B.C. minister asks for urgent federal help with forestry sector crisis
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2019 02:24:56 +0000
B.C’s Minister of Forests Doug Donaldson has hand-delivered a direct plea for federal help in dealing with the cascading affects of the growing crisis in British Columbia’s forest industry.
With some 3,900 workers put out of work, at least temporarily, in 16 communities over recent months, Donaldson wrote to federal Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi asking for federal support to deal with the “urgent need” for specific assistance.
Donaldson handed the letter to Sohi’s deputy minister Christyne Tremblay Tuesday during the annual Canadian Council of Forest Ministers conference at Waskesiu Lake, Sask.
In the letter Donaldson proposed that his deputy minister John Allan and Tremblay work together on adjusting Employment Insurance eligibility requirements for laid-off mill workers, developing early retirement incentives, and establishing worker transition offices.
Donaldson said that a provincial rural development team has been working with communities where mill closures have happened, but the “targeted interventions that were presented in the letter are a matter of urgency,” he said.
Opposition forestry critic John Rustad, the MLA for Nechako Lakes, said the measures mirror what his caucus said Donaldson and Premier John Horgan should have been asking for two months ago.
“If we can get any help, that’s good news,” Rustad said, because “there are workers and families and communities that are absolutely desperate and the challenge they are facing is not going to end soon.”
A forklift puts a load of lumber from CanFor on to a ship in Vancouver harbour in this undated photo.
The increasing woes of B.C.’s forest industry are evident in trade figures, which show declining lumber shipments abroad with the biggest drop being in exports to B.C.’s biggest customer, the United States.
B.C.’s American lumber exports fell to 6.8 million cubic metres by the end of June 2019 from 7.6 million in the same period a year ago due to poor market conditions that have exacerbated timber supply issues.
The mountain pine beetle infestation of interior forests, along with successive years of record forest fires, have decimated available timber and contributed to production cuts at 22 B.C. mills, and three permanent closures.
Earlier this year, an industry analyst estimated up to a dozen mills would have to shut down to align with B.C.’s shrinking timber base.
Rustad said he is “extremely disappointed” that B.C. waited until just before the federal government issues the writ for a general election in the fall instead of asking for federal assistance while Parliament was still in session.
“There could have been solid dialogue between politicians … in order to get the help needed,” Rustad said.
Donaldson said the province “wanted to make sure (it got) the targeted-intervention requests right,” and were asking for specific things that communities needed.
For instance, in the northern interior town of Mackenzie — hit by three mill closures, two temporary and one indefinite — that have put more than 400 out of work, Donaldson said a third of affected workers are aged over 55.
An undated file photo of the Mackenzie Pulp Mill.
In that case, Donaldson said, financial support to help bridge some of those workers to early retirement would be helpful.
The province is working on medium and long-term transition strategies for the industry, but the initiatives asked for in the letter “are the ones that really provide direct assistance to workers,” Donaldson said.
On Wednesday, Sohi said the governments’ respective deputy ministers will continue to work together “regardless of whether we’re going into an election.”
Sohi didn’t speak to specific requests but said the federal government already has measures in place in the $867-million softwood lumber assistance program from 2017.
“Within that plan, B.C. workers can access skills training and other employment services,” Sohi said.
Enhancing and extending the program to help independent logging and trucking contractors was one of Donaldson’s specific requests in the letter.
“This is a shared responsibility,” Sohi said. “We understand municipalities are being affected. The province of British Columbia and federal government will continue to cooperate to support workers and communities.”
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