Topic
Pulled off the web after just a few hours, it puts forest 'reserves' on chopping block.
Photo by ericflexyourhead from Your BC: The Tyee Photo Pool.
Scathing report says failure to replant enough trees puts future harvests at risk.
Cariboo North MLA alarmed government may lift 'constraints' in Land Use Plan.
Premier more than doubles actual amount; mill closings nearly equal openings: MLA Macdonald.
Find more labour and industry reporting on The Tyee.
For more than a quarter century, logging companies at the government's blessing have been on a tear through British Columbia's expansive interior forests.
In the name of "salvaging" economic value from forests attacked by mountain pine beetles, beginning with a smaller outbreak centered in the Williams Lake area in the 1980s and followed by the much larger beetle epidemic that erupted a decade ago, millions more trees have been logged than would otherwise have been the case.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the issue has known for years that this spelled trouble. A catastrophic "falldown" in future logging rates loomed because the industry was literally cutting out the ground from beneath its own feet. But the illusion of abundance was sustained as the beetle attacks spread and more timber became available on a one-time basis only to salvage log.
Well the day of reckoning is now very close at hand and the government's response leaves a heck of a lot to be desired.
As revealed by Mark Hume in the Globe and Mail a couple of weeks ago, the government is so loathe to acknowledge the obvious -- that what has gone on cannot be sustained -- that it is seriously considering throwing out the last vestiges of responsible forest management in an attempt to buy a few more years of higher employment in an industry that must, inevitably, make the transition to a future in which fewer trees, not more, are harvested.
So-called "reserves" of forest that would otherwise not have been logged -- biologically rich remnant patches of old-growth trees, important forests for wildlife species, forests in visually stunning valleys or slopes near towns, economically more marginal tracts of trees, forests higher up on mountain slopes -- are now all about to be placed on the chopping block. All in the name of buying a few more years of logging, which will in turn place an even higher burden on future generations.
The biggest proponent of this so-called plan turns out not to be the current forests minister, Steve Thomson, but his cabinet colleague Pat Bell, minister of jobs, tourism and innovation, and MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie.
Bell and John Rustad, who is the MLA for the nearby riding of Nechako Lakes, have both publicly declared that they have found a way to free up more trees for logging -- trees that they say will go a long way to providing a basis for a new sawmill to be built in the community of Burns Lake. If built, a new mill would replace one that burned to the ground in January following an explosion that killed two mill workers and put 250 local residents out of work.
Earlier this month in an interview with Prince George Citizen reporter Mark Nielsen, Bell said he believes that opening forest reserves to logging would yield four million cubic metres of wood per year, which would be enough wood to keep "four fairly large sawmills, each employing about 500 people between people that work in the bush and the people in the mill."
This may sound impressive. But the devil's in the details. And it's the details that Bell and Rustad are not talking much about.
For whose eyes only?
The details are contained in a tightly guarded Ministry of Forests document that took a hard look at the so-called "mid-term timber supply" in four of the most heavily impacted forested areas in the province where pine beetles had attacked and where the provincial government had responded by approving big increases in logging rates.
A few days ago, Bob Simpson, the Independent MLA for Cariboo North, publicly called for the release of the report. And yesterday a confidential draft of it was briefly posted on the web, before it was summarily removed a few hours later.
Simpson, like other MLAs in the interior, is keenly interested in what's in the report that was prepared by officials in the provincial chief forester's office. The forests around Simpson's hometown, Quesnel, are more heavily weighed to lodgepole pine trees -- which the pine beetles have fed on and killed -- than are other tracts of interior forest.
When he saw a copy of the briefly posted document he was flabbergasted, as it seemed to undermine so much of what Bell and Rustad have contended.
In the first page of text, the report notes that "under current lumber market conditions" it is "uneconomical" for most logging companies to make money because of the increasingly longer distances that the companies must travel from their sawmills to find trees to log. The growing scarcity of economically viable wood to run through mills is becoming so acute the same report notes, that within 1.5 years in the case of Quesnel and five years in the case of Prince George local mills will be out of wood.
