This page contains annotated news stories and press releases with commentary about land reform and the democratic process in British Columbia. Our comments are shown in red.
Libs not so biz smart
Feb 07, 2007
Premier Gordon Campbell and the B.C. Liberals came into office in 2001 promising the government would make decisions based on business models. So why, asks lawyer and Dogwood Initiative executive director Will Horter, are they giving handouts to forest companies without getting anything in return?
“As the fiscally conservative government, they should be trying to extract benefits for the public, not give them away,” he says.
On January 31, forests and range minister Rich Coleman announced the province would allow Western Forest Products to remove over 28,000 hectares of land on Vancouver Island from three of its tree farm licenses (TFL). WFP owns the land, but it had been managed as part of the TFLs for half a century, a deal made in exchange for access to trees on public land.
If the government is going to allow WFP to break the deal, says Horter, it should get something in return. “This is just a windfall gift,” he says. “It’s like writing them a cheque . . . It’s just bad public policy. There’s no commensurate public benefit.”
The government made a similar gift to what was then Weyerhaeuser in 2004. Removing the land from public management allows the companies to sell the land for a lot more than it would be worth and opens it to real estate development.
A forests ministry spokesperson says it would take a week to check government files on why the lands were included in the TFLs. She said she would have someone call who could answer questions, but the call hadn’t come by press time.
Horter says he wonders if there’ll be more give aways like this from a government that doesn’t deserve the “business minded” label. He says, “They’re the subsidy government.”
