Canada’s federal and provincial governments are spending millions of dollars to tout recent changes in forestry rules, but they are not actually practising what they preach, the environmental group Greenpeace says.

In a report released here Monday, titled, ‘Broken Promises’, Greenpeace contends that the province of British Columbia and the federal government in Ottawa have spent 65 million dollars to promote what they say is “world-class logging”.

That campaign has been in high gear since British Columbia introduced a Forest Practises Code — a development which prompted the province’s former premier, Mike Harcourt, to boast in 1994, “We’ve stopped the chop.”

But at the same time, 95 percent of the logging in British Columbia — where about half of Canada’s logging is performed — is in precious old-growth forests, Greenpeace adds.

Although Canada says it has reduced harvesting of old-growth forests and has banned the environmentally harmful practise of clearcutting in many “sensitive” areas, Greenpeace estimates that 92 percent of the logging in British Columbia is done by clearcutting. The majority of forests protected by the recent laws, the report adds, consist “primarily of rock and ice,” while 94 percent of low-elevation forests remain unprotected from logging.

The overall picture, says Greenpeace political advisor Clif Curtis, is that “the B.C. government is more interested in public relations than in making the real changes it promised.”

In fact, according to a Greenpeace survey taken last February, 68 percent of respondents wanted to see clearcutting of forests stopped. The poll found that 81 percent of British Colombia respondents do not believe that current Premier Glen Clark’s government is doing all it can to protect forests.

The report comes at a tricky time for Canada. Ottawa’s efforts to boost its forestry record have heightened during the three-week Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) meetings here, since Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s government is pushing for U.N. member states to hold negotiations for a global Forestry Convention.

Canada and the European Union strongly favour a convention that would push for global forestry practises and would possibly result in an ‘eco-label’ for all goods made through forestry practises deemed to be environmentally friendly. The United States and Brazil are among many nations — mainly in the developing world — that are wary of a convention, and the proposal has stalled during the ongoing CSD talks, sources say.

John Fraser, a Canadian environmental ministry official, says that Canada’s new forestry policies have for the first time protected large amounts of forest land from any cutting. Some 27 million hectares of forests (or 6 percent of all Canadian forests) are protected by national policy from any cutting, while timber harvesting is not permitted in another 50 million hectares (or 12 percent), he says.

A forestry convention, he adds, would help to ensure that other nations would also set aside protected areas.

Canada’s environmental critics, however, warn that Ottawa’s record gives cause to worry that any Forestry Convention that enshrines its approach will not be a strong one.

“The report shows the sort of practises Canada actually follows, which could become its model for a global convention,” says Tamara Stark, a Greenpeace forests campaigner based in Vancouver. “It is a model that would not enforce forest protection.”

The report notes that, despite the fact that the Forestry Practises Code could allow for millions of dollars of fines against violators of good forestry practises, not a single charge has been laid against any company even though activist groups have documented numerous violations.

Nor is the problem restricted to British Columbia, environmentalists say.

“In Nova Scotia, protected areas that have been widely acclaimed are now being dismantled by the premier, to the advantage of small mining interests,” says Aaron Schneider of the Nova Scotia Environment and Development Coalition.

In a joint statement in April 1995, the Confederation of Canadian Unions, Greenpeace Canada, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, and several other groups argued that the standards for responsible logging in Canada were pushed largely by a forest industry trade group, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association.

“The standards being proposed (for an eco-label) would allow products derived by large-scale clearcutting and chemical pesticide use to be called ecologically responsible; all major environmental groups have come forward to condemn it,” the joint statement added.

Such statements may hinder Canada’s efforts to secure a global convention at the United Nations, with only two months to go before the 185 U.N. member states meet here to discuss the environment five years after the Rio de Janeiro ‘Earth Summit’. “If Canada wants to be a credible force in the United Nations, it must first act to stop forestry destruction at home,” says Curtis.