David Broadland

BC Premier John Horgan at a press conference announcing he was all for saving old-growth forests AFTER ANNOUNCING 2-year logging deferrals for the Fairy Creek watershed and the central Walbran Valley, BC Premier John Horgan said: “These are monumental steps. I know it appears, at the moment, to be just another announcement by another premier...” He was right. It does appear to be just another announcement by another premier, a hyperbolic one at that. Monumental? Definitely not. Horgan announced 2-year logging deferrals on “2000 hectares” of old forest. It would have been monumental if, first, he had announced the permanent protection of 2000 hectares of actual old forest and then, second, had said something to this effect: “This is just the first, irrevocable step, one that can’t be backed away from in two years or ten, in our steadfast commitment to save the rest of BC’s now rare, biologically productive old forest, of which as little at 400,000 hectares remain in all of BC—can you believe we let that get so low? What an ecological catastrophe! Who were the nit wits-that engineered this fiasco!” That would have been monumental. Such a statement would have shown that Horgan wasn’t just playing kick-the-can-down-the-road. Instead, he kicked two cans down the road. First, the premier re-announced a 2-year deferral in the central Walbran that most of us already knew had been deferred in September 2020, and wasn’t in any danger of being logged. According to the Order In Council that established the deferral, it was to cover 1,489 hectares. Today the ministry recognized that it contains 1150 hectares of old forest. Second, Horgan deferred logging for 2 years in the “small area” that Teal Cedar Ltd has been claiming for months was all that the company could cut in Fairy Creek Valley because “most of the watershed is protected forest reserve or unstable terrain, and not available for harvesting.” After Horgan’s announcement, mapping released by the ministry of forests showed the area at Fairy Creek that’s been deferred for 2 years. Based on that mapping, we estimate there are about 100 hectares of the valley in the deferral area that weren’t already “protected forest reserve or unstable terrain,” as Teal Cedar Products Ltd has described it. Putting what Teal has said together with what Horgan announced today and the ministry has mapped, we find the surprising result that 100 + 1150 = 2000. If you’re thinking, “Wait, that doesn’t add up,” you’re correct. What that arithmetic shows is the sleight of hand used today by industry, the ministry and the premier. Last week, according to them, Fairy Creek Valley was almost all “protected forest reserve or unstable terrain.” This week, in a monumental step, the premier turned all that “protected forest reserve or unstable terrain” into a 2-year logging deferral. The Rainforest Flying Squad had originally been trying to save about 2100 hectares of contiguous rainforest, including the entire Fairy Creek Valley and areas of intact forest outside it. But their movement to save the last of the old-growth forest on southern Vancouver Island is apparently gaining more and more public support as their forest defences are assaulted by a militarized unit of the RCMP. What will they do now? Following Horgan’s announcement, the Flying Squad’s Saul Arbess made a gracious acknowledgment of Horgan’s monumental step: “It’s a good deferral, however it falls short of the deferrals required to pause logging in all of the critically endangered areas currently being defended, for generations to come.” Why would Arbess think 100 hectares is a “good deferral”? This is an important point. Arbess knows that the part of Fairy Creek Valley that Teal and the ministry have claimed are “protected forest reserve” are actually only “protected” until Teal and the ministry decide to move the “protection” to some other part of TFL 46. This happens all the time, all over BC, to Old Growth Management Areas, Wildlife Habitat Areas and other forms of transitory “protection” that have been created by the ministry of forests to create the appearance of protection—until such time as a company wants to log that “protected” area. If there was a monumental step taken today, it was that the ethical corruption that grips the ministry of forests and the forest industry was made plain, for everybody to see. To do this and then call it an “honouring” of a First Nations’ request is disturbing. When he isn’t out walking through forests, David Broadland is writing about the problems they face. Read more of David’ s stories about BC’ s logging industry at evergreenalliance.ca.

