modified version of an article in the newspaper
Black Sheep, Nov.-Dec. 2009
Nothing goes to the great forest industry in Quebec, everybody knows. Even the spokesman for the Council of the Quebec Forest Industry Council, Guy Chevrette, who keeps repeating all forums this message, waiting to see the state again socialize the losses of the industry. Again, Quebec society should make an effort to support the multinational forest industry, decreasing the cost of fiber, reduce regulation, to support this, let them do that. Forest communities and their representatives, held hostage by the industry, dare contradict this speech secular, yet which removes the essential: the crisis of increasingly serious facing the Quebec forestry sector are caused by the dominant model Forest Industry itself.
If the proponents of this model looking into the current crisis an opportunity to close ranks behind them and still continue to justify the privileges that this extended model, however they are struggling more and more to hide bankruptcy. Two events in recent months have shown and have inaugurated a period of upheaval that could be favorable to the development of economic alternatives forest more rooted in the realities of socio-Quebec forest. First, a colossus of the industry was shaken last spring: unable to pass on to other astronomical debt of six billion dollars, the transnational AbitibiBowater could not convince its creditors that it had a future and had to be placed in April 2009 under the protection Act arrangements with creditors. Alone holding nearly 40% of the total allowable cut, AbitibiBowater literally decides the fate of nearly 28,000 direct and indirect workers in Quebec, all spread across thirty communities living mainly in the forest. Since April, the company and all that it administers and are suspended effectiveness of a restructuring process, which notably led to the closure of factories became symbols of a mess: Donnacona, Beaupre, Clermont, Dolbeau-Mistassini. Under a non-compete clause that condemned to impotence, these facilities can not be redeemed and reinvigorated by the workers and the local community. Their anger is understandable.
must know how to look things in the face: the probable demise of AbitibiBowater could help open the game open the game for many companies, cooperatives or co-management initiatives land that would find it an unexpected chance to leave the margins to become centers for structuring forest communities living in the forest. Or even better: to become models of innovation based on the diversity of ecological and economic wealth of the world forests. Clearly, the collapse of this giant could, wherever he locks the imagination, giving space to another forestry. Furthermore, another recent event could allow recovery of endogenous socio-Quebec forest. The Quebec government tabled the draft this summer Law 57 on the occupation of forest land, a bill was introduced by his minister as a "small revolution". The term is misleading: you look closer, this draft revision of the forestry regime hinder any control channels of commercial pulp and lumber by large transnational corporations, since they still exert market power on the main segments of production and distribution. But the new plan contains elements that could bring air into the house. Among these include the development of forest management plans would no longer be the prerogative of private organizations in the industry. The forest planning process, overseen by the state, now goes through a regional body of integrated resource management in charge of building management plans. This body, which falls within the Regional Commissions on natural resources and territory (CRRNT) from each regional conference of elected officers (CRE), meet around one table the major users of forest management units, regardless of their relation to the territory.
Thus, forests would no longer be reduced prior to the timber, and the forest industry would be forced to deal with actors pursuing separate goals, if not opposed to the productivist logic of the current model. This joint planning is perhaps the best opportunity to give the forces of forest communities to coalesce. Project management woodlots, forests inhabited forests and nearby could become the backbone of renewed collective responsibility for the forest in the middle. We are still far from a questioning of the economic structures Quebec daily to dispossess a large part of its forest wealth, but there may be here in the water, interfering with the lines of the stone, may eventually split it in winter.
The combination of these two events could be favorable for recovery from yet another crisis in the productivist model and why not, the model itself. Why "might"? First, because a paradigm shift can not be achieved without the determination of Quebec actors to turn the page, which means prefer power to structure the internal space to a regional economic dependence on single economic benefits. Secondly, because one can not underestimate the ability of the dominant model of heavy industry to renew itself to maintain what it considers to be his privilege against forest communities, freedoms against the state and its "vested rights "against society in general. We are witnessing an industry, it is important to repeat, was developed according to a colonial logic and took a liking to see the world as forest a common pool of assets to be valued. It is high time to question our docility and take steps to implement projects to match our talents. And projects, we are not lacking.
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