Fix Our Broken Forest Industry!

The April 2007 report by Macauley and Associates for the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range says almost 80 per cent of timber harvested on private lands in the Alberni Valley was second-growth Douglas fir, for instance. Most of it was exported. This is the highly valuable timber on which B.C. has long planned to build its future forest industry. Instead, big companies are shipping millions of cubic metres to the U.S. and Asia. And Ottawa's recent lumber deal with the U.S. makes things worse by ensuring these logs enter the U.S. duty-free while subjecting our lumber to a 15-per-cent duty, actively encouraging even more log exports. Premier Gordon Campbell and the CEOs of major forest companies claimed the government's "new" so-called Forest Revitalization Program would bring billions in new investments. But the report clearly shows that second-growth Douglas fir is still "not the type of logs being consumed by local mills which utilize primarily old-growth cedar and hemlock." http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=8830d301-3c3a-4958-acc2-069f69dc6675 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on June 28, 2007]

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