You have got to be kidding?

And the vote buying starts using our tax dollars.

$5 million, sweet what are companys paying into the fund? hell we should setup another fund for oil and gas,oh forgot thay have one todate Government paid them $800 million in tax credits to build roads,Drill and construction great were rolling in money hahoooooooo

Dragon, do you think that loggers should work for free or be taken advantage of by log buyers?

Dragonmaster, you’re comment really surprised me. Aren’t you one of the biggest proponents of worker’s right?

Oops, wait a minute, these logging contractors are often self-employed single owner/operators. Even though most of them probably work a lot harder than you do, they don’t deserve any measure of financial protection because they’re not Union members!

That wouldn’t have anything to do with your comment now, would it??

Finally some contractor protection. Hard to believe people think that small business shouldn’t have payment protection. Small businesses employ lots of people and require payment protection as much as union employees

This parallels builder and mechanic liens which gives a security interest in property to someone who supplies materials and labour used during work performed on that property .

That partial protection exists throughout Canada as well as the USA and many other countries.

The property in question belongs to BC in this case. Depending on what kind of work was done value was added. In the case of harvesting it was done for the benefit of the licensee and through stumpage, to the benefit of the province. In the end, the subcontractor needs to be protected and this is long overdue.

You know, if someone wants to put a political spin on it, you might want to ask why previous governments have not done anything about this inequity, as you might ask how come it took this long with the current government. I suppose the only thing I van think of is that the forestry industry has been through some tough times recently and it is not over yet.

The annoucement mentions forestry contracts, not just logging as the headline states. Which is it?

Business is all about risk/reward, except in BC where the BC taxpayers will take on the risk part for you!

Taxed Out, the problem with your comment is that many many businesses recieve assistance from the tax payer, directly or indirectly.

Currently, our film industry, predominantly in the lower mainland has been asking the government for an extension of or additions to the tax credits that have helped to grow the industry and have resulted in the creation of many union jobs.

Our own sawmills and pulpmills provide very well paid union jobs to many of the citizens of this community. I believe that our mills recently benefitted from a great deal of government money, either in the form of grants or tax credits. The money was used for modernization as well as environmental upgrades.

Many other industries including forestry and mining have also benefitted from government assistance.

So, taxpayer support of commercial business ventures is nothing new. Ask our local puplmill workers if they appreciate the union jobs that they have, paid for in part with yours and my tax dollars!

So, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that some protection is now being offered to forestry contractors who go to work every day, hoping that they will actually get paid for the work that they do!

About time……most contractors working for a mill have everything invested in that job. They get stiffed and not only do they go broke through no fault of their own but their workers and suppliers don’t get paid either.

Look what happened when the mills burnt down….all the money was raised for the mill workers but no one ever mentioned the guys in the bush and the log truck drivers that saw their jobs disappear too.

“Business is all about risk/reward.

Actually that is government in my eyes. If business will not do it because it is too risky, but it needs to be done, then government will do it.

With P3 projects, government is attempting to offload some of the standard risks. In the case of the sports centre at UNBC, they could not get anyone to operate the facility. It was too risky. So government took it on.

The same happened with the assisted living facility in the gateway. They were trying to get an operator. But it was too risky, so Northern Health is operating it.

A P3 project is simply a government admitting that the community’s financial credit is OWNED by the banking system, not just ADMINISTERED by it. And so long as that conception of ‘ownership’ is held, the banking system is then solely entitled to dictate to government, industry, and consumers, what will or will not be constructed. This puts the banking system, as to what its operatives deem is best for IT in the preservation and enhancement of IT’S own interests, in precedence to EVERY other consideration. In essence it means that instead of a money system, fundamentally a mere system of accounting, serving US in facilitating needed and desired improvements in our individual and societal well being, we must serve IT instead.

Banking, like insurance, is all about the pooling and sharing of risk. In creating financial credit to lend to government the risks are only, (a.) that the government may not be able to continue to tax enough to make the interest payments on the loans; and (b.) that, because the principal sum of government loans are generally not paid off as are private loans, but are simply being ‘rolled over’ into new loans due sometime in the future, ever larger amounts of government borrowing will be inflationary. Whereas borrowing by the private P3 partner will have to be amortised over a definite period, and the tendency to be inflationary is thought to be less long term.

