British Columbia: Gov. fails to give China all its pine on a silver platter
SHANGHAI – The Canadian government has cleared a path for loggers in
the interior of British Columbia to export unprocessed timber to China
in a bid to open a market for forests killed by the mountain pine
beetle. The trade in “raw logs,” as such shipments are angrily
denounced by labour unions, is a painfully sensitive topic in British
Columbia, where such shipments are viewed as the exporting of the jobs
that go unfilled when trees are not cut into lumber. The mainland port
of Putian, near Taiwan, quietly opened to Canadian logs on Oct. 1, a
fact that has already raised concern in some corners.
While the
rationale may be “understandable,” there are “tremendous opportunities
here in B. C. that are being squandered” when logs are shipped away,
said Ben Parfitt, a researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives. Logs have previously been allowed into China, but only
after being either fumigated or debarked in Canada or Japan — both of
which are costly measures. Fumigation also requires sustained
temperatures above 10 Celsius, and is impossible in B. C. during
winter, especially at the northern port of Prince Rupert, where
interior logs would depart. The agreement with China addresses both of
those issues, providing Canadian exporters a cheap cold-season way to
have their logs cleared to Chinese health standards. It remains
unclear, however, how quickly companies will flock to the new trade
opening. This fall, when Russia was still planning to impose a
crushing 80% tax on the export of its logs, it looked as if Canadian
logs might find the Chinese eager to buy from Canada. Now that tax has
been postponed for at least nine months, leaving Canadian logs too
expensive to make significant inroads in China. Putian is also distant
from the Yangtze River, where much of China’s sawmilling capacity
lies. http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=1054721
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com