“Minister of Jobs Tourism and Skills Training, Pat Bell says the Prince George economy is feeling the positive waves being created by mining activity”

Ah ha! So that’s why there are no vacant lots in PG and why new subdivisions are in desperate need of development!

In all seriousness, it is good to see investment in the Region. If mining can help offset some of the blows that forestry has been taking and will continue to take, then that’s a good thing IMHO.

It would be interesting to conduct an analysis which looks at the state of the local economy when factoring in the decline in forestry as well as the increase in exploration. My guess is that overall, things would still be very static. This seems to be confirmed by population growth estimates, housing starts and other “hard” data out there.

NMG

what a weird way of looking at things you have?

New development comes when people with money are speculating that good things are about to happen. We have allot of that going on right now.

Forestry has seen a big upswing in the last few months. Qualified employees are few and far between. Mills are running weekend shifts with volunteered overtime to make ends meet. 2008 was the bottom for forestry IMO… supply issues withstanding.

Mining is peaking right now.. as new projects come online others are winding down.. the nature of the business. Mount Milligan is huge and once its construction winds down it will be hard to replace those construction jobs… Endako is already history as far as job creation goes.

PG’s only hope for real growth is if it focuses on quality of life and good fiscal management.

The fundamentals of the resource economy essentially follow the markets and is somewhat stable considering the significant capital investments into world class infrastructure such as modern mills and such.

The problem with PG is blow hard politicians always blowing smoke and working behind closed doors for the special interest groups at the expense of transparency and respect for all stakeholders.

The way I see it is realestate is going down significantly in the lower mainland and Okanogan regions. Interest rates will be going up and people are anticipating this. Owning half million to million dollar homes based on speculation will be a thing for the history books. Once the goodwill equity evaporates home ownership will be based on real wage and salary incomes and once that happens the flight from high cost homes will begin and places like PG could benefit… but not if we have significant pollution problems, crime problems, and we have bankrupted our municipal finances with rising interest rates.

I think highway 16 out west will see growth, but I’m not so sure about PG itself… I think PG priced itself out of growth (potential property tax wise), and we continue to fail on taking advantage of our true strategic assets in the surroundings our city is blessed with for recreational developments (a provincial and municipal problem as multinational resource revenue is their sole focus in government).

I agree with NMG. The point is how much of an increase in mining, etc; do we need to get us back to where we were in the late 90’s.

People have short memories. We lost North Central Plywoods, Rustads, The Pas Lumber Planer, and Sawmill at Bear Lake, Clear Lake Sawmills, Paper Mill in MacKenzie, and the Pulp Mill in Kitimat. Plus other sawmills around North Central BC. In addition Kemess shut down, and will be replaced by Mt Milligan, however no real changes in jobs.

So thats the point. How much new industry do we need just to get back to where we were. Once there, we will still have a population between 75 and 80,000 people.

I don’t see the bellweather businesses in P.G. noticing much if any, increase in business. Politicians can spout all they want about the big upswing for businesses but we on the ground haven’t seen it. I heard more than one person from down south about ten years ago saying up here, we were going to see some really big things happen.
Still waiting to see that.

“New development comes when people with money are speculating that good things are about to happen. We have allot of that going on right now”

I respectfully disagree. I don’t think speculators have anything to do with development, that only occurs when there is increasing demand for products and services. Speculation without an increase in demand for products or services just results in empty subdivisions, vacant lots, additional costs to the city and additional holding costs for speculators . . .

Agreed Palopu.

That’s possibly the way it ‘should’ be, NMG. But if you have a government in office that doesn’t know the difference between ‘inflation’ and ‘prosperity’ ~ and we definitely do in BC ~ speculation can take place in the absence of much ‘real’ meaningful economic growth. And it’ll feed on itself for awhile, as prices get pushed higher and higher ’til it all collapses. Again.