Originally published on the Discovery Islander

The problems Quadra Islanders are having with Mosaic’s Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP) have their roots in the relationship of the corporate forest industry with the province of British Columbia. As governments transferred the authority for the management of forests to corporations such as TimberWest and its proxy, Mosaic, two processes were activated. The first was the disempowerment of the public to influence the fate of their own forests.

This is illustrated dramatically in a July 15, 2019, letter from Mosaic’s Chief Forester, Domenico Iannidinardo to The Honourable Doug Donaldson, then Minister of Forests, Range and Natural Resources Operations. Under the heading of “Defining Public Trust”, Mr. Iannidinardo writes that, “Our concern is that the concept of ‘public trust’ can be misused by some to advance a view that any activity or practice they do not support is a violation of public trust.” He then goes on to explain that any resulting “consultation” could interfere with logging plans, “with serious negative implications for the sector and local economies,” the clear suggestion being that Minister should, therefore, use legislation to limit the influence of public input on FSPs.

The letter goes on to explain that, although “sustainable forest management is a three-legged stool, focused on environmental, social and economic sustainability… it is therefore critical that timber supply be maintained as a key overarching objective.” In the logic of corporate thinking, the availability of trees to log somehow becomes the only important leg on the “stool”. Environmental and social considerations suddenly lose their importance in the corporate quest for profit.

And this identifies the second problem with any bargain between governments and the corporate forest industry. The primary objective of corporations is profit. All strategies are considered through the lens of maximizing returns to shareholders. Business is not in the business of either protecting the environment, pleasing society, or supplying “economic sustainability” to anyone but themselves. The other legs of the “stool” are collateral benefits that accrue as long as profit margins are high enough to justify them. But corporations that start losing money scrimp on environmental protection, abandon any social obligation they may have promised, and justify “business is business” as the rationale for closing operations and transferring them somewhere else. The machinery of corporate profit-making has caused the wholesale closure of innumerable mills throughout BC, both lumber as well as pulp and paper. If the profit margins are higher in America, Taiwan, China or Korea, that’s where the mills are built and that’s where BC’s logs go to be processed. Profit trumps all other loyalties, duties and responsibilities.

In another amoral corporate manoeuvre—without the stability of the jobs provided by mills—most of Mosaic’s so-called “employees” in its logging operations have now become contractors, a nifty business strategy that transfers the risk to the competitive bidders. The process distances Mosaic from direct responsibility for its working personnel and minimizes its obligations to society, all while maximizing corporate profits.

The end result of trusting bargains between corporations and governments is that the imperatives of business make treacherous partners. Mr. Iannidinardo interprets any objection to logging plans as a “violation of public trust” and threats to “local economies”. Given the corporate imperative to survive in a comfortable zone of maximum profits, his words don’t actually say what they really mean.

This has created a situation in British Columbia that is coming to a tense, confrontational and unhappy conclusion, summarized by Gavin McGarrigle, the Regional Director of the 27,500 Unifor members in Canada (Campbell River Mirror, Dec. 6, 2021). Decades of “systematic over-harvesting, short-term profits over long- term sustainability and broken promises, from the forest companies themselves,” he writes, have led to a crisis. “Simply put, the BC forestry sector is struggling and the forest industry itself has been the co-author of its own demise.”

The Ministry is aware of such problems with forest management in BC, and is intending to replace its Forest Stewardship Plans with Landscape Level Planning in Bill 23. A postponement of the implementation of Mosaic’s 2022 FSP and its replacement with a more sensitive and responsive provision in the Forest and Range Practices Act could help to alleviate some of Quadra’s concerns about Mosaic’s present and future logging practices.

At a more comprehensive level, the United Nations’ COP26 meeting has concluded that we will not come close to meeting our global carbon reduction targets without the assistance of corporations. And the science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified deforestation as a major cause of the planet’s unfolding ecological crises. Recent studies have found that, if BC were a country, its per capita destruction of forests would be multiples worse than some of the most egregious deforesters in the world. And because of disease, insect damage, forest fires and rapacious logging, BC’s forests are now a net contributor to atmospheric carbon.

Mosaic is functioning as it were oblivious to these findings and these trends. Quadra Island would be a good place for it to connect to the reality of both our local and collective situation. What is it about the global ecological crisis that Mosaic doesn’t understand? Indeed, the entire forestry sector is coming under pressure to reform. This pressure exists on Quadra Island, too. And it’s our responsibility as a community to remind Mosaic in the most explicit of terms that it is not exempt from the winds of change that are blowing through the trees.

Lesley Fettes is the District Manager of the FLNRORD branch of the ministry that is responsible for final authorization of Mosaic’s Forest Stewardship Plan. Expressions of your concern should be sent to her as well as Jennifer Peschke.

Ray Grigg
for Sierra Quadra

Letters of concern can be sent to:
Jennifer Peschke RPF,
Area Forester, Mosaic Forest Management, Box 2800 Campbell River, B.C., V9W 5C5
or Email: [email protected]

Lesley Fettes,
District Manager, FLNRORD,
370 S. Dogwood Street, Campbell River, B.C. V9W 6Y7 or Email: [email protected]

Top image credit: A clearcut, replanted area and second growth off Granite Road on Quadra Island – Roy L Hales photo

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