If we extend..If we cut..If we study..If we,If we,If we. Time to sharpen your chainsaw PAT!! Enough B.S. get on with the programs.

Sees like half of L if E is if!

Mr. Bell is doing a very good job. The reality is that our neigbours down south are dealing with a crisis that some call a day of reckoning.

In the meantime we have to pull together, pull up our socks and find new markets to take up the slack.

Mr. Bell does not whine and snivel. He has a positive approach and has done a lot of good work already.

Mr Bell is part of the group that cut payments to injuried workers by 10% while fatting his own pockets by what 25% . So much for the positive approach. He does not need to whine and snivel. He has put a lot of people in that predicament already.
And the reality is that if our neigbours down south are hurting it will affect economies world wide.

I was not aware of the sweeping powers of Mr. Bell.

He is according to you a very, very powerful man.

Hmmmm.

I find it mind boggling that after all these years the governments are still using the pine beetle as a crutch for their excuses for lack of proper attention to our forests. We have thrown all kinds of tax dollars at this issue. What do we have to show for it?
IMO, we are just getting more hot air. I do however believe that Mr Bell is sincere in his efforts. However, how much freedom does a cabinet minister have? (Just a thought.)
Post secondary funding increases to the forestry programs offered by the College would be a great start and would put the money where their mouth is. We are losing our trained professionals! Without them, we are losing our investment in our forests.

What I find mind boggling is that 82.8 cubic meters of RAW LOGS is leaving this province while sawmills and pulp and paper mills are being closed down (some of them permanently).
It's time the gov't stepped in and kept the forest resources in province instead of shipping raw material and jobs overseas. Keep the wood in the area where it was harvested or don't allow it to be cut.

"B.C. exported to China 1 billion cubic meters of lumber this past year, and 82.8 thousand cubic meters of logs."

Shouldn't that number be 1 billion board feet (although that seems high as well)?

No RAW logs should leave this province ever, but this is not a new thing, it happened all the way through the NDP nineties as well.

It's not a new Liberal policy.

I too believe that Mr. Bell is sincere in his efforts and that they must reflect government policy, or else.

Can someone can enlighten me, how does BC not exporting raw logs help us again? Do we have a monopoly on trees that I'm not aware of? If China couldn't get their logs from BC, wouldn't they just go somewhere else?

And if China can process the lumber for 50% of the cost that BC can, how can we compete with that? Who is going to buy our milled lumber?

Have I oversimplifed this or misunderstood something somewhere? Maybe one of the peanut gallery can tell me where I've gone wrong?

Heehee, lots of peanuts out there!

Yup, and most of those peanuts are blanched and salted. Hee Hee.

Gee Country Cuzin a whole 82.8 m3 of logs exported- that's two truck loads- check your math.

The "wood should be milled in the area harvested"- Ok How far should logs be truck? Can one mill cut all the wood harvested in a local area? The answer is no- most harvesting sides these days run 4-8 bush sorts- and ship to 4-8 mills depending on the product produced- So you ship to one mill what happens to the other 5-8 sorts? Times have changed.

When mills are shut down and communities are hurting it would make a lot of sense to process all the logs here and keep the export of raw logs to a minimum, ideally zero.

Then when the products made from the exported Canadian raw logs come back to compete with the locally made products we are looking at a double whammy.

This may be an oversimplification as well, but it seems to be an actual fact when it comes down to counting the peanuts on the plate.

DEAREST DOG:
I'm so sorry for the TYPO. I really meant 82.8 THOUSAND cubic meters (as was relayed in the article). maybe you should check your own typos before you chuck dung at others.

Diplomat writes,"that when exported Canadian raw logs come back to compete with locally made products we are looking at a double whammy."

The reality here is that we have little to fear with this happening for basic dimension lumber and panels. The minister stated that as well saying "they want our lumber not our logs."

However, I believe there is a vulnerability to losing opportunities for high value added products which require more labour content. This is where china and any low labour cost area has advantage over us.

There is an upside to building a trade relationship with china. They for sure have enormous domestic demand for wood products, which if we help develop properly, could become very important to our province.

We desperately need more flexible facilities which can produce the products which these new markets want. We will sell some north american dimension lumber products but we also need to provide other product types, to china and any other country.

Great interview Ben and hats off for the courage to push the minister to answer to the issue of big corporate clout working to leverage their goals and against ours.

While the minister inferred that the majors are now willing to cooperate with the ministry of forests, to improve forest utilization, it remains to be seen if this is a genuine legitamate step towards spreading control of our industry...by the ministry of forests.

The missing link which the minister must address is that the diversity required to utilize the entire forest profile also requires numerous different types and sizes of facilities to process and cater to new markets wanting different products than we currently make.

Without providing adequate security of longterm tenure to these new innovative enterprises, we will not see this shift in manufacturing occur and our industry will continue to falter and downsize.

Virtually every region of the province requested tenure reform and diversification through the roundtable forum.

I believe the new minister understands this but has he the strength to force the major corporations to cooperate?

You give us trees, we sell you crap. Melamine mixed with lead with your finished product, sir? Rearry cheap!