Canfor announced Feb. 15 that they are permanently reducing production capacity at the Plateau sawmill in Vanderhoof which will affect 70 employees at the facility, and is expected to take effect at the end of the second quarter of 2022. In a news release, company officials said the reason for this decision is the devastation caused by the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation and other constraints on the timber harvesting land base. The reduction in production capacity will be done through a partial plant closure and the elimination of one of the three production lines at the mill. Officials said impacted workers will be offered employment opportunities at other Canfor locations along with relocation and transition support. “As the allowable annual cut has decreased in the region, it is necessary to resize the facility to align with the sustainable fibre supply,” said Don Kayne, president and CEO for Canfor.
Employees at the Western Forest Products Chemainus sawmill be heading back to work next week after the Family Day long weekend following a production curtailment layoff due to a log shortage. “We have secured enough inventory to restart the mill,” announced Babita Khunkhun, senior director of communications for WFP. “We intend to resume operations on February 22.” Weather and harvest conditions contributed to the temporary log shortage and the curtailment at the Chemainus mill started on Feb. 2. Chemainus primarily processes Western Red Cedar and “there was approximately one million (cubic metres) less cedar harvest on the coast last year than the average between 2015-2018,” according to Khunkhun. WFP ran alternate species at the Chemainus mill in 2021 to address chronic log supply shortages.
A pulp mill in northern Saskatchewan is slowing down production due to a lack of rail cars. Graham Kissack calls it a frustrating situation after Paper Excellence said it has used all available local storage facilities at its Meadow Lake, Sask., mill. “Having been through all the global market challenges with COVID, (we are) now finding ourselves in the position where we can’t ship our product out”. “We’ve been having to put finished pulp on the ground since back in December, and now we’re finding ourselves in a position where we’re actually having to slow back the operational speed of our facility in Meadow Lake.” The issue, Kissack said, is CN Railway is not providing the cars the company historically needs. Instead, he said they are left bidding at an auction for rail cars. …CN said its issues are due to the recent extreme weather conditions and supply chain issues.
Effective immediately, Diane Nicholls, British Columbia’s chief forester, has set a new allowable annual cut (AAC) level for Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 8 in the Southern Interior. The new AAC for the TFL is 158,400 cubic metres with a maximum of 131,500 cubic metres harvested from terrain of less than 45% slope. This is to ensure sustainability in low slope areas. The new AAC is a reduction of approximately 14.8% … The new AAC accounts for management measures that address Indigenous interests and the accumulation of unharvested volume in the TFL. TFL 8 overlaps with the territorial boundaries of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, Okanagan Indian Band, Okanagan Nation Alliance, Osoyoos Indian Band, Penticton Indian Band, Splatsin First Nation, Upper Nicola Band, Westbank First Nation and the Okanagan Nation Alliance (First Nations Tribal Council). … TFL 8 is held by the Interfor.
The federal government and Saskatchewan are moving to amend the Constitution to abolish a 140-year-old political fossil that exempts CP Railway from paying taxes to the province on its main line, with hundreds of millions of tax dollars at stake. Despite that formal exemption, CP Rail has paid taxes to Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba since 1966. But it is fighting in court against all three provinces. …A quarter century before Saskatchewan became a province, Ottawa struck an 1880 deal with CP to build a transcontinental line across the Prairies to the newly formed province of British Columbia. …The agreement contained several inducements to CP, including a clause that the company and its property related to that line “… shall be for ever free from taxation by the Dominion, or by any Province hereafter to be established.” …The House of Commons voted unanimously in favour of a motion to amend the Constitution to eliminate that guarantee. [to access the full story a Globe & Mail subscription may be required] 
VANCOUVER, BC
The B.C. government claims it protects nearly 20 per cent of the province’s land base as sanctuaries for biodiversity, but a new report says it has abused a key designation to “falsely inflate” its progress. The report, which was jointly produced between the environmental law group Ecojustice and the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, examined Old Growth Management Areas, Wildlife Habitat Areas, and Wildland Zones. Together, they account for nearly all of what the province claims as “other conserved” areas, a designation B.C. uses more than any other province in Canada. That means that 20 per cent of all the land the B.C. government claims to protect is at risk from some combination of logging, oil and gas exploration or road building, says Tori Ball, acting terrestrial conservation manager with Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society BC. … “We see old-growth areas that can easily have borders redrawn.”
