Hmm… switched the Hazelton three vehicle accident story for this one?

Red tape keeps lots of people employed with pointless busy work dont’cha know?

‘Full employment’, Johnny. The universal policy of ALL our current political Parties.

Looks like WorkSafeBS is cutting a lot of red tape too, why have all those Stop Work Orders like Newfoundland & Labrador clogging up and slowing down business operations?

Number of Stop Work Orders Issued by WorkSafeBC, from their 2012 Annual Report:
2008- 95
2009- 77
2010- 81
2011- 65
2012- 84

Number of Stop Work Orders Issued by Newfoundland & Labrador Occupational Health and Safety, from their Inspection Activity Report 2008 – 2012
2008- 824
2009- 702
2010- 827
2011- 1,009
2012- 1,081

Kind of “pathetic” comparing the two, wonder which province cares more about worker safety than the other?

http://www.servicenl.gov.nl.ca/ohs/statistics.html

“Today Transport Canada advised another 157 people that they may lose their jobs bringing the grand total to 370 employees affected. Of these positions affected today, 107 will be eliminated. Included in this number is the elimination of communication specialists and various administrative functions and, most notably, all regional Health and Safety Advisors who were recently hired to help bring the department into compliance with federal Health and Safety legislation.”

http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1000389/transport-canada-continues-to-show-its-disregard-for-safety-with-latest-round-of-layoffs

All these Transport Canada layoffs happening during the absolute worse year for rail transport, where more oil was spilled this year than the last 4 decades combined! Now that’s not very smart is it?

http://news.msn.com/us/more-oil-spilled-from-trains-in-2013-than-in-previous-4-decades

“Four years after a deadly outbreak of food-borne illness killed nearly two dozen people, the Canadian government is cutting up to 100 food safety inspectors, the inspectors’ union said on Wednesday, reviving concerns about quality control in Canada’s food supply.”

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCABRE83A1BP20120411

Need I go on JB and socredible? Your blindly idealistic “cut red tape” and “smaller government” mantra can actually endanger us all!!!

People#1: Your government make-work programs and nanny-state are bankrupting us all. So what’s your point again?

One thing you fail to realize, People#1, is that red tape can actually get in the way of common sense and protecting the people you pretend to care about. It doesn’t take a huge effort to see many examples of this.

Engaging me in debate can be a bit overwhelming, but seriously JB, do you really have to respond like a sack of hammers?

It always comes back to personal attacks with you, doesn’t it People#1? How disappointing.

Go away TROLL!!!

People#1, did it not ever occur to you in comparing the number of ‘Stop Work Orders’ between B C and Newfoundland that the industries in Newfoundland may have a greater incidence of unsafe working conditions than industries here?

I have to agree with Johnny, red tape can, and often does, get in the way of common sense. Sometimes those in charge of administering red tape are more concerned with the preservation of their positions than they are in dealing sensibly in interpreting the regulations that are in place. This is something far from being restricted to only issues involving workplace safety. If you ever operate a business you’ll soon find out what we’re talking about.

Given that our business, industry, and workforce is nine times larger than Newfoundland and Labrador’s, yeah I have a problem with the number of Stop Work Orders issued by WorkSafeBS compared to Newfoundland and Labrador.

Given the pathetically low number of Stop Work Orders issued by WorkSafeBS, I think we can all come up with at least two local examples where Stop Work Orders could have saved lives!

If I had a business, I would make sure my workers would be going home to their families and not to hospital emergency rooms and morgues!

I have provided multiple examples of cutting red tape and the blind pursuit of a smaller government being an actual threat to our well-being and safety, other than your opinion, what have you provided socredible?

Let me give you an example of some of the type of red tape inanities I’m referring to, People#1.

An individual bought a small acreage, on which he and his wife built a new house. They were both very much into horses, and, after moving in, they cleared about half of their remaining acreage for pasture. And I, as the owner of a local sawmill and lumber company, was approached by them to find out if they could get the fir, cedar, and spruce timber they had taken down cut into lumber. They hoped to use this lumber to build a barn. They had one logging truck load, they figured.

