Forest practices across the north were in the spotlight at the BC Natural Resources Forum this past week in Prince George.
Some of that was discussion among government officials and forest company managers inside the convention, and some of it was expressed by protesters outside the Prince George Civic Centre the night premier David Eby spoke at the gala dinner.
The impetus for the protest was the announcement by Canfor it was shutting down one of its pulp operations, affecting about 300 workers.
The protest was organized by longtime forest practices critic James Steidle, who works in the forest and wood sector and is the co-founder of Stop The Spray BC which aims to eliminate the use of chemical herbicides to regrow young forest stands, and maximize the market for deciduous hardwoods.
Doing so would, in the view of the group, reduce wildfire risk, open up new economies for trees currently viewed as weeds to sawmills, and ensure the industry maintains the naturally diverse landscape instead of planting mono-forests of softwood species.
It all adds up to re-thinking the way major forest companies are allocated trees to cut, what their obligations to the taxpayer must be in exchange for harvesting rights, and perhaps consider that publicly traded companies (which require constant profit margins and little flexibility in local business activities) may not be the best stewards of the sector.
When he worked at Canfor’s Clear Lake Sawmill south of Prince George, Steidle told the audience, “the most we ever produced there was 120,000 board-feet a shift.
That’s about 10 logging truckloads. And we had about 180 employees there, in total, 80 to 90 people per shift.
“That mill never lost money. But they shut it down because it didn’t make enough money. They moved the production to Polar (a Canfor sawmill north of Prince George), one of the biggest sawmills in the world. They can process between 80 and 100 loads of logs a shift. That’s 1.2-million board-feet. They have half the workforce as Clear Lake. So if you do the math, you’ve got to have 20 times the wood to employ the same number of people (to achieve the profits they need).”
Steidle also said the pine beetle harvesting rush in the late-1990s into the 2000s ensured there was constant logging, yet overall forestry jobs were reduced, and record profits taken in by the big forest companies.
“So, who is this working for? Not us.”
Chuck LeBlanc is president of Public and Private Workers of Canada, Local No. 9, and he spoke at the protest on behalf of the workers at Prince George Pulp Mill who would be losing their jobs. Canfor has stated that the curtailment is not to do with poor market performance of their product, but lack of available wood chips that come to the pulp mill from the sawmills, or trees that are unsuitable for milling into lumber.
“It is forest policy over a number of years that has gotten us here,” said LeBlanc. “It’s not going to be solved before our members lose their jobs, but at the end of the day we need to make changes so our forest economy, our forest industry, is sustainable into the future.”
As he described the impacts on the affected families, his voice broke and he had to regroup his emotions.
“I’m so encouraged by this turnout,” LeBlanc said. “We met with the premier today, we got a half-hour with him, and everyone was watching the clock and stuff, but we had some really good discussions with him. Whether they have the political will, that’s going to take some backroom thought. When I see all these people here, I can tell our members that people are thinking about them and concerned about them. We need to keep the fight on.”
Inside the forum, Eby said he, as a new premier only two months into the job, was in the process of looking at the forest industry with a new set of eyes.
During the convention he announced a $90-million investment, spread over three years, in the StrongerBC Economic Plan for “delivering support for people in rural British Columbia through a new fund that will diversify local economies, promote value-added innovation in the forestry sector and create thousands of good-paying jobs for British Columbians.”
He also announced a new $50-million investment in the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC) for expanding the use of wood fiber, to add support to workers in the forestry sector.
“We know that access to fiber is one of the most critical challenges facing the industry and we’re working hard to find new sources,” said Eby.
“The projects funded through FESBC will help us get more fire-damaged wood and logging waste to the mills that need it. At the same time, forestry contractors will have more work hauling fiber that would otherwise be too remote or costly to access. This also supports our CleanBC Roadmap to 2030 and our continued focus on getting more well-paying jobs from our forests.”
