JOHN KIMANTAS, Times Colonist 14 April 2011 Link to article
On April 1, Iisaak Forest Resources, the logging company active in Clayoquot Sound, was granted a road building permit as part of a bid to log a large, intact portion of Flores Island.
In 1999, Iisaak signed an agreement to protect this area. I guess 12 years is long enough to quietly ignore past oaths. The next step for Iisaak is an application for a log-handling and storage permit so the company can dump the logs at Matilda Inlet.
The provincial government is taking public feedback on the permit application until April 22. I went to the website to set out my opposition, but the form sat there blank and ultimately unfilled.
What could I possibly say about a log dump? Just more environmental rhetoric, and I'm sure that will get as much consideration as the old memorandum of understanding to leave Flores Island untouched.
I could have gone through the motions for the record and ranted and raved about broken agreements and betrayal. I could have accused Iisaak of taking advantage of a protestweary public already fought out over Clayoquot Sound. But what gall to ask to protect yet more trees at a time when sawmills on Vancouver Island have been shut down due to dwindling log inventories.
Of course, I could mention I've watched through my living-room window on three successive Fridays as a ship left Nanaimo Harbour filled to overflowing with raw logs heading overseas. I can't guess the number of jelly beans in a jar to win a contest, but I figure fairly accurately I saw about 14,000 trees on the deck of each ship, with more not visible in the hold. Some shortage.
So I could have argued we should be smarter about our logging industry, not cut more logs. But again, this has nothing to do with the merits of a log dump in Matilda Inlet. That dump is needed for the end of a road that is needed if we are going to log the island. If the road is approved, it makes sense to grant the permit.
Simple from the bureaucratic viewpoint. If no killer whales are squashed in the process, it could even be billed as ecologically friendly.
So for the record I'm not opposed to the dump. But I am opposed to tearing through a cherished, unspoiled and irreplaceable region of Vancouver Island in the name of jobs while I sit here and watch other jobs in the same industry get dumped into a freighter and sent offshore in unfathomable quantities.
Where's the form to oppose that? For that I might have something to say.
John Kimantas is the editor of Wavelength magazine and author of The Wild Coast.
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