I explained to them that they could, but also there now needed to be a ‘paper trail’ to accompany their logs from their property to my mill.

It included getting the BC Forest Service to issue them a Timber Mark, which had to be written on their logs; and finding out whether the Forest Service required these logs to be scaled or not. That it was illegal to move their logs on the highway without this Mark, and that I could not receive them in my mill yard legally without it.

My advice to them was to get someone with a portable mill to come onto their property and cut their logs on-site. They could avoid all the bureaucratic requirements that would be necessary if they brought them to me.

They didn’t want to mill their logs on-site. They were concerned there would be too much mess to clean up afterwards.

And so they applied for, and were granted a Timber Mark, which they dutifully crayoned onto the end of each log. One of their neighbours who drives a self-loading logging truck, hauled them in to us. The Forest Service had waived the requirement the logs be scaled, since there was only one load, and no stumpage or royalty was payable to the Crown on their timber.

We sawed the logs, they paid their bill, removed the lumber, and built their barn.

That winter a wind came up and took down some of the trees remaining on their acreage. Not anything that would be considered a ‘commercial species’, but a mixture of crappy hardwoods. Some cottonwood and maple.

They contacted me again, and asked if they could bring these logs in, about a third of a logging truck load this time, and have them sawed. They wanted to build a tack room inside their barn.

I said sure, and again the same truck came in with these logs, with the same Timber Mark crayoned onto the end of them. I knew they had done the necessary ‘paperwork’ because I’d already seen it before. So had the trucker.

A day or so later, before we could mill this wood, the Forest Service came around, checking to see if we had any unmarked logs in our yard. I said we did not. When asked about the ‘crap’ the couple had now sent in, I explained whose wood it was, and what they wanted to do with it.

Surprisingly, I was ordered not to cut or further move those logs ~ this paragon of officialdom wanted to check the Timber Mark, which he suspected had expired. He wanted the name of the trucker who had moved the logs. I said they’d come in when I was busy, and hadn’t noticed who brought them in.

An hour or so later, after he’d returned to the Forest Service office, we received a phone call. And from the tone of it, you would have thought we’d committed some high crime and misdemeanor. We were told that the Timber Mark had indeed expired, (about a week before), and that we could have our mill seized, the trucker could have his truck seized, and be fined and penalised for having done what we had done. That the people that owned the ‘crap’ we had received had to “immediately” apply to get another Timber Mark.

Which they did, (and I imagine must’ve been given a similar lecture, if they’d applied to him). By and by the requisite paper work was brought in, with an order to phone and get official ‘clearance’ to mill this wood before it was cut. All that for eight or ten ‘junk’ logs, to make a bit of lumber to build a lousy tack room.

Now that, People#1, is just one small example of the kinds of bureaucratic inanities people in business have to put up with every day. People who provide employment, and serve the general public. People who are required to pay taxes out of some income they’ve managed to eke out of doing something ‘useful’. Taxes that support those who are all too often functionally ‘useless’, and ones we still have to put up with, and try to reason with at our peril. A cost and inconvenience which could be avoided, in this instance, (and far too many others), by the simple application of ‘common sense’ ~ something sadly lacking amongst many in the ranks of bureaucracy.

Hmm… as a sawmill owner I would have just offered them use of my portable Woodmizer sawmill to mill the logs into dimension lumber on their property, eazy peezy!

I would charge them a small fee for the use of my portable sawmill of course ;-)

http://www.woodmizer.ca/

Hindsight is always 20/20, People#1. Foresight rarely so.

Those of us in business walk a very fine line between maintaining enough income to stay in business, continuing to provide employment for those who are depending on us to do just that, and maintaining as safe a workplace as we can.

Governments are great at dictating what we must do, and are able to change the requirements at will. Often more to try to curry favor with the electorate than to sensibly address some problem. They are far from great in creating and maintaining the conditions under which all their dictates can be paid for.

