Raw log exports must stop immediately.

Oh yes the BC jobs Plan.. Canfor + China = Bye Bye Canfor Quesnel, plus Westfraser Houston. The New forest act 2001 companies can buy, sell trade timber licence and no consideration needed for communities or workers.

Can’t stop the export of raw logs either with the new FIPA agreement Harper struck with China that allows Chinese corporations to sue provincial and municipal governments in Canada through off shore tribunals for lost potential profits as a result of… in this case provincial policy.

José Manuel Barroso President of the European commission is on a mission to eliminate all national sovereignty… he sees that as the source of the world wars and the enabler of another holocaust… feels sovereign democracies need to be managed and can not be trusted when acting in their own interests. That is what the EUSR is all about, eliminating national sovereignty, and that is what all the ‘investment’ agreements are all designed to accomplish. Harper calls it ‘enlightened sovereignty’.

‘Enlightened sovereignty’ means that if the province of BC decides to put a stop to raw log exports, then the effected corporations in China under FIPA, or the EU under CETA, can sue in trade agreement tribunals of globalists for lost potential profits(Supreme Court of Canada is sidelined and powerless against these agreements that are in effect akin to a globalist bill of rights with their own tribunals of insiders).

It doesn’t stop at raw logs either… clearly Harper was in a rush to bring in FIPA to ensure for the Chinese that they could sue the province of BC for their $100 million spent to bring Northern Gateway through the approval process… and for any potential lost profits as a result of the project being rejected. In effect a trade agreement that allows foreign corporations to blackmail their way to immunity from local democracy, and for Harper to insulate himself from the ‘conflict’.

“This mill will be importing lumber from British Columbia and cutting it into metric sizes for Chinese buyers.”

Lumber or raw logs?

Lumber, the article stated. And this makes sense.

It would be a logistical impossibility to cut all the different metric dimensions that might be used in China (or Japan, for that matter)here in BC and get them to where they’re needed on any kind of an “on time” basis.

I do not know about the use of lumber for housing construction in China, but in Japan a traditionally constructed home can have up to 1,300 different dimensions of lumber in it.

They do not use the same narrow range of standardised dimensions we use here. I suspect the lumber imported to China is not going into wood frame construction of housing, which the Chinese, unlike the Japanese consider to be inferior housing. They are a ‘bricks and mortar’, and now re-inforced concrete people.

If it’s being used in industry, as crating or components of other products, it only makes sense to re-saw that lumber in China. This should lead to more sales for our lumber there.

Aside from all that, I agree completely with what Eagleone has written above about the erosion of national sovereignty by the advance of globalism.

Such will be irreversible so long as our system of money operates as it now does, where each country has to try to have a so-called ‘favourable’ trade balance with other countries, and gain international credits to enable it to have sufficient effective demand for its own products in its own home markets.

That would be easy to change, but don’t look to ANY of our current political Parties to ever attempt it.

The article quotes as follows.

**Canfor’s plans in China do not affect BC workers, said BC’s forestry minister Steve Thomson. **This plant will re-cut lumber from BC into custom cut sizes for the Chinese market, especially for furniture stores, windows, and moldings.**Thomson said. *So this is a remanufacturing that’s taking place as opposed to primary manufacturing*

Seems more like an end run to me. I would keep my eye on this one. My guess is we will be supplying a lot of timber for these Chinese Mills while BC mills will be closing down.

Raving about the Harper Government is not a solution. In fact I fail to see what Harper would gain from all the BS that is taking place. Perhaps Eagleone could explain.

What we need is for Canadian business to get off their asses, to ensure that we can utilize our own resources, which includes oil, natural gas, concentrates, etc; THis exporting of natural resources for nothing more than the almighty dollar without creating any jobs in this Country has to stop.

At one of the Canfor mills the entrance sign says “our roots are in your community”. I hope they don’t believe any bought that garbage.

China should import as many raw logs they can, then use their 10 cents an hour workforce to make 2×4’s etc and re sell on the open market at a fraction of the cost we can produce it, which in turn would drop the cost of lumber everywhere making it unprofitable for mills here to make lumber so that more mills here will shut down due to lumber price and then the US will have cheap lumber to buy and we will all be on the EI choo choo train.

Sounds good to me. (used to work at a sawmill)

Then maybe we can open up the market to send more raw logs there then we already are.
I bet they can make a good profit selling lumber in our size’s we use at less then half the price and even after they ship back to us (at less then half the price) put everyone out of work. Sounds good to me.

Posted by: only2c on December 2 2013 9:43 AM
At one of the Canfor mills the entrance sign says “our roots are in your community”. I hope they don’t believe any bought that garbage.

——————-

It’s absolutely true! The roots are in the community. Where is the rest of the tree should be the question.

I’m sure that if any of you happen to own a large chunk land full of trees that would fit the Quesnel mill’s profile as far as species and size and are willing to sell them to Canfor at current market rates they would happily reverse the decision to close the mill.

