just tree hunters, are beginning to view big trees left standing as more economically valuable than trees that have been cut down and turned into lumber and paper. It’s also a sign of the times. RAW LOGS: WHAT’S THE REALITY? Vancouver Island’s forest sector is far from what it used to be. Local manufacturing capacity was in decline even before 2003 when Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government scrapped a provision in the Forest Act called appurtenance — the requirement that companies with tenures to harvest Crown forest, or publicly owned forest, must operate mills in communities located within the geographical area of given tenures. In a 2018 study for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, longtime forest policy analyst and former Vancouver Sun journalist Ben Parfitt took a sweeping 82 DOUGLAS
look at raw-log exports and mill closures. Between 2013 and 2016, approximately 26 million cubic metres of raw logs were shipped out of B.C., and old growth accounts on average for half of raw-log exports. In 2016, the volume of raw log exports jumped 6.2 per cent year-over-year, according to Parfitt’s research. The three largest exporters of raw logs happen to be big players on Vancouver Island: Western Forest Products, Island Timberlands and TimberWest Forest Corporation. (TimberWest and Island Timberlands were affiliated in 2018 under the umbrella of Vancouver-based Mosaic Forest Management.) In 2016, TimberWest, which owns 327,000 hectares of timberland on Vancouver Island, sent more than two million cubic metres of raw logs out of the province. As raw-log exports rise, manufacturing capacity stalls. Since 1997, roughly 100 mills have shut in B.C. Parfitt gathered numbers from BC Stats
Mike Beltgens on the landing deck of his family-owned sawmill in Chemainus. Jemico Enterprises is one of the biggest producers of hardwood lumber, such as alder and maple, in B.C. The family also owns a planer mill specializing in high-quality kiln-dried lumber and green timber.