PREMIER JOHN HORGAN recently claimed he couldn’t resolve the tense and expensive standoff on Pacheedaht traditional territories between old-growth forest defenders and the RCMP. Why? Horgan told reporters, “The critical recommendation that’s in play at Fairy Creek is consulting with the title holders. If we were to arbitrarily put deferrals in place there, that would be a return to the colonialism that we have so graphically been brought back to this week by the discovery in Kamloops.” Actually, Horgan’s government had already signed an agreement (download at end of story) with the Pacheedaht in late February in which the economically impoverished First Nation agreed to accept a small annual payment “to accommodate any potential adverse impacts on the Pacheedaht First Nation’s Aboriginal Interests resulting from Operational Plans or Administrative and/or Operational Decisions.” In other words, logging. How small? The Pacheedaht accepted the equivalent of glass beads: $242,388 for the first year of the agreement, with no clear indication of what, if any, subsequent payments would be over the agreement’s 3-year term. What did the Pacheedaht have to do for that princely sum? For one thing, the band had to continue “consultation” with the Province, and to help the Pacheedaht do that the Province will provide an additional $35,000 per year to build the “capacity” within the community for consultation. Perhaps more significantly, the agreement requires the Pacheedaht to provide “assistance.” Such assistance would take two forms. First, the band agreed “it will not support or participate in any acts that frustrate, delay, stop or otherwise physically impede or interfere with provincially authorized forest activities.” Secondly, it agreed it “will promptly and fully cooperate with and provide its support to British Columbia in seeking to resolve any action that might be taken by a member of First Nation that is inconsistent with this Agreement.” The first part of the “assistance” portion of the agreement was aimed squarely at the defence of old-growth forest in TFL 46. The second was intended to stifle any expression of support for that defence from within the Pacheedaht, such as that given by Elder Bill Jones, Victor Peter, Katie George-Jim and Patrick Victor-Jones, all of whom have publicly supported the old-growth defenders. Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones speaking out at the Caycuse blockade (Photo by Michael Lo) The agreement was signed on February 21, just before Teal Cedar Products Ltd filed an application for injunctive relief with the BC Supreme Court on March 4. On April 1, that application was granted by Justice Frits E. Verhoeven. Enforcement of the injunction has led to over 170 people being arrested during weeks of standoffs between police and old-forest defenders. The cost of that enforcement is unknown but likely in the millions. Horgan has claimed that “consultations” with the Pacheedaht are ongoing and so ending the confrontation by removing Teal’s controversial permit to log in the Fairy Creek watershed would amount to a “return to colonialism.” Let’s compare dollars with glass beads. Over the past three years, according to the ministry of forests, Teal Cedar has removed 976,000 cubic metres of logs from TFL 46, which is mainly on unceded Pacheedaht territories. At an average value of $135 per cubic metre over those years, the logs Teal removed, before they were turned into lumber and other products at Teals’ Surrey mills, had a market value of about $132 million. That’s over a three-year period. What will the Pacheedaht—the legal owners of the land from which those forests were removed—get for three years of being quiet? The Pacheedaht will receive $277,388 in 2021 and $35,000 each year in 2022 and 2023 as long as they keep “consulting.” There’s nothing in the agreement that says they will get any more than a total of $347,388. Compare that with the estimated $132 million worth of logs Teal will tow away to feed its mills in Surrey. For not getting involved in the old-growth controversy and discouraging band members from supporting the blockades, the Pacheedat will get the equivalent of three-tenths of one-percent of the “fibre” value of the forest Teal removes from their property. Anyone who has visited the Pacheedaht reserve will understand why they had to sign this agreement. Here’s the definition of colonialism: “The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.” Like all First Nations in BC that have signed a Forest & Range Consultation and Revenue Sharing Agreement with the Province, the Pacheedaht also receive 3 percent of the stumpage collected by the province from logging on their traditional territory. This works out to between one-half of one percent to 1 percent of the value of the logs before they are milled. Green Party MLA Adam Olsen, in a widely-circulated opinion piece, wrote: “The agreement with Pacheedaht was signed in February 2021. So instead of negotiating an agreement that provides economic alternatives to logging, provides real choice to the nation, and enables the conservation of the endangered old growth in Pacheedaht traditional territory, the Provincial government negotiated an agreement that almost assured that those ancient trees would be cut. This situation illustrates how deeply disingenuous the government has been as the tension in our forests continues to grow. Rather than offer conservation solutions, the BC NDP are effectively using BC Liberal policy to put Indigenous Nations in the centre of conflicts and use the language of reconciliation to cover for their inaction. Clearly, colonialism is alive and well in Premier Horgan’s government.” David Broadland is grateful to the Pacheedaht for allowing public access to the extraordinary forests, beaches and trails on their unceded territories. Read more of David’ s stories about BC’ s logging industry at evergreenalliance.ca. BC agreement with Pacheedaht signed february 17 2021.pdf

