The social and economic costs of overcutting

It is often proposed that increasing the AAC means more jobs. Unfortunately, in British Columbia, quite the opposite is true. Since 1960, British Columbia's AAC has consistently increased while forest sector employment has actually remained static and in some regions decreased.

The number of forestry workers in BC has fluctuated very little in the past 30 years. In contrast, the volume of wood cut has almost doubled. The result? British Columbia has one of the lowest rates of employment per volume of timber cut when compared to other timber-producing countries.

BC does not maximize the potential of its value-added industries.
In fact BC's value-added sector is very small, with BC adding the least amount of value to its wood compared with the rest of Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and the US. For example, BC adds only $119 in value per cubic metre compared with $318 per cubic meter in the United States.


The degree of inefficiency in BC is further compounded when the amount of waste wood is considered: an estimated 300 million tonnes annually, or the equivalent of 100,000 logging truck loads of wood, is burned, buried, used to construct logging roads or simply left to rot.

This lack of development in the value-added sector is reflected in the decline of the forest sector as a major employer in BC. In 1981, 1 in 11 people in BC were employed in the forest sector, by 1994 that level had dropped to 1 in 17.

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Rather than establishing high-value, niche markets with some of the finest wood in the world, British Columbians have been left behind in the global trend towards high-skill and value-added employment.

 

 

When BC's Forest Act was drafted in 1947, forest tenures (Tree Farm Licenses and Timber Licenses) were established to promote social and economic stability in communities by requiring companies to operate mills locally. In exchange, the companies received a steady supply of timber from public lands. After decades of intense industrial logging throughout the province, there is little or no mature timber left and what remains is generally difficult to access. Subsequently, mills are closing and workers are losing their jobs. A typical scenario is that once the best and most valuable original forest is gone, large timber companies pack up and move.

In 1991, MacMillan Bloedel (once BC's pre-eminent timber company, bought-out by Weyerhaeuser) closed their Port Alberni plywood mill on Vancouver Island and shipped the equipment to Alabama, USA, where pine trees reach commercial size in a mere 12 years - much faster than the typical 80 years in BC.

Mill closures and layoffs have become commonplace throughout BC. When Canadian Forest Products closed the its Eburne samill in Vancouver in 1998, CEO Peter Bently said, “Over cutting on the coast, not government policy, is the reason the mill must close.” This shameful situation continues and is one of the most urgent issues the province must address.

For information on community forest projects in BC click here.

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