BC Budget: Incoherent Strategy Wrapped in Green

By Peter Ewart

(The following article is based on a speech delivered by Peter Ewart at the forum in Prince George on the BC Budget organized by the CNC Faculty Association and FPSE)

Minister of Finance Carole Taylor’s budget 2008 was released with much fanfare on March 7, and its title is “Turning to the Future, Meeting the Challenge.”  This title, and the entire budget hoopla, suggests that there is some kind of coherent plan, strategy and vision to deal with the problems we, as British Columbians, are facing.

But nothing could be further from the truth, especially for the rural and Northern areas of this province.  Indeed, the current crisis is revealing to workers, businesses, foresters, town councils, mayors, and everyone else in the Interior and North, just how incoherent and lacking the provincial government’s strategy is to cope with the present situation - let alone the future.

As we all know, our region is being hit with body blows that are unprecedented in their magnitude, including the severe downturn in the export market of lumber to the U.S., the high Canadian dollar, the pine beetle devastation of the Interior forests, massive layoffs and plant closures, lack of diversification, and so on.  Forest industry experts are saying that they have never seen the economic situation so bad. 

Yes, to cover all its bases, the provincial government is sprinkling a little funding here and a little there in the 2008 budget, and then all the talk about this being a “green” budget.  But there is nothing that suggest that a coherent overall strategy exists to move our region ahead in the years to come, to get more value out of our forests and natural resources, to create more jobs, and to create sustainable communities. 

When you boil it all down, a lot of the hoopla about this “green” budget is about a tax increase that is to be levied on gasoline, diesel and home heating oil (which are at record prices).  However, all the “green” wrapping paper in the world cannot disguise the fact that this is a tax that will hit rural areas disproportionately harder, because of the longer distances we have to drive, the colder climate, etc. 

At the same time, while people across the province are getting hit with a new gas and heating oil tax, foreign financial institutions and banks, with operations in Vancouver, are being given substantial tax breaks, the Vancouver Art Gallery is getting $50 million, and so on.

All of which brings us to the situation at the College of New Caledonia and other rural colleges in the province.  If the provincial government does not have a coherent plan and vision for the region, if it does not have a clear industrial strategy to move forest-dependent communities ahead, how can a community college have a viable plan, strategy or vision for its programs?

Without an overall strategy and vision to tie training and education into, then everything becomes arbitrary and haphazard.  So, if there is no overall plan at the provincial level to take forestry and forestry manufacturing to the next level, why should the College bother having a forestry or value-added wood processing program if enrolments are down at the present time?  Where is forestry going in this province?  No one in Victoria seems to have a clear answer to this.  As a result, college administrators, municipal leaders and the people in rural communities are left twisting in the wind.

Furthermore, why should CNC offer programs in Computer Information Services, Criminology, GIS, Adult Special Education, Business the Next Generation, Hospitality, university transfer or any one of the many other excellent programs that have been cancelled over the last five years because of funding shortfalls?  

Why not instead focus on establishing a call center, hula-hoop or tiddlywink training program, or anything else that will fill a seat?  Better yet, make the entire College into a farmer’s market or a venue for extreme skateboarding or a bubbabaloo’s.  Anything to fill a seat – because that is what the Ministry in Victoria seems to demand with its funding formula for rural colleges. 

This made-in-Victoria funding formula is a classic example of the discriminatory and illogical way that rural areas are treated in this province.  With this formula, rural colleges are regularly punished on a provincial basis because they do not have the same economies of scale in enrollment that bigger colleges have that are based in the Lower Mainland.  If you are offering a course that requires a computer lab, it is a lot easy to pay for it if you have 100 students in 5 different classes using it (such as in the Lower Mainland), compared to a rural college that may have just one or two classes.  And there are many other examples of these funding disparities between urban and rural colleges that have been documented and researched.

Now when I say that the provincial government does not have a “coherent” strategy for taking forestry and regional economic development to the next level, I do not mean to suggest that it has no strategy for rural areas.  In fact, there is one – the “default strategy,” and it has been in place for a long time.  And what is that? 

Well, we are seeing the fruits of this “default strategy” today.  Basically, it is a status quo strategy that heavily favors the big multinational forest and other resource companies over everyone else.  It does not favor workers, communities, forestry contractors, value-added companies, independent forest companies, and others.  And that is why it is incoherent and lacking.

The current forest policy and timber licensing works very well for the handful of big monopolies that have backing from New York, European, and Asian financiers.  Everyone knows that these big companies are planning to use the present crisis in the forest industry to consolidate their assets, scoop up smaller companies, and close mills. Thus, we could end up with only 4 or 5 supermills in the entire North, which would mean a drastically reduced forestry workforce and a number of severely wounded communities. 

But this default strategy is unacceptable, and it must be challenged.  In its place we need a strategy and vision that is based on getting more value out our forest resource, as well as our mining, oil & gas, and energy assets.  Such a strategy is based on creating more jobs and not eliminating them, and creating sustainable communities through expanding and diversifying our economic base.

The Conference Board of Canada, a leading business organization, has pointed out that any “competitive advantage” for regions in Canada that is “based solely on low cost or local natural resources is not sustainable.”  And we, in this region, as well as forest communities in Northern Ontario and elsewhere, are finding out now just how unsustainable this dependence on raw or relatively unprocessed resources is in this globalized world of the 21^st Century.

With an overall plan and vision to get more value out of our natural resources, then we can have a context in which clear and logical decisions can be made about not eliminating, but expanding and further diversifying, forestry and other educational programs.  Such a plan could also guide the changing of timber licensing and forest policy to favor the whole industry, not just the big companies. 

At the present time, it is clear - we have incoherence in strategy and vision, whether it is for rural areas as a whole or the forest industry itself.  We also have incoherence and discrimination in how rural colleges and other rural institutions are funded. 

Both situations are causing layoffs, whether these be at mills and forestry operations or College instructors and staff.  Human resources are the most valuable of all.  When a trained millworker or a tradesman or a forestry instructor leaves to go elsewhere, it is a loss to our region.

How do we end this incoherence?  Well, let’s look at what works.  Seven or eight years ago, our region had a big problem because of lack of doctors and other medical personnel.  Community leaders got together and organized a rally at the Multiplex and attracted over 7,000 people, making it one of the biggest rallies ever organized in this province.  As a result, we got the Northern Medical Program, and other related health infrastructure for the region.

At the end of last summer, to their astonishment, people learned that the Electoral Boundaries Commission was recommending that the North and the Cariboo regions each lose an MLA.  Just one more blow to the region.  However, the Prince George mayor and council called for a rally, and over 350 people attended from throughout the region to express their strong disapproval.  Soon after, the government announced that the removal of the two seats was unacceptable.

There is no other way to put it.  Enough is enough.  If we are going to make an incoherent situation into one that is coherent, we are going to have to hit the streets and organize rallies, meetings and pickets, to defend our jobs, to defend our communities, and to defend our region.

 It doesn’t matter what political persuasion we are. We are going to have to work together to develop a strategy to get more value out of our natural resources and to provide a future for ourselves and for those generations yet to come.

It is not good enough to sit back, hope for the best, and see what happens or only rely on some negotiations with MLAs or company officials behind closed doors.  We shouldn’t kid ourselves.  The big companies and the big governments are watching how we react to layoffs, plant closures and infrastructure cuts.  If they carry out these cuts and layoffs, and it is like running a knife through soft butter, then they will be emboldened to slash even deeper. 

But we must not allow them to write off our communities or our region.  It is time for us to speak out and act.

Peter Ewart is a college instructor and writer based in Prince George, BC.  He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca

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