world news - 21.11.2002
Environmentalists, unions challenge B.C. raw log export program
Environmentalists have teamed up with two forestry unions in a legal bid to stop the export of raw logs from B.C. Crown lands.
The Sierra Legal Defence Fund argues a three-year permit to export 1.3 million cubic metres of timber annually from northwestern British Columbia should never have been issued while some B.C. sawmills are closed, often because of a log shortage.
"Our evidence is the wood could be processed in the province," said Devon Page of the environmental group, which is spearheading the challenge.
But B.C. Forests Minister Mike de Jong said the three-year export permit was the only way to preserve logging jobs in the northwest's slumping forest sector.
The petition to stop raw logs from being exported was filed Wednesday. It asks the B.C. Supreme Court to quash a Feb. 13, 2002 order-in-council approving log exports equal to 35 per cent of the allowable annual cut of three northern forest districts. The provincial cabinet can review the order annually.
The exports, destined for the United States and Asia, violate the provincial Forest Act that allows such sales only if the logs are surplus to B.C. timber processing, the brief argues.
Page said environmentalists began looking into the permit when it was issued but that it took months of freedom-of-information requests to acquire the government documents to buttress their case.
The suit is backed by the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers of Canada -— which represent many mill workers -— and a group called Woodworkers for Fair Forest Policy.
The Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers, which represents most of the province's loggers, is not part of the challenge.
The exports would add up to 28,000 truckloads of timber over three years, the coalition said.
"It is beyond us that while there are people being laid off and there are mills closing, and there is a purported fibre shortage in B.C., at the same time the government is encouraging the export of logs from this province," Doug Muir, a former president of the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers, said in a news release.
Page said in an interview that the group suspects companies are paying rock-bottom stumpage -— Crown timber-cutting royalties -— on the export logs. The program could be a losing proposition after environmental costs are factored in, he said.
"I think they would have concluded it was better off being left standing," he said.
De Jong defended both the legal and economic reasons for issuing the permit.
"First of all, the economics in the northwest were terrible -— were then (last February) and in large measure still are, given where the price of lumber has gone," he said in a conference call with reporters.
The logs being taken from the region are lower-valued timber located in high-cost logging areas, he said. The law allows for exports of logs that can't be economically harvested and processed in the province.
The choice was to have everyone in the region idle or provide limited access to timber and put some people, such as small logging contractors, back to work.
"I don't like doing it," he said. "I would prefer that all of the timber we harvest in British Columbia is processed in British Columbia."
De Jong also said the previous NDP government, which the B.C. Liberals crushed in 2001, had quietly issued export authorizations to individual operators.
"Some companies had the right to do it and some didn't," he said, adding the blanket order-in-council has ended that disparity.
A Forests Ministry chart shows total log exports, which declined in the early and mid-1990s, picked up sharply from 1998 to 2001, though never exceeding four per cent of the allowable cut.
In any case, a lumber glut has depressed the market so much that less than one quarter of the volume available under the permit has been exported, de Jong noted.
But Page rejected all of de Jong's explanations.
The order-in-council's stated reason for permitting exports was that the logs were surplus to domestic needs, not that they were uneconomic to cut and process here, he said. There's also no evidence of a government analysis of either rationale, said Page.
Even if the uptake has been low, it still amounts to about 300,000 cubic metres of wood.
"Don't tell me it has no value, and if it has no value, why cut it?" Page said.
As for equalizing the NDP's log-export policy: "The perfect answer to that is two wrongs don't make a right."
See also:
- — Ilim Restructuring
- — U.S.-Canadian timber deal sought
- — Small furniture firms battle to keep doors open
- — DREMA 2002: International Trade Fair of Woodworking Machines and Tools
- — Chinese visits `crucial
