James Steidle

Fire-resistant aspen and birch can put the brakes on those recurring fires while rebuilding the soil and sequestering more carbon. Photo courtesy Conservation North OUR BOREAL FORESTS ARE CHANGING. More intense fires following in greater frequency are occurring from Alaska clear through to Quebec. This is giving deciduous species like aspen and birch the upper hand in our unmanaged northern forests. This is an undeniable fact, but what I want to zero in on is how Americans feel about this shift compared to Canadians. Last week, Toronto writer Hannah Hoag wrote an article on this phenomenon in the Globe and Mail. The headline was ominous. “As Canada’s boreal forests burn again and again, they won’t grow back the same way,” she wrote, before noting this shift “threatens to recur across Canada’s boreal forest.” On Twitter (now called X) Hoag channeled the archaic dogma of forest management used to justify glyphosate spraying of local forests to summarize the issue. “The transition from spruce and pine to birch and aspen in boreal forest[s],” she offered, is a “regeneration failure.” Really? Not only are shifts from conifer to deciduous after fire a well-documented fact of life well before climate change was happening, but the only thing those aspen are threatening is the curated postcard image of the pure conifer forest type at the heart of our national identity. Compare that to how writer Nathanael Johnson wrote about the same conifer-deciduous forest shift in the American publication Grist two years ago. You couldn’t come up with a more contrary headline: “Rising from the ashes, Alaska’s forests come back stronger,” he wrote, pointing out that “A new study brings a rare glint of hope from climate science.” Similar optimistic headlines were reported in the Smithsonian Magazine and The Conversation. In a world of doom and gloom, the American coverage was quick to highlight one of the climate change defence tricks nature holds up its sleeve: How “these changing forests could mitigate the fire-climate feedback loop, and maybe even reverse it.” How? Well, those fire-resistant aspen and birch can put the brakes on recurring fires while rebuilding the soil and sequestering more carbon. For the same reason we call them weeds, these fast-growing species can sequester carbon between 400-500 percent faster and, once mature, lock up around 160 percent more carbon than black spruce. This forest fire in a pine plantation was stopped by a wall of aspen None of this was mentioned in the Globe and Mail article. And I suppose one of the reasons is because singing aspen’s praises in this country doesn’t get you very far. I guess you would be much wiser to use the age-old fear of the aspen “threat,” hammered home relentlessly in Canadian forestry programs, to sell climate change action: You better do something or these worthless aspen are going to take over! Who knows, but I prefer the American approach. They love their aspens. They recognize the healing power they have on the landscape and their importance to wildlife. And so should we. James Steidle is a Prince George writer.

Replanting pine monocrops and spraying and brushing the fire-resistant deciduous is the equivalent of draining a patient of blood to cure an infection. This almost-pure lodgepole pine plantation, partly the result of spraying glyphosate, might look healthy, but is less resilient to the impacts of climate change—including more forest fires and pine beetles. IF YOU ATTENDED the Council of Forest Industries conference in Prince George last week, you would have seen a lunatic outside with a couple signs. That lunatic was me and one of the signs said “broadleaf burn less.” Now I say lunatic, but maybe you haven’t heard the spiel about our broadleaf trees before - the aspen, birch and cottonwood. Maybe all you’ve ever heard is that these are the “weed trees.” They aren’t the “money trees.” If that’s all we’ve heard, I could partially agree. It would be sheer lunacy to want to flip this cash-crop reality on its head with no concern for the industry or jobs that depend on it. But flip it we must. And I don’t even need to provide a reason that the industry isn’t already well aware of: pine beetles and forest fire. It’s all we’ve been hearing about. David Eby talked about it. Bruce Ralston talked about. All the industry analysts talked about it. These two scourges have destroyed the timber supply, we are told, and for this reason our already decimated forest sector must suffer more. Yet despite the sure-footed conviction of what ails us, industry and government apparently have no concept of how to remedy it. To the contrary, the state of reforestation is the equivalent of 19th century quack medicine. Replanting pine monocrops and spraying and brushing the fire-resistant deciduous is the equivalent of draining a patient of blood to cure an infection. That’s exactly what we are doing. If fire and pine beetles are the problem, we are doing everything within our powers to make this worse! We are growing denser, more pure forests of pine than we had before! Now this may come as news, but one of the greatest fire fighters on the landscape is our aspen forests. There’s a myth that is floating around in forestry circles. I heard Minister Nathan Cullen say it and I’ve heard senior ministry bureaucrats say it—that aspen isn’t stopping forest fires anymore because of climate change. This is sheer and complete nonsense. A pure aspen