"All of this begs the question," Simpson says. "Why are we beginning this discussion now when we're looking at just one-and-a-half years of cut? In 2002, the growth curve for the mountain pine beetle went from normal background levels to straight up. At that point, everyone knew that we were going to lose the pine forest. And for 10 years, this government has done nothing. Now, they've put lipstick on a pig. They're putting the forest at risk in order to avoid job losses. That's what it looks like."
Waiting for promised 'dialogue'
In questions in the legislature yesterday, Simpson tried to draw Thomson out on what was in the report prepared by his staff. But on each occasion, it was Bell who answered questions. In response to one on what "options" the government was weighing in terms of relaxing the rules on what could and could not be logged, Bell said:
"There is a lot of work going on. It is in the broader mountain pine beetle region. We are likely a month or two away from having a broader public discussion. I think that dialogue is important, and it is a dialogue that we'll be encouraging as we move into the summer months."
If that dialogue does happen, however, it will be interesting to see the public's reactions to the projections in the report. Because as the draft that briefly circulated on the web yesterday makes clear, even by escalating logging activities in forests that ought to be left alone given their great biological value, Bell and Rustad are not likely to succeed in staving off job losses. There is simply too much sawmilling capacity and too little remaining wood to delay what will likely translate into a number of mill closures in the very near future.
The report, which looked at available logs in the Lakes, Prince George, Quesnel and Williams Lake timber supply areas, offers a sobering look at what lies ahead.
Kill old growth, then jobs gone
The Lakes TSA, is particularly interesting in that regard as it would be the major source of logs for any new sawmill in Burns Lake. The report notes that "it is possible" to increase log supplies in the region by basically throwing all constraints out the window. But it buys few jobs while jeopardizing local moose and caribou populations and essentially finishing off the remaining old-growth forest.
"This increase is projected to maintain 87 more direct, indirect and induced person years of employment in Lakes TSA communities" the report claims. But this does not translate into increased jobs over time. In fact all it does is lessen the severity of future job losses and not by very much. As the same report notes relaxing the constraints simply means "potentially limiting the (jobs) decline from 1,572 pre-epidemic total jobs to 521 total jobs instead of 434."
For 10 years of delayed economic pain, the same report notes, the region then must resign itself to 50 years -- half a century -- of logging rates at one quarter of the artificially propped up rates that Bell and Rustad publicly support.
Whoever in government decided to pull yesterday's briefly posted online report had good reason to believe that the public might find a lot to be concerned about with the proposed logging of forest reserves.
Anthony Britneff, who worked in several senior positions within the provincial Forest Service for nearly 40 years before retiring a couple of years ago, has been actively writing and critiquing forest policies since leaving the public service. He said Tuesday that he was alarmed at the report's projections in large part because the numbers being used to estimate the number of trees that remain are highly suspect.
The Lakes TSA in particular, Britneff said, has some of the poorest, most out-of-date inventory data of any forested region in the province. In fact, the last robust inventory or counting of trees in the TSA took place before the pine beetle attack not after.
"As the Forest Practice Board and the auditor general for British Columbia have already pointed out, one has to question the reliability of the information the government is using to mitigate timber supply falldown and to assess the viability of a new Babine Forest Products mill at Burns Lake," Britneff said after reading the briefly posted timber supply report.
If there's a silver lining, he says, it's that mayors and local town councillors are skeptical of what they are hearing from the provincial government.
"Fortunately for forest-dependent communities, some local mayors and councillors are beginning to wake up to why the government in Victoria is preferring not to engage local communities and citizens in discussions about changes to their land-use plans," he said. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
35
Login or register to post comments
Steve Hetherington
1 year ago
trees gone
I have said in an earlier post that what makes this government so dangerous is that they know they are toast and all they now care about is lining the pockets of corporate friends and in turn their own.
When the trees are gone,the wildlife is gone.when the trees are gone,streams and rivers are gone and in turn our fish species.
Trying to "protect jobs" my ass.If you were concerned about jobs stop giving away raw logs!
Dear British Columbians----we cannot wait for the next election----too much damage will be done.
What on earth will we say to our children and grandchildren.How do we stop this evil and greed of the 1%
Every damn idea this farce of a government employes is a travisty.
