BC recently announced changes to regulation that governs the relationship between forest licence holders and timber harvesting contractors and road builders. …Moving to a “cost-based” arbitration was one of George Abbott’s proposals from the [2019] Logging Contractor Sustainability Review. …In my opinion, the newly worded regulation has the potential to improve contractors’ chances of achieving sustainable rates. But…the regulation’s arbitration process will not be a fast route to resolve a dispute. New sections on covering costs of an arbitration will limit abuse. There are many new sections added or revised that will need legal interpretations and precedence to add clarity.
The verdict will remain undetermined on the impact to the financial sustainability of the sector’s broader contracting community until the amended regulation is put through the motions of an arbitration. The goal was never to have regulation written for one party to win an arbitration, but to dissuade both parties from going to arbitration. …The probability of success increases for those who track their data (costs and productivity) and regard contracting as a business, not a lifestyle. The amended Bill 13 regulation hopefully will help in “levelling the field”, but if contractors (or licence holders) do not have organized data, they will not get what they need to be sustainable. [click here for more of Dave’s View From The Stump]