The City cancelled an international committment recently that a lot of people in the community were very angry about the cancellation.

Here we have another one.

Times have changed. With it come changing practices. Reduction in nice-to-have meetings and associated travel is part of that.

Let us see whether those who were critical of that cancellation can change their mind about the wisdom of that decision by City Council.

Nemesis is lose in the forest industry as we speak... no one wants to play their luck with Nemesis, so everyone with power is staying low till she has done her dirty work.

Come this fall we will likely have a radically different forest industry than the one we have this week. Contracts are up this summer, shifts to chip plants are in full swing, and Nemisis isn't done with the global economy yet either.

It makes sense that people are focusing on their own operations at this time and keeping things close.

Well they have not had the lumber grading championship for a few years. That will be a distant memory soon. When will these horrible conditions end ???

When the price of housing in the USA has dropped low enough for the average family to be able to buy one; the average family's income certainty has stabilized enough for them to be able to obtain a mortgage; and their appetite for improved living conditions has once more increased to the extent that they will take the risk of "investing" in a house or a better rental unit.

Of course, if you couple that with the tendency to reduce the travel distance and densify the urban environment, that new living space a new group of upwardly mobile people may just become a move of existing single family residential owners to higher density condo owners closer to the centre of the city with others moving into the older suburban housing stock that has been freed up.

Then again, if oil prices rise again in the next year or two to a level beyond what they just dropped from, you might be able to kiss the value of many SF residences goodbye and see a clamour for urban, apartment style condos.

The denser and higher developments will become, the less will be the tendency for them to be built from lumber.

So, we may be selling the same prodcut to the USA as we are to China, structural lumber for roof construction.

Structural lumber grading championships will be pitting one machine grader manufacturer or model against another.

$575 for each non resident Sounds real high to me. No wonder we are in trouble. We have people who base their spending for events on inflated numbers like this.

"The denser and higher developments will become, the less will be the tendency for them to be built from lumber."

There's an element of truth to what you're saying but there is a change in the building code which will permit wood frame buildings to go up to 6 stories in height. So couple that with historically low prices of lumber, and developers looking for ways to cut costs, I think we'll see a resurgence, when the economy starts turning around, in lumber and forestry. The next thing we'll see is that beetle killed lumber will be allowed to be used structurally (with some provisions), and then this business will really take off.

But don't get too excited about these things yet. The news out of the USA indicates that the housing market won't really turn around for another 3 years. The product available now will fill the needs of the buying public for that long. We'll see a raft of people enter the rental market similar to what happened in the 70's, when house prices were too high, inflation caused the interest rate to skyrocket, and people could only afford to rent.

Can you say deja vu? It has that sort of feeling about it for me.

Anyways back to the subject. Companies that normally send people to these conferences, do it for a reason. To gather information to allow them to keep or gain market share. Now as the receding tide lowers all boats, companies are looking at the bottom line, and what has to be done to stop loosing money. That means shutting mills, and laying off people. And some of those people that will be loosing their jobs, would be the same people that would come to these conventions. We're just starting to see the long slow death of forestry, when the people who administer these companies are also going to loose their jobs. Now it's not only the blue-collar guys, its the suit-and-tie people joining the ranks of the unemployed.

Yeah, it's like deja vu all over again.
metalman.
with thanks to Yogi Berra.

Steelworkers IWA Local 1-424 just cancelled its annual general meeting.

This move will save around $100,000; while effecting democracy. But if you are out of money; how to you finance expensive democracy? How were the unions structured and opertated in the 1930s?

There are also cut backs to staff and operating hours at the Prince George office.

There is a very real question as to the long term viability and structure for the IWA in North Centeral BC.

I wonder what the Union movement will look like by the end of this deeping financial mess?

Oh well, the temperature is dropping into the basement as well; but spring and summer will come.

frank

"There's an element of truth to what you're saying but there is a change in the building code which will permit wood frame buildings to go up to 6 stories in height"

That is the building code in BC, not the USA. There are four codes in the USA based on the regions. I have not heard that they are changing. I am also not sure whether the Canadian National Code (thus provincial codes) is changing.

Despite that, what the media typically does not say is that the total volume is not changing. In other words, the taller you go the smaller they area of the building. If you multiply the area of the average floor by the number of storeys, the total gross floor area can never exceed 7,200 square metres. That is the way it has been for buildings up to four storeys.

Build a 6 storey building, and the building floor area is 1,200 m2.

Build a 4 storey, it is 1,800m2

Build a 2 storey, it is 3,600m2.

Thus, you can build a 2 storey, or even 3 storey town house development connected as one building, no wasted central corridor and common stairs, elevator etc. without sprinklers and get something like 60 1,200sf units from it.

Build it 4 storeys high and you get about 50 units the same size from it due to common area losses. Build it 6 storeys high, you get the same 50 units, but the building now has to be sprinklered and has to have non combustible material on the outside face.

http://www.housing.gov.bc.ca/building/wood_frame/6storey_form.html

This blog gives you an insight of the dangers associated with 6 storey, unproven, wood frame buildings. There is more than fire safety to consider.
http://johngrasty.ca/?p=37
“How are the same people that can’t build a 4-storey building right, possibly going to achieve a defect-free and safe 6-storey building?”
“The 2-5-10 warranty insurance excludes coverage for settling of 3 and 4 storey buildings and provides consumers little protection as it exists, requiring homeowner to deal with issues by their own means. If we start building 6-storey, effectively adding 50%, with so much settling (wood shrinking) already being experienced, it seems that we could be on the brink of yet another building industry faux pas”

In a country the size of Canada it's utterly ridiculous to pack people like sardines into condominiums, just to try to concentrate more of them into an area where there are already too many people living. The 'solution to pollution is dilution'. Not increased concentration carried on for the whole perverted purpose of 'saving money'. It will be found to be an entirely false saving in any realistic sense of the word. 'Growth' should be encouraged where growth is needed. In smaller communities, that are still liveable, and can easily be kept so. With single family homes, and a back yard for a garden and a place for the kids to play in.

"The 'solution to pollution is dilution'"

The last time I checked a gallon of raw sewage dumped into the ocean from Victoria still equals 1 gallon of S#@t.