Province Proceeds With Forest Sector Jobs Strategy
Saturday, April 14, 2012 @ 3:47 AM
Prince George, B.C. – The provincial government this week launched the B.C. forest sector strategy, part of the B.C. Jobs plan unveiled by Premier Christy Clark last September. Forestry is identified in the Jobs plan as one of the eight key sectors that can contribute to jobs and economic growth in the province. The strategy announced Thursday will help achieve those objectives, according to Forests Minister Steve Thomson.
He says the strategy re-affirms and enhances the strategies that were developed under the Working Roundtable on Forestry in 2009. Thomson says three key initiatives include a continued focus on export market diversification, particularly in the Asian-Pacific market, maintaining the focus on wood frame construction under the wood-first ethic which promotes new applications and expanded use of wood construction in non-residential and mid-rise buildings, and ongoing investment in reforestation, silviculture and forest carbon projects.
Thomson says the new forest sector strategy “will enable job creation, open new markets and prepare us for the opportunities of tomorrow.” Pat Bell, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation, says “over the next few years we’re going to build on the momentum established by WoodFirst and grow the market for non-residential construction throughout North America, enabling creation of more B.C. jobs.”
Comments
If the idea is to build with new wood laminate… then why all the promotion for the building strategy, but nothing for the plants that would make the laminate and create the value added jobs? Are we creating a market for existing plants elsewhere?
It’s all huff and puff, Eagle. As for “value added jobs”, the ONLY ‘value’ to a politician in them is to hold out the promise that there might be some.
They confuse the desired ends of ‘value adding’ ~ making a product that someone, somewhere, actually wants and will pay enough for to cover the costs of its making, plus a profit for the maker ~ with the means ~ the job of making it.
Unless there’s a market it can be sold into at a profit there’s no more sense in making value added wood products than there is in digging holes endlessly and then filling them in again.
And if there were a profitable market, or even a good possibility of there being one, someone would be stepping up to fill it. Just try and stop them.
Politicians should stop this inane focus on ‘jobs’ and recognise that whether they like it or not the world has been continually working to put itself out of work for over most of the last 100 years.
Every advancement in the ‘productivity’ those same politicians are always beating their gums about, when they’re not promoting jobs, is a net displacer of human labour.
The problem for them to solve isn’t creating more jobs, but distributing adequate incomes, to all, so that the product of the machine can be consumed as needed and desired.
the only strategy the pathetic Liberal government has is log till its all gone.Save BC forest vote out the Clark/Bell/Bond Liberals!
This strategy is recycled news of old or ongoing projects.
In the introduction, the government claims:
“Approximately 14 per cent of B.C.âs forest lands have been set aside . . . with additional areas under special management for values such as old-growth, water, species and ecosystems at risk, wildlife habitat, scenic viewscapes, and cultural features”.
And yet this same government with forked tongue is actively promoting the logging of forest reserves.
Which is it? Protection or logging of forest reserves? Sustainable forest management or rip-and-run?
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