We better wake up B.C. (canada) before it's too late.
The next rant after smart meters will "save us money" is "trees are bad for us"so lets get rid of them quickly
What will you tell your son Christy?
seth
1 year ago
How come
You can economically ship raw logs to the US and Asia but
" "uneconomical" for most logging companies to make money because of the increasingly longer distances that the companies must travel from their sawmills to find trees to log. "
Just askin'
MJK
1 year ago
This isn't just a failure of
This isn't just a failure of policy by the BC Liberals. Remember the much vaunted Forest Renewal BC? More than 15 years ago, that now-defunct agency was put in place to deal with the pine beetle emergency. But, as with all such crises, short-term solutions are laid with only an eye on the next election. Oh, that our leaders, then and now, would be able to present the loooong view to the electorate.
wiley
1 year ago
Eviction notice
This govt. is like bad tenants who will burn all the furniture just to keep the house warm for another day.
irth1st
1 year ago
This too shall come to pass
How much volume was harvested under the rush of MPB salvage logging? How much healthy spruce was pulled out, where the stumpage paid reflected salvage rates of pli?
Logging "parks" this too shall come to pass
COFI is so in bed with this policy....no different than the liquidation of the souther eastern USA hardwood forests during the last century.
Fall down effect, this was a principal concept taught in our forestry classes two decades ago.
Stop letting COFI cry wolf and let's push for the repatriation of what remains of our forest resource.
Maybe the current government is glad now they can find reason in pushing for exponential growth in mineral extraction.
How timely for Taseko Mines
Fiat lux
1 year ago
The main problem, not only in
The main problem, not only in the forests, but all over, especially in resource rich areas and countries, is gross overcapitalization that drives costs up, lowers employment, destroys the environment etc. to keep the investors happy with imaginary monetary profits.
Not too long ago BC had hundreds of privately owned mills and at least twice the workers employed in the industry on a frcation of the present logging rates.
Automation has cut the jobs, increased the demands on the resource and there are now only a half dozen corporations extorting the highest profits to keep the stockmarkets happy, demanding 500 loads of logs per worker per year to remain "efficient", which is known in physics as "inefficient", but doesn't count.
I'm buying my lumber from my friend next door, who has woodlots and a couple of small mills for a one person operation and is doing very well on a few loads per year.
This has been and could again be done all over BC, but in the warped minds of politicians and so called "economists" this is not "efficient" as it doesn't make some "investors" and our "trading partners" happy.
Ed Deak.
Loke
1 year ago
Missing a major point
Logging companies and mills are not worried about the number of trees being currently cut.
The issue, for quite awhile, is that a huge number of the trees that are cut are labelled surplus and shipped to Asia. BC mills are having more and more restricted access to material.
If you cut more trees and ship them out of the country this will not keep the mills open. If you reduce the number of trees shipped out then there is enough to keep the mills open and busy.
Terrys_Hot
1 year ago
GENERAL STRIKE
What we need is a 3 Day GENERAL STRIKE too bring these IDIOTS in Victoria too their knees. If they keep this up there will be no
BEAUTIFUL BRITISH COLUMBIA there will be nothing but baren land with nothing on it. Krusty Clarke will have raped and piliged our province in the name of corporations.
irth1st
1 year ago
GENERAL STRIKE
GENERAL STRIKE AND DEMAND ELECTION NOW!!!!!
Perry
1 year ago
disappearing documents
This is a bit off topic, but I'm interested in the report that appeared briefly online and then disappeared.
I've encountered this problem many times, where important documents, reports or articles disappear and are difficult or impossible to find again. I now have a habit of immediately copying to my hard drive or emailing to myself the entire content of such documents that I may need to reference later.
For example, if it is a news article that I fear will disappear (Tyee articles don't), I copy it in full and email it to myself. Once a week I download all emails to my hard drive. If it is a report like the one referred to in this article I download a copy to my hard drive.
