Editor:

Re: In response to Rustad's comments in Lakes District ÑÇÖÞÌìÌà issue Feb. 20, 2013.

MLA Rustad, how disingenuous your remarks are. To compare major licensee tenures to area-based woodlot and community forest tenures is ludicrous. Woodlot and community forest tenures are small and locally owned and operated. They totally benefit the community. The control remains within the community. Major licensee tenures are huge and corporate, internationally owned and operated, and are not operated solely to benefit our community. Of course, community forest employees would extol the virtues of their area-based tenure. But, those tenures pale in comparison to major licensee tenures and should not be compared.

They are apples and oranges and just another attempt to ‘hoodwink’ the people of this community. Eighty per cent of forest tenures in B.C. are volume-based and 20 per cent are area-based such as woodlot and community forest tenures. The 20 per cent are not major licensee Tree Farm Tenures such as the Liberals propose.

How disingenuous your remark is: ‘Area-based licenses are not a privatization of the forest.’ Then you go on to say the reason is because they will have to replant and the land is still the government's.

You not once discuss the asset conversion of area-based tenures to the licensee and out of the government's control. Not once have your or other Liberals ever mentioned this dirty little secret deal breaker…. that, the asset value of the land transfers to the licensee with saleable rights and benefits going to them, not the community for the government.

I am disappointed that Walter Strong didn't force MLA Rustad to address the asset conversion aspect of area-based tenures. The crux of MLA Simpson's and my letter was this very point yet MLA Rustad avoids the discussion. The Liberals hopes are that First Nations and rural communities will not wake up until it's too late. The Liberals will be long gone if the political polls are correct and will not have to account for the terrible consequences thrust upon the Lakes District.

Once again the Liberals refuse to come clean to our community. The Timber Supply Review Report does not recommend changing volume-based tenures to area-based (major licensee) tree farm licenses. The Liberals used to say they were thinking of going the area-based tenure route but only if the community wants it. Now they are basically saying ‘area-based tenures are coming to the Lakes District.’ They have never felt they had to disclose the dirty secret deal breaker for First Nations and non-First Nations rural communities.

A warning has been issued by Judith Sayers (Visiting National Aboriginal Economic Development chair University of Victoria) & Ben Parfitt (Resources Policy Analyst) to First Nations, and non-First Nations rural communities that this proposed government transfer could fundamentally alter who gains access to natural resources; and, it is a ‘lifeblood issue.’ Their article ‘Forests bill urgently in need of a rewrite’ was published in the Times Colonist on Feb. 19, 2013.

Judy Stratton