Prince George, B.C. – Liquefied natural gas has been a top priority for the provincial government since its campaign for re-election in 2013 and that focus won’t change heading into 2015.

“We remain very optimistic and I’ve been working very closely with liquefied natural gas proponents on the labour file because that was a major issue for them,” says Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training Shirley Bond.

“This past session we dealt with issues related to emissions and to the tax regime and as we saw most recently, basically one of the major proponents (Petronas) said B.C. has done its part. We’ve worked very hard.”

But Bond says the focus on LNG won’t come at the expense of other economic drivers in the province.

“We remain focused on tourism, forestry, and mining. All of those things but the most pressing issue at the moment is to bring an LNG project to B.C.”

Bond’s colleague, Prince George-Mackenzie Liberal MLA Mike Morris, agrees LNG is of paramount importance but notes the forestry sector could pose some challenges this year.

“The central interior’s been hit very hard with the pine beetle epidemic so our AAC (annual allowable cut) went up significantly and now we’re going to see that reduced and that’s going to have an impact on our forest industry.”

He says Prince George, Quesnel, Williams Lake, and Vanderhoof (not so much Mackenzie after an uplift in their AAC) will all need to learn to transition.

“How are we going to address that and how are we going to maintain a viable forest industry throughout the province?”

Morris says it will have to include capitalizing on the so called “bio-economy.”

“No longer is a log turned into a two-by-four. It’s turned into a bunch of different products. We’re going to see that increase more and more every year in the future.”