Nova Scotians are asking the same question as we wait for the government to respond to the Lahey Report and clearcutting continues unabated on Crown lands
Plantation New Brunswick
It’s pretty powerful stuff as they say and, sad to say, the story of forestry in Nova Scotia shares many elements with that of N.B.
Begins the intro by Tracy Glynn:
Thériault’s impression that all was fine in New Brunswick’s woods was shattered when he met a 26-year-old man who had tried to commit suicide. The man was $1 million in debt, a debt he had accrued from working as a contractor, cutting wood for J.D. Irving, the largest forestry player in the province. According to Thériault, the contractors are in a perpetual debt cycle of taking out loans to buy new machines.
The series of films can be accessed online at isourforestreallyours.ca.
Currently there are 28 episodes. Some examples:
Episode 8
Scoutmaster Jean-Guy Levesque remains in a state of shock as he visits the clearcut that decimated the forest behind their scout camp.Episode 13
Charles Thériault asks the question: Why is industry leaving perfectly good marketable logs to rot in the woods? To what purpose does it serve. To cheat the owners? To bankrupt the small contractors? To eliminate competition? It does not make sense!Episode 21
Don Bowser is an international expert on transparency and anti-corruption. Having worked many years in several hotspots of the world, he has decided to return to New-Brunswick only to find a situation which he describes as far worse than many of the countries he has dealt with.Episode 26
Gareth Davies, former operations manager for the Acadia Research Forest. comprised of 23,000 acres near Fredericton, details what he believes is the real state of the forest industry in New Brunswick.
These are all fodder for two documentaries as explained by Thériault on the home page:
Welcome to my experiment in social awareness raising.
This site is where I will be creating a one hour documentary on the state of our Crown Forest in New Brunswick.Every week for the next four months I will be posting on this site as well as on a Facebook page documents, interviews, reports, observations and opinions on the state of our public forest.
I will then undertake 2 months of editing in order to produce two documentaries. One in french, the other in english that will question the management of the greatest natural wealth we New-Brunswickers possess, our Crown Land Forest, a forest held in trust by the government for the benefit of all residents and future generations of New Brunswick.
Merci, Monsieur Thériault!
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Tip of the hat to R.A. for this one