Sometimes it is just link rot (dead links) that is the problem, but the open internet is slowly closing due to gated communities, pay walls, censorship, etc. I no longer trust that information freely available today will be so tomorrow.
northern001
1 year ago
IMO, of course this is in the
IMO, of course this is in the play book. Cripple the forest industry, so that it isn't viable anymore. The roads are already there for the mining industry to utilize. Politicians will save the day by promising bucket loads of jobs in mining. Communities will open up BC to be ravaged and polluted, because, well, what choice do they have, it'll be the only game in town. What with the Cons slashing environmental regulations, BC is being fast-tracked to being gutted.
Talon
1 year ago
General Strike YES!
Before Premier Clarke and her band of terrorists turn BC into the northern Galapagos for the 1%, let us get out and have a good old fashioned general strike for a few days. It has worked before and can work for us now. Don't let corporate monopolies ruin our province as they are so successfully doing in Alberta. Cheers!
rantnic
1 year ago
Heh Heh Heh
Information freely available today will be so tomorrow? Not if it hurts the government or the profits of the government handlers.
The pines of British Columbia will soon go the way of the "Cedars of Lebanon". Thank you Christy.
Here's to what used to be "BEAUTIFUL BRITISH COLUMBIA".
psosp
1 year ago
forests
I am tired of seeing our land and resources being pillaged for the good of the few, and the spoils sent overseas, leaving our citizens under or unemployed. I personally know many professionals (engineers, medical researchers, scientists) as well as tradespeople who cannot find work in these times. We have a gov't that tells us they need to increase immigration to bring in skilled workers to do the jobs that either we Canadians won't do, or there aren't enough of us to do the jobs. This is the biggest lie of the century and is only overshadowed by "I'm from the government - trust me, I'm here to help." What a crock! How about retraining our own citizens or hiring the ones that have the skills and need the work? Why aren't Canadians suitable? Because the immigrants will work for much, much less. More profits for "the pockets". Let China rape its own resources for a change. Because when we send our lumber over there, guess what we can buy when they are finished with OUR materials? Sorry the link is so long...
http://www.made-in-china.com/productdirectory.do?subaction=hunt&style=b&mode=and&code=0&comProvince=nolimit&order=0&isOpenCorrection=1&word=house&by=%2Fproductdirectory.do
And I was wondering why the current houses being built looked so cheap and crappy, and all the same. I expect the kits to be blister packed some day soon...
Meanwhile, the mindless masses are being kept in a soma-state by watching grossly overpaid, testosterone - fuelled neanderthals duke it out on ice and call it "entertainment". If only the energy that a hockey game generates in the population could be channeled into something of any importance, maybe a difference could be made! Meanwhile, the genernal reaction to everything (except hockey!) seems to be "Oh well, what can we do about it...?" Pathetic.
jimmmmy
1 year ago
Perry
Tyee is gun shy after being sued and threatened with more suits, also its in the business of generating a little revenue as wellas shaping discourse, not rabble rousing that threatens the staus quo
Habos
1 year ago
Where's Snookie?
She seems to be as rare as reserves of fiber in this province.
No doubt she and her posse will be subject to the same "falldown" effect that our forests are currently experiencing as a result of this government's unsustainable forest practice policies.
Hear that sound? It's B.C. voters sharpening and firing up their Stihls.
jimmmmy
1 year ago
Misunderstanding
The author of this good article is being naive . His facts are informative , but his premise is wrong. Reminds me of OWS crowd who believe they are dealing with "fat cats" who can be negotiated with. These corps. are Bengal Tigers and don't do negotiation. Its always about profit. Jobs are used as cover or spin. The promise of jobs should be gotten in writing, with potential heavy penalties if they don't materalize.
irth1st
1 year ago
Leg this week
The forest statutes amendment act tabled in the BC leg this week is a feeble attempt to address the AG damning report, FPB concerns and recent concerns raised by the RPForesters Association. It is basically enabling legislation with very little specific detail to address the crisis present on the land base in BC, particularly in the hard hit areas of the MPB epidemic.
Of course this particular piece of legislation is more focused on the resource roads, of which the devil is in the details. Essentially industry lawyers are the ones setting policy and writing this legislation in Victoria, it is not the addle brained bufoons by the likes of Harry Bloy, to be sure.
