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November 55, 2009 - No. 507 Accelerated Destruction of Forestry Workers' Livelihood Cannot be Called a "Solution" to Forestry Crisis• Accelerated Destruction of Forestry Workers' Livelihood Cannot be Called a "Solution" to Forestry Crisis
- Gabriel Girard-Bernier -
Accelerated Destruction of Forestry Workers' Livelihood Cannot be Called a "Solution" to Forestry CrisisBased on documents released by the Superior Court of Quebec, monopoly AbitibiBowater is attempting to place seven Hydro-Saguenay power facilities as sureties in obtaining a $230 million loan. The power grid's seven hydro-electric stations represent some 162 megawatts used to provide energy to the Kenogami and Alma mills. Bill 11 specifies and stipulates it cannot "cede, transfer or otherwise alienate the rights it has been granted by virtue of the present Act without having obtained the government's authorization and, if need be, conformed with the conditions it may so determine". At present, AbitibiBowater is still under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) until the established December 15 deadline. On the excuse of CCAA, the State and its tribunals allowed the monopoly to suspend its contributions to the pension fund while granting it a $100 million loan through Investment Quebec. To boot, the Charest government is preparing to stretch out a new loan and retard the payment date for the $100 million loan. Meanwhile, the Charest government refuses to recognize the demand of workers and communities for a guaranteed livelihood. Through such narrow and sectarian capital-centred conceptions, the monopolies and the Charest government only exacerbate the crisis in forestry, while the working class puts forward human-centred solutions to sort it out and they are ignored. For months AbitibiBowater has been trying to make use of its power stations, plants and hydro-electric power grids to both siphon off at public funds and auction off its assets. As far as hydro-electric installations go, AbitibiBowater's assets are phenomenal. For example in a recent report, the firm Ernst and Young, responsible for the monopoly's bankruptcy affairs, described its assets as being most substantial. Those assets, along with the plants linked to them, far from being created by the owners of capital, were created by generations of workers. Today, AbitibiBowater, with the benediction of the Charest government, is using those assets as a tool to destroy the forestry and the workers' and their communities' means of subsistence throughout Quebec and Canada. The forestry monopolies are being encouraged by the State to destroy such means of production Canada-wide because of "market imbalance". For example at the Dalhousie mill in New Brunswick, AbitibiBowater ordered impact studies on the demolition of a mill that has not been maintained, heated, or protected despite the fact that one of its water mains supplies part of the town. It seem the company is only interested in selling the mill as part of four plants, thereby depriving the local community of any possibility of reactivating installations and guaranteeing itself a means of subsistence. State-fed vultures hovering over AbitibiBowater are attempting to extract the maximum remaining added-value from the company, its plants and facilities. The Charest government refuses to enforce its owns laws while continuing to finagle agreements with the monopolies, behind closed doors, for the destruction of the means to a livelihood for the workers and their communities. Every AbitibiBowater hydro-electric installation is linked to the mills, it is their very raison-d'être. The workers of AbitibiBowater in the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region, as well as of the entire forestry industry, are struggling against monopoly dictate pitting them against the weight the State places behind the forestry companies at all levels. The issue of hydro-electric installations is not new. For months now workers have been denouncing Charest government complicity with AbitibiBowater in the destruction of their own means of subsistence. It was Serge Simard, the Provincial Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife who last February declared: "We will make sure the law is adhered to. We have also reassured the workers. If discussions are to be had about the dams, they will be there. They must be part of the solution and kept in the loop." And so, based on neo-liberal pragmatism, yesterday's solution is turned into today's problem. AbitibiBowater management argue that power stations and the hydro-electric power grid are already sureties for the $100 million loan which is coming to term. This means the Charest government has therefore already circumvented the law and allowed the dismantling of these sureties and, for all intents and purposes, the destruction of what remains of the facilities in the Lac St-Jean area. State monopoly capitalism is the very system that places the State's full weight and all its resources behind the financial oligarchy and the bourgeoisie against the working class and its nation-building project through mechanisms that intertwine the "public sector" with the "private sector" through the allotment of all the resources by granting the monopolies their "rule of law" over the entire society. The forest industry is one of the many sectors of the economy where the contradictions and effects of State monopoly capitalism are the most glaring, with entire communities wiped off the map from one day to the next. The nation-building project of the working class, based on human-centred social theory and practice, does not permit workers and communities to be wiped off the map by monopolies such as AbitibiBowater. By fighting against monopoly right the working class elaborates solutions to resolve the problems facing the society on the basis of building a pro-social and sovereign economy. The demand of an organized and conscious working class is that added-value be taken from the monopolies, not individuals. By taking up the pro-social program the workers are not only preparing the alternative for forestry, they are preparing it for the entire society.
