EDITORIAL PAGE — When consultation fails

Two groups of people were recently invented and woven into the Canadian social fabric. One such group, “ordinary Canadians,” were discovered in the midst of a national election some years ago by the same folks who once identified corporate welfare bums as a made-in-Canada social blight.

But this recently minted group of ordinary Canadians is already waning now that New Democratic Party governments are ensconced in several provinces. These governments can’t help but disaffect some ordinary Canadians with talk of a “social contract” (read pay cuts) in Ontario, recognition in Saskatchewan that uranium mining underpins the economy, and workable compromises on logging issues in British Columbia.

The second social group of relatively recent vintage are “stakeholders.” Stakeholders, according to current political lingo, include everyone, both ordinary Canadians and not-ordinary (extraordinary?) Canadians — stakeholders such as business groups, ethnic groups, native groups, environmental groups.

This is an admirable and necessary notion. Both the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord and the Charlottetown Accord died because of lack of proper consultation. The mining industry itself subscribes to the theory that broad consultation is a prerequisite to a renewed understanding of its role. The Whitehorse Initiative, for example, includes all the players. But what happens when, during such consultations, one stakeholder walks out in a huff because all its demands aren’t met? It happened in British Columbia recently.

Shortly before releasing a land-use plan for logging Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, the environmental groups pulled out. They weren’t happy with the final recommendation. The forestry companies are to harvest only half the area, and on a “sustained yield” basis. One-third of Clayoquot will be preserved as wilderness and much of the rest for recreational development. According to news reports, this formula evolved from a “community-based task force that initially included all the stakeholders.”

But several environmental groups are attacking the agreement. The Financial Post reported the Valhalla Society promises to inflame a European boycott of British Columbia. The Western Canada Wilderness Committee is boycotting the government agency which is trying to resolve other land-use conflicts on Vancouver Island.

Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in California was quoted as saying he would “send a crew of trained . . . agents to Vancouver Island this summer to spike trees and monkeywrench” attempts to log Clayoquot Sound. Obviously, environmentalists accept the co-operative approach until true co-operation, in the form of compromise, is needed.

If this is the consultative process involving all stakeholders as practised with regard to B.C. logging, mining in Lotusland will probably not fare any better. It certainly doesn’t bode well for the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE), a multi-stakeholder body examining wilderness issues in the province. And if this consultative mechanism breaks down, it bodes ill for the future prosperity of the country.

Move over stakeholders. Move over ordinary Canadians. Make way for even more impoverished Canadians.