Unsaid policy in the PG region is to not allow anyone a private interest in crown land, or the forest, so as to not hinder maximization of resource royalty revenue at the greatest possible efficiency.

Its why you will never see a new farm, private campgrounds (and underfunding the recreation sites), no new ecotourism resorts, or anything that could hinder future corporate extraction of natural resources. The policy is about maximizing the revenue for the bureaucracy and not about free enterprise opportunity… and in the long run that narrows our sustainable options and impoverishes a limited and restricted population to near servitude for the honor of having a job. IMO that is the policy and few beat the system… most don’t even recognize thats the policy. As the future unfolds these same policies are being modified to sell those same opportunities (crown land related) to foreign capital in the form of corporations and jobs. If Vancouver is any indicator… than we are most definitely a province up for sale to the highest bidder.

Most of these career bureaucrats are enmeshed into their own ideology and few can think of the indiginous rights of citizens, free enterprise competition, and property rights. The future most of them envision doesn’t include these things as factors in their models as they game theory in the name of things like practice boards, planning models, and new regulations to enforce them.

Time Will Tell

There’s a lot of truth in all that you’re saying, Eagle. What we’ve so far failed to realise though, is “Why?” it has developed that way. And until we do, we’ve no chance whatsoever of any viable alternatives.

Most people put it down to corporate greed enmeshed with a self-serving government bureaucracy. One that was originally put in place ostensibly to restrict the very thing it ends up more often encouraging. ~ and there’s no doubt that both these things are present. What is more likely the case, though, is that both of them are ‘effects’ of a much larger problem that goes largely unnoticed.

Fundamentally, it’s a problem to do with “accounting”. As ‘figures’ representing ‘money’ in the accounts of individual enterprises relate to overall ‘money itself’ in the quantity it’s available in the hands of the public.

Not so hard to see.

Government desperately wants the revenues and relies on harvesting not plans to get that revenue. So any changes to tenure or use permits are always “negotiated” with the major tenure holders, in this case, the big forest companies. In reality, these negotiations meet the companies’ interests and keep (some) revenues flowing.

Unfortunately for the Crown (read province in this case) the net stumpage per cubic metre has been declining along with the decline in harvest so they have a double whammy, and so they are ever more fearful of killing what used to be a golden goose. Playing at the edges at best, instead of really taking a hard look at the 1950’s based tenure system, we have now.

Are there better uses for the land – possibly. But not if useless land is transferred for purposes it is most UNsuited for.

We really do need change, but as Eagle says, current governance models won’t provide the insight and innovation needed.

Time may tell, but it’s not on our side ….. :-(

So why is it that there is no background provided ab out the headliner, Dr. W. McGill, but we have some background on Ralph Archibald of Victoria?

When I went to the UNBC site, all I can find is that Dr. W. McGill is on academic leave and that he is a professor in Ecosystem Science and Management.