Ten proposals to set our forests and BC'€™s rural communities on a new course

1) Launch a rapid, comprehensive review of logging rates across BC, and reset logging rates in all regions to sustainable levels.

2) Publish a comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of where trees logged in the province are processed.

3) Empower local communities and regions to have a more direct say in forestry decisions through the creation of new regional management boards.

4) Award long-term, secure, area-based forest tenures directly to First Nations.

5) Increase the minimum payments that companies make to the provincial government for trees logged on publicly owned lands. Transfer the additional revenues to new regional forest management boards.

6) Immediately launch a province-wide “competition review” to determine whether current rates of corporate concentration are acceptable.

7) Begin an immediate phase-out of all exports of raw, unprocessed logs from BC.

8) Create new regional log markets to generate new forest industry jobs and encourage more local and regional wood-product manufacturing.

9) Enact new “social contract” rules requiring minimum levels of manufacturing for companies holding long-term logging licenses.

10) Encourage more higher-value forest product manufacturing through new “partnership” timber sales.

/r/canada Thread Link - policynote.ca