Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Forests are getting the B.C. Rail treatment

Re: “Government not privatizing forests,” May 26.

Re: “Government not privatizing forests,” May 26.

Given recent reports by the Forest Practices Board and audits by the province’s auditor general, Forests Minister Steve Thomson’s claims about forest sustainability and no overcutting border on the absurd. The Forest Practices Board estimates that the area in need of replanting is in the order of two million hectares, and reports overcutting of non-pine trees in the Morice and Prince George areas of the province.

The auditor general finds that the health of animals, plants and ecosystems in the province is dire, and says the Forests Ministry has been operating for a decade without any objectives (vision, goals) for the timber resource.

As for certification, the Forest Ministry’s process for timber-supply review has never been audited by the International Standards Organization.

If the forests minister were forthright about the consultation process underway to give a handful of companies more control over public forests through the creation of more tree farm licences, he would say that these timber farms allow companies to monetize the rights to log public forests as an asset on their books while the Crown retains ownership of the land. This asset can be traded and sold.

This is what is meant by privatization. And what Thomson proposes for B.C.’s publicly owned forests is no different than how his government handled B.C. Rail, where the Crown retained ownership of the rail tracks and the land below them, but privatized the rights to use the tracks, effectively forever.

Anthony Britneff

Victoria