Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
When Arnie Campbell thinks of what the Juan de Fuca electoral area has lost due to removal of private land from tree farm licences, he gets hopping mad.
Looking at how residents of the Kootenays were treated when the provincial government allowed private lands held by bankrupt Pope and Talbot be taken out of the TFL, he wants the Vancouver Island decision revisited.
“I look back on the acrimony here and the total indifference we got from the minister. We can’t let them get away with this and think it’s fine,” said Campbell, president of the Otter Point and Shirley Residents and Ratepayers Association.
The association and Malahat-Juan de Fuca NDP MLA John Horgan are writing to Forests Minister Pat Bell asking that government reconsider the decision to allow Western Forest Products to remove 28,000 hectares of private land from three Island tree farm licences.
“If your government is now committed to ensuring workers are central to land removals and that recreation and wildlife values are accounted for in the Interior, then the same protections should be available on Vancouver Island as well,” Horgan said in the letter.
The community lost the better part of a year of planning after WFP put the most high profile land — including the Jordan River waterfront — on the market and processes such as the parks plan are only now re-starting, Campbell said.
There is no planning for fire protection if WFP is given approval for 319 acreages, no parks in areas traditionally used for recreation, no mapping of watersheds and development along the west coast makes a mess of the Regional Growth Strategy.
In the Interior, government consulted with communities.
About $4.4 million will go to local contractors, critical wildlife habitat was excluded from the land release, the company donated $50,000 to the Nakusp Community Forest and the province has bought two recreational areas.
Bell readily admits it is a different standard and said government learned from the scathing auditor general’s report, which found the WFP decision was made without sufficient regard for the public interest.
“Pope and Talbot is bankrupt. No one likes private land deleted from TFLs, but it means the money will be paid to the service providers,” he said.
However, it would not be practical or appropriate to revisit the WFP decision, he said.
