By Cheryl Jahn

Canfor decision hastens questions around tenure

Sep 6, 2024 | 3:39 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It has been a tough week for more than five hundred Canfor employees between Vanderhoof and Fort St. John, with the forestry giant announcing the permanent closure of those operations. It elicited some immediate demands from many corners about one thing: Tenure and the return of it to the Province.

“The reality is they’re divesting our region,” says advocate James Steidle. “They’re taking these mills out. They’re shutting down mills or selling off the sawmills. So I think we need to call their bluff and say, ‘Hey, listen, once you get rid of these sawmills, you don’t have access to the timber anymore.’ A lot of other tenures of Crown land, like for range tenures, if you stop using that range tenure, you lose it.”

It’s a sentiment the union representing the forest workers laid off in recent months and years agrees with.

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“The government needs to step in and let them know clearly when the mill shuts down, you lose your logging rights. And those logs should be available because it’s not a dying industry,” says Brian O’Rourke, President of the United Steelworkers Union, Local 1-2017. “The price of lumber will come back. The softwood lumber tariffs. We’ve won them over and over, over again in courts. I don’t see a different decision coming out. Money will flow back to the employers here again.”

BC’s forest assets, meaning all the trees, are a public asset. Forest licences, or tenure, are granted to forest companies to harvest the trees, usually with a contract spanning several years. Traditionally, those tenure-holders can hold on to licences even if they aren’t harvesting the timber or have a mill to send it to.

Steidle says there is a fallacy that we don’t want to give up tenure for fear of detracting investment.

The Nak’azdli First Nations has a vested interest in accessing fibre for two of its new operations. One turns waste into electricity while the other would use underutilized fibre for value added applications. “There are all sorts of little rules and regulations that prevent small guys from getting into the game. So, you know, those those that kind of red tape is what we need to look at relaxing. And we need to recognize that a lot of the red tape, a lot of the rules and regulations we have on the books are to basically secure that privileged access to the public resources for these big corporations who are providing nothing for our communities in return. And that needs to change. Right now.”

Steidle argues, with communities held in limbo by absentee forest companies, it’s only fair those tenures go to someone else who can provide the jobs.

Pattison Media is owned by the Jim Pattison Group, a majority shareholder in Canfor.