We all know the story, the pine beetle, mills closing, communities dying, the past decade has seen the forest industry move from the economic engine of the province to an after thought. Today in the House Michael addressed the government’s record on being stewards of our forests as part of addressing the latest policy change by the government.
Below you will find the draft transcript of his speech and as always the official version will be posted when available.
2010 Legislative Session: Second Session, 39th Parliament
HOUSE BLUES
This is a DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY of debate in one sitting of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. This transcript is subject to corrections, and will be replaced by the final, official Hansard report. Use of this transcript, other than in the legislative precinct, is not protected by parliamentary privilege, and public attribution of any of the debate as transcribed here could entail legal liability.
DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY
(HANSARD)
HOUSE BLUES
MONDAY, MAY 17, 2010
Afternoon Sitting
HSE – 20100517 PM 001/HBW/1330
MONDAY, MAY 17, 2010
Second Reading of Bills
BILL 7 — FORESTS AND RANGE STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2010
(continued)
M. Sather: It’s my pleasure to join the second reading debate on Bill 7, Forests and Range Statutes Amendment Act, 2010. I agree with my colleague from the Cowichan Valley that this bill is more of the deregulation agenda that this government has brought in not only to forestry but to the whole of government, and particularly to forestry, since they were first elected back in 2001. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1510]
You know, it’s about removing regulatory requirements for forest management, including scaling changes, redetermining stumpage rates and extending timeline management agreements. All of these kinds of things that are contained in Bill 7 — including the increased new powers of the minister that my colleague referred to — are more of the same medicine that we’ve experienced from this government and, unfortunately, forest workers and the communities they live in have experienced from this government over the years.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
It’s hard to figure out. I’m sure the Minister of Forests is a very intelligent human being and his colleagues are intelligent. [Applause.] Let’s hear it for the minister.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
But you’ve got to wonder about the ability to learn. You know what the ability to learn is, Madam Speaker? It’s like when you’re doing something that isn’t working, you try something different. That’s intelligence. That’s the ability to learn. But this government is on the same…. In fact, they’re recycling the old ideas that they started with in 2001 with a fervour that I haven’t seen in a number of years.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
It shows quite clearly a government that’s run out of ideas, that’s run out of energy and that’s going back to the future. It’s not a good thing at all for the industry, and it’s not good for British Columbians. But they have support. Indeed, they have support for the deregulation and privatization agenda that they’ve embarked on these many years in the forest industry.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
For example, Rick Jeffery from the Coast Forest Products Association says that environmental compliance has shifted from government regulation to customer demand. Now, isn’t that sweet? You don’t need any regulations in government. All you’ve got to do is depend upon the customer. The customer is responsible for ensuring that the health of our forests is cared for, that our forest workers are looked after. All of this is dependent on the customer because the government doesn’t have any responsibility.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The government can be out of the picture. That’s the way they want it, Madam Speaker, and that’s the way they continue to go. So he goes on to say, Mr. Jeffery: “We have to be green. People won’t buy if we’re not green.”