patch, with no conifer, with healthy trees, and with leaves on them, will not sustain crown fires, even in the most extreme fire conditions. Pine are exponentially more flammable. Those are indisputable facts. A forest fire burned through this pine plantation but was stopped cold by a grove of aspen. Deciduous stands make forests much more fireproof, but they have little commercial value. So logging companies want to use glyphosate spray to get rid of deciduous growth so more-profitable conifers can be planted. Diverse landscapes could also help reduce pests. Monoculture landscapes allow pests to rip through. We should know this already. Break it up with some different species, and the pine beetle or whatever else has a harder time to spread. There are other reasons for more aspen. They support exponentially more moose, more cattle on public rangeland, more biodiversity, and they sequester more carbon and absorb less sunlight because of their higher albedo. They also have economic uses, as almost all OSB panel is made from broadleaf. We need more broadleaf on the landscape and we need it now. James Steidle is a Prince George writer. This story was originally published in the Prince George Citizen. Learn more about the spraying of glyphosate in BC forests at Stop The Spray BC.

In the first instalment of a two-part story, James Steidle examines how the chief forester and her office shaped a study on the use of glyphosate so that it would support continued use of the controversial biocide. This almost-pure lodgepole pine plantation, partly the result of spraying glyphosate, might look healthy, but is less resilient to the impacts of climate change and supports a lower level of biodiversity than forests that include deciduous species. But such monoculture plantations might be—if they survive the larger forest fires and pine beetle epidemics expected to come with climate change—more profitable for logging companies. If they don’t survive, at least they can be turned into wood pellets. THE RECENT ANNOUNCEMENT by the BC ministry of forests that Chief Forester Diane Nicholls was leaving to join the wood pellet industry—after years of working to promote that controversial industry’s growth in BC—is not the only supporting evidence that the Chief Forester’s Office has become increasingly corrupted by BC’s logging industry. Taxpayers spent close to $100,000 on a report commissioned by Nicholl’s office that documents reveal went out of its way to mislead the public on the consequences of forestry glyphosate spraying. The Chief Forester’s Office released the report, titled “Review of Glyphosate Use in British Columbia Forestry,” in late 2019, in response to public outcry over the spraying of glyphosate on regenerating cutblocks to kill “competing” trees and shrubs. The report defended the practice, and that was used by government to sway public opinion. But it was not an independent study that considered the public interest. The Chief Forester’s Office, under the direction of Deputy Chief Forester Shane Berg, direct-awarded the $75,000 contract (later increased to $82,500) to an industry-connected think tank, FP Innovations, and appeared to require it to come up with a pre-determined conclusion: to show how glyphosate supported forest management and therefore industry. FP Innovations is not an independent research body. It is funded by industry and government. Their board is dominated by representatives of the corporations who utilize glyphosate for their operations, including Canfor, West Fraser and JD Irving. Chief Forester Diane Nicholls also sits on the board, as an “independent” representative of government. There are no ecologists or advocates for wildlife on the board. The official contract appeared to require an unbiased report. It required FP Innovations to analyze forestry glyphosate within the context of the “objective outcome of promoting the establishment of healthy and diverse forests.” That wording suggests FP Innovations and their researchers, Pamela Matute (who worked for West Fraser) and Jim Hunt (a forester who has worked for industry), could come down on either side of glyphosate, depending on the evidence. But documents obtained through an FOI request reveal the behind-the-scenes direction was a little less objective. In a briefing note to Forests’ Minister Doug Donaldson, project lead Shawn Hedges, former Director of Sustainability and Forestry in the Chief Forester’s Office, characterized the contract as requiring an assessment of “How glyphosate use supports the overarching objective of promoting the establishment of healthy and diverse forests.” (Emphasis added.) The final report did just that, failing to question the underlying raison d’être of spraying the fire-resistant deciduous forest type, which is known to sequester the most carbon and absorb the least amount of solar radiation. Instead, it claimed glyphosate spraying has a “minimal impact on forest ecosystems” despite admitting—or perhaps boasting—“it is very effective because it is easily translocated within the target plant, and usually kills it.” More significantly, it concluded “glyphosate remains an important tool for establishing conifer or conifer–deciduous mixed stands and ensuring future timber supply,” just as government statements appeared to request. A record of the report’s evolution suggests that conclusion shifted as the report was reworked. A leaked draft version suggests interference from the Chief