The Regional | Jan 2020

Page 1

Regional

The

The Regional | www.pgcitizen.ca

Thursday, January 16, 2020 | 1

THURSDAY January 16, 2020

The Mackenzie Matters march from the forestry offices to the Mackenzie Rec Centre last August.

Why the province’s working forests aren’t working Nelson BENNETT Glacier Media

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nyone who has ever flown from Vancouver to Prince Rupert, Prince George or Fort Nelson and looked out the window may have wondered to themselves: “How can B.C. possibly be running out of trees to cut?” B.C.’s forest sector was beaten to a pulp in 2019, as a “perfect storm” of market, policy and natural forces converged, triggering multiple sawmill closures and curtailments, and spurring anger among laid-off workers towards politicians and conservationists. When the Sierra Club and Wilderness Committee tried to hold an event in Campbell River on November 25, it was shut down by the city and police, for fear of confrontation. What was supposed to be a town hall talk on old-growth forests and climate change turned into an impromptu pro-logging rally, according to

the Campbell River Mirror. “It’s not a very popular time to be an environmentalist,” said Mark Worthing, a climate and conservation campaigner for the Sierra Club. Nor is it a popular time to be a BC NDP cabinet minister in ridings where sawmill workers and loggers are now struggling to meet mortgage and car payments. There, the general downturn in forestry is aggravated by a prolonged strike by Western Forest Products (TSX:WEF) workers. When Claire Trevena, NDP MLA for North Island, held a recent town hall in Campbell River, angry, out-of-work loggers accused government of indifference to their plight. B.C. forestry companies have gone from making record profits in 2017 and 2018 to posting losses in 2019. “The companies are bleeding,” John

Desjardins, forest products lead for KPMG in Canada, said at a recent Greater Vancouver Board of Trade talk on forestry. “They’re in the red.” Six sawmills permanently closed in 2019, and with shifts that have been eliminated at mills that are still operating, it adds up to the equivalent of eight sawmills. Thousands of sawmill workers, truck loggers and related service workers were laid off in 2019. Employment and Social Development Canada confirms that unemployment insurance claims went up in B.C. by 1,170 between September 2018 and the same month in 2019. The effects are most immediately felt in Interior towns like 100 Mile House, where forestry accounts for one out of every four jobs. But forestry accounts for one-third of B.C.’s exports, and even in Vancouver, the economic impact will be felt, because more

sawmill closures are inevitable – possibly followed by pulp mill closures. “More than 40% of forestry jobs are located in Vancouver and in the southwest part of the province,” Susan Yurkovich, CEO of the BC Council of Forest Industries, recently told the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, adding that forestry in B.C. accounts for 100,000 direct and indirect jobs. Forestry is cyclical, and B.C. is used to downturns. “This time it’s different,” Yurkovich said. Other provinces, like Quebec, have not seen the wave of sawmill closures that B.C. has. Whereas B.C. used to be “the last man standing” when a cyclical downturn came in forestry – owing to the fact it was a lowcost jurisdiction – that’s no longer the case. One of the biggest problems has become a lack of economically harvestable timber. continued on pg 3


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