And without government regulations intervention and oversight (red tape) we would all end up working is the same conditions, and have the same rights, Bangladesh garment factory workers!

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/13/bangladesh-agrees-to-allow-garment-workers-to-form-trade-unions-in-wake/

But hey, that’s a third world country example, lets have some first world examples:

http://gulfnews.com/news/world/london-intern-dies-after-working-long-hours-1.1222297

This last sad story comes from Alberta and is source from an “Employment Law Firm”. Thank the powers that be we have employment laws right socredible?

http://www.employmentlawtoday.com/articleview/18780-family-of-alberta-intern-killed-in-car-accident-after-working-long-hours-pushes-for-change

There are several people with Wood-miser type portable mills in our area, People#1, and I often refer customers looking to have their own wood custom-sawn to them.

It saves the customer the cost of trucking, and both of us the hassle of having to deal with the Forest Service. Whose policies are often far from consistent.

In addition, we never know what we’re going to be getting into when we cut this kind of wood. If it comes from built-up areas, generally it’ll have metal in it.

Even from more rural areas there’s the risk of running into things left over from when a tree was used as part of a fence line. Or worse, ceramic insulators that once carried a phone or power line, and the tree has since grown completely around them.

Of course when I ask if there’s any possibility the logs could have any metal in them, the answer is always, “No.” I’ve had instances where what I had to charge for saw damages exceeded what was charged to actually saw the wood.

Now don’t even mention going over every log with a metal detector. In most cases those who want custom sawing done are already on the cheap side, and thoroughly convinced every sawmill owner is robbing them blind.

Especially when they can buy kiln-dried, planed, and graded SPF 2x4s at the local building supply ~ ones that’ve been cut by one of those awful large corporations, like Canfor ~ for less money than it’s going to cost them to get their own logs rough sawn by me.

And if we were to add the cost of going over their logs with a metal detector to the degree we’d have to to ensure there was no metal present in each and every log, they’d wail even louder.

And if I were to run the notion that I was doing so “in the interests of workplace safety” by them, it wouldn’t cut any ice with them either. For they’ve already told me that their logs, even ones where there are nails as visible as pins in a pin cushion, have no metal in them at all. Thank God for those poor suckers who’ve bought Wood-Mizers in their quest for a lumbering fortune ~ long may there be a continuing stream of them!

Forget it socredible, you’d have better luck talking to your cat.

People who are in business like yourself, socredible, would have a good idea about red tape. People#1, on the other hand… well, the posts speak for themselves!

People#1: “And without government regulations intervention and oversight (red tape) we would all end up working is the same conditions, and have the same rights, Bangladesh garment factory workers!”

How can you have a discussion with someone who doesn’t even know the difference between government oversight and red tape? As I said earlier… disappointing.

People#1, if we were truly progressing ‘financially’ as we so clearly have done in productivity ‘physically’, the average workday and workweek would now be considerably less than 8 hours a day, and 40 hours a week.

Instead, we seem to be going the other way. More ‘red tape’ will not change this, except to make it worse. It’s a ‘financial’ problem that is endemic in our whole economy. And it requires a ‘financial’ solution that applies to our whole economy.

Conversely, why even saw the timber socredible, use the whole logs to build a log home.

The attached picture is of a man named Dick Proenneke from the popular public television documentary; “Alone in the Wilderness”. He built his home for $45 dollars.

http://www.cavemancircus.com/wp-content/uploads/images/2009/august/alone_in_the_wilderness_featured.jpg

Guaranteed, he had next to no “red tape” to deal with when he built and lived up at Twin Lakes, Alaska, after all, isn’t that what’s it’s all about?… getting away from it all?

Oh, and to build a log home all you would need pretty much is some nails and a “sack of hammers” ;-)

People#1: Give it up.

Yeah you’re right Give it up, public servant lay-offs in light of massive train derailments, deadly outbreaks from infected food, sawmill explosions, all resulting in death, are not good arguments for increased regulations, and government oversight (red tape).

My apologies.