I wish to add to the executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, Ken Wu’s explanation that the B.C. Liberals took the sawmills away from the workers.
It was the Government of British Columbia, under the NDP, that removed Clause 7 from the Ministry of Forests documents. This Clause 7 tied the tree farm licences to the local sawmills, like Tree Farm License 46 which was tied to the Youbou Sawmill. It wasn’t long after the disappearance of Clause 7 that the Youbou Sawmill closed down in 2001. So, the NDP was responsible for the initial mess.
When the Liberals became the government, they did nothing to correct the situation and instead increased the amount of raw logs for export. They are the second government to fail the forestry workers, thereby exporting jobs out of B.C. and precipitating the closures of many sawmills. With this present Liberal government and their trashing of emails, I doubt getting any records about what happened to Clause 7 would be possible.
Rick Faulkner,
Chemainus