BC Premier John Horgan reveals a new strategy to avoid meaningful change while accusing old-growth forest defenders of seeking a “return to colonialism” GARRY MERKEL AND AL GORLEY, after calling for a “paradigm shift” in how old forest is valued in BC, probably had no idea that John Horgan would move so fast. But the premier has spoken and with the stroke of a press conference BC has moved from the era of Talk and Log into the new paradigm of Talk with First Nations and Log. Here’s the situation Horgan faces: There’s growing public support for blockades of old-growth logging at Fairy Creek Rainforest in Horgan’s own riding. These actions involve hundreds of people—and it’s an All Ages event—committing acts of civil disobedience and risking arrest by a militarized police unit which has put restrictions on press access to the conflict zone and has denied the public the right to be on publicly-owned land. It’s happening daily and is unlikely to stop until the police start shooting people. In the face of all that, what does the premier chose to do? He releases a series of forestry-related “policy intentions.” None of these addressed the old-growth issue beyond vague language about possible future short-term logging deferrals. All of Horgan’s intentions seemed to depend on interminable private talks with First Nations. What was the premier thinking? In response to a question from a reporter, Horgan said, “The critical recommendation that’s in play at Fairy Creek is consulting with the title holders. If we were to arbitrarily put deferrals in place there, that would be a return to the colonialism that we have so graphically been brought back to this week by the discovery in Kamloops.” Horgan seemed to be saying that solving the crisis in public trust around this issue would be like murdering 215 First Nations kids, again. The premier’s convoluted rhetoric speaks for itself. The question that needs considering is this: Is Horgan using the paucity of First Nations’ treaty agreements to protect the forest industry from real change? He’s claiming that the government can’t make decisions about a new direction for forestry in BC unless those decisions include consultation with First Nations. Is this actually the case? Or have Horgan and his cronies in the forest industry just figured out a new, post-colonial version of talk and log? We might judge the answer to that on the basis of his government’s record of signing treaties with First Nations. In nearly 5 years in office, approaching year 30 of a process that began in the early ’90s, Horgan has signed exactly zero treaties, a record that’s far worse than former premier Christie Clark’s. With no actual record of successfully negotiating with First Nations for what really matters to them, Horgan appears to be using the injustice done to those communities to hide behind in order to avoid making hard decisions on new directions. Directions that he doesn’t yet know how to sell to his party’s labour base, new directions that reflect the need—in light of the climate and biodiversity crises and falling forest employment—to reframe our entire relationship with forests. The irony here is that this deeper, necessary reframing meshes with First Nations’ traditional wisdom and practices regarding the use of forests. Turning them into feller-buncher operators doesn’t. The BC treaty process, dragged out by endless consultations by an army of highly paid BC government lawyers, has bankrupted First Nations and left them desperate to recover financially. Those debts, and the damage they inflicted on First Nations communities for nearly three decades, are now being used by Horgan to keep firm the forest industry’s death grip on BC’s old-growth forests, just as those debts have been used in other resource disputes. That’s the real “return to colonialism” that’s taking place. Jens Wieting, Sierra Club BC senior forest and climate campaigner, called today’s announcement an “Orwellian nightmare.” He added, “The old-growth crisis calls for immediate short-term funding for First Nations and forestry workers seeking an alternative to logging the last old-growth. Defending business as usual will only exacerbate conflicts like the one happening over Fairy Creek and undermine options for communities seeking an alternative to destructive resource extraction.” Horgan’s performance truly was an Orwellian moment. David Broadland is going to write about forests and politics until First Nations title and rights are reflected in just treaties for all BC First Nations, and trees are valued for what they provide just by standing in a forest.

ACCORDING TO Madison’s Lumber Reporter, the price of 2x4s milled in BC reached a record high of just over $1600 USD per 1000 board feet at the end of April 2021. For the first four months of the year, the price had averaged about $1250. That average was approximately 3.3 times higher than for the same period in 2020. With almost all lumber in BC being cut from publicly-owned forests, you might think that huge price increase would translate into a financial windfall for BC residents. But data from the BC ministry of forests shows that for the first 4 months of 2020, the average stumpage collected across the province was $20.59 per cubic metre. For the first 4 months of 2021, that rose to $29.66. So while the value of products milled from public forests increased by 330 percent, the ministry of forests collected only 44 percent more, barely enough to cover the ministry’s own cost of providing forest management for the industry. The large jump in net revenue for forestry companies will make for some interesting financial statements in the coming months. In 2020, when lumber prices were one-third of their current level, Canfor, BC’s largest forestry company, reported a net operating income of $560 million. The ministry’s data also shows a huge surge in logging in 2021 over 2020. In the first 4 months of 2020, about 13.2 million cubic metres were cut in public forests. In the same period this year, 21.8 million cubic metres had been cut, up 65 percent. So not only are forestry companies getting a huge break on what they pay for wood compared to what the market pays them, they are cutting like there is no tomorrow. If logging continues at the current rate, the year’s cut will be about 15 million cubic metres higher than what the forest ministry’s own timber supply analyses have shown is sustainable in the mid-term. A logging truck heads to a log sort loaded with old-growth forest (Photo by TJ Watt) For some companies, the record high prices have had little effect on the stumpage they pay. In the first four months of 2020, Teal Cedar Products paid an average of $23.13 per cubic metre for wood it removed from publicly-owned land in TFL 46. For the same period in 2021—by which time lumber prices had more than tripled—Teal paid just 2 cents more per cubic metre than it had in 2020. Teal Cedar Products is the company whose logging operations in TFL 46 are being blockaded by the Rainforest Flying Squad, which is trying to prevent the company from cutting old-growth forest. A strategic review of old-growth forests in BC conducted in 2020, commissioned by the BC government, recommended an immediate moratorium on logging of old forest in areas where less than 10 percent remains, which would include much of TFL 46. BC Premier John Horgan promised—before last fall’s election—that his government would abide by the review’s recommendations. The blockades don’t seem to have hindered Teal’s access to trees in TFL 46 for its mills in Surrey. For the first four months of 2021, forests ministry data shows that Teal cut more in TFL 46 than it had in the same period in 2020, which turned out to be the company’s biggest cut since 2012. But the blockades have resulted in intense public scrutiny and criticism of Premier John Horgan’s dithering on the old-growth file. David Broadland splits his life between a primary forest on Quadra Island and an urban Garry oak meadow in Victoria.

