Rob Shaw: Forestry crisis a huge risk to B.C. NDP
Credit to Author: Rob Shaw| Date: Sun, 08 Dec 2019 21:38:17 +0000
VICTORIA — Transportation Minister Claire Trevena received an uncomfortable reminder last week of the gulf between the political bubble of the legislature in Victoria and the real world, after she was blasted by forestry workers in her North Island riding.
Trevena held a public meeting in Campbell River, in which more than 50 people gathered to vent their frustration at the inaction of her government to mitigate the forestry crisis. The gathering was many months in the making, she explained, because she’d been busy at the capital doing the work of minister.
A 30-minute video of the encounter showed the genuine anger, and in some cases desperation, being experienced by mill workers, contractors, employers, truck loggers and striking Western Forest Product employees as they shared stories of losing their livelihoods, families and homes.
The raw emotion caught Trevena and New Democrats by surprise.
The NDP skated through the fall session of the legislature by avoiding the forestry crisis as much as it could.
There was no legislation, regulations or significant announcements to help the more than 3,000 people who’ve lost their jobs or had their shifts curtailed before Christmas. And there’s been no intervention to speed a resolution to the five-month Western Forests Product strike.
The sum total of the NDP’s entire response was an effort three months ago to repurpose existing social assistance programs for displaced Interior workers, in many cases leaving out the coastal sector, that offered not a single new dollar of aid during the collapse of an industry that used to be the economic lifeblood of the province.
Then there’s the NDP forestry policies that the industry has blamed for exasperating the financial crisis, including refusing to intervene on stumpage rates, adding fees onto raw log exports, new penalties if wood waste isn’t brought out of the bush, a coastal revitalization consultation process that’s going nowhere fast, and a new government veto on Crown timber transfers that won’t let companies swap forest licences unless the forests minister personally deems it in the “public interest.”
In the legislature, it’s easy for the NDP to convince itself it has done enough to help the forest sector. But back in the real world, Trevena, who is one of the few rural NDP MLAs with forestry workers in her riding, was told quite clearly otherwise.
“We’ve been talking to the government for over a year, and nobody is listening to us, you are ramming down new forestry polices that are increasing our costs, and making it less economic for us to operate out there,” one person told Trevena at the meeting. “We need forest policy that will help drive costs out of our structure, not drive costs up. That’s what we need.”
Trevena promised to take their concerns back to Victoria.
“This can’t be news to them,” another worker responded. “You can’t still be in the information-gathering part of solving this problem.” “Is there a plan in place?” another person demanded.
Trevena had no answer. Forestry is not her ministry. The questions would have been better addressed to Forestry Minister Doug Donaldson and his parliamentary secretary Ravi Kahlon, who clearly had failed to gauge the red-hot temperature.
Many in that room likely voted for Trevena and helped her enjoy 14 comfortable years as the North Island’s MLA. She’s spent 12 of those years in opposition, complaining about everything the Liberals did and telling her constituents she could do better. Now, she’s in cabinet. And when those same supporters appeal for help, her government has nothing to offer.
One man in the room put his finger on the frustration: “For the working man’s party, you haven’t seen a lot of work for them.”
The room was filled with the hard-working, hard-hat-wearing, middle-class, unionized, natural resource folks that have been the electoral lifeblood of the NDP for decades.
But when they look at the NDP now, what do they see? A party that is entirely focused on Metro Vancouver, where almost all of its MLAs are elected and where its power base lies. A party preoccupied with urban issues like ride-hailing, electric vehicles, climate change and Lower Mainland transit. A party that relies more on the support of environmental activists than it does forestry workers.
Where was Forestry Minister Doug Donaldson while Trevena was getting grilled? Announcing a halt to logging on the B.C. side of the Skagit River Valley. You couldn’t ask for a more representative example of the NDP in 2019 — congratulatory press releases on how it is preventing trees from being logged.
Another man in the meeting room with Trevena sharpened the point: “I think this room is ready to take matters into its own hands. That’s how far behind we are. Everybody in here that’s had differences of opinions, competed against each other for all these years, is coming together and it’s not going to be to help you out if it takes this long.”
Comments like that should give the NDP great pause.
Party strategists may have convinced themselves that the collapse of the forestry sector won’t hurt the NDP’s re-election chances because it mainly affects people in rural ridings where the NDP has almost no MLAs.
But as Trevena’s meeting showed, the problem bleeds over into safe ridings like North Island, which has been reliable NDP territory for decades. If the New Democrats lose a riding like that, where do they make it up? It’s a much tougher fight to take a seat away from the Liberals in the hard-fought battleground of Metro Vancouver.
Bob Dewar, the NDP’s 2017 election campaign guru, tried to warn NDP members of this electoral math when he spoke to the party convention last month.
“We didn’t win the last election,” he said, bluntly.
Which is true.
The NDP with its 41 seats is not a majority government. It has to pick up at least four new seats from the Liberals or Greens in the 2021 election to have a hope at a majority. And, more importantly, it has to hold every single riding it currently has, including ones affected by the forestry crisis like North Island.
The NDP has been coasting along in its belief that it is immune to the forestry crisis, and therefore hasn’t expending an ounce of political capital to fight to help the workers and prop the sector up during its worst crisis in decades.
But as the confrontation in Trevena’s riding showed, that political calculation may be a mistake the New Democrats will deeply regret.