Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

I think this is an important aspect of #bcelxn2024 #bcpoli

In BC today it matters electorally if a politician has gained the confidence of First Nations. Prominent northern BC NDP MLA Nathan Cullen, a former MP and federal NDP leadership candidate (runner up to Jagmeet Singh), lost his race for reelection to the Conservatives. Why?

Apparently one aspect is he ran afoul with many First Nations in that region over the last term.

While I am disappointed in that result, I am glad the First Nations communities are having a real impact on the democratic process they are forced into.

If he had not lost that confidence, perhaps the result would have been 47 to 44 and his party would have a majority government.

Show threadJanis La CouvéeOct 20, 2024
@chris this absolutely does not explain North Island, unless you have some skinny that I don't have.
Show threadChris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024
@lacouvee No. In that space I think we see the deep rural divide. The impact of Facebook. The impact of deep loss of support from the forest industry for the NDP as jobs evaporate and blame is put on environmentalists rather than the capitalists who extracted our resources and ran.
Show threadJanis La CouvéeOct 20, 2024
@chris oh so true - once every last tree is cut, those companies will move on to "greener" pastures in countries with fewer environmental protections. They talk about "fibre supply" as if it didn't mean that the trees they are cutting are getting smaller and smaller. They will never again have the volumes of the 50s 60s 70s
Show threadRev.Hans 

@lacouvee @chris I don’t know how volumes of fibre compare, but there are 100s more stems per acre in today’s industrial forest than there were in the natural forests of 50 or 100 years ago (or today, we’re still cutting old growth stands).
Industry loves standardization. Many small trees are easier & cheaper to process. It really is “fibre industry” today. Not a “forest industry.” BC, and especially VI, grows fibre - fast.
1/2

#bcpoli #forestry

Oct 20, 2024 at 8:02pmWeb
Show threadRev.Hans Oct 20, 2024
@lacouvee @chris
Forest industry or fibre industry?
Does that matter to a contract logger who’s trying to feed his monthly payments on equipment, before he even gets to feed his family? Hardly.
Does it matter to those of us who value qualities beyond fibre? Absolutely. I know many loggers who love the natural forests they once worked in or heard about working in. Some of them feel this tension. But feeling it, that doesn’t pay the bills.
#bcpoli #forestry
Show threadChris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024
@hanspetermeyer @lacouvee I have a deep mistrust and suspicion of the Truck Loggers Association as a vessel for everything that is hurting both our forests and the people working within them.
Show threadRev.Hans Oct 20, 2024
@chris @lacouvee I used to write/photograph for the TLA
Even in my few years around that crew I saw what I thought were good changes. Some good people.
But they were (& imagine still are) squeezed by corporate profiteers. And rather bite the hand that feeds them, they will lobby against progressive policy.
They are a lobby organization with one goal: maximize the short-term business (financial) interests of their members. Much weaker than they once were.
Show threadRev.Hans Oct 20, 2024

@chris @lacouvee Meanwhile, the ones who squeeze them (used to be repped by lobby org FIR, Forest Industry Council), are quietly mistrusted but publicly allowed to do their business as usual: turning forests into fibre farms, maximizing shareholder profits at truckloggers’, BC communities’, and BC taxpayers’ expense. TLA gets a bad rep, sometimes unearned. The villains are behind the curtain…

#bcpoli #forestry

Show threadJanis La CouvéeOct 20, 2024
@hanspetermeyer @chris I see the trucks on the highway daily and I come from a logging family. Also - economic markets in Asia are drying up. They can blame the NDP all they want, the market conditions aren't there.