The FSR's will simply transfer to the metal extractors with very little oversight or input from rural citizens.
Sure looking forward to the results of the by-elections tomorrow. Is there ANY hope for an election sooner rather than later?
metacomet
1 year ago
Don't Fear The Reaper
The beetle-kill is a red herring, this time used as an excuse to fatten BC Liberal insider friends before this corrupt government is chased from office. So let's quickly dispose of the pesky little bug:
The two reasons why there was so much lodgepole
for the mountain pine beetle to live on are that we
put out fires and that nobody wanted this low-end
tree species anyway.
The beetle outbreak started about twenty-five years ago. About seven years into it, everybody realized it would get way worse if we didn't get cold winters (to kill the beetles.) About ten years into it, everybody realized we're not going to get those cold winters (because of global warming) and the remainder of BC's lodgepole pine was doomed. Only about 5% of killed pine could be salvaged before it rotted down to worthless. The reason we didn't salvage more? Nobody wanted lodgepole pine.
Every school-boy knows harvesting levels from old-growth cannot be sustained over successive rotations because, to put it simply, we harvest managed forests when they're several decades old, not several centuries old like many old-growth stands. This is called the "fall down effect" which is taken into account when calculating future harvest levels so's to smooth out the transition from virgin to managed forests. Other loss factors are also taken into account: wildfire, alienation to other uses (eg. farming or real estate) and disease. Losses due to pine beetle, although greater than projected at the outset, have not been totally unexpected for many years and have been taken into account in Allowable Annual Cut calculation for some time now. The idea that there is a recent, sudden, emergency timber shortfall for BC sawmills is bullshit. If it was a real emergency, we wouldn't be exporting raw logs as fast as possible.
Protected forest areas were not intended to be reserve logging areas. They are living ecological archives of old growth and can't be replaced over a few decades like managed, utilitarian forests.
This government stands accused of breach of public trust for attempting to pillage the public weal in the shrinking window of opportunity left to them before their date with the political executioner. Is there nothing to be done before the rotters make off with the loot?
The solution lies in the fact that time is running out for this government, details of conspiracy are becoming more difficult to effect and cooperative obedience from bureaucracy is diminishing as opportunity for punitive retaliation ebbs away. Court injunctions may be effective but the usual dishonour among thieves is more likely to cause the ranks of mutual complicity to break and be routed on the run.
It's already started. We just gotta stay on the trail.
Fiat lux
1 year ago
The politicians are getting
The politicians are getting their licence for enslavement and destruction from economic theories taught in our universities and given to them by so called "prestigious conservative economic think tanks" .
There's no hope for any change for the better as long as these priesthoods are permitted to thump their scriptures licencing irresponsibility in the name of the Almighty Money God to please the stockmarkets.
All the destruction, the replacement of workers, the depopulation of the rural areas are done with the excuse of the GDP and growth.
What we need is a correct and logical accounting system based on physical realities, and not on ideological claptrap, with debit columns overriding the fraud of the GDP and "wealth creation" by sending our resources and jobs to Asia and calling it "cost cutting".
I have seen some stupid and irresponsible ideological systems in my time, but never could imagine this kind of fraud overruling logic in Canada.
Of course we now can "text" and push pictures around with our fingers, which excuses all.
Ed Deak.
wiley
1 year ago
That Timber Supply report
is now available at Bob Simpson's website:
http://www.bobsimpsonmla.ca/governments-unpublished-mid-term-timber-supply-report-available-here/
Aurora
1 year ago
Perry
Wondering if you are referring to recent Auditor General's report on Ministry of Forests?
http://wsca.smartt.com/Media/Multimedia/OAGBC_FLNRO-Management-Timber.pdf
Otherwise, this announcement by BC Libs on lateset assault of forests now is an outrage. (Spotted it in wknd dailies here in Van.) What a week, coming at us from all fronts - as if the massive federal assault on our environmental regulatory process wasn't bad enough. And, while huge oil pipeline applications are distracting us, the province chooses this moment to slip this little news under the radar. I echo others above - obviously a last-year sell-out act of a desperate gov't keen to pay-out its forest industry buddies. This must be stopped, obviously. Government has zero authority to do this without consultation. Further, it flies in the face of the AD's Report who soundly lambasted Liberal Gov't for decimating BC's forest ministry - resources and staff - over past decade and for not having a clue where it stands in its timber inventory.
