more than 100 submissions given to the ministry’s final set of public infor-

mation sessions into the “rolling over” of _

forest licences into tree farm licences,

_ March 10 and II. The public information sessions are not hearings, Parker repeatedly reminded the _ participants, and the government is not

amendments to the Forest Act passed dur- ing the last sitting of the legislature.

Nonetheless, participants representing environmental groups, Native bands, trade unions, religions, small forestry businesses and themselves travelled from all over Vancouver Island to speak their minds against the wasteful logging practi- ces that have seen the huge forest compan- ies devastate B.C.’s once abundant tracts of first-growth timber.

If their collective objections could be summed into’a couple of sentences, it would be: large forest companies have, with the collusion or apathy of the B.C. Forest Service, logged off most of the best

_ timber in the province in the most wasteful

manner. Lack of a manufacturing base in B.C. means often the choicest logs are exported unprocessed, or mashed into pulp. Meanwhile, the last few stands of vir- gin timber, many of them on land claimed by Native nations, are threatened with

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON ~

Retired woodworker Ernie tt of Victoria presents position of the Communist

bound to follow any of the recommenda- _ annihilation by those same companies. © tions to modify or repeal Bill 28, the see FOREST page 3

sessions.

Party‘s Vancouver Island regional committee to government's forest information