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
So that’s how it works in today’s forestry in British Columbia. You’re depending on the consumer to say, “Hey, I’m not going to buy your 2-by-4s unless those are green 2-by-4s” — not green in the sense of freshly cut but green in the sense of being kind to the environment. But that’s not how it works oftentimes. Usually, I would expect, probably a large measure of the times when a consumer goes to Revy or RONA or wherever they go in their community to buy 2-by- 4s, they have a need for that 2-by-4.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
That’s what’s on their mind. They’re going to build a house. They’re going to build a chicken coop. They may need some fence posts and some rails. I bought some recently myself — you know, supporting the Interior economy up in the Cariboo. That’s what they’re depending upon. By thinking that somehow the consumer drives all of the requirements that we have for forestry…. That’s a pretty outmoded kind of thinking.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
You know, it’s irresponsible. It is. It’s a lack of leadership. I think the government simply has to do better. I know they’re struggling these days. I know they’re having a hard time on a number of fronts, but still, they’re going to be governing this province for at least the next three years — probably only for the next three years. So it’s incumbent upon them to bring in new ideas that will revitalize the forest industry.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
As the Premier is always saying — and, I’m sure, the minister agrees —it needs to be done, but clearly, it’s not being done. The people of British Columbia are looking for that kind of leadership. What we’ve seen…. This is building upon the cuts to the Forest Practices Code. The government brought in the so-called results-based code. My colleague used the phrase, I guess: “The fox guarding the henhouse.” [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1515]
That’s basically what that results-based code amounts to. It’s like: “You go out there, forest companies. Make sure you’re doing a good job. Make sure you’re protecting the land base. Make sure you’re protecting the environment. Let us know how you’re doing, and we’ll give a check mark beside your name, and then you can carry on.”
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The agenda…. Like I say, it’s back to the future with this government. They came in saying: “We’re going to get rid of one-third of all the regulations, the red tape, in this province.” You know, those nasty environmental regulations, those streamside protection regulations that were there to protect the streams out in the forests — the setbacks from streamsides that they thought were a little too lacking in flexibility.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
That’s another buzzword we hear from the other side a lot, that “we want flexibility.” You know what? Those streamside regulations requiring a 30-metre setback or more were just a little bit too onerous, and companies need more flexibility.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
This government has been only too happy, too pleased, to comply with the forest companies that have been demanding that and the developers that are, in my communities, demanding that. What we’re seeing here is that same deregulation agenda, and it’s nonsense. We’re seeing how it doesn’t work not only in this industry. We’re seeing it today in the oil industry with that horrendous spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
We look at how corporations work. What is the primary purpose of a corporation: to make money. Fair enough, and so it should be their purpose, but that doesn’t mean you just leave them alone, let them go home with their barrels of cash. You’ve got to be responsible.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
It’s shown that oftentimes if you don’t have the regulations…. Just look at how BP and other corporations work in other parts of the world. Look at Nigeria. Look at Ecuador. Oil spills all over the place. They don’t have any regulations saying that you have to clean them up. You know, they have a little better regulation in the States, and apparently, we do have better regulations here with regard to oil spills. But you can’t just leave it up to the corporations. You can’t leave it up to the forest companies.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Their job is to make money. Let them do their job, but our job as regulators, as governors, is to govern, to set some of those regulations that I know are a very bad word to members opposite, but it’s how we need to work together. You can’t just let corporations go on unimpeded.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
We’ve heard in the past, and we still hear it today, the promises that this government made back what they were elected first. You know: “We’re going to have a leading-edge forest industry.” But what they sadly and unfortunately forgot to tell British Columbians, particularly forest workers and their communities, is that it was going to be leading in job losses — tens of thousands. It was going to be leading in the shutdown of mills across this province. My colleague has read out a litany of such operations that have shut down, including one in my community of Maple Ridge. That’s what “leading edge” has become.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
In 2003 the government said: “We’re reshaping our forest sector to restore the B.C. advantage to our province’s number one industry.” What is that? What reshaping have they done? What it appears to be is a cozy relationship with the heads of forest companies, whereby they say: “Whatever you want, come and ask us, and we’ll give.” In return, the B.C. Liberals get some pretty nice donations from the forest industry.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
