Protesters occupying highways? Oh really...

What's this I hear about protesters occupying a highway, from CP?

Members of the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union plan to block Highway 17 in Dryden, Ont., Tuesday in support of the forest industry.

About 50 people are expected on the Trans-Canada Highway around 1 p.m.

The union says the federal government can no longer ignore forestry workers and is demanding immediate action.

The forest industry has lost 130,000 jobs in the past six years and the union says the sector deserves the same attention as the automakers.

A similar protest is scheduled in Ottawa.

Blocking a highway, hmm? We all know how the Conservatives feel about people blocking highways. Unless they have tractors. I don't think these protesters have tractors though, so surely the Conservatives won't be encouraging such civil disobedience, right? Right?

CEP members will meet with Flaherty as part of today's CEP-lead demonstration, which will see workers gather at the offices of Minister of Natural Resources Lisa Raitt and Prime Minister Stephen Harper before the meeting with Flaherty and federal representatives.

Flaherty agreed to the meeting after CEP members took over the constituency offices of seven Conservative cabinet ministers and MPs, including his and Vancouver Island North MP John Duncan's office, last Monday to force the issue.

Oh, really? So Jim Flaherty is meeting with protesters that plan to block a major highway, after they pressured him into a meeting by occupying the offices of Conservative MPs?

Some would say Flaherty is encouraging and enabling acts of civil disobedience. And those some would be Conservatives, were the protesters not, hmm, how should we put it. What's different about these protesters and the protesters they don't like?

Surely, for consistency's sake, Conservative bloggers will be clamoring for the cops to go in and make arrests, right? Right?

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Raw log exports

If you're still reading after that enticing headline, I'd like to bring you this story from my hometown paper, the Comox Valley Record. It makes no sense to me that we continue shipping raw logs outside the country when they could be processed here, creating more jobs. Much of the Canadian economy is still resource-dependant, and we should be ensuring we derive maximum value from those resources.

MP calls on feds to take action
By Record Staff
Apr 06 2007

In light of the layoff of workers at TimberWest’s Elk Falls mill, Vancouver Island North NDP MP Catherine Bell is calling on the federal government to take immediate action to help protect forestry worker jobs.

“I am asking the federal government to wake up and act now to protect the jobs at Elk Falls and everywhere else in B.C. where the export of raw logs is taking jobs away from workers and causing undue suffering for families and communities” said Bell in a press release.

“Since I was elected a year ago I have heard from people in Campbell River, Courtenay, Port Hardy, everywhere in the riding really — it just doesn’t make sense to them that so many logs are being cut and yet there are less and less jobs being derived from processing that wood,” said Bell.

She said that the explanation that Elk Falls mill has to close because it can’t find logs is a difficult one for the public to swallow.

“The average person watching the logs go by on trucks can’t tell where they were cut, on private federally regulated land or on public provincially regulated land, they just see a lot of logs leaving their community.

“And they ask, how can it be that a mill in Campbell River has to close because it can’t get logs? It’s a good question, and I am demanding on their behalf, that the government provide a good answer.”
(more)

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