Flex your consumer power - save the forests

Consumers have the power - on forestry, health care, banks and more

By: Ish Theilheimer

  KILLALOE: The big political news of the week in Renfrew County is the defeat of a proposed new county bylaw to regulate tree-cutting on private land.
  "Nobody's going to tell me how to cut trees on my property," is a popular sentiment. Many local municipal politicians caved in. Quite a few rode it like a snowboard.
  The event had all the satisfaction of a lynching or witch-burning - everyone had a good time but the victim. In this case, the victim was our forests.
  There are many good loggers and landowners. But it is well known that some operators buy a private forest lot and "shave" it, leaving a gaping wound for decades. You can't do that on Crown land anymore. But it's not uncommon on private land.
  Maybe the county was wrong in how they developed and introduced the new bylaw. But previous attempts have also failed. There remains only one proven way to change bad environmental practice: the power of consumers.
  A local small sawmiller told me his opinion of the fuss over the bylaw. "It's stupid. Some of these guys are just greedy. They've been raping the bush for years. The only way it's ever going to be controlled is if it comes from the industry."
  Sound crazy? In fact, that's exactly what's likely to happen. It isn't that any forestry giants have appointed David Suzuki as their CEO. It's because consumers in Europe, and increasingly in the US, are demanding that their paper and wood be sustainably produced.
  "The mills are going to demand that logs only come from managed forest lots," said the miller. This means mills will only buy logs from a seller with a certificate from a registered forester. "It's already starting to happen."
  Canadian consumers can - and must - demand that their wood and newsprint come from managed forest lots. The Forest Stewardship Council, for example, is doing just that. Working with groups like Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund, they've pressured companies like Home Depot to make the switch to certified wood products. If you go to their website, you can learn about the wood certification process and which companies produce products with certified wood - www.web.net/fscca/consum.htm.
  If more Canadians consumers get involved as activists, county politics will have one less hot button, and our forests will be better off.
  The same lessons apply to any number of items - from health care to bank regulations to cell phones. Government and regulation are important, but if Canadian consumers were only to flex their muscles a bit, we could do some things of which the political process seems incapable.

Bell from hell - and cell-less in Toronto
  Last week the unthinkable happened. On a business trip to Toronto, my cell phone died. It was an analog Motorola bought from Bell Mobility through their Simply One program, and it was still under warranty. Without it I was completely unable to do business. I tried to fix it by going to a Bell phone store - now called "Bell World" (ironically, Bell Mobility seems not to be a part of that world). These stores are few and hard to find. I managed to find two and while away a couple of hours seeking satisfaction. The stores are usually hidden away inside sprawling malls. They appear to be staffed by overworked, undertrained (and probably underpaid) young workers. All the workers I dealt with were very nice, but none could deal with my technical problems. Nor could they do what I really needed, namely set me up with a phone so I could continue to do business on the road in a city with nearly no public phones and absolutely none in convenient places. Then there were the four calls I made Friday trying to get Bell to send me a new phone so I could go back on the road and do business again. At the end of the day, it looked like I might - just might - get a replacement phone on Tuesday. There's a reason Bell has acquired a bad public image. It's bad enough they're constantly downsizing and contracting out, or broadcasting TV ads that put down old people. It's bad enough they won't put public phones in places people need them badly, especially in low-income neighbourhoods. But their customer service could try the patience of Job. I always start out these calls - I'm on hold as I write this column - with every intention of remaining calm with the poor service rep I have to deal with. Usually by the time I get off the phone, our dog Ruby is eager to get out of the house because she thinks she's the one I want to kick. I'm still on the phone as I write this - 44 minutes since the first paragraph, and my fifth call since yesterday. The people at the other end are very nice. They're trying to help. But like me, they seem trapped. Something bad is obviously happening at Bell. It must be awful to work there. It's certainly a big problem to be a Bell customer, with no real choice, no real competition, little effective public accountability, and no way to deal with problems if, unlike me, you don't work from home and you don't have all day long to hassle phone bank reps and their managers.

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Conrad worried about Straight Goods?
  Quote from the Toronto Star business section, April 6 in an article about media magnate Conrad Black speaking to other media executives. The Star reports "most newspapers are published on the Internet already and said their offerings are generally preferable to those of some new Internet enterprises, which provide nothing but 'hucksterism, faddishness, and cultural flim-flam'."
  Could he be worried about the little daily 'zine that broke the PCB import story and the Diane Marleau story - despite claims by Hollinger papers that they broke these stories?

Straight Goods news notes
  We're overjoyed to welcome new staff to our team this week with the addition of:

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