B.C.’s industry as presently constituted needs to fail completely, as must the weak legislative framework that allows it to clear-cut most of the province’s primary and old-growth forests to the detriment of biodiversity, soil, air and water.
A commentary by a Victoria resident who worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years, holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
In two decades, employment in British Columbia’s forest industry has fallen by more than 40,000 direct jobs, and the industry today contributes only two per cent to B.C.’s gross domestic product while employing only two per cent of the province’s workers.
Given this, why all the hullabaloo about the loss of 300 Canfor jobs in Prince George? And why another knee-jerk government response in the form of a new subsidy, amounting to $90 million?
This is the same old pattern repeating itself, a pattern of subsidization following an industry downturn that has contributed to the decline of the very industry that the subsidies ironically purported to support.
A flagrant example of government subsidies that has accelerated the crisis in our forests is a Ponzi scheme known as “crediting,” which awards some of the biggest forest companies in the province with more trees to cut down when they deliver “lower quality” logs to the province’s wood pellet and wood pulp industries.
Examples of other direct subsidies that have accelerated the loss of…