After years of low prices anyone who thinks Canfor is closing the mill willingly now that they are making money is a fool. No mention of the millions that the company is investing in southern BC, where there are TREES to supply the mill

Using Ewart’s logic we should not be selling pulp to any customers outside of BC but demand the final product be manufactured here. But then again that is typical dipper behavior…focus on one pixel and yell “SEE SEE” instead of taking a step back and looking at the whole picture.

If we don’t export raw logs, someone else will. We don’t have a monopoly on trees.

Posted by: JohnnyBelt on December 2 2013 2:21 PM
If we don’t export raw logs, someone else will. We don’t have a monopoly on trees.

————

That may be true but in this case, the company isn’t even exporting raw logs.

Canfor employees will be voting on the new contract ,likely 90 percent will be rejected ,boys will issue 72 strike notice ,monday morning will strike

axman: “That may be true but in this case, the company isn’t even exporting raw logs.”

Point taken. I was more talking about BC.

People seem to forget that the Canfor mill that is closing in Quesnel was changed over to metric a couple of years ago, so that all its production could be sold to China.

So now it appears that logs, or cant’s will be sent to China instead of the lumber produced at Quesnel, and the finished product will be produced by Canfor’s joint venture with the /Chinese.

The lumber/logs of course will come from BC, where we supposedly have a shortage.

More to this little endeavor than meets the eye.

Palopu asks ‘whats in it for Harper’, and then nearly answers his own question in the very next paragraph lol.

Don’t forget Harper’s dad was a Bay Street banker, and studied to be a political economist… his policies are to deregulate banks and raw resource industries, so that bankers can profit… its not about social welfare and sustainable employment for the Harper government… who profits the most if multinational corporations have their own bill of rights and quasi judicial courts to rule in their favor when taking an axe to local regulations and political hindrance to their ‘profit’ ventures?

Common now Palopu don’t shoot the messenger, you’re a smart person so surely you can put the pieces together. One only has to look at the investment agreements Harper pushes to see who he works for. He might even go to work for Goldman Sachs when he’s done this gig as Canadian Prime Minister.

I wonder does Palopu really think Harper works for equal opportunity and a vibrant democracy that is truly sovereign over its corporations? If so Harper has sure got one person fooled….

What happens to Harper and Mayor Green’s policy on twining with China when China starts a war with our allies over their self declared air identification zones China is now unilaterally declaring.

I thought Canada also once stood for freedom of the seas for navigation and trade, or is that now for sale as well?

Palapu states “So now it appears that logs, or cant’s will be sent to China instead of the lumber produced at Quesnel”

The Quesnel TSA does have enough timber to supply both the Canfor and West Fraser mills so they each closed a mill and combined cutting rights so remaining mills are viable into the future.

Why not move logs that are being exported to Quesnel to keep mill running you say, lets see what that might look like. For this exercise a log is a log and will ignore species,size,etc.

First trucking- as most of the logs being exported are near the coast by the time a truck gets out to the bush, gets loaded and drives to Quesnel you are looking at least 14 hour day. This means that a truck would deliver one load every two days. Even if you could find enough trucks it would not be economically feasible.

Trains you say. Logs would would have to be trucked from bush to sort yard and siding to be loaded on rail,built from scratch if there are none available. Once trains arrive in Quesnel, offloaded to log yard if that yard has a siding, if not then it means building another siding and sort yard so they can be reloaded on trucks for delivery to mill. Each load, offload and reload costs money. Mills can top off their fiber basket with expensive logs like this-but run the entire mill?

Then there is another problem if the mill is cut to length as I can not remember seeing CTL logs on rail cars. Once again not insurmountable as cars can be modified but not at a price that would be affordable.

Saying move the logs slated for export is easy but the devil is in the details and I am sure Canfor and WF have explored most of them.

LS … to most people on here logs are logs are logs …… the kind of information people such as yourself present is not common knowledge.

Why should it be? After all, forestry is still the industry a significant number in this community are involved with on a daily basis. ;-)

I mean, just look at Peter’s article. It is all over the map. Is there an error with the reference to “lumber” at the beginning and then associating lumber with “logs”? Or is it an accurate description of what is happening?

Further down he speaks about a deep sea port to import wood from other countries as well as Canada.

Finland, which has more m3 of timber cut each year than BC, uses 40% of its wood for energy.

The fact is, China uses wood for building. BUT we do not share the same standards, while we share those standards with the USA. So, it is simple to deal with the USA.

There are few people in the world who use the stick framed method of building housing. It is a North American phenomenon.

Pellets? We will see that played out shortly when there should be a battled for waste …. is it going to co-gen to run the mills and heat this City, or is it going to panel boards, or to pellets?

The economics of pellets should change considerably when the fibre access for that product diminishes.

“At the same time, dozens of mills have closed in BC and an estimated 35,000 forest sector jobs have been lost.”

