The Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, and Rural Development spent a couple of days at a forestry conference advocating B.C.’s wood.
Doug Donaldson also made the opening remarks at WoodRise in Quebec, last week. The international forum focuses on wood as an essential material to build mid-rise and tall buildings.
There were more than 800 delegates from 20 different countries who attended.
Donaldson said he spent time networking and promoting the province’s timber and the kind of materials available for producing tall wood buildings.
“Part of my mandate is to grow the engineered wood sector in B.C. because it is much more value-added sector than dimensional lumber,” he said.
Donaldson met with many people who are passionate about building larger buildings out of engineered wood.
“Part of the reason they are so passionate about it is because it is one of the tools towards addressing climate change. Building with wood means that carbon is sequestered and building with wood means that trees take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to grow and building with wood means substituting more climate friendly products in the construction business,” he added. “It fits well with our Clean BC strategy that we have as a government.”
Donaldson said it is also a way to help the forest industry in the long run.
“We want to maximize value instead of maximizing volume because the volume in the Interior just isn’t there anymore after the beetle-killed wood is over,” he said.
“We are very concerned about workers, contractors, families and rural communities. That is why we announced the $69 million support package for the Interior forestry workers and contractors and communities. In the medium and long term, we want to get more jobs and more value from every log that is harvested in our publicly held forests.”
The Province also recently adopted a 12-story wood construction building code which Donaldson says will encourage more value-added products and therefore a more economically viable forest sector.