Forester’s Office’s had resulted in removal of contradictory evidence and affirmation that deciduous trees can only ever be a threat to the “timber supply.” For example, in the leaked draft, numerous statements are made that indicate deciduous forest types can diversify landscapes in the face of climate change and reduce wildfire. This would suggest glyphosate spraying of fire-resistant deciduous forest is neither in the public interest nor in the interest of growing “healthy and diverse forests.” These statements were deleted. The statement that “a potential expansion of deciduous species in boreal forests, either occurring naturally or through landscape management, could offset some of the impacts of climate change on the occurrence of boreal wildfires” was removed. Mention of a 2001 study that quantified the exponentially greater burn potential of pine forests compared with aspen, which showed pine burned 840 percent more area than aspen over a 36-year period, was removed. A detailed explanation of the Canadian Forest Service’s Fire Behaviour Prediction system, which quantifies the fire-resistance of deciduous versus various types of conifer forests, was also removed. A forest fire burned through this pine plantation but was stopped cold by a grove of aspen. Deciduous stands make forests much more fireproof, but they have little commercial value. So logging companies want to use glyphosate spray to get rid of deciduous growth so more-profitable conifers can be planted. These key statements would have portrayed aspen as a potential benefit to the timber supply by significantly reducing wildfire. This, however, would contradict the baseline assumption of the report, that any “increases in deciduous volume in a stand negatively affect conifer volume.” Indeed, the conclusion notes that glyphosate must be sprayed to “ensure stand productivity and sustainable timber supply.” The final report did keep some qualified statements about deciduous fire resistance, but cast doubt on their effectiveness in the recommendations. The report concludes that “the level at which vegetation management (i.e. deciduous suppression) affects the risk of wildfire is not clearly understood,” a statement that the burn rates they had previously deleted showed to be untrue. Key statements in the draft document that showed more deciduous could help with climate change adaptation were also deleted. In the leaked draft, mention of the adaptation strategy of “promoting stand-scale species diversity (e.g. retain broadleaves and plant more species)”, was deleted. The admission that vegetation management, including glyphosate application, “can impact stand-scale and landscape-scale species diversity,” was deleted. A statement mentioning the “need for forested landscapes that are resilient to management actions and a range of potential future climates” addressing “the anticipated impacts of fire, insects, and disease,” was also deleted. In fact, all the statements suggesting that more deciduous on the landscape would benefit timber supply by facilitating adaptation to climate change, reducing wildfire and mitigating pest outbreaks, were deleted. The report completely denied—despite plentiful evidence to the contrary—that deciduous species could contribute in any way whatsoever to creating “healthy and diverse” forests. The only time the authors begrudgingly mentioned this possibility- that deciduous species are important- was to dismiss it on the dubious basis that spraying does not, in fact, suppress the deciduous! The suggestion was that enough deciduous remained on sprayed blocks to address these risks. To make this claim, the report had to deny that glyphosate is an incredibly powerful herbicide against deciduous plant communities, especially aspen. While on one hand the report admits glyphosate “is very effective because it is easily translocated within the target plant, and usually kills it,” the authors were careful not to quantify the immense destructive power of this herbicide. They ignored findings that treatments can kill 92 percent of aspen within 10 years of spraying. That statistic comes from a 2000 government study they were aware of—and listed in the bibliography—but which they did not quote in the actual report. Secondly, they assumed the deciduous species that survive the glyphosate and which are counted in the free-to-grow surveys of sprayed blocks, remain viable and competitive parts of the forest. Those surveys, completed shortly after spraying, show 15 percent of the trees in sprayed BC Interior blocks are deciduous after spraying. However, the authors completely ignored, and did not measure, the potential for contamination of the remnant deciduous with sub-lethal quantities of glyphosate that affect the physiology, survival, and resilience of deciduous plants in unknown ways. In any case, the report’s conclusion that the small amount of surviving aspen (of unknown health) is enough to mitigate wildfire or climate change impacts, is completely unsupported by the evidence. The Fire Behaviour Prediction system clearly shows pure deciduous patches are critical to fire-resistance. Forests with even 75 percent deciduous are significantly more flammable than forests with 100 percent deciduous. So, for the report to conclude that a small percentage of surviving deciduous (likely contaminated and with low prospects of competitiveness) means the concerns of landscape adaptation to climate change and more