Bell Says Next Decade A Positive One for P.G. Region
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 @ 10:39 AM
Prince George, B.C.- Minister of Jobs Tourism and Innovation, Pat Bell, says Prince George has a very positive decade ahead.
Speaking on the Meisner program on CFISFM this morning, Bell says the development of natural resources north of P.G. is turning into good news for a lot of companies in the area. He says there are high paying jobs coming into the region and is confident the demand for skilled labour will be high enough that people can pick and choose their job opportunities. Bell says he was talking with a local company not long ago, “And that company has secured 10% of the Rio Tinto Alcan refurbishment over the life of that project, that’s $330 million dollars worth of construction.”
He says the Northern Cancer Clinic alone will bring 200 new jobs, all professional to the community and that will be a real economic benefit to Prince George.
He says with the Mount Milligan project, and the turnaround in Mackenzie, where a new subdivision is now in the works, “People can be optimistic.”
As for forestry, Bell says the annual allowable cut (AAC) in the Prince George region was 10 million cubic meters before the uplift brought about by the mountain pine beetle infestation. The AAC was lifted to 14 million cubic meters, and that lift is slowly being reduced to about 9 million. He says that is the level of cut that will allow current mills in Prince George to sustain themselves. It is Quesnel that has Bell concerned. “Its annual allowable cut was upwards of 4 million cubic metres. They’ve got three big sawmills, two pulpmills, they need the fibre to keep things running, and their annual allowable cut is likely to go down to below 2 million cubic metres, so it’s going to be a problem, that’s the community that will have the biggest hit.” On the more positive side for Quesnel, Bell says there are a couple of mines in the community and more potential, but for the time being, it is the community that he worries about most.
Bell says the natural gas in the region northeast of Ft Nelson will be a major boon to the Province but that’s not to say forestry is no longer a major economic player “I’m not saying gas or mining will surpass forestry but, they will provide diversity. That, for me, is the real goal. I believe you need to do what you do well, and we are very good at resource extraction in Prince George and the outlying communities Mackenzie, Vanderhoof, Ft. St. James, McBride, it’s what we’ve always done well, and we should stick to our knitting, we should do the things that we do well, but try and diversify into the different types of resources in the resource industry.”
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“That, for me, is the real goal. I believe you need to do what you do well, and we are very good at resource extraction in Prince George and the outlying communities Mackenzie, Vanderhoof, Ft. St. James, McBride, itâs what weâve always done well, and we should stick to our knitting, we should do the things that we do well, but try and diversify into the different types of resources in the resource industry”
Is Pat Bell basically conceding that PG and the surrounding area will never be anything but one that lives and dies as a result of resource extraction? What happens when the resources run out or markets dictate that the activities are no longer viable? Where is the plan to have REAL diversity in the PG area and not this “quasi” diversity that Pat is referring to?
Yes the area should still take advantage of resource extraction, but good grief Pat, where is the vision to grow beyond the 1960’s and start to look at ways to bring NEW TYPES of economic activity to the area?
To me this is NOT a good news story. I see it more as a recognition of the limitations the region will face in the next few decades and the government trying to spin that into something positive because there is really no other plan for the area. I hope I’m wrong!
I don’t think Pat is conceding to a resource extraction only. He is only one man, I think others just need to step up to the plate and take on the role of developing secondary industries. I would rather have one person concentrate on one sector at a time.
Maybe we need someone to take on the role of developement of secondary industry.
I am glad he did not do the shine job only. He admitted to challenges in the Quesnel area.
I say, keep it going Pat, Your doing a great job.
The next decade won’t be a positive one for Pat Bell. Enjoy your last 2 years, bud. Keep developing the economy – you’ll need the job when you get the boot next election. Maybe sweeping the floor at a mill…
NMG: “Is Pat Bell basically conceding that PG and the surrounding area will never be anything but one that lives and dies as a result of resource extraction? “
He’s telling it like it is. Maybe you would prefer that he spun it some other way?
gamblor: “The next decade won’t be a positive one for Pat Bell. Enjoy your last 2 years, bud.”
Maybe, maybe not. Having some backbencher NDP rep. getting elected for this region is a scary thought indeed, but it still might happen.
Pat, you’re doing a great job. The USA and Canada have lost over 45 million manufacturing jobs to China, mostly and it’s not easy to compete with manufacturing countries which have wages so low that it takes a worker a whole week to make as much as one of our workers earns between 8:00 am and lunchtime in a single day.
Nobody would have done a better job than Pat!
Considering the global picture we (B.C.) and Canada have done relatively well.
I am sorry, I have to agree very much with NMG.
One has to be aware of much more than the local situation. One needs to look at what has happened in other Canadian communities in the last 50 years as well as in communities in similar countries in the rest of the world.
Other than oil, resource extraction countries are not doing that well compared to those countries who use the resources extracted in other countries and create something from them. It is the knowledge and, even to this day in the developing countries to some extent, the brawn which creates the wealth from something that has little intrinsic value until the human imagination and ingenuity is put to how to apply them to something which can be used by humans.
Just as one needs diversity in income in sustaining a community, one needs diversity of approach to maintaining that income. It takes time to move a community into solid access to a different market cluster. In fact, that is the investment side of the equation.
