James Steidle

Recently Lower Mainland MLAs Bruce Ralston, our Minister of Forests, and our fresh-eyed Minister of State for Sustainable Forestry Innovation, Andrew Mercier were in town. I have no idea what was said… They don’t talk to critics like me who volunteer their time to highlight forestry issues. But I suspect it was the usual “solutions.” The moose will pay. …Our primary forests will pay. And of course, eventually, you will pay. …We will scrape the forests barren of life … plaster the landscape in monocrop pine plantations … as every last dollar of investor profit [is] siphoned out of our region to keep the global shareholder happy. …Last week at COFI, the investor class actually had the nerve to say red tape was to blame for the decades-long decline of the forestry sector, a sector that lost nearly half of its work force at the same time the floodgates were opened to deregulation and big capital.