BC’s Forest
Service Jeopardized by
Deep Cuts: Time for a Formal Inquiry
by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
—
BC Office and Sierra Club
BC
A decade of layoffs and budget cuts, combined with the recent radical
cabinet reorganization, have so thoroughly gutted BC’s Forest
Service that the door is wide open to abuses of the province’s
cherished public forestlands, a new study concludes.
Based on analysis of government employment data, the study reveals
that in less than a decade one quarter of all Forest Service
positions have been cut (1,006 full-time jobs), and calls for an
independent commission to determine whether the Service can
adequately serve the public.
No sector of the venerable institution, nearing its 100th
anniversary, has been spared, including compliance and enforcement
staff, making it difficult to catch companies who are stealing logs,
defrauding the public of stumpage fees, or using environmentally
destructive logging practices.
“The deep job cuts — combined with October’s
cabinet reorganization that cleaved what was left of the old Forest
Service in two — are completely contrary to the public
interest,” says Ben Parfitt, a researcher with the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives’ BC office and author of the
report, which was co-published with Sierra Club of BC. “The work
load that we have saddled the Service’s remaining men and women
with is past the point of absurdity.”
Parfitt notes that today in the US there are 30,000
national Forest Service employees, each responsible on average for
nearly 2,700 hectares of forest. BC’s Forest Service staff
is one tenth that of the US, yet the area of land
to be covered per employee is 7.4 times higher, or 20,000 hectares.
The disparity is even worse in northeast BC: 232,000 hectares per
employee, or more than 580 Stanley Parks each.
Field investigations by compliance and enforcement personnel have
declined by more than 14,450 visits annually, and are expected to
fall further. Meanwhile, Service personnel conducting audits of
companies to ensure that they accurately report the value of the logs
harvested from public forestlands (thus ensuring that adequate
stumpage fees are collected) must now each contend with 7,500 more
truckloads of logs, on average, than they did eight years ago.
As a result of October’s cabinet reorganization and the
creation of the new Natural Resource Operations Ministry, entire
sections of the Forest Service were disbanded, including its renowned
83-year-old research branch, whose remaining scientists (60 per cent
fewer than a decade ago) are now scattered among the Natural Resource
Operations, Environment, Agriculture and Forests and Mines
ministries.
“We cannot continue on this way. The BC government should
immediately reverse its dubious cabinet reorganization and halt any
further Forest Service layoffs, pending a review by an independent
commission,” says George Heyman, executive director of Sierra
Club BC.