Having only the extraction with onley enough income to sustain the community while the extraction getting is good is very short sighted and poor management in my opinion.
Now, the interesting thing is that if there is more income from the extraction to invest in future alternate industrial cluster access, we should follow that money, as the saying goes. In my opinion, most, if not all of that money leaves this community and the northern half of the province, in fact, most of the interior of the province as well as the island and finds its way into the GVRD and even, in some cases, to other provinces.
THAT is what needs to be monitored and THAT is how the work of provincial governments and local MLAs should be measured.
BUT, that is wishful thinking. THAT type of transparency in government activity is a fair tale which will not happen in my lifetime.
I am watching the WIC, research activities and development of research parks in this community to see whether anything of that naturre will develop in the next 10 years.
Obviously, it did not see the light of day during this missive.
I agree, Prince George, notwithstanding what I just wrote, Pat has been working hard to make the best of the current situation.
However, I am not leaving him off the hook with the almnost lack of future planning for diversity. He could do a much better job with that.
I believe he is fighting against the grain in a province that has not been that great in future planning. Not only that, but he is fighting against the grain in a country that has not been great in future planning.
In fact, I am not sure whether he understands that someone needs to be fighting that fight.
If we did not have a petro dollar, thanks to the oil sands, Canada would be much further down on the world scale of well to do countries.
Read between the lines. He is telling the people that supported him (the resource extractors) that he will continue to fight for them. Personally I don’t think it is the best approach because of the boom and bust nature of resource based economies. But Pat Bell has been consistent in his support for these industries.
The resource extraction will continue but with ‘guest’ workers.
What Pat is saying is we are going to continue to log the crap out of the area.Pat Bell and Shirley Bond are starting to wage war on the old-growth forest in the Robson Valley and target the small community of Crescent Spur by allowing the community to be targeted by loggers.Ancient forest are mowed down for 25 cents a tree.Bring the election on Christy so we can throw you and this pathetic Liberal party out!
Well gamblor, I hope the NDP has turned over a new leaf by now, if your wish they take over the Province again comes true, because I remember well the days when the mining industry literally stampeded for the exits when the NDP came to power some twenty odd years ago !! The mining industry knew full well the NDP saw them as nothing but easy targets and a cash cow, and would slowly regulate them to death well before their time. (the Windy Craggy mine up in northwest BC, comes to mind for one, when Mike Harcourt had the reins to the Province).
I was one of the contractors clearing the site for the Mount Milligan mine those twenty years or more ago, and we literally got sent home overnight, with the whole project put on the shelf within days after the NDP came to power.
It’s no secret where the NDP harvests their votes from, but even tree huggers, and union members need jobs, and if the resource industry can provide the best prospects for those jobs at this point in time we’d be stupid not to take full advantage of that, (with proper management of course). (I’m not a fan of whole log exports by any measure — but that’s a can of worms for another rant, and neither party can plead “not guilty” to buckling under pressure from certain groups to continue this particular rape and pillage farce).
We’ve all got, or at least we all know some kids who still need shoes and lunches, and at least a shot at a decent future, so lets see if we can do something for them too while we’re at it.
Resources, expertise, talent, and wide open spaces may be the best we’ve got to offer some day because I seriously doubt we’ll ever be able to compete with China, Japan, or India in the trinket or electronic markets, and call centers or newspapers just don’t employ enough people.
I do think it’s interesting that all the people who seem to want the current government out never quite go far enough to say they want the NDP back. Why is that?
Every time I hear Pat Bell talk about our future I think of the eerie sinister smile of a clown from a traveling circus… a clown that is entertaining us with a fabricated future… only its a future planned for us by the banksters of the globalized monopoly capitalist world that will see us all as slaves to their agenda, and not the future of an upward mobility free enterprise middle class world.
The problem with politics today is that it is governed by fallacious hypotheticals designed to herd the voters into parochial policies for the self serving few… and very little anymore is based on transparent facts, or open dialogue on specific policies that actually inform voters so that people can even know what they support or do not support. Pat bell makes it into an art form.
I read Pat as holding out a threatening hypothetical for an ndp riding so as to encourage them to support a gold/copper mine in the area that he supports, but that has already been rejected by the federal government. In reality Pat supports foreign corporations (mostly Chinese) extracting local resources with minimal corporate taxation and employing mostly foreign workers.
Johnny its because we don’t want party politics all together. Top down party politics needs to go, its all too corrupt. A viable third party with a minority government is the best we could hope for at this point in time until the way we organize government and our democracy can better reflect the wishes of mainstream middle class citizens.
Isn’t that what he and his buddies said ten years ago? I see the “bash the NDP” commercials are on already so the three “b’s”(bullchit baffles brains)apply and maybe an election coming soon.
Eagleone: “Johnny its because we don’t want party politics all together. Top down party politics needs to go, its all too corrupt. A viable third party with a minority government is the best we could hope for at this point in time until the way we organize government and our democracy can better reflect the wishes of mainstream middle class citizens.”
Well, until that Utopia you describe happens, party politics is what we got. Here is the current world of Provincial politics, we have the Liberals and the NDP. If you don’t want the Liberals, it’s got to be the NDP and vice versa.
I think you left out the ‘none of the above’ majority… I still vote though so I’m just a minority.
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