Details of an RCMP plan to end a protest against old-growth logging near Port Renfrew, outlined in an open letter to the RCMP from the Rainforest Flying Squad, suggest the plan may not be legal. AN OPEN LETTER to the RCMP from the Rainforest Flying Squad (RFS), the group of forest activists blockading logging of old-growth forests near Fairy Creek Rainforest, contains a bit of a slap in the face. The letter states that the RCMP’s Division Liaison Team have told RFS they will be given 6 hours notice before any police action will take place. But, the letter adds, the RCMP have said “that all persons who have not left after the six hours will be arrested.” Such police action, should it occur, would apparently violate the terms of the injunction stipulated by BC Supreme Court Justice Frits E Verhoeven. Verhoeven’s order appears to require that protesters be observed by the RCMP to be “obstructing, impeding, or otherwise interfering with” Teal Cedar’s access or the access of its contractors before protestors would be in contravention of the order. There are many people in the area supporting the protests in ways that have not involved standing on roads. To arrest those people because they are “in the area” would be about as heavy-handed as police can be, save tasering them at Big Lonely Doug. FOCUS contacted the RCMP’s Division Liaison Team (DLT) by email requesting confirmation that the DLT would arrest all persons who have not left after the six hours. The DLT did not immediately respond. Old-growth forest defenders near Fairy Creek Rainforest (Photo by Dawna Mueller) Civil disobedience actions in the past in BC, such as the months-long blockades of a logging road at Clayoquot Sound in 1993, only involved arrest of people after they had refused to leave a road once the RCMP had read the terms of an injunction to them. The RFS letter (link below) suggests the RCMP’s plan for how to handle the Fairy Creek protest may not be legal: “It should be noted that not all persons left will be in violation of [Justice Verhoeven’s] enforcement order listed below. All actions will be videoed and there will likely be media crews on hand. The world will be watching.” The Rainforest Flying Squad has filed an appeal of Verhoeven’s order granting Teal Cedar injunctive relief. It is unknown in what time frame an appeal would be considered. Teal filed for injunctive relief on February 18 and that was granted on April 1 by Verhoeven. Presumably, BC’s justice system would want to work as quickly in response to the appeal, filed on April 29. Since that appeal could be successful, any RCMP action in the interim could appear to pre-judge the outcome of the appeal. David Broadland stood on the road at Clayoquot Sound along with many thousands of other citizens. He admires the forest protectors’ commitment to embarrass the NDP government into doing what it said it would do. Open Letter to RCMP from Rainforest Flying Squad.docx

TODAY, LAWYERS ACTING ON BEHALF OF the Fairy Creek Rainforest blockaders filed an appeal of the April 1 judgment made by BC Supreme Court Justice Frits E. Verhoeven. Verhoeven granted injunctive relief to Teal Cedar, ruling that the blockades in TFL 46 were causing irreparable harm to the Surrey logging and milling company. The appeal, filed in the BC Court of Appeal, asked that Verhoeven’s judgment “be set aside due to: (a) The Court erred in deciding that the granting of the injunction be allowed on behalf of the Respondent, Teal Jones Products Ltd.; (b) The Court erred in allowing police authorities and/or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to enforce the injunction against the Appellants; (c) The Court erred in its determination that the Respondent would suffer irreparable harm had the injunction not been granted; (d) The Court erred in failing to treat an injunction as an extraordinary remedy, especially in the context where arrests could be made but the police and Attorney General choose not to do so; (e) The Court erred in deciding the balance of convenience on one issue–the presence of a permit(s) to log; (f) The Court erred in failing to properly balance the public interest; (g) The Court erred in failing to analyse whether, in an area where there is a road-building permit but no cutting permit—a road building permit meets the irreparable harm branch of the test for an injunction; and, (h) The Court erred in applying the balance of convenience test determining the forestry decision to approve the Fairy Creek watershed Cutting Permit 7265 was a governmental policy consideration outweighing the public interest in preserving the few remaining old growth forests in British Columbia.” Despite the blockades, which were established in August 2020, Teal Cedar was able to harvest 437,982 cubic metres of logs from TFL 46 in 2020. That was an increase of 71 percent over 2018 and 55 percent over 2019. In announcing the appeal, the Rainforest Flying Squad observed that “the public interest in this case far outweighs the profit-making ability of a single entity and government.” David Broadland previously wrote about Justice Verhoeven’s judgment granting the injunction here and here.

