FORESTS MINISTER Dave Parke:’s mad scheme fo turn over control of 67 per cent of all timber cut in B.C. to a handful of multinational corporations amounts to treason. The man should be arrested and locked away.

I don’t have any trouble finding words to describe his plan. Crimi- nal. Idiotic. A corporate lap-dog sell-out.

_ By tansferring land from gov- érnment-managed forest licences into tree farm licences (TFL), Parker claims he is giving the in- dustry “‘greater opportunities and more responsibility.’

Greater opportunities, sure. _ The theory — wait, that’s ioo

strong a word, let’s try ‘‘fantasy”’ — is that secure access to timber will encourage long-term resource management because forest com- panies would be able to find fi- nancing more readily.

What piffle!

it should be overwhelmingly ob- } vious to anybody except a - clockhead or a lap-dog that once 67 per cent of our forests are securely in the hands of a handiul of corporate groups, the decisions that are made will reflect corporate priorities, i.e. the bottom line, and that’s all they will reflect.

As it is, the B.C. forest industry is dominated by four giants.

The Saunder-Champion-Ket- chum-Fletcher group controls 16.5 million cubic metres of annual cut.

The Bronfman-Reichmani- Desmarais group controls another 13 million cubic metres. Mead- Scott controls 10.7 million cubic metres. And the Bentley-Price group controls 4.4 million cubic metres.

None of these outfits inas its headquarters in British Columbia. Does anybody think for a moment that during their board meetings, the directors of the above-men- tioned groups include serious discussions about the welfare of the local folk, their water supplies, need for parks and recreation, etc.2 -

The truly insidious part of Parker’s nasty little plot is that once the corporate biggies have obtained virtually complete control of their TFLs, they will be able to

Hearing moved up

THE DATE for the West Van- couver District public hearing con- cerning the Klahanie Park residen-

tial complex has been moved up,

from Oct. 30 to Sept. 25.

The mixed seuiors and family housing project is being sponsored by West and North Vancouver Rotary clubs.

The site is located just east of the Capilano River, near Earl's Restaurant and is accessible only through North Vancouver District.

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stonewall any proposals for local control of logging, proposals for wilderness areas or parklands, or even native land claim settlements.

Remember what happened at South Moresby. Western Forest Products managed to wring $150 million in compensation so trees in a new national park could be spared.

.e . B ritish Cohimbians,

whether natives or newcomers, lose — thanks to the sell-out of our land:to the multinationals. ??

If the same outrageous scale ap- plies elsewhere in the province, and the forestry giants were given what Pavker is talking about, the total value of the lands involved would be in the neighborhood of $42 billion. That’s what it would cost the public to buy back the rights to have parks instead of staring at ravaged, clear-cut forests.

The biggest proposed licence is the Fletcher Challenge Mackenzie TFL in the Prince George forest region, which will cover 15 million acres, an area roughly twice the size of Vancouver island.

For New Zealand-based Fletcher Challenge this is quite a coup, considering the area involved is almost a quarter the size of New Zealand in iis entirety.

If you want a sneak preview of how Fletcher Challenge can be ex- pected to behave once it becomes master of such an awesome area, lock no further than the com- pany’s plans for Hanson Island, just south of Alert Bay.

The company intends to clear- cut the island this fall, but will be contracting out first of all to get someone to haul away the wasted debris from the company’s last assault on the island, which left it

littered with unused, felled trees.

As fate would have it, the pro- vince is considering expanding the Orca sanctuary at Robson Bight to include the Tsitika watershed and Hanson Island.

Should this plan go ahead, the province will undoubtedly have to compensate Fletcher Challenge just as Western Forest Products was compensated for South Moresby.

How Fletcher Challenge came to obtain its TFL on Hanson Island is worth reviewing.

The licence was obtained from Crown Forest, who got it from Crown Zellerbach, despite the fact that the island is the subject of a Kwakiutl land claim.

In order to pull the deal off, the foresters hired some ‘“‘experts’’ to check the island over for signs of long-term native habitation. They found only 76 trees that had been “culturally modified,” meaning that they had been used centuries ago by Indians as a source of bark.

Interestingly, what this revealed was that the native people have been practising what we now like to cal] sustainable development for ages. The trees would be par- tially-peeled roughly every 14 years, sometimes as many as six or seven times in the lifespan of each tree. Another way of describing this practice would be to call it in- tensive forestry management.

Last year, an independent survey of Hanson was conducted, and lo and behold, some 1,000 culturally-modified trees were found in one small corner of the island! The forest company’s ex- perts had either not done their job properly or — gasp! — they lied.

The significance of this is that the island stands a very good chance of being declared part of the Kwakiuti lands. But by then, it will either have been logged or sold off to the province for parkland.

Either way, Fletcher Challenge wins. British Columbians, whether natives or newcomers, lose — thanks to the sell-out of our land to the multinationals. As for Dave Parker, as I say, he should be ar- rested for treason @

Before you buy your Mercedes-Benz

discover the difference in prices and selection, over the Lion's Gate Bridge in

North Vancouver

Grants

to aid

LGH projects

FIVE GRANTS, recently awarded by the Lions Gate Medical Research Foundation, will allow researchers at the local hospital to initiate studies on a diverse range of topics.

According to foundation execu- tive vice-presid2nt Valerie Young, the grants were made possible by the community support given the foundation’s fund-raising activi- ties, which include its annual Run for Research and Bachelor Auc- tion.

Because of the successful fund raisers, ‘‘we’re going to be able to give maybe $10,000 more this year,’ noted Young. In other years, the foundation, which was established in 1963, has annually distributed approximately $30,000 to $35,000 towards various pro- jects.

Of the most recent awards, the largest grant, $10,000, went to Wendy Winslow, the hospital’s

See LGH

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