Monthly Archives: September 2019

The B.C. government’s decision to transfer its $25 million annual “rural dividend fund” to an aid package for communities losing their sawmills has prompted a backlash. The fund was set up by the B.C. Liberal government to provide economic diversification to communities of 15,000 population or smaller, many of them dependent on a single industry. That changed Sept. 17 when Forests Minister Doug Donaldson announced ministry funds have been reallocated for this year. B.C. Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson hosted rural community representatives at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention Tuesday, where they took turns blasting the decision. Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb said his community was counting on funds to help upgrade its water system. …Donaldson sent letters to applicants for the rural dividend fund…, advising them their grant applications are “suspended until further notice” to help those hardest hit by a wave of mill closures across the Interior.

Jorden Ilnicki and Tracy Ilnicki

A truck convoy down to Vancouver to protest forestry job losses is quickly gaining momentum in the Interior and northern B.C. On Wednesday, truckers will leave Prince George at 2 a.m., stop in Quesnel, Williams Lake, Merritt and Hope to pick up more truckers, then meet in Vancouver for a provincial demonstration at the Union of BC Municipalities annual convention. “It’s pretty disheartening that no one else is stepping up to help us. We’ve got nothing,” said Tracy Ilnicki, a longtime logging company owner in Williams Lake whose 25-year-old son, Jorden, is helping to organize the event. …Anywhere from 20 to 50 truckers in Williams Lake are expected to join the convoy, he said. Said his son, Jorden: “Logging trucks, pickups, anyone and everyone are welcome and needed. Please spread the word, our communities need this.”

Additional coverage:

Canadian Press in Prince George Citizen: Log truck convoy drives home message about dire state of B.C. forest industry

CBC News: Convoy of more than 100 logging trucks heading to Vancouver to protest forestry job losses

Doug Donaldson

Some rural B.C. mayors are upset by the provincial government’s decision to divert money from the rural dividend fund to help communities hit by the forestry industry downturn, and say it will hurt their efforts at economic diversification. …Last week, the province announced $69 million in measures to help communities where mills have closed and production curtailed. …Karl Sterzer, mayor of the Village of Canal Flats, said the fund was “everything” when a Canfor sawmill… shut down in 2015. …Forest Minister Doug Donaldson said at a separate news conference that applications will be held until the next time the grants are issued, which could be in 2020. …BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson suggested the money to support the forestry sector should come from the provincial government’s contingency fund. …Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson agreed that it’s disappointing.

Additional coverage from:

CTV News: Amid forestry crisis, Horgan’s government accused of hurting rural communities

Kamloops This Week: Backlash as NDP’s forestry funding details emerge

A Facebook post calling on local logging companies to join a Rally to Vancouver truck protest is quickly gaining momentum in the Cariboo. Started in the Cariboo by Jorden Ilnicki of Jordco Enterprises in Williams Lake, the protest will see truckers from throughout the north head in a convey to Merritt and then Vancouver to bring attention to the dire state of the industry, stopping at many resource-based communities along the route. …From Merritt, the truck rally will begin its convoy to the Lower Mainland and into the City of Vancouver with a police escort. …Tracy said anywhere from 20 to 50 truckers are expected to come out of Williams Lake to join the provincial convey, where there could be hundreds more.

Ellis Ross

Ellis Ross would be the first to admit he doesn’t know a lot about the forestry industry. “Forestry is an incredibly complicated topic. There’s no easy fix. There are so many different issues. It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me,” says the BC Liberal MLA for Skeena. So he’s hosting a meeting Oct. 3 and is inviting anybody and everybody with ideas that would stimulate economic development and employment. …“What I’m looking for is a non-partisan discussion. I want to get good qualified people in the room,” said Ross of his plan. …The MLA also thinks the wide variety of companies in the provincial forestry industry may have to forego the idea of making as much profit as possible in favour of putting people to work.