BC Premier John Horgan has an inflated view of what his government has done to save old-growth forests. IN AN APRIL 7 INTERVIEW with CBC Victoria’s Gregor Craigie, Premier John Horgan claimed his government has already responded to the Gorley-Merkel report on old-growth forests in BC. Horgan claimed that logging has been deferred on “hundreds of thousand of hectares” of old growth. Forest scientist Karen Price, one of the co-authors of BC’s Old Growth Forest: A Last Stand for Biodiversity, has pointed out on this website that Horgan’s deferrals apply to only 3800 hectares of high productivity old growth. FOCUS has shown that a large portion of the biggest deferral included about 100,000 hectares of already protected Strathcona Park. Other deferrals are mainly rock and ice or second-growth forest. Horgan’s grasp of forest-related issues was further clarified by his claim to Craigie that “just in the Lower Mainland, 500 million hectares of land has been set aside just to protect the Spotted Owl.” What’s wrong with that? Watch the 1-minute video below. The problem for British Columbians is that Horgan seems clueless about the environmental damage being created by the forest industry in BC, and even more unaware about how his government is responding to that. Or maybe both his claims about the logging deferrals and the area protected for Spotted Owls were a slip of the tongue, or a joke. Either way, Craigie didn’t fact-check the premier on either matter. Is British Columbia’s mainstream media unintentionally enabling the unfolding ecological catastrophe in BC forests? If you have heard something about BC’s forest industry in the media that you think is doubtful, including what you read on this website, please let us know in the comments section below and we’ll fact-check that piece of information. Thanks to Dave Cuddy for drawing to our attention John Horgan’s surprising plan to save the Northern Spotted Owl.

As arrests at Fairy Creek Rainforest begin, arm yourself with some truth about what's actually happening. The injunction was obtained by inaccurate, self-serving descriptions of the impact of the blockades by the company. IF THERE’S ONE SITUATION in which you would expect a company’s accountant to be accurate about the numbers, it would be in a sworn affidavit in which the company is seeking a high-profile injunction from the BC Supreme Court. Right? Not these days. Teal Cedar Products Ltd filed such an application in mid-February, asking for injunctive relief, enforceable by the RCMP, in response to ongoing blockades of some of its logging operations in TFL 46 on southern Vancouver Island. On April 1, Justice Fritz E Verhoeven ruled in favour of Teal’s application. Verhoeven accepted information in affidavits provided by Teal CFO Gerrie Kotze concerning the impact of the blockades on Teal. Some of the information was grossly inaccurate, and Verhoeven based his decision on that information. I wrote recently about the fact that Teal’s cut in TFL 46 rose dramatically above the previous two years’ logging in spite of the blockades. In 2018, when there were no blockades in place, Teal took 255,975 cubic metres of timber out of TFL 46. In 2019, again with no blockades in sight, the company removed 282,096 cubic metres. In 2020, the year in which the blockade started (in August), Teal trucked 437,982 cubic metres of logs out of the TFL. That’s an increase of 71 percent over 2018 and 55 percent over 2019. Teal Cedar Products Ltd is clearcutting old-growth forests, like this former forest in the Caycuse River Valley (Photo by TJ Watt) Yet Teal stated in its application that the company had suffered “irreparable harm” as a result of the blockades, and Verhoeven agreed. A finding of irreparable harm was a legally necessary condition for allowing Teal’s application for injunctive relief and civil damages. Not only did Teal apparently misstate the impact that the blockades had on its operations, but other details, including information in affidavits provided by Kotze, appear to seriously underestimate the value of the logs the company removed from TFL 46 and the value of the products manufactured from those logs. Verhoeven accepted this information, analysed it in his judgment and concluded that Teal had suffered irreparable harm. I find the details of this case particularly compelling because they demonstrate how, in the face of industrial destruction of Earth’s life support systems, institutions that are needed to support the public interest—like government and the courts—are failing the public. The evidence of this is deep in the details of this case. C’mon in. In a section of Teal’s injunction application covering “Impact of the Blockades,” the document stated: “Teal Cedar estimates that the value of the products manufactured from timber sourced from TFL 46 to be about $19.4 million, which is an incremental value-added over the value of the logs of approximately $9 million.” This statement cites “Kotze Affidavit #1” as the source of that information. Again, Kotze is Teal’s chief financial officer, and his numbers are not credible. The market value of the 437,982 cubic metres of raw logs removed from TFL 46 in 2020 was close to $60 million, based on the volume and the ministry of forests’ average log price that year. According to the ministry of forests’ Harvest Billing System, Teal paid $10,580,295.06 in stumpage to the Province for those logs, the most stumpage it has ever paid for its logging in TFL 46. The value of the wood products manufactured from the logs Teal removed from TFL 46 in 2020 was likely around $220 million, not $19.4 million. (FOCUS estimated this number by using information provided in Western Forest Products’ 2020 financial statement, and the volume Western Forest Products harvested from its coastal operations, as determined by the ministry of forests’ Harvest Billing System. Western Forest Products has TFLs on Vancouver Island, one of which is beside Teal’s TFL 46.) It’s evident that Teal grossly underestimated the value of the wood that it had removed in 2020. Yet that inaccurate information was then used by Justice Verhoeven to determine whether to grant Teal an injunction. Did Teal intentionally construct numbers that would