2020 budget delivers modest initiatives for struggling forest sector
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2020 02:05:00 +0000
Loggers including a convoy of about 40 logging trucks converged on the B.C. legislature Tuesday in Victoria to deliver a message to government just as Finance Minister Carole James was preparing to deliver her budget.
The group behind the rally calls itself the B.C. Forestry Alliance, and co-organizer Carl Sweet said the message was to demonstrate that “forestry contributes a lot to our economy,” and the beleaguered industry is in need of support.
Specifically, they want government to “defend the working land base,” a “message that was delivered loud and clear,” said Sweet, a heavy-equipment salesman from Campbell River.
James didn’t directly address the issue of the so-called working forest, but said government was committed to supporting the “industry that built this province.”
In the short term, the industry is plagued by a collapse of markets and shrinking timber supplies that saw hundreds of permanent job losses and some 3,000 temporary layoffs throughout the Interior over the summer and an eight-month strike in the coastal forest industry.
“This is a problem that didn’t arrive overnight, it’s not going to be fixed overnight,” James said.
Minister of Finance Carole James waves to people in the sitting area before she delivers her budget speech from the legislative assembly at B.C. Legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Tuesday, February 18, 2020.
Doug Donaldson, Forest Lands and Natural Resource Operations minister, met with a delegation from the group and in a statement said government “will continue to work with the sector to address challenges and ensure a bright and sustainable future.”
However, Donaldson acknowledged more needs to be done and said he has pressed his federal counterpart, Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan, on the point that “worker support is a shared responsibility,” and the release of some federal resources for the purpose would be warranted.
In the legislature Tuesday, James unveiled initiatives in the budget that appeared modest with new money, in addition to emergency funds announced in the middle of last year, directed to supports for new products and wildfire protection.
The forest industry’s struggles were apparent in the budget with revenue from the current 2019-20 fiscal year falling 14 per cent to $991 million from the $1.16 billion in last year’s budget, and the 2020-21 forecast has that revenue falling a further 12.5 per cent to $867 million.
James’s 2020 budget included $13 million over three years to support the development of bio products, such as plastics and fuels derived from wood fibre, and support for enhanced forest inventory work. That is in addition to the previously established emergency worker support program, the two-year, $69 million effort launched last fall that borrowed $25 million from the previous government’s rural dividend program.
The new money is welcome, said Council of Forest Industries CEO Susan Yurkovich, but government’s focus should be on the sector’s competitiveness.
“We all need to work together to preserve the working forest land base and address B.C.’s position as the highest-cost forestry jurisdiction,” Yurkovich said.
B.C. Liberal finance critic Shirley Bond, MLA for Prince George Valemount, said the budget didn’t add up to the “comprehensive strategy” forest-dependent communities need.
“This is the government that ripped the rural dividend fund out of rural and forest-dependent communities,” Bond said, and this budget didn’t commit to restoring an initiative launched by the previous government “let alone (include) a plan to adequately address the needs of forestry communities struggling to get by.”