The Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF) annual general meeting is set for Monday, July 23, as the District of Sechelt continues its consultation on the future direction of the district-owned operation.
The AGM will see the appointment of some new board members after the resignations of three members, including the chair and vice chair, at the end of May.
The Community Forest was one of the issues addressed in a Coast Reporter Radio interview with Sechelt Mayor Bruce Milne about his decision to seek re-election.
Milne said the consultation, which will continue with an information booth at the Farmers’ Market July 21 and Aug. 18 and an online survey that will launch by the end of the month, is focused on “trying to ensure the right community values are shown in the operation of the Community Forest. As I said [during the campaign] in 2014, we want to make sure the community is in the Community Forest and it’s not just another contract logging operation.”
He also said a key question is how to ensure community participation in SCCF, and noted that it goes back to the creation of the Community Forest in 2006.
“There was a cleavage across the district about the direction of the Community Forest and whether it was actually going to serve the broader community in the ways and values that the community had,” Milne said. “We raised that in 2014. It wasn’t a high priority issue, and we had much more challenging things to deal with, but it finally got to the top of the agenda.”
Milne also addressed how he sees the relationship between the council and SCCF’s volunteer board.
“The people of Sechelt own the Community Forest and they’re represented by the council that they elect that shares their values, obviously, because they got elected. I cannot imagine a time when the interests of a stand-alone corporation are separate from the interests of their shareholders… When I find board members telling me that there is a difference, it raises real questions in my mind – huge questions. I think the shareholders’ interests are always paramount. The shareholders’ interests are expressed through the council of the day, but that’s not in a political way, that’s in terms of the broader values.”
Critics of Milne in the Facebook forum “Sechelt DOS Buzz” have alleged a connection between council’s handling of the Community Forest file and the fact that one of Milne’s largest 2014 campaign contributions ($2,500) came from Laurie Bloom. Bloom, a prominent member of Elphinstone Logging Focus, was one of the plaintiffs in the 2017 court action to try to stop logging in EW23, the so-called Chanterelle Forest.
Milne said all contributors to his 2014 campaign got lengthy letters making it clear that those contributions would not influence policy if he won the election. “Anyone who donated to my campaign knew that there were no favours. I said there’s no special deals for friends and insiders and that includes my friends, that includes my insiders,” Milne said.
“In fact, some of the criticism I’m meeting now is precisely from people who didn’t expect it would be that rigid and that in fact they wouldn’t have an open door to the mayor’s office or that I’d be able to fix this for them or fix that for them. That doesn’t happen. There are no strings and people know that and that’s one of the things that’ll be strong in the campaign.”
You can hear the full interview with Bruce Milne on the July 20 edition of Coast Reporter Radio, available at www.coastreporter.net/audio
