Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons says he remains confident a new land use plan to be drafted as part of the Foundation Agreement between the province and the shíshálh Nation will end the “constant cycle of proposal and protest” over issues like logging on the slopes of Mount Elphinstone.
The group Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) has been trying to use the courts, as well as protests and a roadblock, to prevent harvesting of the area known as the Clack Creek Forest in BC Timber Sales (BCTS) cutblock A93884.
In a BC Supreme Court petition filed last spring in an effort to stop the auction that eventually saw Black Mount Logging of Squamish secure the right to remove some 29,500 cubic metres of timber, lawyers with West Coast Environmental Law argued the auction shouldn’t take place because the land use plan (referred to in court documents as the Modern Land Use Plan or MLUP) had not been completed.
In ruling against ELF, BC Supreme Court Robert Punnett said, “The petitioner’s position that an MLUP had to be undertaken before timber could be harvested in the Clack Creek TSL is not supported in law or principle.”
Black Mount Logging secured a court injunction against any attempts by protesters to block its crews from working in the cutblock on Jan. 28, but as of Monday afternoon the company had not attempted to resume the cutting it began on Jan. 12.
ELF, meanwhile, has been encouraging supporters to contact Forests Minister Doug Donaldson’s office in an effort to get him to intervene to have BCTS offer the company a different block to log without financial penalty.
The group has also, recently, been critical of Simons and the NDP government.
“Our local NDP MLA Nicholas Simons has done nothing to support the Mount Elphinstone Park expansion campaign – in fact he’s cowered before the Truck Loggers Association,” ELF said in a Feb. 2 post to its Facebook page.
Simons laughed off the claim in an interview with Coast Reporter, but said he understands why there’s disappointment that the land use planning many in the community have called for since the ’90s still hasn’t come to pass while calling for a less confrontational approach.
“I think after years of waiting for a land use plan, now that one is at least in the works, set out as part of the Foundation Agreement [with the shíshálh Nation], we should take full advantage of that and ensure that we can build alliances and build support for what the community considers important,” Simons said.
Simons also reiterated his support for increased protections for the forested areas of Mount Elphinstone and said he’s brought the issue to the attention of Donaldson “many times” and worked to help ELF get the ear of the minister as well.
“There are many perspectives on this. The forest industry is also going through its own set of challenges… I think the conflict that we see around this is exactly why we should have had a planning process around this years ago,” Simons said. “It was one of the first issues I brought up when I was first elected – there was just no interest with the previous government. They knew these conflicts would come.”
