Ben Parfitt

…Japan’s rapid development of its bioenergy industry (after the 2011 earthquake) comes at considerable cost to those countries that are supplying it with the biomass to run the new network of plants, be it Borneo … or the primary and old-growth forests of central British Columbia… The company responsible for producing and selling the lion’s share of Canadian-made wood pellets to Japan is Drax… Drax owns outright or is a partner in numerous mills in B.C. and Alberta… Given rising concerns over the fate of primary forests both at home and abroad, it is long past due for the B.C. government to make fundamental reforms to forest policy. …In the absence of such fundamental reforms, B.C. is likely to slip further into a deepening timber supply crisis that the government and forest industry both know is well underway.