A recent rally in Victoria, the biggest since the heady days of the Clayoquot Sound protests of 1993, brought attention to the problems in British Columbia’s struggling forestry sector, not the least of which is the loss of jobs—18,000 in the past year alone.
With the depletion of old-growth forests, crashing lumber prices and decreased demand for Canadian lumber south of the border, logging companies have been closing mills across the province. Forest industry deregulation allows logging companies to close sawmills but retain cutting rights.
The Western Canada Wilderness Committee, which organized the rally, is calling on the government to make a number of changes to B.C.’s logging industry, including ending old-growth logging on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland in regions where old-growth forests are most scarce.
For the rest of the old-growth forests, the environmental organization wants the government to phase-out old-growth logging by 2015.
“This will give time for the retooling of sawmills to handle the smaller second-growth logs. Already, 75 per cent of the productive forests on the south coast are second-growth, including on 90 per cent of the richest growing sites,” says Ken Wu, WCWC’s campaign director.
To offset job loss and ensure a steady supply for the province’s pulp and saw mills, WCWC is calling for an immediate ban on the export of raw, unprocessed logs.
The committee wants the government to mandate sustainable logging for second-growth forests and to play a greater role in the restructuring and development of second-growth mills and value-added wood processing facilities.
However, B.C. Forestry Minister Pat Bell says previous agreements reached by several different groups rule out the possibility of any bans.
“Vancouver Island went through an extensive land use planning process involving environmental groups, industry, First Nations and local government in the 1990s, and that process needs to be respected. Of the 1.9 million hectares of Crown forest on Vancouver Island, 900,000 hectares are considered old-growth,” Bell says.
Bell maintains raw logs are only exported if there is no buyer in BC. And the export of raw logs in itself creates job opportunities.
“If landowners were not able to export some of their logs and get better prices, then many stands of timber would not be economical to log. More than 9,000 workers depend on B.C.’s private forestlands for their livelihoods.”
Bob Simpson, the NDP Forestry Critic, says an immediate ban on the export of raw logs may not be the best course of action. However, he is in favour of a gradual reduction.
“Some of the people of the industry are only working because we’re exporting logs. There needs to be a phased in incremental tax on log exports. We give a three year market signal that we are going to end unfettered log exports and we are going to demand people invest in manufacturing.”
Simpson was cautiously supportive of ending old-growth logging, saying people need to start thinking about old-growth forests differently.
“I think where the science indicates that we’ve overrun the old growth then yes you’ve got to phase it out. We need to look at old growth forests as biodiversity reserves and see them as carbon sinks - we need to reevaluate our entire approach to these areas.”
He believes the time has come for a shift in the industry as a whole, with a greater emphasis on using wood pulp or waste as “bio-mass,” or the raw material for products such as ethanol, pharmaceuticals or plastics made from organic materials instead of synthetic ones.
“We need to rethink and re-engineer the whole industry and derive a wide range of economic benefit while still maintaining the ecological benefit. We can get the best of both worlds.”
According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, the Canadian forest industry lost a total of $1.2 billion in the first six months of 2008, including $700 million by companies in eastern Canada and $500 million in the west, mainly in B.C.
With a depressed U.S. Housing market ─ annual housing starts are down 50 per cent – the situation is not expected to improve any time soon.