While we await new administration in BC, it's imperative stock-taking is conducted and an actual PLAN for the coming decade is implemented for BC's forests - and NOT a wholesale FIRE SALE of its last good, PROTECTED forests.
marcerickson
1 year ago
Buying a few more years of logging?
Mark Hume's Globe and Mail story referenced above says three to six months more logging if the plan is carried out:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/mark-hume/politics-trumps-reason-as-bc-eyes-bid-to-raid-protected-forests/article2388741/
lynn
1 year ago
How the Suits Log from Their Desks
Despite their good work on this, I think the reporting by both Ben Parfitt, and Mark Hume on this issue is operating under the wrong assumption. As jimmmmy above writes: the promise of jobs is about "cover and spin."
There is no real concern by the present government over the loss of jobs in the forest industry. Far from it. This is really just about greedily stripping the last planks from a sinking ship....a sinking ship that the BC Liberals have already intentionally drilled the holes in for the corporate fun and profit of their special friends
It's not just about the (pine beetle) forests in the interior either.
This targeted recklessness is occurring province wide.
We live in a remote area on the BC Coast and in recent years we have observed hillsides stripped that were never even under consideration previously. Logging trucks ply the winding roads we live on daily. Our friends on Vancouver Island tell us the same is true there.
Also a clever game went on about six or seven years back - the clearing of large stands of Douglas fir from the sides of the major highway - under the premise of widening the road. The widening never happened...though the promise is being whispered once again - with a sort of, haphazard, higgedly-piggedly approach to widening the road. Nothing that gives any impression of serious intention. We would rather have kept the narrower road and the grand magnificent trees that lined it. Now imagine 'the opportunity' that was presented if that highway logging was offered up province-wide? That's miles and miles of big trees...with such convenient, easy access for logging trucks. A joint Ministry of Highways...and Ministry of Forests collaborative effort? I would be interested if anyone has witnessed elsewhere in BC this same kind of sides-of-the-highway logging plunder occurring under the promise of so-called highway improvement.... that then never happened....or was minimal at best?
As always the BC Liberals agenda under their varied "partnerships"...is about facilitating access to the previously inaccessible/the protected. Facilitating easy access with as few questions asked as possible. Think access to FN lands. Think access to BC Rail lands. Think access to the Agricultural Land Reserve. Think access to Hospital Lands like St Mary's. Think access to school district lands when funding cuts require schools to sell their educational 'real estate'. Think access to our rivers and their surrounding land under run-of-river. Think access to Crown land.....and our precious forests. Think....
Forest_Lover
1 year ago
Reality check = state of Canadian Hockey Playing
Did I just wake up in another world or did Christy Clark repond to questions about this issue by pouting her lips and talking about the dead people who unfortunately passed away in the Burns Lake Mill fire? Yes she did.
She pulled the oldest dirty trick in the book to lie to the children whom will be saddled with the folly of 11 years of mismanagement. All in the name of giving in to what ever was asked while never actually doing anything at the same time except the stopping of continuing to do 'the right thing".
WE unfortunately are saddled with such a large efficient political machine, that except for extreme activities, we have no alternatives but to be bullied like a hockey layer hit from behind. Hidding behind words is what Christie does best.
metacomet
1 year ago
Think
Lynn, think about the Esquimalt/Nanaimo Railway Grant, the east coast of Vancouver Island awarded to CPR in return for the fifteen miles of level track (from Port Moody to Granville) they built as an "extra" to their trans-Canada railway construction contract with the federal Conservatives, one of BC's most important terms of confederation back in the 1870s.
(The story of corruption surrounding the trans-continental railway system is a fascinating one in and of itself.)
This incredible source of wealth, an astoundingly generous gift, remains some of the most valuable real estate in BC today; a century and a half ago its virgin forests of giant Douglas firs, shoals of fish and easily accessed coal were riches that would boggle the mind. The only stipulations were that CPR had to sell off the land and build a railway, the E&N, which was to run between Victoria and Courtenay "in perpetuity."