That may work for them, politically, in some respects, but it’s not working for the people in British Columbia. They’re pretty concerned, as they should be, as we all should be, about the forest industry.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Bill 7 is not the medicine that’s needed. It does some tinkering around the edges. There may be some things about it — if we’re recovering wood waste, but then for what purpose and how is that going to be done…. I’ll say a little bit more about that later. There are a couple things around wildfire regulations that I like, and I’ll talk about that. But by and large, it doesn’t measure up to the need that’s out there, the desperate need that’s out there in the province. It simply doesn’t measure up. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1520]
What we’ve seen as a response is last September, the government cut $60 million from the forestry budget, and $198 million over three years are cut. I guess it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, Madam Speaker, that the forest industry is allowed to decline into chaos. Then, well, guess what. You don’t have that much of a forest industry left, so why should you actually spend any money on it? Besides, a lot of it is wasted on those civil servants, those public servants who…. As my colleague pointed out, the minister can do the job, so he figures that by this legislation, he can do the job than all those folks who have made a career out of managing the forests. He can do it, and this legislation is going to help him do that. So 29 Forests offices have been closed since 2003, and it’s ongoing. We’ve heard about more closures from my colleagues on this side of the House this spring.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
“Politicizing” is a word we heard actually from the Minister of Children and Families earlier today. She said that we don’t want to be politicizing issues in the province. But that is in fact what the government is doing with this bill. I mean, it’s being taken out of the hands of the professionals and put in the hands of a politician. If that’s not politicizing, Madam Speaker, I’m not sure what is.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The capacity to deal with all the important forest health issues, the management of the forest industry in terms of the harvesting and how that’s done, is being reduced in the ministry considerably. The minister said this spring, regarding those cuts, that a lot of that work is duplication as professional foresters have a responsibility to ensure that the documents they sign are in full compliance.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Well, in fact, that isn’t their first responsibility. That should be our responsibility. Their first responsibility is to their employer and to help their employer make a profit. So the minister is saying — and this is the self-reporting agenda, the results-based agenda…. It’s like we don’t need independent people, civil servants, those not very helpful civil servants in the first place because, hey, these guys have got foresters. The forest companies have foresters in their employ, so we’ll just depend on them. They can do it. When we actually have a civil servant looking over the shoulder, that’s not very helpful. That’s duplication, the minister says. So we’ll just get rid of those civil servants and let the forest companies carry on apace. Not good management, not at all.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Compliance and enforcement was cut by 35 percent this year over last year — not surprising and not out of keeping with…. It kind of reminds me of the doctrine that right-wing governments — and this is a right-wing government — have used for a while. If there’s a crisis, that’s the time to move in. It’s the time to make a cut; it’s the time to make the sea changes. This is what it seems to me the government is trying to do.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Yes, there has been a desperate recession that we aren’t through yet by any stretch of the imagination. So now is the time to whack the public service a little harder, and what we’ve found with this government is that those cuts don’t come back either. We’ve found that year after year.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
As I mentioned, this bill is taking key decisions out of the hands of public servants and putting them in the hands of the minister. We’ve seen that in a number of areas with this government, especially this spring taking away the power of supposedly independent bodies like the B.C. Transmission Corporation and the utilities corporation. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1525]
We’re looking at essentially more privatization of the forests. That’s what this leads to. The government has been only too happy to assist that process, turning forest companies into land developers in places that local communities didn’t even want this to happen, like on the southern end of Vancouver Island. They’ve been brushed aside for the desire to rescue the forest companies, but here’s the difference. It’s rescue the forest companies and abandon the forest workers. That’s the problem with the agenda. It may work okay for Mr. Jeffery and his associates, but it’s not working for the average British Columbian who depends on the forest industry for their livelihood.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Bill 7 talks about improving better use of low-quality timber through scaling provisions and changes for bioenergy and improving wildfire protection. The minister himself will decide whether the scaling is done right or not, whether it needs to be rechecked. Normally, prior to this bill, it would be required if the volumes of wood differed between original and the check scales by more than a certain percentage. We’d redo it. All that kind of red tape will be gone, and the minister will just go: “Oh, let me see now. I’ll look at my Ouija board, and I’ll decide here what needs to be done.”
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
It’s very unprofessional. It’s an abandonment, I believe, of the management of the forests. Why give the minister all this power? Why does the government want the minister to have all this power? Is it to hand out more goodies to friends and insiders, or is it to cut back on the hated — let’s not say hated; I’ll say “not particularly embraced” — civil service, or is it both?
