Response to Minister Thomson – The Real Facts about the Proposed Tenure Legislation

In response to Ben Parfitt’s op-ed about the B.C. Liberals’ intention to introduce legislation to rollover replaceable volume-based timber licenses to area-based tenures, the forests minister claims as a “fact” that the legislation stems from a recommendation from the special committee on timber supply that toured B.C. last summer.

That is pure fiction.

According to a leaked cabinet document, the “rollover” of volume-based licenses to area-based tenures was recommended to cabinet in April as an option to enable the rebuilding of the Burns Lake sawmill — a month before the committee was formed and five months before it made its recommendations public.

The committee did not “in fact” recommend the conversion of volume-based licenses to area-based tenures. Rather, it gave significant and thoughtful cautionary recommendations “if conversion to more area-based tenures is desirable.” The committee found there is still no consensus on the relative merits of area-based tenures and significant concern about the potential privatization of our largest public asset.

The minister also gave Hampton Affiliates a “letter of intent” in September committing to the conversion of this U.S. company’s volume licenses to area-based tenures — a full month before he publicly released a response to the committee’s recommendations.

The fact is: the Liberals were on the rollover path long before any public process.

Enabling legislation will not guarantee in law any defined public process in the rollover decisions. It is used to give politicians “flexibility” to take actions without the constraints of law or guiding regulations. Used inappropriately, it can be a very “sneaky” instrument indeed.

We must oppose giving politicians the unfettered right to radically alter forest tenures or to privatize our public forests. I certainly intend to do that in this upcoming session. It would be nice to know if the NDP will join me in this fight.

[Original Bob Simpson article no longer available]