wildfire have been met, is ridiculous and contradicted by the evidence the authors deleted and the details of the Fire Behaviour Prediction system they did not mention. The authors also claimed that “the area comprised of deciduous–mixed stands has been increasing over time as a result of forest management activities in general.” This was an unsourced claim, but appears to rely on the misrepresentation of one of the only studies we have on this, the 2008 Forest and Range Evaluation Program Report #14. That document does show that deciduous have increased—as they do after logging in line with natural succession—but only up until 1987. Since then, more intensive deciduous-suppression practices have actually led to an increase in monoculture conifer forests, documented in this same report. Deciduous/mixed stands are no longer "increasing." We can assume this has only grown worse in the past 14 years, but unfortunately there has been no update to this report. Modern monoculture pine plantations in the foreground and background, while a more natural distribution of deciduous and coniferous is shown in the middle, the result of logging in 1972 and natural regeneration. We can, however, look at what the law says. The near-extermination of deciduous is, in fact, legally required. The authors of the report do mention the obscure regulation that requires it, section 46.11 of the Forest Planning and Practices Regulations. But the extreme logic of timber supply maximization that underpins it, goes unmentioned. The end effect of 46.11(2)(b)(ii) is the requirement of 95 percent conifer domination of cutblocks under almost every major Forest Stewardship Plan in BC. There is no minimum deciduous requirement. Companies have an incentive to exceed the 95 percent threshold to ensure compliance. So 100 percent of pure deciduous patches are, in fact, regularly sprayed and brushed, to ensure 95 percent conifer domination, lest some deciduous grow back. The report completely denies the fact that current regulations and practices are responsible for forests of less diversity than the natural regeneration of the 1970s and ’80s, a troubling trend that is maladapting our forests to climate change and making them more vulnerable to pests and fire. Which individual was responsible for this selective parsing of logic and fact is uncertain, as evidence of who made the edits of subsequent versions of this report were withheld by government. But the Chief Forester’s Office would be responsible for ensuring the final report was indeed objective. It is apparent that this did not happen, not only with respect to the role of aspen in mitigating climate change effects and wildfire, and how current practice undermines this, but also in maintaining biodiversity. The section on wildlife, biodiversity and glyphosate is particularly troubling. It quotes literature saying biodiversity on sprayed blocks is unaffected by glyphosate and makes the dubious claim that moose benefit from it. A close analysis reveals that not one of these studies considers potential contamination or the long-term effects on biodiversity and moose food subsequent to crown closure. The fundamental forest-type conversion from deciduous to conifer has massive and long-lasting impacts on associated biodiversity and forest function. Deciduous forests are widely recognized to have the highest biodiversity values in the boreal forest, with the highest carrying capacity for species like moose and beaver, with exponentially more insects, birds and plant species. Recent government moose-collar research in Central BC shows that moose select for deciduous forests in all study areas and all seasons. The claim that moose benefit from spraying ignores the big picture; the entire purpose of glyphosate spraying is to shift the long-term forest structure away from preferred deciduous forest types to less-productive conifer plantation forest types. The possibility there may be more forage opportunities that recover in years 4-11 on a sprayed block prior to crown closure, which is itself a doubtful conclusion, does not alter this fact. A recent study based on radio-collar tracking shows moose prefer foraging in deciduous stands, contrary to the report’s claims. Finally, the report falsified and downplayed watershed protections. Quoting 73(1) of the Integrated Pest Management Regulation the report claims that the laws “require the maintenance of pesticide-free zones around water features, dry streams, and classified wetlands.” This is not true. Section 74 of the regulations authorizes numerous exceptions to 73(1) allowing the direct spraying of the vast majority of dry streams. So, in fact, there are no pesticide-free zones for the vast majority of dry streams. Nor did the report mention that section 75 (5)(d) authorizes direct over-spraying of open water smaller than 25 square meters in late summer, which are typically much larger and more productive the rest of the year. They also failed to mention the pesticide-free zone is only 10 meters to any fish-bearing waterway for helicopters spraying from an elevation of several hundred feet, with drift documented as far as 800 meters away. Any objective analysis would have recognized these pesticide free zones are inadequate. Photo of helicopter spraying It is doubtful such misleading statements and analyses were made due to unprofessionalism and incompetence. This report was reviewed by Chief Forester Diane Nicholls, Deputy Chief