Carrier Lumber Case in B.C. a Tale of Abuse, Arrogance and Deceit
8/12/99
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Title: Lumber case a tale of abuse, arrogance and deceit
Source: Vancouver Sun
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 12, 1999
Byline: Jim Beatty
VICTORIA -- What began as an earnest attempt to eradicate a
devastating infestation of mountain pine beetles more than two decades
ago has become a distressing tale of government abuse, arrogance,
contract breaking and deceit.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge's decision in the Carrier Lumber case,
delivered late last month, is no flash-in-the-pan ruling, but a
scathing indictment that could cost taxpayers as much as $150 million
and is likely to remain a black mark for British Columbia for years to
come.
At one level, it is a complicated story involving licences, logging
practices and political concerns involving native rights. But at its
core it is a shocking tale of the British Columbia government's
efforts to trample on the rights of a company that had played by all
the rules.
Describing B.C. government officials as arrogant, deceitful,
duplicitous and unethical, B.C. Supreme Justice Glenn Parrett painted
a picture of a that sacrificed the interests of a good corporation to
make peace with two native bands. Then it tried to it up.
Retired B.C. Supreme Court justice Lloyd McKenzie, who is now the
information officer for the court, said Parrett's tough language is
understandable given the circumstances.
"He is doing his judicial duty of calling the shots way he saw them
according to the evidence and to the law," McKenzie said Wednesday.
But the Carrier decision does not end the story. The government is
considering an appeal, the B.C. Liberals are calling for a public
inquiry and, according to Forests Minister David Zirnhelt, heads in
the bureaucracy may roll.
The story began in the mid-1970s when an infestation mountain pine
beetles was discovered in trees near Williams Lake in B.C.'s Interior.
Despite provincial efforts to stem the infestation, by the early 1980s
it was being described as one of the largest insect disasters known to
man.
With tens of thousands of hectares of dead trees, the province was
watching its future timber-cutting evaporate as the risk of wildfire
mounted.
Desperate for a solution, the provincial forest offered a tempting
deal for a company willing to cut down the infested, uneconomical
wood. The province offered an unusually large stand of timber, five
cubic metres, to be cut over 10 years -- a deal that suddenly brought
viability to wood that was thought to be uneconomic.
Although several bids were received, the 1983 proposal from Carrier
Lumber Ltd. of Prince George clearly outpaced the rest.
"Carrier brought to the project all of the finest attributes of the
entrepreneurial spirit. Their was innovative and unique," wrote
Parrett in his judgment.
Instead of incurring huge costs in transporting raw out of the forest,
Carrier spent huge resources developing portable mills that could
produce finished lumber in the woods, which was less costly to market.
While work was nicely underway, severely cold winters 1984-85 and
1985-86 killed the beetle larvae. For the province, it meant Carrier
was no longer as necessary it once was.
Then, despite the creation of more than 250 jobs in Chilcotin region,
operations in part of the project brought to a halt in 1989 when the
Ulkatcho Indian blocked roads to protest the tree cutting.
Instead of negotiating a settlement, the province to impose new
requirements on Carrier that hadn't been part of the original deal.
The forests ministry attempted to coerce Carrier into spending up to
$30 million on enhanced tree planting.
Terse memos and legal manoeuvring continued to sour relations between
the company and forests ministry a pivotal event in 1992 that resulted
in the collapse the entire deal.
On May 7, 1992, the Nemiah band blockaded a bridge crucial to
Carrier's logging operation.
Six days later, then-premier Mike Harcourt and two of his cabinet
ministers -- David Zirnhelt and Dan Miller -- met with the natives and
promised them veto power over all future logging. The unprecedented
promise no mention of the government's signed legal agreement with
Carrier.
By the following March, Carrier's tree-cutting licence -- which was
only half complete -- was cancelled, leading to the court battle that
just ended.
The court determined that the government did it could to distort the
reasons for the cancelled contract. Instead of admitting it was
favouring native concerns over the company's rights, the government
concocted a story and decided to "stress the silviculture obligation
problem not the [native] blockade," wrote one bureaucrat.
While the court found the company had met or exceeded all of its
obligations, it determined key officials in the B.C. government acted
unethically, deceitfully and duplicitously.
The judge paid specific attention to several who played various roles
in suppressing evidence, writing self-serving memos, holding secret
meetings, misleading Carrier or pressuring the company into accepting
new terms.
Of one, Mike Carlson, regional manager of the Cariboo forest district,
Parrett wrote: "[He] demonstrated and again an inability to be candid
and forthright." Carlson was a witness who sacrificed truth for his
own interests or those of the ministry, Parrett said.
Another, Ron Reeves was "a district manager who is calculatedly and
deliberately creating not a true and accurate record but one
calculated to deceive and conceal the actions of the ministry while at
the same time laying the blame for any failure at Carrier's door."
Despite testimony from the two bureaucrats that they made the final
decision to cancel Carrier's forest licence, Parrett said he believed
it was too big a decision to be made by bureaucrats and had to be done
a higher level.
Making matters worse, the B.C. government was harshly criticized for
failing to disclose more than 2,000 relevant documents to the court.
"There was an active and deliberate effort to suppress documents and
withhold evidence," Parrett wrote.
It was only by sheer fortune that some of the were ever discovered by
the court. During an in the 1997 trial, a Carrier official began a
with a member of the Ulkatcho Indian band and thousands of documents
that the provincial government had given the natives but hadn't
disclosed to the
There is no specific penalty for non-disclosure of evidence, but doing
so can greatly hurt a party's
"It discredits the person who doesn't come forth with all the
documentary evidence that is in his said retired judge McKenzie.
In the end, Parrett encouraged the parties to a damage award, which he
said should be based on the 2.5-million cubic metres of wood Carrier
lost with the licence cancellation. Based on 1993-94 prices, when
was at an all-time high, the award could be worth $150 million.
The Carrier decision is the latest of several that questions about the
credibility -- and believability - of the New Democratic Party
government.
Earlier this year, a judge took the word of a fired Hydro executive
over that of Premier Glen Clark. And last fall, a forensic auditor
investigating alleged dirty tricks by the government during provincial
campaigns believed a recall worker's version over that of Brian
Gardiner, then provincial secretary.
But the Carrier ruling could be the most damaging and costly of all.
One thing is certain: With a financial settlement to be determined, a
potential appeal in the offing and the B.C. Liberals vowing to keep up
their calls for a further investigation, Carrier won't soon forgotten.