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The minister gets to be able to give to those that he finds most deserving. Those, you know, kind of bothersome, sometimes, civil servants, because they do have some professional standards, of course, that they have to adhere to…. You know, I’m sure they upset the minister and his help by saying that things are not all done the way they should be from time to time. Those that are left, that is, are saying that.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The province doesn’t have a good grasp of the timber supply and the annual allowable cut. It’s those kinds of basic issues that we need to have in place before this kind of tinkering, really…. It’s the time to do it. It’s the time to do it when you have the basics in place, then move forward. But we’re kind of going backwards, it seems to me, with some of the thrust of this legislation and the tens of thousands of job losses I have mentioned and no real changes to assist affected forestry workers or to make any real changes to the way we do forestry in B.C.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Now, one thing that the government, the Finance Minister and others, have talked about…. The HST, though, is going to be a boon to forest companies, apparently to the tune of $140 million in tax relief.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[C. Trevena in the chair.]
What’s going to happen with that $140 million? Is that money really going to be reinvested in British Columbia? You know, we always hear that British Columbians and British Columbia lag in productivity, but productivity is determined in large measure by business investment. That, I don’t think, is what we’re seeing. In fact, that’s what the figures show: that we’re not seeing solid business reinvestment in our province.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
We’ve seen Canfor invest in new mills down in the States, but we’re not seeing that here. Americans, now that they have a new president who is looking, I think, a lot more than the previous one at the particular needs of their country…. They’ve got an America-first policy, you know. We don’t have anything representing a B.C.-first policy. It seems like our first job is to make sure that corporations are doing as well as we possibly can, and the rest of the people have to just find their way, stumble along, try to make a living, not with a lot of help or understanding or direction by this government.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
So the forest industry is being abandoned. Forest health is threatened by pests and wildfire. We know a lot about the beetle outbreak, but it’s not just the pine beetle. Fir trees are being attacked — spruce, even willows, aspen.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1530]
They’re all all having new attacks that are largely — as is understood, anyway — climate change–related. This is not going away. Climate change is not going away.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Wildfires. Despite the fact that the ministry has a much smaller budget — I think $53 million this year for fighting wildfires, and it was something like $400-plus last year…. The Minister of Environment is saying very openly, and I think the Minister of Forests has acknowledged in recent comments, that we’re looking at another dry, hot summer most likely in British Columbia.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
It’s already really dry in the Cariboo. It’s dry in the minister’s hometown. I mean, there are already forest fires in Prince George. So we’re looking at more problems with our forests in terms of the wildfires and in terms of the beetle outbreaks, but we’re not seeing a response that’s going to be adequate to deal with the disaster that’s really looming out there. It’s not only looming; it’s underway in the forest industry and in the forests right now.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
There’s actually an opportunity to address forest health, to conserve biodiversity and to use our forests to fight climate change, and that’s being lost, I think. Instead…. I want to talk a bit about bioenergy because Bill 7 talks about annual allowable cut partitions for the purpose of bioenergy and so on.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
What I would like to see is a fulsome discussion about bioenergy because from what I’ve read about bioenergy, it seems to me that it’s not clear at all as to the efficacy or the desirability of proceeding with bioenergy. Is bioenergy a net benefit in the fight against climate change? I think that’s one of the discussions that we should be having.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
We know about the beetle-kill wood. If you go into the Interior, you’ll see it everywhere that there are pine trees, and that’s a lot of the interior of our province. But you can’t compare fossil fuels, and that’s the idea of bioenergy, the usual purpose. It’s supposed to make us more green, to get away from using fossil fuels and to get into using other sources of energy, in this case wood. There are other forms of bioenergy, of course, but in this case we’re looking at wood.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