Forester Shane Berg and senior ministry staff. We should hope they know how to read regulations. Assuming they do, this misinformation is a violation of the public trust. In short, taxpayers spent close to $100,000 on a report that intentionally edited and omitted information to mislead the public on the realities of glyphosate spraying of BC forests and its consequences. We will never know whether or not senior staff in the Chief Forester’s Office orchestrated the biased outcome of this report. But they did select an organization with industry links and funding who hired industry researchers to write the report, and we know senior staff on at least one occasion characterized the directive given to them as showing how glyphosate “supports” forestry. We also know the Chief Forester’s Office accepted this flawed report as an acceptable use of taxpayer money. They oversaw and witnessed, and were perhaps directly responsible for, the suppression of key information that would challenge the underlying belief that glyphosate use supports “healthy and diverse” forests. They approved a report where any role deciduous could play in protecting timber supply—by reducing landscape wildfire and disease outbreaks—was either systematically suppressed or misrepresented by the false assumptions of deciduous survival. There is little doubt that in the writing and re-writing of this report the power of a critical institution—the Chief Forester’s Office—was intentionally abused. The public interest was undermined. The report was designed to allow a key practice of modern forestry to continue: The maximization of coniferous timber supply by eliminating deciduous species. The risks that glyphosate spraying and conifer-dominated monocrop plantations pose to the future resilience of the landscape, the timber supply, and to public health and safety don’t—evidently—measure up to what’s most important to the current Chief Forester’s Office: the health of forestry company profits. Read part 2 here. James Steidle grew up south of Prince George in the bush and worked as a treeplanter for 3 years and in Clear Lake Sawmills for 4 years. He currently runs a woodworking company and works with aspen wherever he can. He is a founder of Stop the Spray B.C.

If a forestry company isn’t providing mill jobs with its tree farm licences or forestry licenses to cut, fair compensation for taking back those licences should be $0. LARGE MULTINATIONAL FORESTRY COMPANIES in BC earning billion-dollar profits have pulled a fast one on us. They want us to think the rights to the forests are actually theirs. If we wanted our forests back for some reason—say to make them accessible to community-oriented mills, or to stop spraying glyphosate on fire-resistant deciduous and work with mixed forests not against them, or to preserve old-growth—we would need to pay a ransom collectively worth billions of dollars! Our wild-west history is replete with stories of cattle barons, outlaw gangs and octopus-tentacled monopolies extracting wealth from the public domain. This is only the latest chapter. Yet the scale of the new thievery promises to put anything before it to shame. A little history is required. First of all, across much of BC we have publicly owned forests. Nobody ever bought them, and nobody ever paid the public any money to secure exclusive access to them. This is the key point. For example, a vast tract of forest north of Prince George—now within the Mackenzie Timber Supply Area (TSA)—was divvied out to British Columbia Forest Products back in the 1960s. BCFP never paid for the timber rights. But they did pay for construction of a pulp mill and two sawmills in the community of Mackenzie, providing numerous local jobs and community benefits in return. From day one, the requirement to get access to public timber was to provide community benefits. “Trees for jobs” was the mantra. And it was on this basis that we provided access to timber. This was a requirement of the Forest Act at the time. The 1990 Review of Forest Tenures in British Columbia clearly states that the Forest Act granted tenures in exchange for “employment opportunities and other social benefits,” along with “managing for water, fisheries and wildlife resources.” We were never paid cash for the tenures. We were paid in economic, social, and environmental considerations. Canfor ended up with the tenure when they bought the Mackenzie Mill. So now that Canfor has closed its sawmill and is no longer providing local jobs in the community of Mackenzie, surely the tenure should revert to the public—the same way it was originally transferred to the private sector. For free and at no cost, and simply on the basis of what the public gets in return. Yet the corporations are convinced the timber rights are theirs now. Personal private property that they can exploit to the maximum degree with no consideration for wildlife and fisheries. Property which they can now turn around and sell to someone else to do the same. And for which we, the public, will have to pay dearly if we ever want them back. A recent Council of Forest Industries’ report on the $70 million sale of Canfor’s forestry licences to cut in the Mackenzie Timber Supply Area Somewhere along the line, the exact details obscured by the passage of time but the outcome surely a result of the relentless drumbeat of corporate power chipping away at our sense of community, a metamorphosis has occurred: public forests have become