Tinkering on the edges of a forest crisis

There was something pathetic about one of Forests Minister Rich Coleman's recent moves to help the forest industry.

Or more accurately, to be seen to be helping the industry. The pathetic part is that the ministry is reduced to issuing news releases about the most banal things imaginable in order to foster the impression the government is doing something about the down-and-out industry.

Coleman's news was that it had concluded three months of work reviewing all the regulations governing the industry and decided to relax a few of them.

That scant information was wrapped in an aura of confidence that the Liberals are on the right track when it comes to forestry, which is a very debatable proposition.

"Government has made substantive changes to the forest regulations and policy since 2001 to increase competitiveness," Coleman said.

Hopefully he means B.C.'s competitiveness with the rest of the world.

Because the one thing the Liberals have achieved is the creation of a handful of regional forest industry monopolies in B.C. leaving next-to-no competition at all when it comes to bidding for timber, even if there was anyone interested.

That boast was accompanied by something you don't see every day in government handouts -- an open admission of failure.

"B.C.'s forest industry is currently experiencing one of the worst cyclical downturns in its history," said the ministry. It cited the usual external suspects: The dollar, the weak U.S. housing market and low lumber prices.

The two statements together seem to suggest that the B.C. forest industry would be very competitive, if it weren't for the fact it's in the worst economic shape in its history.

The dwindling number of functioning forest operations prompted the regulatory review. That process basically involved the ministry responding to a giant wish list from industry, which itemized all the requirements it would prefer not to bother with. There were some 500 submissions along those lines from more than 50 outfits.

The government went through exactly this process in the Liberals' first term, resulting in the forest governance we have today.

Nonetheless, a handful of new red tape cuts were adopted immediately. So the government is now promising that it will establish faster approval times for cutting and road permits.

It will ensure all offices will work with digital-only filing of plans and permits.

And it will recognize new "ecosystem-based management costs" in stumpage rates.

The details reveal how mundane most of this is. The approval time will be 40 days, instead of 45. And going to digital permits is notable only because it's so late.

There's also this bold idea: "Licensees and ministry staff will eliminate any unnecessary requirements in the Forest Stewardship Plan tracking system to save licensees' time and effort."

And this pledge: "The ministry will eliminate all non-essential information requests in as-built road submissions, which will save industry time and extra record-keeping."

Those notions come years after the big deregulation push in the Liberals' first term. They spent a couple of years hacking hundreds of thousands of regulations. How come that anti-red tape thinking faded to the point where "unnecessary" and "non-essential" information was being requested in the first place?

But included in the long list of minor changes are some potentially big ideas.

The ministry is talking now about expanding the current risk-based approach to compliance and enforcement, "recognizing that over the past few years licensees have had a compliance rate of over 94 per cent."

Translated, that means most companies follow the rules, so enforcement checks are considered a waste of time. The government will try to focus on the small number of companies with sketchy records.

The Forest Practices Board recently surveyed compliance and enforcement and found practices are all over the map. Districts have wildly different approaches to monitoring logging practices. One did 12 times more inspections than another. Non-compliance levels ranged from two per cent to 35 per cent. In one district, one inspector found no infractions, while another found 61 per cent non-compliance.

The board's recommendations to address the discrepancies seemed to suggest going in the opposite direction from the government's plans. It wants strengthened policy and standardized information management.

There's still some optimism in the forest business that the industry will rebound back to something like its former glory.

You wonder if there will be much public oversight of the forests when that happy day comes.