You can’t compare, though, burning wood for bioenergy with fossil fuels without a full-cost accounting of both sources. In the case of bioenergy, you have to account for the carbon used in obtaining the wood, from disturbing the soil and from burning the wood, so it’s a several-part process. It’s not just burning the wood where carbon is released, and wood has a quarter to a third the energy intensity of fossil fuels.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
We know that fossil fuels, you know, are fossils. Coal is very heavily compacted over the millennia, and it’s very dense in terms of an energy source, and the same thing with liquid fossil fuels. Therefore, there’s more carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced that comes from burning wood as comes from burning fossil fuels.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
All of this that I’m talking about is not to say necessarily that fossil fuels are better. I’m just saying that we need to have a discussion, and we fully need to understand where we’re going with bioenergy and what we’re likely to get out of it or not.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The energy costs toss retrieve wood are high, and that’s why the kinds of bioenergy uses that we have now are usually at the point where the wood is being used for something else, like chips that have been a by-product of a mill and may be burnt. But when you take in all the costs of having to cut the wood in the forest and transport it, there’s a lot of energy released there. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
[1535]
Bioenergy is not carbon-neutral. I think sometimes folks might think that it is. It in fact takes several decades to cover the emissions from the use of wood as bioenergy, I want to clarify.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The carbon losses in the use of bioenergy, the carbon emissions, are not just in the burning. Clearcutting decreases carbon stocks by about a hundred tonnes per hectare. So what you have is that below ground…. People don’t realize, I don’t think, that there’s a lot of carbon stored in the soil, and a lot of that…. It’s all decaying, virtually. That’s the process of respiration, and that succeeds the photosynthesis that’s occurring, which is severely reduced, of course, if you remove the trees.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Even with replanting of trees, it takes several years to achieve carbon neutrality at that particular site — so there in the forest. There’s a lot of complexity to the issue of using wood for bioenergy.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
You know, in those beetle-killed forests, as traumatic as they are, the pine is the one species, often the dominant tree species in the forest, but those forests are not dead when the tree dies, when the pine dies. You often have or nearly always have some other species. If not another tree like aspen or fir, you will have shrubs. You’ll have juniper and various kinds of willow and birch and others that are growing there. The thing about it, too, to remember is the soil is still intact, so all that carbon is being held there in the soil.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The last thing I want to talk a little bit about is the wildfire issue. This bill will allow forest companies, apparently, to recover more costs associated with fighting wildfire, and I look forward to hearing from the minister more about what that’s about. I don’t want to see just more money flowing from the government to forest companies, but it may be, in fact, a good thing.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
I know of a couple of things that I saw that I did like with regard to the wildfire. Section 21 is a prohibition against starting a fire on grasslands, not just risking starting a fire. I think that’s good — to make those that are responsible if you can possibly catch them…. There are lots of signs out there in the province to report arsonists, and that’s a good thing. So anyone that’s found to have started a fire on grasslands — and I guess that will apply also to the forest base — will be held accountable, as I understand.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
The other thing — about if an individual got paid for fire control costs but was found to have been responsible for the fire, they have to pay it back. You know, there’s lots of anecdotal evidence, at least, of folks going out to start forest fires so that they can get a job. That’s kind of sad that someone would have to do that or think they have to do that. Nobody has to do that, and no one should do that.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
If they, in fact, do that, and they certainly then are actually found to have been the cause of the fire, it’s only right that they should be required to pay that back. This bill will do that. That’s a good thing.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Overall, I would say it’s the wrong direction for the government. We’re not looking at the big picture here. We’re dealing, it seems to me, with more centralization in the minister’s office, more deregulation, putting the forest base at greater risk, instead of bringing in some greater innovation that would help us to revitalize the forest industry in a true way and to deal with the reality of climate change. Again that speaks to things like bioenergy from wood.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
We have to have, in my opinion — and I’d sure like to see — a wider discussion about that. With that, I will take my seat and allow my colleague to have his say.
[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
