Katrine Conroy Minister of BC Forests "Bla, Bla, Bla"

 

First I want to give a special shout out to the brave souls still on the line at Fairy Creek. I know it’s tough. But serendipity happens and you are living it. You are witnessing that the BC NDP government, because of your efforts, want to at least portray that they have had a “come to Jesus moment” about the need to protect BC old growth forests, what is left of them. You and the others have certainly accomplished this and many of us recognize how hard this work is and are grateful for your sacrifices.

Katrine Conroy, Minister of BC Forests, announced on Nov. 2 that there would be a temporary halt in logging in critical old growth areas in BC. She didn’t say when this halt would start. She did mention that she and her office needed a month to figure out how to manage this halt to old growth logging. There first has to be consultations with First Nations who are not of one mind on the issue, certainly they are divided at Fairy Creek. Then the logging industry itself must be considered, also the logging communities, and the logger’s union etc. Conroy says in effect that she must first go through this process of bringing all together in the spirit of harmony. So the actual halt will have to wait until this conferencing between the province and the designated players must be gone through first in order “to get it right”. 

 

In my mind this really means more “talk and log” or “bla bla bla” as Greta Thurnberg recently characterized the recent COP26 environmental gathering in Glasgow that has promised all kinds ofgoodies for the environment in the future, including a global halt of all global deforestation by 2030. In the first place Russia and China didn’t even show up for COP26 and in second place, leading heads of state that did attend can promise all they want but delivering is a different matter. For instance, Brazil can’t even stop the illegal poaching of their old growth forests, much less control the legal burning of the trees for farming and bio fuels. The governments of British Columbia in the past have been unable (read unwilling) to control the deforestation of old growth forests in BC. They have had all kinds of reasons for not doing so... the lack of agreements with First Nations, people need jobs, logging companies need profits, the government needs the taxes, the universities need corporate logging endowments, the courts need to be seen as wise in their power to hand out injunctions to prevent people from acting as citizens and trying to prevent the destruction of public property. Or in the case of First Nations, their own property. The list goes on. But one truth is beginning to be laid bare and that is the innate power of the BC government to stop the logging of old growth forests in our province tomorrow, by the stroke of a pen.

 

How? By the stroke of what pen? This could be done by Katrine Conroy declaring that there will be no more Tree Farm licences given out for areas that contain any old growth trees, and to rescend the ones already given out. By the time Conroy and her office gets it straight about what areas contain ancient trees as opposed to rare trees, or just plain old big trees, etc. it won’t matter much anyway. They will all be gone. Mechanized logging machinery can zip through old growth forests like a bat out of hell. Does anybody remember Joni Mitchell’s song the Big Yellow Taxi?

 

"Don’t it always seem to go

 

That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone

 

They paved paradise 

 

And put up a parking lot"...

 

 

Stay safe everybody.