New Democrats Attack Bell's Tenure In Forests Ministry
By 250 News
Saturday, February 04, 2012 08:01 AM
KAMLOOPS - The B.C. New Democrats are claiming the Forest Practices Board has confirmed that former forest minister Pat Bell has been grossly understating the true problems facing B.C.'s forests.
New Democrat forest critic Norm Macdonald said Bell needs to explainwhy his estimate of crown lands that have not been adequately replanted was less than 10 per cent of the total the Forest Practices Board revealed Thursday.
"Either the minister was badly misinformed or he was purposefully understating the problem facing our forests," said Macdonald. "The Liberal government has utterly abandoned B.C.'s forests. Treeplanting and silviculture work has been reduced even after cutting increased and at a time when fire and pests like the beetle are already taking their toll on the forests."
Last February, respected forester Anthony Britneff released a report showing that the total net Not Satisfactorily Restocked land was approximately 2.3 million hectares; the gross NSR land - including forest land not restocked after fire, pests or disease - is around 9.1million hectares, three times the size of Vancouver Island.
Minister Bell, as forest minister, claimed the total NSR land to be around240,000 hectares.
Thursday in Kamloops, Marvin Eng of the ForestPractices Board confirmed that Mr. Britneff's calculations were closerto the truth. "Compounding the problem is the fact that we just don't know the full extent of the problem," said Macdonald. "Even Mr. Eng acknowledged thathis figures were based on old data.
"This government made massive cuts to the forest service, which has left the service unable to paint a true picture of what's actually happening on the forest floor."
In the 1990s, the province spent an average of $22.25 million annually on programs assessing forest inventory. By the last budget, that had shrunk to $7.5 million.
New Democrat leader Adrian Dix delivered the keynote address to the SCA convention Thursday evening, saying the forest health crisis was an ssue the provincial government must immediately address.
Since 2001, more than 70 mills have closed and the forest industry has hed more than 35,000 full-time, family-supporting jobs. Adrian Dix and the New Democrats believe that B.C. logs should support .C. jobs as part of a forest strategy that respects First Nations, nvironmental and local needs.
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It is just a few more months of having to tolerate the LIES and arrogance from these LIARS. All bell can do is send out raw logs to china. But the real funny part is how when the raw logs come back from china made into CHEAP furniture these stupid peopke here actually buy this junk. You can see it yourself just drive past any of these places and see the stupid people in these shops buying this made in china GARBAGE. Want to shut off this system? Just refuse to buy anything made in china. Not only will you help our country but maybe we might get our jobs back here. As long as YOU keep buying this GARBAGE cheap made from them, they will keep sending it to you. Myself, I do everything I can to not buy ANYTHING made in china. It costs a little more but I can not stomach anything made by them. For example just last week I wanted to put new light fixtures in my new house. I had to special order them from mcguiness lighting in order to get some made in Canada. So next time you think about this pipeline or wonder why all our mills closed and all our jobs is now done by commie slaves just put that cheap made item back on the shelf and walk out the door. It is time to just stop giving any money to china. They should be starved out. Please do not buy any more things made in china. Just try doing it for a while say until the election when we can finally obliterate these LYING liberals and extinquish the hst.