The present forestry situation in British Columbia can be fixed, the question is who is willing to take a bath to fix it? We can look at the mountain pine beetle, exportation of raw logs, corporate mistakes, and the continued and inept running by the various governments over the last 40 years. There are a great many factors we can examine.
At the base level, we can look at universities that research and teach resource management and resilience, hand-in-hand with teaching antiquated agricultural models that do not work with trees, species diversification, and soil management.
While it may seem unrelated, the sheer greed with regard to the current Telus contract negotiations sheds light on just how bad we have gotten.
Internet and cell phone coverage and pricing in Canada is among some of the worst in the world while Canada ranks very high in other life-quality categories. Telus have outsourced many jobs to developing countries to save money, and in 2019 the net income for Telus was $1.75 Billion. Despite this, Telus employees have been working without a contract for ages.
The first Telus response to this is to speak about competitiveness in a world economy and blame the high cost of the union labour, but there is another thing to consider. While Telus refuses to deal fairly, and strip their employees of their pension, Telus donated $500 million to a charitable organization last year and are in the process of doing the same as I write this. The details are all public record and it is astonishing that they can donate this much money but not get a CBA in place. When you recognize that charitable donations are tax deductable, you realize exactly why Telus is doing what they are doing, and that is maintaining a PR charade as tummy warming as their animal ads.
Greed, portfolios worth billions, a stock market that isn't worth its value. The governments walking hand-in-hand with corporations that only care about profit, off-shore investment, and padding hefty retirements while our province dies. It is time that we as British Columbians started to fight back.
How much is enough?
Michael Maslen
Prince George