The CPR did exceedingly well by this deal. It didn't have to treat with First Nations and, when most of the land had been parcelled out to big forest and coal companies, after coal-fired steam power had become obsolete and the big firs had long since been logged, it managed to fob the railway obligation off onto public-owned VIA while keeping a disparate network of smaller forested properties for itself.
Today the E&N Grant Land, because of its jurisdictional pedigree (Hudson Bay Charter, part of one Crown Colony eventually included with another, then Canadian province), alienation from the Crown prior to 1918, encumbered by so-called Douglas Indian Treaties, peculiar dispensations, isolated reversions to the Crown, federal leases (military), sovereign water licences, special leases and foreshore rights, etc., make it the most unusual and complicated set of private land titles in the province.
One type of land status in the E&N in which the BC Liberals take a characteristic interest is the Managed Forest Unit (MFU), private forest land which pays a heavily discounted land tax if it's kept as productive forest land. But what if an owner of such an MFU wanted to convert that usage to something non-forest, say a hotel or some condos? Rich Coleman, BC Liberal Minister of Midnight, has the answer.
metacomet
1 year ago
Think
There are still lots of things the BC Liberals can do for their buddies before they get the boot in the next election. Forest companies have their wish lists. As we've recently learned, the government is contemplating logging in forest preserves to offset, they say, losses from the mountain pine beetle. The most suspect notion is the recommendation that a decision be made no later than the end of 2012 because any later would "conflict" with the fixed-election date. The document that was supposedly leaked, then suddenly taken down, suggests the government has a fix in for their forest company buddies to harvest protected forests and intended to conceal the decision until it's "too late to undo it."
Rich Coleman favoured a forest company friend by fiat a few years ago when he allowed WFP to remove several thousand acres of their private land from a tax sheltered MFU on southwest Van Isle without paying back the discounted tax that is intended to compensate MFU owners for keeping the land exclusively productive forest use. The Regional District local government was taken unawares by hundreds of real estate subdivision applications, infrastructure, taxes and services for which had never crossed the planner's desk. When the RD passed bylaws to effect minimum lot sizes, cabinet overruled them. Locals were outraged and not just about the discounted tax that wasn't paid back, either. Next day Coleman was shuffled out of the forest ministry and would not thenceforth answer questions about the unpaid discounted tax or the planning bombshell he'd lobbed at the local government. The new minister Pat Bell also refused to answer questions about his predecessor's fiat for friends policy.
This was a very good deal for WFP. But isn't what's good for the goose good for the gander, too?
the real ODB
1 year ago
seth
Good question. Sounds like the fix is in.
metacomet
1 year ago
Think
When Rich Coleman arranged for WFP to remove their private lands from the land-tax-sheltered MFU on Vancouver Island, a lot of people got pissed off but not all for the same reason. The local Regional District government that had to deal with the surprise rezoning applications with no warning or plans for infrastructure, mil rates or services was mad enough to try to ameliorate it by passing bylaws to effect minimum lot sizes; they darn sure were madder when cabinet shit-canned their bylaws. Taxpayers in the rural communities nearby were also angry at the sudden announcement that they'd soon have hundreds of new neighbours without having been consulted in any way. But there was also anger because of envy.
TimberWest, another logging company with private property in an MFU land-tax shelter was jealous of their WFP competition. It wanted to be treated fairly...well, at least treated the same as WFP. So when debate about a regional hospital was raging (it was to replace hospitals in both Campbell River and Comox and was widely protested,) it made an apparently unsolicited offer to donate about a hundred acres of its private land for the hospital site, the condition being that an adjacent, larger property of theirs could be removed from the MFU without, you guessed it, repaying the discounted land tax.