property that corporations can sell. This is a preposterous situation, duly noted by Mackenzie mayor Joan Atkinson. In 2020, after Canfor closed its Mackenzie mill, Atkinson asked why Canfor was selling (to Dunkley Lumber) rights to uncut, publicly owned timber before stumpage had even been paid. What right did Canfor have to profit when it was no longer providing jobs or community benefits? Those jobs had been shifted to Quesnel, 264 kilometres away. I have a theory for why they are so committed to this perplexing illusion. Obviously, they have money at stake, but how did money come to be at stake? The answer is found in the past decades when the big players swallowed up all the small independent mills. When they did so, observers at the time thought the big companies were paying too much for the mills. And they would have been, if the janky old mills were all they thought they were buying. But in the companies’ minds, they were buying not just the sawmills, but also the associated timber rights. The original mill owners, who never paid a cent for the timber rights, reaped this inflated windfall. In short, the big companies paid dearly to establish their empires because they thought they purchased the public timber rights, an asset they imagined in itself to be in addition to, and perhaps separate from, the actual mill providing the community benefits. They created a non-existent product in their own minds, and they made this purchasing decision knowing full well the law required community benefits in return. Their goal was obviously to make this public asset theirs. But those pesky mills and the jobs they provided were in the way. Luckily for the corporations, they got their big break in 2003 when “appurtenancy” was eliminated. Up until then, a TSA had to supply the local mill. Now logs could be shipped from anywhere within the company’s patchwork of multiple tenures and that paved the way to close the little mills and expand their big ones. We would still get “jobs for logs,” just less of them, and in less places, and this was justified on the bogus basis of rationalization and maintaining global competitiveness. More critically, this helped create the myth that a tree farm licence (TFL) and forestry licences to cut could stand as tradable assets belonging to the licensee, now that the local mill was no longer necessary. It didn’t happen all at once. But over the years, one by one, small mills and their communities like Upper Fraser, Clear Lake, Isle Pierre, and countless others, disappeared. And with each mill closure, blamed on external market forces, the public’s memory of the link between jobs and logs faded. The old contract was blurred and obscured by turmoil in the industry as 50,000 out of 100,000 forestry jobs disappeared into thin air. Those mills and jobs disappeared, but rest assured the big corporations hung onto their old timber rights, even as mills in communities like Fort Nelson sat idle for years, wreaking economic ruin on the community, a blatant violation of the terms by which the tenure was originally granted. Nobody challenged them on it. And so now companies like Canfor are taking their next big leap of faith, hoping we are all asleep. It appears many of us are. The companies are now attempting to fully monetize these mill-less tenures as a separate asset altogether. Their original plan is at play. This is insane. This has happened with Canfor’s apportionment of the AAC in the Fort Nelson TSA, which it sold to Brian Fehr’s Peak Renewables in a deal that was finalized just last November. In reality, Peak Renewables is an affiliated company of Canfor’s. This is, potentially, what will happen to Canfor’s share of the cut in the Mackenzie TSA, too, with the proposed $70 million sale to the McLeod Lake Indian Band. These third parties should be aware of what they are buying. Separated from community benefits, a TFL or a forestry licence to cut are ultimately fictitious products. Sure, companies can buy and sell their imagined timber rights amongst themselves, as long as there is one greater fool to buy the snake oil, as Canfor once was, or which the government may be. But ultimately, the public owns the land, owns the forest, never sold the rights to access them to begin with, and with new legislation in place, can take it back for “fair compensation,” whenever we like. The big question going forward will be what entails “fair compensation.” The companies and the corporate press want us to think this compensation is stratospheric in value, maybe worth billions. They say we have to respect private property rights. But how? It never was their private property. And since the corporations have mostly reneged on the terms of the original deal, have neglected to protect wildlife populations, and since the hard mill assets have been capitalized and most of those jobs have evaporated—along with the communities—the notion of “fair compensation” for an abandoned, liquidated “asset” like Canfor’s licences to cut in the Mackenzie TSA, beyond $0, is an illusion. Here’s what should happen in that case: The Mackenzie TSA licences should revert to the Crown, the cutting rights then doled out to entities like the Macleod Lake Indian Band, or a community-based company, and the basis of the original agreement—trees for jobs—is re-affirmed. The assets and property of the shuttered Mackenzie mill are Canfor’s to sell as they see fit. That’s the extent of their “private property.” At