Federal Minister's Irresponsible ActionAfter all the announcements made by the Charest government on forestry, it is now the federal government's turn to step in. Denis Lebel, Minister of State responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, wrote a letter published October 12 in Le Journal de Québec entitled: "Forestry: Responsible Action". The Minister begins his letter with a major myth on the causes of the crisis hitting the forestry industry in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia which he attributes to "consumers of newsprint who have changed their habits through increased reliance on the Internet" and a reduction in the construction of new housing starts in the U.S. From this he concludes "that the crisis has become a market issue". Minister Lebel speaks of a 42 percent drop in newsprint demand since 2000 and vis a vis the housing issue he says "Housing construction represents only a quarter of what was being built in the U.S. before the world economic crisis." Referring to the softwood lumber dispute, the Conservative minister adds: "The former Liberal government is to blame for the softwood lumber dispute with the Americans and the exorbitant tariffs for our forest industry." He declares that in 2006, the Harper Conservative government "settled the Liberal-Bloc softwood lumber dispute through an agreement that ensures stability and has brought in returns of close to $5 billion for the Canadian forestry industry, $1 billion of which has gone to Quebec's industry". After presenting the Harper Conservative government's version of the forestry crisis in Quebec, Minister Lebel says he is "very concerned about the fate of forestry workers". He says: "Through Export Development Canada, $16 billion in credits over 20 months was approved to assist 226 Quebec forestry businesses in 2008 and 220 others since the beginning of 2009." He then adopts the forestry industrialists' lament: "The truth is that the end of the softwood lumber agreement will lead to tariffs on exports of 30 to 40 percent." All of this "truth" is to cover up that forestry workers are not receiving any assistance from Minister Lebel — Export Development Canada financial support is given to businesses and business owners, not workers. The truth is that Quebec's forestry production is geared towards export, not meeting the needs of Quebecers, Canadians and peoples elsewhere in need. The softwood lumber dispute was "settled" at the expense of the Canadian forestry industry and producers who lost over $1 billion, against the ruling courts who decided in Canada's favour. The problems in forestry are tied to the present world economic crisis as a result of the absence of a national policy on the use of natural resources for the well-being of and in the interests of the people, including the First Nations. The foreign ownership of the great majority of pulp and paper mills and the control of the forestry sector by U.S. multinationals for whom only the highest return no matter what the cost in human terms is a huge problem. Minister Lebel and the Harper Conservative government have put the Canadian state in the service of the plunder of the forests of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia by U.S. multinationals to serve the needs of the finance capital and this is the main cause of crisis in Quebec's forestry sector. Consumers and the former Liberal government are all too easy scapegoats for Minister Denis Lebel. The discontent of the forestry worker is really frightening both federal and provincial governments. In the East they have distributed money to enable the mills to re-open, so that workers are able to again qualify for employment-insurance. That is all they have to offer to ease the population's suffering and concern. Another direction must be given to the economy. The governing elite and its parties and mass media take great care to never present the overall picture, such as the facts on foreign ownership and in particular the overall figures on the social product created by Quebec workers. That would show that pro-social alternatives are possible. Only the workers who produce the billions of dollars in wealth appropriated by the finance capitalists by putting the state in their service can turn the situation to their advantage.
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