By Karen Boden

Alberni-Qualicum NDP MLA Scott Fraser is seeing the forest and the trees this week.
Tuesday, he invited environment and forest ministers to tour the Cameron Canyon and have a look at the Island Timberlands logging plans for former Tree Farm Licence land.
“It was beautiful. It was the one day (of weather) like that,” he said Wednesday. “We were in there from 9 a.m. till 2 p.m. and it was just 2 p.m. when the clouds came in.”
The group went into the bush just east of Port Alberni, behind the helicopter landing pad at the top of the Hump.
They took a television crew.
The idea was to showcase the pristine old growth Douglas fir trees and look at the area scheduled to be logged.
Nature co-operated.
Fraser said he’d never before seen Mt. Arrowsmith as it was: sunlit and covered in bright white snow against a clear sky.
The majestic, craggy mountain provided an impressive backdrop for the day’s activities.
After a 40-to-50-minute hike, the party came across some of the 1,000-year-old Douglas fir and cedar trees marked to be logged.
“It’s all flagged,” said Fraser, adding that Island Timberlands is doing nothing illegal.
“Their rules are private forest rules.”
The company is harvesting trees on private land that was formerly part of the TFL but was removed in 2004.
“Four years ago at least it was under some public scrutiny,” said Fraser.
A more frightening prospect has to do with future plans of the Island Timberlands.
Half of that giant company is owned by Brookfield Asset Management, which is turning over interests in its timber lands to a Bermuda-based company.
“They’ll have an international board and they’ll be exempt from certain Canadian taxes,” said Fraser. “It will also be not possible to enforce civil judgment laws against them.”
The City of Port Alberni is currently faced with huge costs associated with a landslide from Island Timberlands land onto the city’s water source area.
There’s been no indication that the company is culpable.
Fraser and his band of guests walked out of the bush Tuesday and from there he attended a meeting of the grassroots group Save Our Valley Alliance.
SOVA is currently embroiled in issues having to do with watershed protection.
Wednesday night, he was at a meeting in Qualicum Beach hosted by the West Coast Wilderness Committee.
The meeting focused on the impact that forest-land sales and Tree Farm Licences will have on lives and local economy.
Fraser said it’s frustrating knowing that the current government could have but didn’t compensate communities for removing 77,000 hectares of land from the TFLs in 2004.
“This government had the opportunity to do that,” he said. “That money should have gone directly to Port Alberni.”
“We’re trying to get the auditor general to investigate the removal of that land,” said Fraser.


Karen.boden@westcoaster.ca