The Employment Standards Branch will dedicate a full time officer this spring to inspecting silviculture operations and investigating complaints, continuing its special program from last year. At the same time BC Timber Sales has agreed to monitor Employment Standards Act Silviculture Regulation compliance on its forestry projects in 2006. BCTS contractors will be required to … Read more
The ministry of health has announced amendments to the Drinking Water Act Regulations for small water systems including silviculture camps. The new rules allow non-potable water for washing purposes and a more discretionary approach for previously mandatory construction permits and small water system certification requirements. This more flexible application of the regs will be guided … Read more
BC Timber Sales is considering implementing a set of guidelines outlining the agency’s role in ensuring that its silviculture contractors are complying with the province’s employment standards guidelines for silviculture. The proposal has been developed and recommended by the BCTS Contract Advisory Committee and now awaits final executive approval. Once approved the guidelines will take … Read more
Across the B.C. landscape a number of destructive biological imperatives are gathering force including, besides the mountain pine beetle epidemic, other forest pests and blights, general eco-system degradation and impending seasons of landscape-scale forest fires. All these dramatic features of the province’s ongoing forest health crisis are connected in causes, circumstances and consequences. Read more
As many British Columbians know, the province is witnessing one of its biggest logging booms in decades. More trees are falling than ever in the Interior, and will for years to come. But today’s boom presages a dark future wherein resource-dependent communities and the provincial treasury both will be hit hard. Read more