The questions that should be asked about these arrangements are:- 1. what is the real risk to the private partner, who is going to receive an assured return on the investment over the life of the contract, paid for ultimately by the public, because there really is no one else to pay it? 2. how long can any government that is running out of new things to tax, even with resorting to devices like P3 partnerships, going to be able to service public debt levels that continue to rise exponentially? 3. why can government loans never be paid off in the same sense that private loans can be? This latter can only mean that the current economic system is not fully financially self-liquidating, and therefore contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. And ours.

Very timely. My brother in law hauls logs for Conifex up in Mackenzie. We were talking about this very issue over the holidays. How when Skeena went under in Prince Rupert all the subcontractors got screwed and many went under.

My brother in law was debating pulling out and going back to hauling coal instead because of this very real concern he has now with Conifex.

My thinking is he wasn’t the only one and if the province wanted the stumpage and taxes generated from keeping Conifex an ongoing concern they needed to provide some assurances for the sub contractors hauling the fiber.

With lumber doing very well at near $400 a thousand board feet hopefully this won’t be an issue much longer.

“Dragon, do you think that loggers should work for free or be taken advantage of by log buyers?”

No I don’t. I also don’t think taxpayers should be bailing out business by paying the debts of other business. That’s why we have courts. You know, that place the rest of society must go when they get screwed over by those in business!

“Aren’t you one of the biggest proponents of worker’s right?”

LMAO! What do workers rights have to do with business being handed tax dollars because another business screwed them over?

“Even though most of them probably work a lot harder than you do, they don’t deserve any measure of financial protection because they’re not Union members!”

You know FN squat about how hard I work Hart Guy. Your a tool!
That’s a pretty big chip on your shoulder there Hart Guy. Typical liberal hand out proponent. Whiner and crier!

“Finally some contractor protection. Hard to believe people think that small business shouldn’t have payment protection. Small businesses employ lots of people and require payment protection as much as union employees”

Who is paying for it?

“Ask our local puplmill workers if they appreciate the union jobs that they have, paid for in part with yours and my tax dollars!”

Now you’re really grasping at straws!

Tax payers should not be bailing out anyone that gets screwed over by another business, PERIOD!

Dragon than industry should be paying taxes bailing out the bureaucracy.

The way I see it is if the government give assurance to small business that they will be paid when harvesting provincial resources and then uses government mechanisms to recover any funds from bankrupt resource companies, then everyone wins. Government workers get their pay checks because government revenue is coming in as industry is able to operate, and small business is protected by the vagrancy of large multinational corporations that make an effort to create economic opportunities but fail.

In the end it is the province that holds the rights to the resources, so they are in effect just providing insurance as a cost of doing business. If the forest company fails its the government that has the rights to the resources to recover costs and not the small business owners that in BC bankruptcy laws are last in line to collect for the services rendered… the government is at the front of the line.

Might as well just call it a change to bankruptcy laws that sees small business service providers getting paid… and the government provides the assurance so small business operators can continue to work and create government revenue. In no way is the government out of pocket for providing this change to the bankruptcy hierarchy. Its a contingency fund to minimize disruptions to the families that invested in making this province work.

dragonmaster, thank you for calling me a tool, a whiner and crier! Coming from you, I consider that a compliment!!

“A P3 project is simply a government admitting that the community’s financial credit is OWNED by the banking system”

You really need to explore what a private, public, partnership can be. It may take on a variety of forms.

The financing form is not what is being talked about by me when looking at a similarity with doing work on an owner’s property and the responsibility that owner bears to those who have put materials and labour towards “improving” the value of that property.

Inform yourself about lien laws in those cases which provide some level of security to those who do not have a direct contractual relationship with the owner and are faced with a primary contractor who does not pay them. The owner has a responsibility to pay them. For that purpose, owners are allowed to holdback money payable to a primary contractor based on work certified to have been done. It is for that purpose that a primary contractor provides an owner with an affidavit which states that all monies owing to those who have done work on the project and owing to them based on the previous payment made for certified work has been paid.

The government is simply applying what is the law for work such as construction to the case in forestry work which is taking place on crown property. Interestingly, when such work is carried out on private property, the owner of that private property has access to the lien act.

How does this relate to P3?

It is analagous to the work done to the build, operate, maintain parts of a P3, all of which, of course do not have to be active in a P3 project. It does not apply to any part of a P3 which may include financing a project.