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LETTER: Make raw log exports a Nelson-Creston election issue

Reader Rod Retzlaff: “It’s time to play hardball with our softwood.”
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Twenty years ago when driving in the United States, when it was still safe and reasonable to do so, an ad came over my car radio from the State government, assuring me that Washington State did not export any raw logs. It occurred to me that the citizens of that state were probably very happy to hear that and, I wondered why British Columbia had never re-assured me as a citizen in the same way. At that time we had a lot more sawmills in B.C., and I don’t believe we were exporting very many logs.

Since that time, many of our sawmills have shut down and we have taken to exporting huge quantities of raw logs, mostly coastal logs. Only the very best raw logs are in demand. The last time we had a dispute over softwood lumber, our senior governments assured us that they were fighting hard for Canadians. At the same time they increased our export of raw logs substantially. In the end our negotiators folded their cards and took whatever Uncle Sam was willing to give them.

Christy Clark is feigning the big fight again, but certainly not to the point of stopping the logs, and John Horgan is willing to take a trip to Washington D.C., as long as we pay his way, but is certainly not willing to stop the raw log exports either. They are both quite willing to continue to sell us out.

Meanwhile, we, the people of B.C., continue to get ripped off for the very best of our forest resource, and the many jobs that that resource should be creating for us.

Instead we are being sold the promise of mega prosperity as long as we are willing to industrialize our northern farmland by fracking the hell out of our beautiful province, and then risking our ocean resources by building huge shipping facilities to ship our clean burning natural gas to China.

We need some big anti-raw log export demonstrations now, during this election campaign, in order to convince our reluctant politicians to do the right thing and put an end to this ridiculous situation. It’s time to play hardball with our softwood.

Rod Retzlaff

Glade