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Prince George Citizen January 26, 2023

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THURSDAY, January 26, 2023

Elite Prince George cyclist mourned after his sudden passing at the age of 47

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Northern B.C.’s megaproject boom coming to end

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LNG Canada is on track to complete its liquified natural gas export terminal in Kitimat “by mid-decade,” the company’s CEO says..

McKay said. “These major projects have had an absolutely significant impact... not just on northern B.C., but across the province.” The megaprojects helped the province, and especially northern B.C., weather the economic downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic, McKay said. The projects didn’t just create direct jobs, but have created indirect employment in a wide range of sectors including catering, hospitality, suppliers, skilled trades, engineering firms and many more.

“It’s a very broad and diverse set of contractors and suppliers that have benefited from these projects,” McKay said. Given the complexity of the projects and their economic impact, it is hard to estimate what the multiplier effect has been in terms of indirect jobs created, he said. McKay’s northern B.C. economic development agency estimates three indirect jobs are supported for every direct job in the forestry industry, but with temporary construction projects it is harder to estimate.

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The completion of four northern B.C. megaprojects, worth a combined $88.6 billion, will mean the end of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity in the region. Construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline from Dawson Creek to Kitimat, the LNG Canada liquified natural gas export terminal in Kitimat, the BC Hydro Site C hydroelectric dam near Fort St. John and the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project from Edmonton to Burnaby are all expected to be substantially complete over the next two years. According to publicly-reported data, those four projects employed an average of 18,632 people in northern B.C. throughout 2022 – a labour force equal to almost seven per cent of the entire working-age population (15 and older) of the province’s three northern economic development regions: Cariboo, Northeast, and North Coast and Nechako. “That’s a lot of jobs,” Northern Development Initiative Trust (NDIT) CEO Joel

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The completion of megaprojects comes at an already challenging time for northern B.C.’s economy. B.C.’s forestry, pulp and paper sectors, traditional mainstays of the northern B.C economy, are on the decline. Canfor announced the closure of the pulp line at its Prince George Pulp and Paper Mill on Jan. 11, and its Taylor Pulp Mill has been curtailed since February 2022. Paper Excellence permanently closed its pulp mill in Mackenzie in 2021. Pacific BioEnergy permanently shuttered its wood pellet plant in Prince George in March 2022. More mill closures are expected in 2023, and many have taken temporary curtailments to reduce production. Economic activity from the megaprojects has helped offset some of the job losses and loss of economic activity in communities that have been hard-hit by job losses in the forest sector, McKay said. “Mackenize and Fraser Lake are examples of communities that are seeing a lot of economic activity because they have a Coastal GasLink camp near their communities,” he said. Those communities are “looking down the barrel of significant contraction and job losses,” when Coastal GasLink is completed later this year, and thousands of workers pack up the camps and go home, he said.

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Four projects expected to be finished in next two years; employed 18,632 people in 2022


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