Comment: We need a new vision for our public forests

Then there’s B.C.’s single largest publicly owned renewable resource: our forests. In 2012, the auditor general stated as clearly as possible that the government has no vision for this major resource. The Liberals dismissed his findings outright. …Under the B.C. Liberals, the once reasonably independent office of the chief forester has been diminished to a part-time function of an assistant deputy minister who has to set annual allowable cuts with information that the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals, the Forest Practices Board and the auditor general have all said is highly suspect. But the government continually refuses to address the sorry state of B.C.’s forest inventory. Clearly, all is not well in B.C.’s forests. Yet the government’s only response is to attempt to give some companies more exclusive rights over our public forests through new tree farm licences.