Pat Bell has no business running forestry in this province with ridiculous ideas such as his.

"maximizing the growth opportunity of forests. more emphasis on silviculture than on harvesting"

Wow. That's like saying let's maximize the growth opportunity of mushrooms in Terrace. More emphasis on growing them than harvesting. That will obviously make the mushroom industry boom in the northwest, because the real money is in growing, not harvesting. Hey, maybe we can get some carbon tax offset in Scandinavia by growing wood. All those high paying, low education jobs can be replaced by a bunch of Wilburs wandering around with watering cans in the woods.

"2. maximizing value from our forests. "I want a forest industry that fully utilizes every single part of the tree when we cut it down. We must use all components for maximum economic benefit to society and to create jobs throughout urban and rural British Columbia."

We're sending our raw logs to the United States and China. We barely have any mills left in BC. Adding more regulation and stipulations to who's left is only going to shut down what's left of mill operations in this province that much faster. Maybe we can maximize value by not acting like American capitalists anymore in socializing loss, and capitalizing profit.

"3. using more wood in large commercial and institutional buildings. "There is an opportunity to expand the use of wood products across the broader construction sector."

This ranks up there with "This song needs more cowbell. That would make it a lot better." Does he know anything about construction at all to say they're not using enough wood? What would you have them do, Pat? Use wooden nails?

"4. The Chinese marketplace is very important to the growth of our industry. "This year, we will ship nearly one billion board feet of lumber into the Chinese market. That is a record and really starts to establish a long-term relationship with an immense potential market for our products."

Oh right, China is going to save forestry in BC. They're going to let us mill and cut the wood for them and pay us a good price for it, instead of buying our mills when they go bankrupt, set them up there and buy our raw logs off us. Right? RIGHT PAT!

This guy has no business telling anyone what his plans are! He's nothing more than a stalling tactic, a diversion from the real issues since he seems incapable of addressing them.

Pat Bell, you suck! We don't need more lies and BS!

It seems to me that Pat Bell says one thing but does another, have you noticed that with politicians? With the loss of jobs in the forest industry in Prince George, and I am speaking from experience here because I lost my job at the local seedling nursery that is going out of business due to the lack of support on the part of the provincial government. I was hoping for something more solid for Prince George from our very own Forest Minister. Why is it that every other place in Canada that has political representation, benefits and yet every time we have local people in office they forget where they came from.

Pat Bell says he wants more emphasis on silviculture, big talk for the Minister of Forests, considering that while I was losing my job here in Prince George, there were trees being grown in Alberta and Saskatchewan for the Prince George Forest District. That is direct exportation of Prince George jobs. I am one of 75 people that don't have a job anymore, but thanks to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, people are gainfully employed outside of our province. I am sure that Minister Bell will understand that people will no longer turn a blind eye to this type of conduct, and pay back will come in the next provincial election.

With federal election approaching a lot of promises are being made, I can already see that aren't worth the paper they are written on. During this current federal election, Jay Hill and Dick Harris are asking for my vote. Where were they when I was losing my job? What they did was to bury the request for help in a pile of red tape or hand the responsibility off to others.

Mr Campbell promised in the speech from the throne, major investments in seedling nurseries and 60,000,000 more trees above the current amount being grown. Sounds like more money is going to be spent outside of BC to expand nurseries in Alberta and Saskatchewan and more jobs for those provinces. Instead of addressing problems at home and helping the local economy, lets just spend the money outside the province. More of BC tax dollars going to support anywhere but BC.

Well said Nejeb, focusing more on silviculture than harvesting is not feasible.... harvesting pays for the silviculture.....

unless the BC Liberals are going to jack up stumpage in an economy that is collapsing, at least in the good old USA.....

Oh yeah, that's where most of the lumber from this part of the world goes in case anyone forgot...

Perhaps we can put a tax on hotel rooms to pay for the silviculture, like we are doing to pay for advertising our Hawaii like tourism industry here in PG!!

We are overcut; have a loss of around 40% of our standing trees in much of the Interior due to the pine tree loss; have a 50% loss of the US market; a higher dollar. The change of emphasis is not because some minister of the crown says so. It is because the real world condition in the forests says so. Sort of like the financial meltdown in the USA. Its back to saving time. The real world removed a major part of the tree deposit from the forestry bank. Time to put money back into the forestry bank as savings for the future. Dig into the pockets we lined with harvesting unsustainably over the last few decades. Put the part back we have not re-invested when we should have. Put the part back we should not have cut in the first place to allow for natural changes over which we have little control.