That is an example of what I believe is unassociated facts being presented in the same sentence which implies that the closing of mill are the result of ALL those job losses.

I think most people who know something about forestry know that it is the increased mechanization and total mill capacity resulting from large mills is the reason for most job losses in the forest industry over at least the last 3 decades.

Quesnel mill closure is as a result of reduced feedstock. That means less harvesting, less transportation and fewer wood manufacturing jobs. To associate that with opening up facilities in China is wrong-headed thinking. Canfor owns mills in countries other than China. Canfor is doing exactly what other countries are doing with selling their products in China and other countries, opening up manufacturing plants for the products that they excel in.

The USA produces Japanese cars in the USA. Not much different.

The USA refines oil in their country. It receives crude from several countries. Not much different.

It will be interesting to see whether one of these days soon, when the downfall in timber supply in BC hits home, we may not see the reverse flow of logs into BC to feed mills that will otherwise have to close.

It is sort of like global warming. Some people are not quite sure. The same with the timber supply downfall.

The pellet manufactures have already started to reach further than sawmill residuals, the easiest and cheapest source, and have begun to “harvest” the slash piles for branches and tops.To my mind this is a good thing as the alternative is to push them in a pile and burn them.

If the cogen facilities scoop up this fiber too I guess the next step for them is to log the weed species: birch aspen etc although not sure if the BTU output of the pellets would be the same or if it would even bind as well as softwood.

I guess as far as Peter is concerned Canfor and other companies should just sit in the boardroom and cry “woe is me” rather than take the steps for long term survival and success of the company;)

lonesome states; “I guess as far as Peter is concerned Canfor and other companies should just sit in the boardroom and cry “woe is me” rather than take the steps for long term survival and success of the company;)”

Completely agree! Same goes for China here as well, lets see how well it fits with lonesome’s statement:

I guess as far as Peter is concerned China and other countries should just sit in their government offices and cry “woe is me” rather than take the steps for long term survival and success of the country.’

Yup… it works, and does explain the take over of Canada’s industries by China. Long live Chinese state owned companies like Sinopec and the Chinese owned coal companies extracting our coal for shipment to china. Now lets apply that scenario to our forests as well. China will take everything we have and then some!

Interesting stuff, however most of what’s being said here is pure conjecture.

1. China receives logs from all over the world, ie; Australia, Russia, Finland, USA, South East Asia, Canada,South America, etc;.

2. With the export duty applied to Russia’s export of logs 25%, the Chinese are purchasing more logs from other sources.

3. If there is such a shortage of logs in the Quesnel area, then why did Canfor re-open its mill in Quesnel, in 2010, and retool it to cut metric size lumber for China. Are we to believe that in 2010 they thought they had sufficient wood for this mill, and then in 2013 they had an epiphany and realized they had no wood, and therefore had to close the mill?? Not bloody likely. There is more to this story than what’s being told.

4. Why is it more efficient to log tree’s the Hazelton, Houston, Terrace area, and truck, rail, them to Prince Rupert, send them to China on a ship, off load, and truck, rail, to a mill, but for some strange reason we cannot do some log trading, and keep mills running in BC. Anyone who believes the stories put out by Canfor and West Fraser on this timber swap, needs to give their heads a shake.

Palopu, it looks to me that you have never been involved first hand with a major program and most certainly not a business.

Businesses, whether small or large are faced with emerging issues over time which they were not familiar with or that sure of. Issues change over time. Information changes and other opportunities arise. It takes time to analyze, negotiate, seek support, etc.

The mid-term timber supply report of June 2012 may have reminded them that it was time to do something to face the prediction. Quesnel has an AAC of 2million m3 pre MPB. That almost tripled post 2000. Within 10 years it will drop to about half of the pre MPB era. That will stay in place for 50 years.

It may simply be that cutting timber to Chinese-sized lumber provided an opportunity for a new business venture which was not available in 2009.

Palopu

If you did a little research you would find that before he was CEO of Canfor Don Kayne along with other BC forest company execs logged a huge amount air miles flying back and forth to China in order to get the foot in the door of that massive market.

Thankfully the doors began to open just when the housing market crashed in the US around 2009 this allowed Canfor to reopen the Quesnel mill to supply that market. If I remember right it was a matter of cut it, dry it , plane it and ship it. No lumber grading involved they took everything, a good thing when milling standing dead timber.

This new market kept the BC industry afloat during the worst downturn in US housing in living memory- one that is just now showing signs of life.

As for this statement “but for some strange reason we cannot do some log trading” West Fraser and Canfor have done log trading in order to keep mills running in Quesnel and Houston. Better two mills that can run full bore than four mills at half capacity, soon there would be four mills shuttered as the fixed costs stay the same but cash flow is cut in half and they no longer generate enough cash to pay for upgrades and improvements.

I think you can add to that, when CANFOR separated the pulping division from the sawmill division, they purposely kept the same CANFOR logo/trademark for both because it was well known in the Asian market.