the end of the day, when the political leaders of British Columbia handed access to public timber to the private sector over 60 years ago, the spirit and intent was to do so with conditions of environmental responsibility, employment and community benefits. That was the political contract, and despite what you may hear, or what you don’t hear, that original contract never changed. At no point did we ever pass a law saying or intending that we were to give timber rights away altogether with no expectation of employment, community, or environmental considerations in return. We never elected a single politician or government who said they would do this. In other words, that we would allow private companies and oligarchs to completely monetize exclusive access to a public asset and exploit it with nothing for the public in exchange, like what we are seeing today. We should all stop pretending that we did. James Steidle grew up south of Prince George in the bush and worked as a treeplanter for 3 years and in Clear Lake Sawmills for 4 years. He currently runs a woodworking company and works with aspen wherever he can. He is a founder of Stop the Spray B.C.

News of old-growth deferrals has set the press on fire with fears of catastrophic job losses. The sawmill at Clear Lake south of Prince George, closed in 2011, once supported about 200 workers BESIDES THE FACT we will suffer catastrophic job losses one way or the other, when the rapidly dwindling accessible old-growth is extirpated, missing from this discussion is the fact many communities have already suffered tremendously. But the perpetrator wasn’t conservation. It was “progress,” or in other words, unrestrained capitalism. Between 1997 and 2017 we lost around 50,000 forestry jobs, almost half the entire forestry work force in this province. Whole communities were scattered to the wind overnight. Conservation had nothing to do with these job losses. Consolidation of mills, automation, and “investment” did. Take Clear Lake, for example, a small mill south of Prince George where I worked as a teenager that produced 120,000 board feet a shift with around 200 workers. That’s around 10 logging truck loads a shift to employ 200 people. It was the most inefficient mill in BC, with green chains, human lumber graders, and community spirit. It never lost money. It was shut down in 2010 and production shifted to Canfor’s super mill at Bear Lake, a place that produces 10 times the lumber (1.2 million board feet a shift) with probably half the workforce. In other words, we lost a mill that provided 20 times more jobs per unit of public timber cut compared to the heavily capitalized, heavily automated mills that remained open. This story has been replicated across the province. Combined with bigger equipment, trucks with eight and even nine axles compared to the old five axle trucks, the huge processors, the feller bunchers, industry has shed thousands of good paying, satisfying bush jobs due to “investment.” We hear a lot about how important “investment” is in the forest industry. We hear about companies like Canfor taking their “investment” to other jurisdictions as if this is a mortal threat to our forests and our forest workers. The reality is, “investment” has been the primary cause of job losses. Sawmilling is fundamentally primitive. The more technology invested, the fewer workers there are. None of this is necessary. The value is in the public timber. You can make money hauling logs out of the bush with a four-wheeler, a $400 chainsaw, and cutting it on a $30,000 woodmizer and planing it on a $20,000 four-sided logosol planer. We have invested our way out of a sustainable industry that once provided enormous public and social benefits and instead chews through our forests at an unbelievable pace with a fraction of the previous work-force to maximize profits for global shareholders while leaving communities decimated in their wake. Smaller mills cutting only what BC needs for its own use could employ more people than the super mills built for the export market As a society we need to ask ourselves why putting 50,000 people out of work to maximize corporate profits was apparently acceptable, while saving the last of our old growth for far fewer job losses is not. Furthermore, we don’t even need to lose jobs. We need to go back to small mills and more diverse ownership, break up the monopsonies and monopolies that we no doubt suffer under, and reclaim some of those 50,000 jobs that were lost so the big companies could earn record profits. The fact we cared nothing for those 50,000 lost jobs, and are red-faced in anger at the fact the head offices can’t decimate the last of our productive old growth, speaks to a fundamental intellectual and moral impoverishment amongst us. We ought to be red-faced in shame for not making a bigger stink about the gutting of our communities and the ripping off of public resources by out-of-control capitalism over the past 20 years, on the mistaken premise that that’s just “progress.” I suggest we take a good hard look at where progress has gotten us: denuded landscapes, red-listed species, shut down mills, ghost towns, and ever more unequal wealth distribution. James Steidle grew up south of Prince George in the bush and worked as a tree planter for 3 years and in Clear Lake Sawmills for 4 years. He currently runs a woodworking company and works with aspen wherever he can. He is a founder of Stop the Spray B.C.