Isn't Pat looking for candidates to go to China to help rebuild? Yes, that will mean another trip for him - take Colin along.
Raw logs are been shipped out of the country - everyday - so his new ideas - Pat just had a "dream". All the above comments have said it!! I am sure they are not making the "big bucks" on the taxpayers but just using common sense.
Pat, how about a "tree tax" for the taxpayers - would go along with the "carbon tax"!

bigdog, I am sorry you lost your job at the local nursery, but I don't think the government should be in the business of giving private business "a letter of guarantee" as the nursery owner was asking for. (I'm assuming you are speaking of the Ruff nursery, unless there is another one in PG closing that I am unaware of). As far as the news articles I've read on this site and in the PG Freepress, Ruff is quoted as saying the greenhouses were hit by a windstorm in 2006 and the uninsured losses pushed the Greenhouses into receivership. Yet the loan holder, Farm Credit Canada states that they can give the borrower deferred payment plans, interest only payment plans, time to re-finance, and time to find other investors. If the business, as Ruff has stated is worth $6 million and the financing needed was "only" 2.75 million, could he not have found an investor? He would have had over a year to do so. Ruff also said he is not asking for a cash injection or government bailout - just a leter of guarantee and if the company defaulted on the loan, the sale of the property would cover the cost. (PG Freepress Mar.16) Isn't that what has already happened?? He has defaulted on the loan and the loan holder is foreclosing to sell the property and cover the cost!

Another little tidbit is this. In the ministry of forests' own contract to grow seedlings it states that "neither party shall be held liable for an act of God." Ruff's nursery was held directly liable, made to pay back monies paid in advance for portions of the crop as per contract, and disqualified from receiving any seedlings to grow. This was stated in a meeting between Mr Ruff, Pat Bell, Shirley Bond, her assistant and 2 of Pat's staff. So does that mean the government only has to honor their contracts and responsibilities when it suits them?

There was an error made on THEIR part that caused Ruff's to be in default of their loan but NO ONE in the cabinet will accept responsibility for it. So there is always more to the story than the media allows the public to know in order for the government to save face.

As far as Farm Credit Canada goes, after one missed mortgage payment, they put Ruff's into receivership. They were adamant that they would not allow Ruff's to continue, that they couldn't service their debt and the business wasn't a viable one, even though they have been in business for 35 years and have NEVER had a crop failure in the past, producing trees in the 98% of quality.

Presumably the contract was fee for product/service. There was an advance paid in good faith. The seedlings were not delivered due to no fault of the client, thus there was no liability as the contract stated.

The loss of the nursery and failure to deliver a product should have been covered by insurance. that must have been insufficient to cover facility damage and loss of business. Perhaps the government should have made adequate insurance coverage a condition of the contract.

I have not heard the term value added for a while used by the BC ministry of forests.
IMO this is what they the BC ministry of forests have destroyed any chance of surviving.
If Pat Bell actually believes in allowing value added opportunities he will have to fire his entire senior staff which have made this impossible. If he wants these value added operations to survive Pat must not allow his new staff to speak to this old fired staff.

The ministry of forests and this provincial liberal government supported the signing of the softwood lumber agreement. This is the agreement which is intended to serve big corporations to make more 2x4s while killing off value added producers and for them to buy up.

If waste is an issue then why did this ministry invent the "take or pay poicy"?
Use the best and leave the rest was created by this liberal government. It is the most disgracefull waste of public resources ever permitted.
Using all of every tree cut is a novel idea Pat, but how about highest use of some of the wood cut--rather than highest production of lowest per unit value products?

Mr Bell speaks to maximizing social benefit and job creation....?

Mr Bell should tell his staff that stumpage system changes could allow this to happen if they truly want this to happen.

Wide open log exports are another obvious problem which this government has embraced for reasons which directly compromise social benefit and job creation in most cases.

Tenure reform was supposed to change the way that timber was apportioned to accomplish these social and employment goals....but nothing has been done. Logs from anywhere can go anywhere because a corporation decides its best for their profits. Is this destruction of livelyhoods and entire communities socially beneficial? Is it good for employment?

We should invest and improve silviculture, but only if the rest of this retarted BC ministry of forests system is fundamentally changed.

Again I must correct many of the posts- few if any logs are being exported from the Prince George area- logs should be allowed to be shipped any where in a georgraphic region to the mill which is willing to pay the highest value. Clause 7 restricting wood flow to local mills was a complete failure and a very 60/70's policy it is time BC changed with the rest of the world- just look at want Washington state did.

Dogs...what exactly is your definition of
"anywhere in a geographic region"?

I'm sure you meant to say logs should go anywhere and to any country and this means that it is exportable.
ExportABLE is the real issue over time and different than what is currently being exportED from a particular area of the province.

This wide open shipment of logs anywhere provincially or exportable might suit a personal/corporate ability to sell logs without restrictions but it undermines the stability of numerous communities accross our province.

Local processing requirements of most major timber licences in our province are what provided the security to build the facilities which we had but are now losing.

We would have had very little manufacturing facilities built in this province if this local processing was not required when these timber licences were sold by the public. We will not have new facilities or investments made to modernise if this wide open exportable log market continues.

Comparing Washington state to BC is ridiculous as they have entirely different timber supply dynamics because they have an entirely different timberland ownership structure.

If you want to compare the issue of log exports to another country then look at a country which "the state" owns the vast majority of the timberlands like BC does.

Its called Russia and for as long as anyone can remember this country has allowed wide open log exports and all sorts of foregn owned companies have wastefully exploited Russia's forests without developing a local industry.

For reasons more obvious than the nose on your face...Russia is now restricting future log exports by taxing it out of existance.