The B.C. government is redirecting money earmarked to help rural communities across the province into a new forest worker support program in the province’s Interior, and the news has left some small-town leaders wondering if the decision is more about optics than actually supporting B.C.’s resource communities. “They’re robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb, whose city had applied for a $500,000 rural dividend grant to build a water treatment plant. “They screwed up.” The B.C. Rural Dividend is a $25 million provincial fund aimed at helping communities of 25,000 people or less “strengthen and diversify their local economies.” …But this year’s applicants have been told they won’t be getting any money, as the province spends $69 million on newly-announced forest worker support programs in the B.C. Interior.

Jackie Tegart

…forestry is the primary employer [for many in BC], so the recent downturn in the industry has been a troubling trend. “Crisis” is the word Fraser-Nicola MLA Jackie Tegart uses to describe the situation. “I think that, certainly in Fraser-Nicola, when we look at mountain pine beetle and the impact of the 2017 and 2018 fires, we knew annual allowable cuts would be going down,” she said. “But we didn’t think it would be quite as devastating as it has been.” Tegart pointed to the province being the highest-cost producer in North America as having a lot to do with the current state of the industry. And, while she acknowledged the plans recently announced by the provincial government — [$69-million fund] — she said that action should have been taken sooner. Tegart said she had urged the provincial government to contact the federal government about solutions to the forestry problem before the arrival of the federal election campaign.

Doug Donaldson

VICTORIA — When cabinet minister Doug Donaldson announced a $69-million support package for displaced forest workers, he didn’t mention it would be paid for in part by suspending $25 million in grants to develop the rural economy. Donaldson… confined the bad news to a letter sent out to hundreds of applicants for grants under the B.C. Rural Dividend. The dividend was established under the previous B.C. Liberal government to “strengthen and diversify” the local economy in communities of 25,000 people or less. …Instead of disappointing all those applicants, why didn’t the New Democrats take the $25 million out of contingency funds? …“This is a cross-government approach to a new initiative,” Donaldson explained. “We want to be careful managers of public funds.” A defensible move if done upfront. …That suggests they aren’t so much careful managers as sneaky ones.

Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson says this week’s Forestry Think Tank was once again very successful. He says they focused on what the human resource challenges would be in realizing a whole new approach to the forest industry. Simpson says they looked at a variety of alternate products… “If we’re going to get into bio processing for example, making bio fuels, bio plastics, or bio composites, if we’re going to do something different on the land base in terms of how we plan and harvest on the land base, then a big question begged is how do you fill the human resource skills for that ?” Simpson says they had more 60 people taking part representing post-secondary institutions, research institutions, the Ministry of Forests from around the province and Victoria, as well as First Nations.

Details remain vague as to how the $69 million aid package for workers affected by sawmill closures and operations reductions announced by the provincial government last week will apply to workers at the Canfor sawmill in Houston and Vanderhoof. …$40 million of the package is to provide a bridge to retirement for older workers, $15 million for short term projects such as getting rid of trees which pose as fire hazards near communities and $12 million for skills retraining. There’s a further $2 million for an office to track workers as they take on other employment and money for communities to help cope with the effects of losing major employers. The retirement bridge portion is to be cost-shared between the province and forest companies. …Dawn Makarowski from the forests ministry… “The details of how the programs will be implemented will be available in the coming weeks.

…Recently layoffs at local mills in Quesnel, central British Columbia and the closure of another have darkened the day in the small city and its surrounding area of about 23,000 people. …Worse yet, the question of what comes next for workers in resource towns when layoffs hit is flumoxing desperate locals. In some places tourism is the answer, but it’s an unlikely scenario in some of B.C.’s more remote places. Experts caution it’s easy to tout tech as an economic replacement but harder to actually employ former mill workers and lumberjacks in an industry requiring specialized education at post secondary schools in cities far away from sawdust and green chains. …Despite a history of boom and bust resource economies across the province, a workable solution to the problem of how to employ people when the resource sector goes down has largely eluded provincial leaders.