Sounds like a reasonable request. Not likely to happen though, too many 'big bucks' to be made peddling property compared to what can be had growing and cutting trees. 'Course the government might get some 'capital gains' taxes when the lands sell, and enhanced property taxes from the buyers from there on in.

Nothing will ever come of this but it SHOULD!
No way removal of land for resale from a TFL that is controlled by a forest company should ever happen, and a very dangerous practice to start!
That land belongs to the people of B.C.
This Liberal government needs a serious tune-up!!
The garbage relating to some of the sneaky crap they are doing behind the scenes is getting worse!!!

Andy, I agree with most of what you're saying, but that particular land in question DOESN'T belong to the people of BC.

It's privately owned forest land, but was combined with other lands leased from the Crown to make up a TFL. The relevant Company actually does still hold title to it in fee simple.

The Annual Allowable Cut was supposed to be set at a sustained-yield basis for the WHOLE unit, and the private land portion has been taxed at a very reduced rate with the idea that it would always remain working forest land. The Companies have had great benefit from both, and now want to cash in even further. And that's something that should be examined thorougly in regards to what's best in the public interest.

As to the BC Liberal government, IMHO they're the worst government this Province has ever had, and we've had some real dillies to compare them with in the last 35 years. Too bad we didn't have something better to replace them with, but it's hard to imagine the current main contender being any worse.

Kinda reminds me of Whacky Bennett and his gang of merry thieves back in the early/mid fifties when the entire TFL/MFL scheme was brought in, complete with payoffs!
It put a lot of small loggers out of business.
And your right...we just don't have ant options and unfortubateky,they know that.
Which makes them even more dangerous!

geez....look at that spelling!...fingers still asleep!
I hate laptops!

Only it wasn't Bennett who brought in the TFL system, Andy, but the previous BC Liberal dominated Coalition government.

Bennett inherited it from them, and with it came the problems of how to allocate them, and all the allegations of 'under-the-counter' deals. Some of which turned out to be true.

In their first terms in office, it's doubtful Bennett's government could have stopped the process and survived. And what would've succeeded them then would have been either a near 'communistic' BC CCF (NDP), or the even more corrupt BC Liberals that started the whole scheme in the first place.

Originally there were lots of relatively small TFLs, the major players didn't get all of them by any means. But the same problems beset their holders that was affecting the whole industry even before, when there was more of a 'free-market' in timber.

They needed ever increasing amounts of 'capital' to do what they'd committed themselves to do, (re-forestation, etc.),and survive, and 'inflation' was continually cutting into the returns on that capital.

And so the smaller TFL holders sold out to the larger ones, who later did the same to still larger ones. Their 'profit' came more from the sale of the 'licence' than it ever did from operating under it.

Actually socredible,your right.
I believe it was the Bennett government who began applying the TFL system, but it did begin with the Coalition/Liberal government.
But it was under Bennett that the nasty stuff started happening.
A lot of small independant loggers were run right out of business because of it.
And remember Bob Sommers?
He and a couple of buddies got some serious jail time for taking payoffs, but it is generally believed that Mr.Sommers took the fall for others who were in on it.
I was a kid on the coast at the time, and I can tell you it was devastating for many of the small private logging companies.
Not all of the little guys were able to sell out in time to the bigger guns because they were run out instead.
Let's hope we never go that way again,it was pretty nasty business.

Back then, a lot of the small guys were already on their way out, Andy. They wouldn't have lasted, even if there had been no TFL's. There just wasn't enough money in logging. Not to take out a living and continually upgrade and/or replace equipment, too. Not when the cost of that equipment, and everything else, was continually going up ever faster through 'inflation'.

Some of the bigger Coastal independents, like that self-styled "Bull of the Woods" Gordon Gibson, Sr., and several others, made most of their dough during the War.

They didn't have two-cents to rub together before the War; a lot of them often couldn't even afford to pay their crews. (After a few missed payrolls, the 'boys' were referred to as being 'partners' in the outfit. Whether they wanted to be or not! That kind of crap was one of the things that got the IWA going.)

But a lot of them, like the Gibsons, were good Federal and BC Liberals, (now there's an oxymoron, if ever there was one ~ is there any such thing as a 'good' Liberal?). And as well as having an unlimited demand from the Government for timber during the War, the patronage in awarding 'cost-plus' wartime contracts to log land for air bases, etc. was far more blatant than anything that Waccy's crowd got mixed up in later. That's what set most of them up. They didn't do quite as well as H R MacMillan, though. He went to Ottawa to aid the War effort as a "dollar a year" man. That was a "dollar a year" and all he could pocket! Which was plenty.

When the TFLs were being handed out, a lot of the bigger independents lobbied and got 'contractor clauses' inserted in the Licence's terms. That reserved a set percentage of the timber that had to be cut by 'contractors'. Most of them did far better at that than they ever did when they had to worry about marketing logs themselves, and bidding against one another for the next patch of timber.

If the previous 'timber sale' set-up had been retained and they'd been charged even part of what it cost to 're-forest', and they were still 'independents' they'd have been finished.

Sommers, like you say, was probably the 'fall guy'. What did he get out of it, the actual 'bribes' he was supposed to have taken, himself? A new rug for his house, or something? Naive, rather than crooked, I'd say.

The President of BC Forest Products, the Company that received the TFL there'd been so much allegations of 'bribery' over, committed suicide. Lots of mystery about the whole affair, but one thing's certain. The BC Liberals were as much the Party of 'dirty tricks' then as they are today. Anything Waccy did, was probably a case of trying to fight "fire with fire".