News of old-growth deferrals has set the press on fire with fears of catastrophic job losses. The sawmill at Clear Lake south of Prince George, closed in 2011, once supported about 200 workers BESIDES THE FACT we will suffer catastrophic job losses one way or the other, when the rapidly dwindling accessible old-growth is extirpated, missing from this discussion is the fact many communities have already suffered tremendously. But the perpetrator wasn’t conservation. It was “progress,” or in other words, unrestrained capitalism. Between 1997 and 2017 we lost around 50,000 forestry jobs, almost half the entire forestry work force in this province. Whole communities were scattered to the wind overnight. Conservation had nothing to do with these job losses. Consolidation of mills, automation, and “investment” did. Take Clear Lake, for example, a small mill south of Prince George where I worked as a teenager that produced 120,000 board feet a shift with around 200 workers. That’s around 10 logging truck loads a shift to employ 200 people. It was the most inefficient mill in BC, with green chains, human lumber graders, and community spirit. It never lost money. It was shut down in 2010 and production shifted to Canfor’s super mill at Bear Lake, a place that produces 10 times the lumber (1.2 million board feet a shift) with probably half the workforce. In other words, we lost a mill that provided 20 times more jobs per unit of public timber cut compared to the heavily capitalized, heavily automated mills that remained open. This story has been replicated across the province. Combined with bigger equipment, trucks with eight and even nine axles compared to the old five axle trucks, the huge processors, the feller bunchers, industry has shed thousands of good paying, satisfying bush jobs due to “investment.” We hear a lot about how important “investment” is in the forest industry. We hear about companies like Canfor taking their “investment” to other jurisdictions as if this is a mortal threat to our forests and our forest workers. The reality is, “investment” has been the primary cause of job losses. Sawmilling is fundamentally primitive. The more technology invested, the fewer workers there are. None of this is necessary. The value is in the public timber. You can make money hauling logs out of the bush with a four-wheeler, a $400 chainsaw, and cutting it on a $30,000 woodmizer and planing it on a $20,000 four-sided logosol planer. We have invested our way out of a sustainable industry that once provided enormous public and social benefits and instead chews through our forests at an unbelievable pace with a fraction of the previous work-force to maximize profits for global shareholders while leaving communities decimated in their wake. Smaller mills cutting only what BC needs for its own use could employ more people than the super mills built for the export market As a society we need to ask ourselves why putting 50,000 people out of work to maximize corporate profits was apparently acceptable, while saving the last of our old growth for far fewer job losses is not. Furthermore, we don’t even need to lose jobs. We need to go back to small mills and more diverse ownership, break up the monopsonies and monopolies that we no doubt suffer under, and reclaim some of those 50,000 jobs that were lost so the big companies could earn record profits. The fact we cared nothing for those 50,000 lost jobs, and are red-faced in anger at the fact the head offices can’t decimate the last of our productive old growth, speaks to a fundamental intellectual and moral impoverishment amongst us. We ought to be red-faced in shame for not making a bigger stink about the gutting of our communities and the ripping off of public resources by out-of-control capitalism over the past 20 years, on the mistaken premise that that’s just “progress.” I suggest we take a good hard look at where progress has gotten us: denuded landscapes, red-listed species, shut down mills, ghost towns, and ever more unequal wealth distribution.