Category: Log Exports

BC Log export numbers raise questions

BC Stats, an agency of the provincial government, reports regularly on raw log export. The most recent shows the quantity of logs shipped has grown steadily but the unit value reported has declined steadily. By eliminating civil servants in the forest ministry, BC Liberals reduced government’s ability to monitor quantities and conditions of logs exported but the dramatic drop in revenue declared for each cubic metre suggests the public might have been shortchanged.

Log exports updated

BC is exporting substantially more unprocessed raw lags by volume but recording – per exporters’ reports, at least – little more than half the unit value realized in the 1990s. The volume of exported raw logs during Christy Clark’s tenure is 567% of what was experienced in ten years of NDP administration. BC jobs in forestry and support activities have declined by nearly one-half.

Pipeline to Beijing

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver made certain intemperate remarks about radical foreign “billionaire socialists,” by which he did not mean the unelected billionaires who run the Chinese People’s Congress in Beijing, but rather American matinee idols who enjoy heli-skiing vacations in the Kootenay Mountains. The servility of Canada’s political leaders (municipal, provincial and federal) to the obvious manipulations of Chinese strategists who flaunt world trade and financial market principles and jail democracy-promoting authors for 10-year terms is a national disgrace.”