lead Verhoeven to find in its favour? In the “Irreparable Harm” section of Verhoeven’s decision, the judge stated, “Teal employs approximately 450 people within its processing and manufacturing facilities. If Teal is unable to log within the area of TFL 46, it will not have an adequate timber supply for its mills. It may be forced to shut down its mills, resulting in layoffs of employees, and Teal’s inability to supply its customers. Teal estimates that the end product value of the products that it will produce from the timber sourced from TFL 46 is approximately $20 million. Teal stands to lose market share, and to suffer damage to its reputation as a reliable supplier of its products.” Two points stand out: First, Verhoeven’s speculation about Teal being “unable to log within the area of TFL 46,” suggests he had little understanding of the situation on the ground. According to the ministry of forests, there is plenty of second growth the company could have logged. It isn’t being defended by blockades. I will come back to this point later. Second, Verhoeven took the information Kotze supplied, added $600,000 for unknown reasons—rounding?—and used this updated total of “approximately $20 million” to find that Teal had suffered “irreparable harm.” As mentioned above, irreparable harm was a necessary condition for Verhoeven to award injunctive relief. Our estimate of $220 million for the value of products manufactured from logs removed from TFL 46 was only part of Teal’s revenue in 2020. In its application for an injunction, the company stated, “Teal Cedar relies on its own timber licences to supply approximately 50 percent of its fibre needs for the three mills, mostly from TFL46.” If TFL 46 supplied most of that 50 percent, then Teal’s total sales for all the volume it processed in 2020 would be roughly twice the $220 million we estimated for TFL 46, or $440 million. In its injunction application, Teal especially highlighted a decline in production of its Tonewood Division, which supplies old-growth Red Cedar to guitar manufacturers. For that division, Teal claimed a loss of $250,000. Based on our estimate of total sales of over $400 million in 2020, the Tonewood decline would represent a loss in sales of just five-tenths of one percent. To put that decline in perspective, Verhoeven’s careless rounding error in restating the “value of the products” produced by Teal amounted to $600,000. Teal didn’t provide any additional numbers that would have summarized how the value of its products—like lumber—declined, because they didn’t. They went up over sales in 2019. Way up. Keep in mind that the blockades are aimed only at Teal’s logging of old-growth forest. The company has plenty of second-growth forest available for logging in TFL 46. Verhoeven did not seem to understand this when he speculated that Teal would be “unable to log within the area of TFL 46.” The most recent (2011) review of the TFL by the ministry of forests set the allowable annual cut (AAC) for the TFL at 403,000 cubic metres, well under what the company took out in 2020. The 2011 review assumed that “at least 180,000 cubic metres per year” would come from second-growth stands. Over the past 11 years, Teal’s cut has averaged 392,172 cubic metres per year and the stumpage assessed by the ministry of forests has averaged $8.20 per cubic metre. Teal has been cutting close to the AAC and, until recently, paying very low stumpage rates. In 2011, it paid just 56¢ per cubic metre for 401,567 cubic metres of wood. Summary of Teal Cedar’s cut in TFL 46, 2010 to 2020. The average stumpage paid over those 11 years was $8.20 per cubic metre. Source: Ministry of forests Harvest Billing System Neither Teal’s application for an injunction nor Verhoeven’s judgment granting the injunction even mention the words “second growth.” Yet that is where Teal was expected, by the terms of its 2011 TFL review, to get nearly half its wood for its mills. The next review, which is past due, will need to increase the proportion of second growth in its cut because TFL 46 now has about 2.5 million cubic metres less old-growth forest than it had in 2011. This is a fact, and the blockades are a public response to this fact. Loss of old-growth forest and the impact that has on risk of biodiversity loss and loss of forest carbon are critical public interest issues that neither the justice system nor the provincial government seem to know how to address. These two institutions, apparently, are only able to assess the monetary value of old-growth forests for companies like Teal. As Teal’s easy manipulations of the numbers show, the court isn’t very good at doing even that. Teal is privately-owned, but Business in Vancouver provides information about the company on its website. According to that publication, Teal is the sixth largest forestry company in BC and employed 1000 people in BC in 2020, the same as in 2019. It also has a mill in Washington. Business in Vancouver estimates Teal had 1350 employees “worldwide” in 2019 and 1485 in 2020. Business in Vancouver’s information about Teal for 2012-2013 shows that back then the company had about 970 BC employees and estimated revenues of $200 million. FOCUS asked Teal and the lawyer who prepared its injunction application why the application had grossly underestimated the value of wood products manufactured and the volume of logs Teal removed from TFL 46 in 2020. We received no response. (If Teal responds after initial publication of this story, FOCUS will provide its response.) A private company might feel compelled to publicly underestimate revenue if it had inaccurately reported that revenue to Revenue Canada. In Teal’s case, however, when CFO Kotze testified to the court that the value of wood products sourced from TFL 46 was “$19.4 million,” it could be that Teal was simply trying to make it more likely that it would be awarded an injunction. The company’s injunction application stated: “Teal Cedar estimates the value of the timber rendered inaccessible by the Blockades to be approximately $10 million.” Verhoeven, taking Teal’s various numbers at face value, would have to conclude that the blockades had made $10 million worth of timber inaccessible. Then he would have