In the News June 9

Consequences of Concentration of Wealth and Power in Fewer Hands

Revolving Door of Ruling Elite Between Government and Big Business

Ben Parfitt, writing in Policynote in April, reveals once again the revolving door for members of the ruling elite between big corporations and government. BC’s Ministry of Forests announced on April 4, the province’s chief forester, Diane Nicholls, would be leaving government services for a senior executive position with Drax Group, a forest/energy monopoly headquartered in the UK. The announcement means the most senior government official in charge of regulating activities in the forest industry had accepted an executive position with a dominant and controversial company in that very same sector.

Rick Manwaring, the NDP government forest ministry’s deputy minister announced in an April 4 email to colleagues, “Diane is leaving us to further her work in sustainable forestry in the private sector in the role of VP Sustainability for North America with Drax.” As you know, Manwaring continued, “[Drax] is a United Kingdom-based energy, carbon capture and pellet company and is establishing its presence in both the U.S. and Canada.”

The word “presence” obscures the reality that Drax is yet another global corporate fiefdom sucking profits from BC’s forests, most of which are on public land and supposedly for the benefit of the people, and in fact rightfully belong to Indigenous nations.

Ben Parfitt points out three features about Drax that Manwaring fails to say:

“1. Drax operates the world’s largest wood-fired thermal electricity plant, a UK-based operation that consumes an astronomical 10 million tonnes of wood pellets a year. Since the UK’s forests are entirely incapable of producing enough wood to satisfy the plant’s needs, Drax must get all its critical raw material from elsewhere.

“2. Almost one year ago, Drax established a near-monopoly in BC when it bought up the assets of Pinnacle Renewable Energy, thereby gaining full or partial control of half the province’s wood pellet mills. In just its first year of gaining that dominant position, its share of wood pellets exported from BC skyrocketed.

“3. Drax claims that the wood pellets it burns come from ‘residual’ sources, in particular the massive amounts of wood chips created at lumber mills when round logs are converted to rectangular lumber products. But in truth, massive numbers of whole trees are being ground directly into wood pellets at BC pellet mills owned by Drax, accelerating deforestation in a province running short of trees to cut down. Worse, wood pellet making generates very few direct jobs while making a product that is then burned at significant cost to our already seriously stressed climate.”

Parfitt continues, “Here’s something Manwaring didn’t say about Nicholls. Two years ago she chose to be in an industry-funded video extolling the virtues of wood pellets.

“The video was produced by the Wood Pellet Association of Canada. In it, [then chief BC forester] Nicholls makes the same claims promoted by her future employer — that wood pellets are part of the ‘circular’ forest industry where wood waste from one operation becomes the critical feedstock for another.”

In the video, Nicholls says, “When you look at pellet production in British Columbia, it’s part of building that circular economy in the forest sector. It uses residuals from sawmill production that may not be used otherwise and it also is starting to use harvest residuals that we know is not being used currently. And that is a win, because it’s something that is an added value for the benefit of British Columbians.”

“Circular economy” has become yet another buzz word in industry similar to “greening.” They describe features that may or may not exist but which are meant to cover up the crucial issue facing the sector and country: the people who work in the industry, those who live in the territories affected along with the rightful owners of the land, the Indigenous nations, play no role or only a perfunctory part in deciding the sector’s activities or future. The people’s right to a say and to decide the direction of the economy is negated and words such as “circular” and “green” are a smokescreen to obscure the root problem the people face: their lack of control over those things that affect their lives.

Parfitt writes, “But what Nicholls says next is most telling: ‘What I see the pellet producers doing is opening our minds in BC by utilizing parts of the tree that currently aren’t necessarily used always. And being able to find a manufacturing potential for that fibre and find a market for that manufactured product as in pellets and be able to add value to the economy of British Columbia, without impacting how much we harvest in any way, shape or form.'”

Parfitt refutes Nicholls’ assertion with video footage and photographs from three pellet mills showing “huge numbers of whole logs piled up at facilities in Burns Lake, Smithers and Houston — facilities all once owned by Pinnacle and now by Drax.

“Moreover, as chief forester in 2017, Nicholls noted that in the Prince George area of BC alone, logging companies delivered an estimated 2.4 million cubic metres of logs to wood pellet mills and pulp and paper mills over the preceding five years. Many of those logs were then turned directly into wood pellets rather than the pellet industry doing as it says it does – utilizing ‘waste’ or ‘residual’ wood from the sawmill industry.”

Parfitt contacted Len Vanderstar, a retired professional forester and professional biologist who worked in various positions with the provincial government, for his view upon seeing Nicholls speak in the Wood Pellet Association video. Vanderstar said he and other former government employees were uncomfortable with the video remarking, “Myself and some others questioned the perception of a conflict of interest.”

Parfitt writes, “Michelle Connolly, director of Conservation North, a Prince George-based group that seeks to protect the interior region’s remaining primary forests — those forests not yet subject to industrial logging — said she was concerned by Nicholls’ pending move from government to one of the world’s top wood pellet users. She is particularly concerned given evidence that tracts of primary forest in the region have been purpose-logged to make pellets.

Connolly asks wryly, “Do movements like this [from government to private industry and back] facilitate the regulatory capture we see in BC, where policies and programs made by government are ultimately authored by the industry?”

Parfitt writes, “Regulatory capture refers to situations where a government regulator tasked with promoting the public interest instead promotes the interests of the very industry it is meant to oversee. A common feature of captured regulators is the revolving door that Nicholls has entered. It’s a portal that many of her predecessors in other provincial entities such as the Oil and Gas Commission have already passed through and many more likely will. And it raises questions about whose interests are really being served as publicly owned resources are effectively managed out of existence.

“Nicholls’ pending move from government to industry comes at a pivotal moment. A fight over the last of what remains of the province’s old-growth forests is underway.”

To view the videos mentioned in the article go to Parfitt’s article here and for information on the “revolving door” in the energy sector click here.

TML Daily, posted June 10, 2022.