As a socially compassionate individual I want very much to support the current BC Teachers Federation job action. Unfortunately I find it difficult to do so due to the activities of their pension fund.
As I understand it, the BC teachers pension fund is a major shareholder of TimberWest. This is a company notorious for breaking the social contract, closing mills, mothballing communities and squeezing contractors to bankruptcy. To say nothing of their logging practices: clearcutting to the very edge of our oldest provincial park and decimating old-growth on their private lands. Adding insult to injury, much of this timber is exported as raw logs to make disposable concrete forms in China thereby fuelling unchecked-growth and accelerating climate change.
If the BC Teachers want my support in this current strike they should instruct their pension fund to demand TimberWest change their ways and conduct their harvesting activities in a far more sustainable manner: ending the cutting of old-growth, respecting the integrity of our parks and with greater regard for the communities within which they operate.
I trust the hypocrisy of striking on behalf of our children’s education and future, all-the-while liquidating the forests and trashing the planet these children will inherit, to ensure a comfortable retirement, is not lost on BCTF members.
Philip Stone
Quadra Island