compared that with the “$9 million” which Teal said it had been able to remove to make products valued at “$19.4 million.” In other words, Teal told Verhoeven that more than half of its timber had been made inaccessible by the blockades. And Verhoeven’s judgment, repeated over and over again by various media, would have the effect of spreading Teal’s misinformation as though it were the truth. Teal’s 2020 bumper harvest ought to be considered in context. In September 2019, Tom Fletcher and Lauren Collins reported for Black Press that 500 employees of Teal-Jones Group had lost their jobs after earlier layoffs in May of that year. At the time, Kotze told the reporters, “Current high stumpage rates remain high relative to lumber prices, and harvesting costs have been adversely impacted by new regulations to bring out more residual waste fibre…These negative factors have made it impossible for the company to continue its forest licences economically.” The reporters also quoted a long-time Teal employee, Bill Fulk, about the future: “There’s going to be ghost towns because it’s hard to find an employee to come [into] the wood industry because people are seeing that it’s going down and down and down,” said Fulk, adding that it’s becoming very difficult to find employees ‘that trust that the wood industry will continue on.’” Somehow, though, in spite of the existential challenges faced by the company—at least as described by the company, Justice Verhoeven and Black Press—2020 saw Teal’s third largest harvest in the last ten years. As a consequence, money rained down on the company as the blockaders took up position to defend what little remains of coastal old-growth forest. David Broadland hopes that as arrests of Fairy Creek Rainforest blockaders mount, the public will look beyond the inaccurate, self-serving, self-descriptions of the forest industry and its institutional allies and look for the truth. This story has been edited: The original version incorrectly stated Teal’s average yearly cut over the last eleven years. The average is 392,172 cubic metres, not 431,389 as originally stated. Teal Cedar Products Ltd application for injunction: 2021-02-18 Notice of Application.pdf Justice Verhoeven’s judgment

The BC Supreme Court Justice who decided that irreparable harm was done to a private forestry company by citizens blocking logging roads didn't know that the company's harvest had actually increased. BC SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Frits E Verhoeven delivered reasons on April 1 for allowing an injunction against BC citizens blocking a forestry company from logging old-growth near Port Renfrew. Comparing the information Verhoeven used to make his decision with BC government information about the extent to which the logging company has been affected by the blockade, it’s difficult to understand why Verhoeven granted the injunction. The citizens have been blockading access to three potential logging sites just north of Port Renfrew. The first blockade stopped construction of a logging road into nearly pristine Fairy Creek Valley. That blockade was set up in mid-August, 2020. When Fairy Creek Valley was ignored by the NDP government in its faux old-growth logging deferrals announced a month after the blockade was set up, other blockades were established to impede logging of old-growth forests nearby. Fairy Creek Valley near the area that Teal Cedar wants to log (Photo by TJ Watt) Teal Cedar Products Ltd applied for an injunction against the blockades on February 18, 2021. A hearing was held by Justice Verhoeven on February 25, which was then postponed until March 25. Verhoeven provided reasons for allowing the injunction on April Fool’s Day. Teal Cedar Products is the tenure holder of TFL 46, which the ministry of forests notes has 45,533 hectares of commercially operable forest land that Teal can log. The approved cutblocks in Fairy Creek Valley that citizens are impeding access to totals 20 hectares. That represents such a small fraction of the land Teal has access to, it’s hard to express: it’s just four-one-hundredths of one percent of the area Teal can clearcut. None of this was mentioned in Verhoeven’s judgment. In his judgment, Verhoeven noted that for injunctive relief to be granted, Teal needed to show three things: First, that there was a serious question to be tried; second, that Teal would suffer irreparable harm without an injunction; and third, that “the balance of convenience favours granting the relief.” By “balance of convenience” Verhoeven meant that the harm done to Teal if the injunction was not granted needed to be weighed against the harm that would be done to the citizens manning the blockade if the injunction was granted. On the first requirement, Verhoeven noted that the citizens themselves conceded there was a serious issue to be tried. On the issue of “irreparable harm,” Verhoeven concluded: “There is also no doubt that Teal will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted.” But the truth is, there’s plenty of doubt. Let me start with what actually happened to Teal’s logging operations in TFL 46 in the year the blockade began, just over halfway through the year. Verhoeven could easily have been provided with this information if he had requested it from Teal. Harvest volumes obtained from a publicly accessible database, maintained by the BC ministry of forests, show that in 2018, when there were no blockades in place, Teal took 255,975 cubic metres of timber out of TFL 46. In 2019, again with no blockades in sight, they removed 282,096 cubic metres. In 2020, the year in which the blockade started (in August), Teal trucked 437,982 cubic metres of logs out of the TFL. That’s an increase of 55 percent over 2019 and 71 percent over 2018. If Verhoeven had asked for this information, he would have been hard-pressed to show that the blockades had done Teal irreparable harm. In fact, Teal did much better—monetarily—than it had in the previous two years. Verhoeven, however, accepted information from Teal and, based on that, concluded that the blockades would do Teal irreparable harm. Verhoeven’s judgment repeats what Teal told them: “Teal employs approximately 450 people within its processing and