Vaughn Palmer: Retirement, retraining, relocation — weak strategy for forest industry
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2019 07:05:03 +0000
VICTORIA — Premier John Horgan did not appear in person in Prince George this week when the New Democrats announced a support package for displaced forest workers.
He did participate by press release, challenging the previous B.C. Liberal government and the current forest industry over mill closures and layoffs.
“The previous government knew that the end of mountain pine beetle harvest would disrupt the lives of forest workers, contractors and communities, but they did little to prepare for this inevitable transition,” complained Horgan.
“While the forest sector must reduce surplus milling capacity to remain competitive, it cannot do so at the expense of the workers, contractors and communities who built the industry.”
Yes, the B.C. Liberals did not do enough to prepare for the end of the supply of cheap, beetle-killed wood.
But the beetles also ravaged the forests during the NDP term of office in the 1990s. When the Liberals took office, they blamed the New Democrats for not doing enough to contain the damage and prepare for transition.
Both major parties play the blame game all too well. But with the beetle-killed wood mostly gone, the challenge is what to do to give the industry a plausible future.
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Horgan claimed to have the answer in his election platform, promising “to revitalize B.C.’s forest industry and make B.C. a world leader in engineered wood products.”
Halfway into his term of office, he’s not made much progress in that direction.
This week’s support package for several thousand displaced workers was overdue, given the cascade of mills shutting down or going on reduced operations this year. But the $69 million will go to helping forest workers retire early, retrain for other careers, or seek employment elsewhere.
Retirement, retraining, relocation — those words don’t suggest a strategy for revitalizing the industry and making it a world leader.
The New Democrats have made some moves to encourage greater use of wood in construction, especially on public buildings.
But the Horgan strategy also depends on persuading industry itself to do more, an expectation that Forests Minister Doug Donaldson repeated Tuesday at the announcement in Prince George.
“We need the forest industry to step up and do their part as well,” urged Donaldson. “I’m hopeful the Interior forest sector recognizes that the new industry that will arise from this transition will need skilled, experienced workers to produce new forest products that can compete in global markets.”
The New Democrats want the industry to share the cost of early retirement for workers aged 55 and over and helping younger ones retrain or relocate.
In the longer run, Horgan wants the industry to invest in revitalizing itself, including the vaunted value-added production that has been sought by B.C. governments for decades.
“If we don’t have a transformation away from the high-volume to the high-value economy, we’re going to be struggling,” said the premier in a keynote address industry leaders earlier this year.
“This is not a surprise to anyone, nor did it just arrive on my watch. But as we deal with that downturn, we need to also deal with the approach and that’s where I’m asking the industry to be innovative.”
Though the premier invited the industry to take part in planning for the transformation — and vowed not to impose top-down solutions — he’s been mixing his messages since then.
Just days after that speech, Donaldson — without any consultation — brought in legislation to crack down on companies transferring forest tenures among themselves.
When the industry asked Horgan to pause the bill for proper consultations, he accused companies of scheming to sneak through some tenure transfers in the interim.
For all the heavy handedness of that episode, Horgan and Donaldson still expect the industry to put up millions to help displaced workers and hundreds of millions to invest in value-added production.
This at a time when the companies are losing money and the government is adding to their operating costs via higher stumpage and additional regulations.
In that respect, the Horgan government’s expectations echo something the New Democrats attempted during their last term of office.
They claimed to have established an accord with industry to increase employment from the timber harvest, thereby adding 40,000 jobs, half direct and half indirect.
Then-Premier Glen Clark, with characteristic modesty, called the Jobs and Timber Accord the “most ambitious job creation program in Canadian history.” But from the outset, it was a fiasco.
There was in fact no written accord, industry leaders having refused to sign a politically-driven initiative at a time when markets were on the slide.
At the first anniversary of the accord, the then-Forests Minister Dave Zirnhelt had to admit employment had dropped by 15,000.
“A target is just that — a target. We never said we were going to create those jobs,” he explained, realizing too late that industry cannot be commanded to create employment even with a snap of the premier’s fingers.
As it happens, John Allan, the deputy forests minister who served during the Jobs and Timber Accord under the previous NDP government, is back in the senior public service post in the ministry again.
Premier Horgan and crew recruited him last year to oversee their revitalization plan, perhaps recognizing that he at least knows where these things can go off the rails.
The first thing he might have told them is that the trouble starts with politicians having unrealistic expectations.
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