NDP Forest critic Bob Simpson (left) was joined by Columbia River-Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald for a meeting with owners and managers of Downie Timber last Thursday. Simpson was on a swing through the Southern Interior as part of his provincial State of our Forests tour. He is providing information and gathering input on the NDP’s five-point plan for forestry which was unveiled earlier this year. . Aaron Orlando/Times Review

NDP forests critic Bob Simpson travelled through Revelstoke on Oct. 2 as part of his provincial State of our Forests tour.

He says he was here to provide information and gather feedback on the NDP’s five-point plan for forestry, which was unveiled early this year.

The plan revolves around the following five points:

-Create a green plan for B.C.’s forests

-Develop an innovative 21st century forest products industry

-Create a community and worker stability program

-Establish a permanent commission on forestry

-Softwood lumber and tenure reform

Simpson says the plan has developed since then because he’s had the opportunity to travel around the province and get input from forestry stakeholders in the past months.

While in Revelstoke he met with representatives from Downie Timber Ltd. at their mill and also held a public open house at the Revelstoke Community Centre. The Revelstoke Times Review was unable to attend the public forum due to a conflict with the federal all-candidates debate, but did meet with Simpson to discuss his plan.

A central platform of the NDP’s new plan is a departure from their prior policy of appurtenance, which basically created contractual obligations to mill the logs from a given tenure at a local milling operation.

He said appurtenance benefited larger rural centres but did not necessarily benefit smaller communities where the trees were cut. Also, he says that the wood profile in a tenure tied to a given mill didn’t necessarily match the needs of the mill, leading to managing the forest for the mill, not for the overall health or potential of the forest.

The new plan seeks to manage the forests in a different way, but with the same goal of having the logs milled locally.

Simpson says the old system created a number of problems the NDP sought to answer. “How do we get to breaking the link between manufacturing and forest management? Right now the commodity manufacturers control the vast majority of the land base. That does two things. One, they take a manufacturing mindset to forest management. So, they want to maximize logs for timber production. In a world of climate change, you have to go to the forests to manage them for healthy forests. So, we need to get back to managing for healthy forests and then derive economic value from those healthy forests.” He also says the tenure system provides the Americans with ammunition during trade disputes because they can argue that tenures are a form of government subsidy.

Simpson feels the current system will lead to consolidation that will hurt rural B.C. “The path we’re on just now is a path of diminishing returns without question. And we can wake up three years from now or five years from now, whenever the U.S. housing market eventually does recover, and only have maybe five mega-mills left in the province. I’m a change management consultant -- that’s my background. When you’re in a time of crisis, that’s when people are really focused and more open to accepting a broader change.”

Simpson says by focusing on other modern potential market uses for the forest as a resource, the cost of dimensional lumber, as an example, would come down.

He says the industry is still focusing on traditional timber resources such as dimension lumber, pellets, pulp and paper.

He says there is potential in non-traditional uses such as bio-pharmaceuticals, natural crops, range, and biomass resources such as bio-chemicals, fuels, oils, energy and heat.

If we managed and harvested B.C. forests for these other values Simpson says we could dissipate the cost of managing the land base by spreading costs for services such as tree planting, road building, and management to other industries, which would then bring the cost of saw logs down, thus making mills more competitive.

This new holistic approach, coupled with tenure reform, would free traditional mills to focus on their area of expertise. Simpson says if the log supply wasn’t tied up in the tenure system, mill companies such as Downie Timber Ltd., for example, wouldn’t have to be in the business of managing forests and trading log supplies. If the logs were traded on an open market, they could then acquire the logs they need.

A major grievance levelled at the current tenure system is that the large tenure holders control the log supply. Combined with marketing that focuses on exporting large volumes to established markets, there can be little supply left over for industries such as local secondary manufacturing. “This new idea, I would call it the social contract, is to restructure the tenure system so that the communities actually have control of the forest resources in their area. And with that intimate level of control, you’re going to get better longer term forest management, you’re going to get the ability to work with people like Downie to make sure they’re successful because those employees are right in your town,” says Simpson.

What about push back from the big companies and major players who could stand to lose their dominant position under the current system? “What I’m reminding them of, and I had this discussion with one of the major CEOs, is they’re not your logs. They belong to the people of B.C. and right now we’re not getting a heck of a lot of value off our land base. We’re getting diminishing returns. So, we have to find a way to meet their needs, so that we secure their capital, but we also have to get British Columbians back in an ownership position on the public land base, back to getting some returns.”

He goes on to say that an estimated 16,000 jobs have been lost in the B.C. forest industry in recent years. “Well, the Liberals in 2003 absolutely gutted the forest act, privatized the forest land base, undermined our forest stewardship and nobody blinked, and now we’re living with the consequences of it. So, you know, what was it Pierre Trudeau said, ‘Just watch me.’ Yes, you can do it, but we would not do it the way the Liberals did it, we would not do a closed door discussion,” he says, going on to say changes would all be done in public view.

Simpson says after this round of consultations he plans to flesh out the five-point plan, and will then do another round of consultations across the province and make explicit promises and statements ahead of the May 2009 provincial election.