A commentary by a Victoria resident who worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years, holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
This is the same old pattern repeating itself, a pattern of subsidization following an industry downturn that has contributed to the decline of the very industry that the subsidies ironically purported to support. More beguiling than subsidies is industry propaganda. Through misrepresentation about sustainable forest management, the industry bamboozles the public and importers of B.C.’s forest products with phoney certification schemes. The federal competition board is presently investigating two certification schemes for misrepresentation.
Given excessive subsidies and self-regulation, no one should expect the industry to rationalize its activities in the public interest by lowering the boom on logging, processing more logs in B.C. and reinvesting profits in secondary manufacturing facilities in the province. To do this, legislation must be repealed and re-written to place ecosystem management on a legally enforceable footing and forestry schools must be renamed: for example, the UBC Faculty of Forestry might be renamed to the UBC Faculty of Ecology. Foresters are a failed profession in B.C.
Now do health care
Do police first.
Exactly