This is about shutting the province down for public access to the back country. All part of the program to shut down rural BC, so the province can be privatized for multinational interests. This is what bureaucracy in BC is all about these days.

You have that one right Eagleone, you will see locked gates at every logging road access soon just like on the island. Just pay your taxes and stay home.

Don't wory. The only reason they are doing that is to stop people from smoking in the woods.

Definition from the act.

"workplace" means any place where a worker is or is likely to be engaged in any work and includes any vessel, vehicle or mobile equipment used by a worker in work.

It is clear that it does not exclude highways, streets etc.(for instance when a paving crew is paving a city street, that city street is a workplace by this definition).

If WorkSafreBC is not actually saying it in the matter written above, they would be suggesting that forest service roads were not workplaces. Bad move on their part.

Read this suggested letter to forest companies as shown on the Western Fallers site.

http://www.westernfallers.com/pdf_newsletters/Generic_Lettter_To_Presidents_Of_BC_Forest_Companies.pdf

They have it right.

In particular, read this part.

The following actions of the MOFR may be found to be violations of Section 119 of the Act depending on the
circumstances:
• Failure to adequately construct, modify or maintain forest service roads.
• Failure to ensure licensees construct forest roads to safe road design criteria.
• Inadequate road use policy.
• Failure to communicate information regarding safety hazards (such as degraded
roads, washouts, obscured or inadequate signage, or unsafe practices) which the
MOFR knew of or ought to have known of through inspections.

That's the conditions in the woods. It is not changing.

A double edged sword here,

1st as a user of said roads, anything to improve conditions is always appreciated.

My concern is for the contractors and building short block access roads. If WCB treats that like most things they get involved in, it will be huge overkill and a great expense to them.

We know what we need for roads to access the bush, a bunch of bureaurcrats from the south have no idea, and based on the previous attempts at "safety" they would require a paved 4 lane highway to venture 1 km off the road.

acrider54

The reason the Island has so many gates at the start of their roads is the majority of logging roads on the Island are privately owned.

Much different than our "public" logging roads.

You want to see beaurocracy at its finest?

Next time you pass a roadside CVSE inspection, look at the different inspectors there. You can have the RCMP, CVSE, Workesafe BC and Minestry of Forests.

Many of their inspections cross over, you can get a pass from one guy, and the next is writting you out a ticket for it.

Its fun taking the tickets to court and using one side as a witness in your defence and the other side having to explain why they differ.

Stompin, I would laugh, except for the fact I remember that we all pay dearly for those people to stand on the side of the road as well as for the court time in disputes. No wonder the government is broke.

...and the biggest supporters of shutting down public access to the backcountry for privatization and foreigners is the $$$Green$$$ Movement. The greenies are fueled by foreign donations. When rich Americans come here, they don't want to see mills and clearcuts, they want "their" wilderness.

Maybe if they just considered the vehicle as the work place, whether it be a pick up, grader, what ever, and not the road or trail on which we travel, that would eliminate some individual or any one company for being liable for a stretch of road they built, or that they maintain. metalman.

metalman,

While you are working your vehicle, grader, truck, loader is considered your work place by WCB already.

The roads are not a work place, but rather a public free enterprise resource. Public resources should be governed by standards and not by liability. If the standards are not up to par than that is an issue of enforcing standards.

Eagleone

who's responsability is it to enforce the standards? Who pays to keep the standards up?

If the roads are my "workplace" then anyone entering my "worksite" needs my approval prior to entering. Currently a cut-block in use is no different than a construction site. A contractor can deny access as it could put his workers at risk. It would really cut down on hunters and snowmobilers!!

It's crazy how there are dead trees all over town that could possibly harm someone yet because it's not considered a "worksite" they don't have to be removed, but if there are dead trees next to a worksite they must be removed immediately. Isn't the safety of the public just as important?

Tom the current system works well... maybe some areas of enforcement of standards for roads could be improved... but creating a liability that will ultimately lead to resource road restrictions is not the answer.

We need to keep as much of BC free, because once we loose access to the back country we will never get it back. We have lost far to much already.