Funny thing was that the government, after so adamantly and for so long insisted the hospital was a done deal, suddenly and unexpectedly shit-canned the whole thing. Perhaps too much light was being shone onto it, refreshing questions about Coleman's WFP gifting. Perhaps TimberWest jumped the gun or was talking out of school to press the government for parity with WFP. But we are reminded once again that their are lineups waiting for BC Liberal favours before the day of electoral doom and we're probably not supposed to know about it until it's too late to undo.
metacomet
1 year ago
One More Thing
The proposed Raven Coal Mine near Buckley Bay is a curious thing; a persistent and well prepared company is duking it out with a persistent and well prepared opposition of locals. Funny thing is that as the discovery process unfolds, the amount and quality of coal, the two pros out of a long list of cons, has turned out to be a lot less and of much lower grade than originally claimed in the preliminary application (it was claimed to have been a whole bunch of high quality metallurgical coal but turned out to be a little bit of highly polluting thermal coal.)
This mining property was originally proposed as a coal bed methane project which was rejected because the prospector wanted to dump a half million litres of attendant coal-water into the nearby fish creek...aptly named Coal Creek. The new proposal is for an underground coal mine. The coal is to be trucked to Port Alberni and loaded on ships. There are opponents at every step of the way.
It has always seemed curious to me why they're going to so much trouble over this not-very-rich mine and I've always suspected it has something to do with it being within the strange and complex E&N Land Grant and has probably been enjoying the forest land tax discount for many years. Perhaps some kind of precedent is being created that would allow owners of such lands to convert it to a non-forest use without having to pay back the discounted tax
Forest_Lover
1 year ago
Whats wrong with this picture.
So its 2012, you can't trust a single thing a politician says, curruption is rampant in government, banks and almost everywhere you look. What did the liberals do? They brought in a model of de-regulation called professional reliance. No more red tape, paper work or reg's. We will just trust forest workers to always do the right thing or we will come down on you hard.
Bill 26 was discussed in the leg this week. A bill to put supposed teeth into stumpage determination so no abuse can take place. This didn't work when the liberals brought it in years ago and we certainly can't trust people anymore now than we could 7 years ago. The people of BC were sold a model of deregulation in forestry that has failed in every area that it was used. This only served one group of people. Business.
Okanagan Orchardist
1 year ago
Metacomet's reminders...
are the kind of history that we continously need to remind us of what Coleman, more than just about any other BC Liberal, in my opinion, has done and continues to do, to feather his own nest and those of his pals. It really doesn't seem to matter what portfolio he is given. He must have gotten contributions from every major industry or business in BC. What he did on Vancouver Island was criminal. What he is planning with the LCB is just as bad.
I would like to bring up a situation that is out of context, but you might want to be warned about this -- and I haven't seen anything in the TYEE about it -- and that is the giveaway of the ALR jurisdiction of agricultural land control in the Peace, which, I think, could be the start of a whole new kettle of bad Liberal decisions just before their expulsion. Check out the following websites:
http://www.peacesunfm.com/News/Story.aspx?ID=1686530
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/sour-water-replaces-fresh-in-peace-river-shale-gas-extraction/article2235068/
Any comments?
jimmmmy
1 year ago
Coleman
Rich Coleman continues to underscore the real danger of letting former policemen into the legislative process. Canada has hundreds of these fellows in elected or appointed positions most of them dislike democracy because of their experiences with the dregs of society in the police services.To my mind this makes them unsuitable to hold office They hate compromise and regard the citizenry as perps generally.
lynn
1 year ago
metacomet
Outstanding posts... a wealth of information....the best kind of wealth the public can have as a defence against the increasing duplicity that surrounds us. The wide scope of the trickery continues to amaze and disturb....what isn't viewed as potential real estate?
In our town, we have Island Timberlands/Brookfield Assets knocking for the umpteenth time. They have been very busy in recent years. Some of the rarest forest floor vegetation is about to be decimated along with great stands of old growth forest.
Interesting link on the ALR in the Peace, Okanagan Orchardist. Those twits must think that food grows in restaurants....or maybe they don't think at all....
NoMoreLiars
1 year ago
Thank you all for your excellent contributions
I find out more from reading the comments than from the articles. The systemic selling out of our Province is well documented by metacomet.
The links to the document on Bob Simpson's website worked for me. There is no defense for the mismanagement of our forests.
It is clear that the current government has acted against the best interests of the people and deserves to be turfed out.
The sooner the better - for everybody.