We have come to the extremely hard decision to cancel the rally for February 22nd. After speaking with VicPD, there is just so much going on that our message risks getting lost. The issues facing the industry are far too important to run that risk and activities happening in and around legislature are far too volatile right now. But our fight doesn’t go away because we have to cancel the rally. Looking back, here are some things that have helped: participating in Question Period at the legislature and local pop-up rallies. I am taking it upon myself to commit to sitting in the gallery twice per week with anyone who will join me until we get a round table discussion with minister Conroy. And taking the rallies to every corner of British Columbia. You can help by sending me concerns/questions for question period or joining me in person. For more information contact me at 
…A province famous for being gorgeous has become a global mascot for environmental mayhem. …A century of homegrown resource extraction — of industrial fishing and logging and mining for gold and gas and coal, all of it on stolen land — has left us terribly exposed. …And so, I’ve had wide-ranging conversations with people inside the BC NDP government, as well as allies and critics. They include B.C.’s ministers of environment, George Heyman, and Indigenous relations, Murray Rankin; three former and current senior officials who are familiar with cabinet’s inner workings and spoke on condition of anonymity; a co-author of the Old Growth Strategic Review; Indigenous leaders, environmental activists, political scientists and more. …This piece is the first of three resulting from those discussions — the B.C. government tapes, we’ll call them. …my hope is to provide a clear view of the forces affecting all sides of our mutual struggle for progressive politics and environmental protection.
FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – The BC Wildlife Federation is worried that a tentative agreement between Blueberry River First Nations and the provincial government will majorly impact outdoor recreation in Northeast BC. The province and Blueberry River signed an agreement to establish a 
Join Forest Practices Board Chair, Kevin Kriese, and project lead, Tracy Andrews, RPF, to learn more about the Board’s recent Special Report on 
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NANAIMO, B.C. — A lawyer for the Crown says a court application asking for a stay of proceedings against those arrested at old-growth logging protests on Vancouver Island is flawed and has no chance of succeeding. Nick Melling told the B.C. Supreme Court that charges were never recommended against most of the clients represented by one of the lawyers. …Neither charged nor uncharged applicants are making any allegations about police, Melling told Justice Douglas Thompson. “To be clear, not only are the applicants not saying that they suffered mistreatment at the hands of police, but no other third party is alleging that the applicant is providing a factual foundation that any of the applicants suffered police mistreatment.” …Lawyers for Teal Cedar Products were also scheduled to make arguments later in the court application.
Here in BC we didn’t want another reminder of our changing climate and its effects but we got it anyway… The floods of November 2021 will rank as one of the most costly natural disasters in Canadian history and the impacts will be with us for years to come. Water is a critical resource to British Columbians and one of the goals of BC’s forest practice regime is to ensure that forestry practices do not harm important water resources. However, there is a lot of concern from the public that our practices are not good enough and that water stewardship needs to be improved.
The parent company of a North Okanagan pellet plant is the focus of calls for a monopoly investigation. Two forest sector unions, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Conservation North are calling on the Competition Bureau of Canada to investigate what they say may constitute a monopoly in the industry in B.C. by British-based Drax Group. The company has too much control of British Columbia’s wood pellet industry and must be ordered to divest of some of its holdings, the organizations say. Drax now directly controls or is a partner in seven of B.C.’s 13 pellet mills and has a lock on two thirds of the nearly 2.5 million tonnes of pellets produced in the province annually. Pinnacle … was sold to Drax in a deal worth $831 million. …“We are deeply troubled by evidence of massive numbers of whole logs being chewed up at Drax operations,” the group says.
LOGAN LAKE, B.C. — Worksafe BC has issued a major fine against a tree-falling firm for high-risk violations in the Logan Lake area. Asplundh Canada will have to pay a fine of $83,932.35. In a summary of the violations, Worksafe says Asplundh was removing trees damaged by wildfire near a B.C. Hydro right-of-way when the inspection took place. Violations noted included: Failure to ensure a risk assessment was undertaken by a qualified person before workers were exposed to dangerous trees; Failure to provide workers with the information, instruction, training and supervision necessary to ensure their health and safety; Failure to ensure sufficient undercuts were used; Failure to ensure felled trees did not brush standing trees; and Failure to ensure workers did not fall trees unless qualified to do so. Worksafe said the first four violations listed were repeat violations and all five were high-risk violations.