Forest land audit sparks range war

By Tom Fletcher – Alberni Valley News
VICTORIA – The B.C. government didn’t take adequate care of the public interest when it allowed Western Forest Products to remove 28,000 hectares of privately owned land from tree farm licenses on Vancouver Island, B.C. Auditor General John Doyle reported Wednesday.
Doyle’s first report since arriving from Australia to take up the job of B.C.’s financial watchdog prompted a quick and angry response from the government.

“We are offended by this report, we think it is totally inappropriate, and if Mr. Doyle thinks this is the way we do business in Canada, he’s dead wrong,” said Forests Minister Pat Bell.

The Western Forest Products (WFP) lands have proven the most controversial of a series of private land releases made by the B.C. Liberal government in recent years. Doyle said releasing the three parcels from forest regulation and opening them to development gave them a value of $150 million.

Bell is currently considering another application to release land in the Kootenays owned by bankrupt forest company Pope & Talbot. The land has been sold subject to a decision to release it so the mostly waterfront properties can be developed.

Former forests minister Rich Coleman decided to release the WFP land to help the struggling forest company, and acted without adequate information or consultation with local communities and the Capital Regional District, Doyle concluded. The January 2007 decision sparked an uproar about possible urban sprawl, and critics said the company should have paid compensation or given up exclusive access to Crown forest land held in its licences.

Bell was also incensed that Doyle’s report hinted at insider trading in WFP shares before the decision was made public, and suggested that Coleman might have been in a conflict of interest because his brother Stan is a senior manager of WFP.

Bell said his staff contacted the B.C. Securities Commission and was told that the stock transactions had been investigated.

“They told us they had followed up, they completed their investigation, and that they found there was no merit to the accusations at all, and that there would be no further investigation,” Bell said. “So what was the point of including that in the report?”

Coleman issued his own statement Wednesday, indicating he had referred the situation to B.C.’s Conflict of Interest Commissioner. He reiterated that his relationship with his brother had no bearing on the decision to release the land and vowed to make the commissioner’s findings public when they are complete.

Doyle said Coleman made his decision based on a briefing note that didn’t detail the state of WFP’s finances, and the ministry didn’t have information on the results of previous releases of forest land.

Bell rejected both the arguments, calling Doyle’s work “unprofessional.”

The government does track the fate of private forest lands, and 97 per cent of what has been released is still being managed for forestry, he said. As for WFP’s finances, Bell said it’s a public company with quarterly reports and its struggles at the time were well known.

Doyle noted that his report contains no recommendations, mainly because almost all the private forest land held in tree farm licences has already been released.