As 500 workers lose their jobs in Vanderhoof and Fort St. John, Stop the Spray BC is calling on the province to take back mill-less timber harvesting rights.
Stop the Spray BC founder James Steidle points out that the industry has lost tens of thousands of jobs as sawmills closed in recent years, leaving timber harvesting areas without mills while large forestry corporations hold the harvesting rights that once went with those mills
“From Day 1 we handed out those timber harvesting rights in exchange for investment,” noted Steidle in a statement issued after Canfor announced the closure of mills in Vanderhoof and Fort St. John. “That meant jobs for logs. That was the condition on which we handed out the rights to log publicly owned land. We’d get investment and jobs in return."
But that’s not how it worked out. With many communities left in limbo by absentee forestry corporations, Steidle says it’s only fair that those tenures go to someone who can provide the jobs.
“Recently Canfor CEO Don Kanye said they will ‘divest’ some of their Northern BC tenures, which means they will sell them. But they aren’t theirs to sell,” said Steidle.
“At no point did we ever hand over timber harvesting rights to corporations like Canfor in perpetuity with nothing in return. Nowhere and at no time did any government ever make that deal.”
Steidle, who writes a column on these and other resource-related issues for The Citizen, says the province should step in and make sure the land stays in public hands for future use.
“The only private money that was ever spent to gain access to the timber was on the sawmills that these companies are busy closing down and scrapping,” he says. “That’s the extent of their private property. And when those mills close, so too should their tenure rights.”
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