This message was handed out at a public meeting Sunday, March20, 2005 in Port Clements, Haida Gwaii. The message is from the Village of Port Clements Council FOR THE PEOPLE OF PORT CLEMENTS Important events that affect our community and others have and will be happening quite rapidly. We have attached a copy of “Islands Bulletin No. 1” to help you understand some of the up-and-coming events. The Village Council and many councils before it , have tried to work directly with Mac Bloe/Weyco and the successive provincial governments, to have our concerns heard and dealt with in a fair and open manner. This course of action started in 1978, it has involved thousands of hours of our communities participation in community forums, direct lobbying, letter and position paper writing, alliance building and many other activities that were aimed at trying to improve the stability of our community. In some of our attempts, we were wholly or partially successful. In the past few years much of this good work has been reneged on by both the Provincial Government and Weyerhaeuser and other local logging companies. We will address just a few of the more important changes that have been made, or promises that have been broken in the last four years that negatively affect our community and all the people of Haida Gwaii. Some of the changes made by the provincial government: - The rewriting of the sections of the Forest Act that set the standards and penalties used to control the waste of our timber resource. The new regulations allow forestry companies to waste as much timber as they see fit with a ridiculously low penalty of 25 cents a cubic meter to be paid for the wasted timber. This is a great deal for industry as it definitely reduce its costs because it reduces the number of people they need to produce just the high-grade timber. It can also significantly reduces the stumpage they would have to pay from an average of $20 to $30 cubic meter if they produced this wood to 25 cents/m3. A great deal for industry, a major loss of revenue to the people of Province of British Columbia meaning less schools health-care services and so on. Most important of all to our village is a direct loss of jobs to our community because if your not going to want to produce this wood then you don’t need loggers. - The complete removal of the “Cut Control” regulations from the Forest act. A this regulation offered some protection to communities like ours in that it regulated the amount of timber industry could cut annually and over a five-year period. A company could cut 50 percent as a minimum and 150 percent as a maximum of its annual allowable cut in any one year, at the end of a five-year period the cut had to be with within 10 percent of the five-year annual allowable cut. This regulation helps protect industry dependent communities like ours from a boom and bust economy. Now, corporations can freely shut operation down indefinitely without penalty and with the disastrous effects on the communities that rely on the attended jobs. Corporations that wish to crush the union in an area can do so easily. Corporations that have large timber holdings in the province can now choose to over cut in one area of their license, say Vancouver Island if it proves more profitable or politically opportune, and allow all communities on Haida Gwaii to sit and wait until they see an advantage to reactivating their portions of their license area here. The ability for us to sell our homes and follow the work, if any, keep our school and clinic open etc. will be impossible to achieve. These are only a couple of the major changes that negatively affect us, we will report on soon. So, it seems we can’t trust this government to work with us and help protect even our basic needs. We also tried working with Weyerhaeuser, here’s what happened. - On June 20th, 2002, the manager of Weyerhaeuser Co. Ltd.’ s Queen Charlotte Timberland Unit signed an agreement with the CHN, the IWA and the Forest Workers Association. (see attached) Let us compare the promises made by this company and the actual performance to date. Item No. 1 “Reduce the cut to 600,000 cubic meters or until a sustainable harvesting level is confirmed”(see Six-point Agreement on this site) - No attempt has been made by the Company or Weyerhaeuser to work with us to confirm the appropriate to cut level. - The company is falsely supplying information to its workers and contractors that the Haida have not allowed them to harvest the 600,000 m3 agreed to. The facts are that last year the CHN in an attempt to work with the company, asked them for some very simple information about the volume of wood produced over their sort plus the residue levels left in the bush. This information is critical to the CHN so that they can calculate how close to the 600,000 cubic meters of AAC the company was coming to. Oddly, instead of supplying this innocuous information they insisted that the CHN leadership sign an agreement that stated that the CHN would not use this information in a court of law for 25 years. Obviously the CHN couldn’t sign such an agreement and the company would not release the information. Why? What possible reason could they have for not wanting the CHN and communities from knowing that facts they need? Item No.2 ”logging the forest profile” - The company totally disregarded this agreement they made as they have been harvesting approximately twice as much cedar as the Forest profile contains. Item No. 3 “a cedar plan will be developed” o The company has dishonored this agreement also, no plan has even been initiated let alone completed. It must be noted that the complete disregard for item 2 and 3 has not helped this company achieved Ministry of Forest approvals. 'Item No. 4 “All parties committed to support maximum employment for island residents within a reduced annual cut. o There is no need for further comment here. Anyone who’s lived in this community for the last two years need only ask themselves are we growing are getting smaller? Do you feel that your job is more secure or less secure than two years ago? Item No. 5 “additional mechanical harvesting is on hold until further discussion”. o Census document was signed additional mechanical harvesting has occurred putting faller’s and equipment operators out of work permanently. Item No. 6 “The parties will endeavor to respect cultural, environmental and economic values in the process of reconfiguring the forestry operation.” o Very little respect for any of these issues has been shown by this licensee in the recent past. No meaningful attempt was ever made by this company to further discuss these issues and work constructively to develop a plan that would be meaningful to all participants. So, faced with inconsiderate government and blatantly untrustworthy and manipulative industry our community and others have little choice but to take the actions needed to bring the government to the table to address and solve our concerns. We must protect our jobs, businesses and communities. It is obvious that we cannot rely on anyone else, except our neighbour, to do it for us. We cannot allow ourselves to be relegated to dealing with government bureaucrats whose prime objectives are to maintain their paychecks and seek the answers to when the next plane or ferry is leaving. We need direct contact in negotiations with the government’s decision makers. We will succeed regardless of the government and industry’s indifference to our wishes and their misunderstanding and jealousy of our commitment and vision. More to come as the situation develops!