manufacturing facilities. If Teal is unable to log within the area of TFL 46, it will not have an adequate timber supply for its mills. It may be forced to shut down its mills, resulting in layoffs of employees, and Teal’s inability to supply its customers. Teal estimates that the end product value of the products that it will produce from the timber sourced from TFL 46 is approximately $20 million. Teal stands to lose market share, and to suffer damage to its reputation as a reliable supplier of its products.” But as the Province’s information shows, none of that happened. Verhoeven went on to describe the irreparable harm done to one of Teal’s contractors, road builders Stone Pacific: “The losses extend to Teal’s contractors and their employees. Stone Pacific lost $3,500 per day for each day its operations were prevented, and its employees lost wages of $350 to $400 each for every day of work lost.” The Province doesn’t make public such details as whether Teal’s road-building contractor actually lost any days of work, but judging by Teal’s much greater output in 2020, someone was building the necessary roads. On the basis of irreparable harm, Verhoeven seems to have seriously erred in assuming that what the company’s lawyers said in court didn’t need to be examined more closely. The third bar that Teal needed to meet for an injunction to be granted was the “Balance of Convenience” bar. Verhoeven described that this way: “Finally, an assessment must be made as to the balance of convenience, which typically starts with consideration of which of the parties would suffer greater harm from the granting or refusal of the remedy, pending a decision on the merits. Many other factors may come into play, depending on the circumstances. In Charter cases, the public interest must be considered within the question of the balance of convenience.” Verhoeven then recounted a short list of what various witnesses had told the court; these amounted to a repetition of the warnings already made by thousands of forest and climate scientists around the world about the impact forest destruction is having on the both the biodiversity and the climate crises. But a careful reading of his written judgment shows that Verhoeven never actually weighs the harms to Teal against the harms the defendants are trying to avoid by impeding Teal’s logging operations. Rather than making a serious effort to understand those harms, Verhoeven seemed to throw his hands into the air in exasperation and declared: “The problem is, all of the concerns raised by the respondents are for the government to address, and not this Court. Forestry decisions are highly policy driven and require the government to coordinate, balance, and reconcile often competing values and interests.” Note that in trying to work through the “Balance of Convenience” consideration, Verhoeven was willing to declare that it was up to the BC government to work out an appropriate response to the concerns of the citizen blockaders. Yet, in examining the question of whether Teal had suffered irreparable harm as a consequence of the blockades, he accepted Teal’s claims without referring to government records about the small area of what the citizens wanted protected, or the increased volume that Teal had harvested during the blockades. Moreover, the government, as many of us already know, only pretends to “coordinate, balance, and reconcile competing values and interests.” In the real world, the forest industry long ago captured the only public agency that could regulate forestry—the ministry of forests—and together the two have become the “mindustry.” Had Verhoeven actually completed his “Balance of Convenience” assessment, he might have properly weighed what Teal had lost—nothing—against what the public is losing every year that the reign of the mindustry continues. Old-growth forest in the Klanawa Valley, northwest of Port Renfrew; this is what the blockades are trying to keep out of Fairy Creek Valley (Photo by TJ Watt) If he had done what justice required him to do, Verhoeven would have summed up all the public subsidies received by forestry companies in BC: the forest management subsidy, which is the million-dollar-a-day cost to the public of running the ministry of forests after accounting for all the modest revenue it receives from companies like Teal. It would have included the more-than-one-million-dollar-a-day subsidy that mills like Teal’s receive through low electricity rates and the more-than-one-million-dollar-a-day subsidy that pulp mills receive through the lower rate they pay for water compared with the rate that municipal authorities pay for water (without pulp mills, Teal’s own mills would soon be buried in sawdust). And it would have included the multi-billion-dollar-a-year subsidy that forest companies are granted by the BC government, which ignores the carbon released by the industry’s destruction of BC forests. If that carbon was priced at the current level of BC’s Carbon Tax, this subsidy alone would overwhelm the entire $3 billion contribution to the provincial GDP credited to the forest industry. Those are some of the monetary public interests that Verhoeven failed to consider in his incomplete “balance of convenience” assessment. The blockaders are, I know, partly motivated by this monetary insult to the public interest. This is where irreparable damage is being done. In the end, after failing to adequately examine either the issue of irreparable harm or the issue of the balance of convenience, Verhoeven simply relied on “the law” that people can’t block roads if it affects other people who have a right to use those roads. So the question of whether Teal should have received injunctive relief seems to have been settled unjustly. The blockaders are now mobilizing support. The public would do well to try to understand that the power of BC’s justice system has been used improperly to support a private company’s interests over the public interest. David Broadland has spent the last year amassing information about the mindustry. He’s discovered that the future of BC’s forests is not in good hands. Justice Verhoeven’s judgment: https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/21/06/2021BCSC0605.htm