The forest industry is in an unprecedented collapse and the Premier and Minister of Forests are doing absolutely nothing to stop the damage. The Opposition is fighting to protect forestry jobs and to support forest dependent communities.
Forestry has always been British Columbia’s most important industry. Forest Ministers of every stripe have known that their job was to keep forest workers employed and forest dependent communities economically healthy. The Campbell government has chosen not to do that.
The reality is that market conditions are difficult right now and that does make for challenges in the industry. It is times like these that the forest workers rely on the government to do the right thing.
Premier Campbell and the BC Liberals are the first government in fifty years to put the interests of forest workers and forest dependent communities at the bottom of their priority list.
The BC Liberals legislated changes that may benefit CEOs of certain major companies but put the jobs of forestry workers at risk.
While the BC Liberals have been in charge there have been 46 mills closed and over 20,000 skilled forestry jobs lost. 13,000 jobs have been lost in the last year alone with 3,000 jobs disappearing in the last two weeks.
The decision by the Campbell government to weaken provincial safety regulations led to more forest worker deaths and injuries.
The decision by the Campbell government to remove appurtenance has led to one community after community losing their biggest employer.
Government decisions have made for record levels of raw log exports, and more value added and remanufacturing businesses can not get access to logs even though they have strong markets for their product.
The decisions by the Campbell government to impose an unfair gas tax on rural areas will hurt the forestry industry in particular.
The impacts of all these decisions were completely predictable.
The results have been devastating. The job losses in the industry are significant and permanent. BC Liberal forest policy is impoverishing rural British Columbia and is a further example of this government’s anti-rural agenda.
Norm Macdonald is the New Democratic Party MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke