"Dr. Fung says people shouldn’t expect any fast agreements, “We have to first obtain mutual understandings, especially when doing business with Asia, very often trust has to be established first. Without trust, business cases are very difficult to build.”

Didn't our esteemed former mayor make multiple trips to China to supposedly build up those relationships and trust Dr. Fung is talking about? I notice that everyone is careful not to get everyone's hopes up.

In any case, it sounds like the same old same old. Keep your expectations low.

Logistics .... the newest of meaningless buzzwords.

definition: handling an operation that involves providing labor and materials be supplied as needed.

So is someone trying to say that PG is getting logistics? Or is PG getting the transportation infrastructure in place which allows it to improve the movement of materials?

Now this good Doctor of something or other is saying we are going to use wood for the 2 units of oil energy that it takes to get 3 units of oil energy out of the tar sands. And, on top of that, it will make it the cleanest oil in the world.

Must be a snake oil salesman.

"One of the delegates is the Vice President of Cosco North America, the container shipping firm. He has been in Canada for a year, but this is his first visit to Prince George"

Hey, there is hope. He may realize the time it takes to get the shipment through the PG bottleneck and ask that CN build a rail bypass. That could finally mean the end of the railway yards on First Avenue.

No expectations. No disappointments. Now, just push down on yer Staples Easy button. I do.

Give them some credit for working on this effort to make P.G. and P.R. part of the global supply chain.

The ten companies which are sponsoring the forum are to be applauded as well.

Shouldn't we be upset if nobody did anything rather then when they are actively engaged in promoting our assets?

At least these people are trying to do something positive besides spending all their time bitching and nay saying like the majority of the posters on this site!Give it a rest and try to be part of the solution and not the problem!

These people are doing nothing. Who are they, John Gibson, newly arrived from Ontario. IPG Mcewen. City of Prince George high paid employee. Mayor Rodgers, newly elected, and Mr. Fung.

Canada has been participating in Global Marketing, and Global supply chains for years and years. In addition Pr Rupert and Vancouver have been ports for years and have been exporting products all over the world. Local companies etc;have been selling lumber, copper concentrates,inots, wheat, logs, etc; etc; to China, Japan, South East Asia, etc; etc; for years. Plus Pulp and Paper.

We have a National Railway that has been functioning in this area and across Canada for over 100 years. We have a major road network that connects Vancouver, Edmonton, Alaska, Pr Rupert, etc; for many, many years. In the sixties we had Ar Canada, and Canadian Pacific Air flying out of Prince George and providing us with some Air Cargo Business, and also allowed us to fly (with connections) anywhere in the World.

There might be some potential for some Air Cargo to come in or out of Prince George, however it is a remote ;possibility, because anything that comes here, would have to be sent somewhere else because there is not a market in North Central British Columbia for anything.

The huge Markets for Air Cargo are in the highly populated areas like California, Eastern USA (Chicago,Detroit, New York) etc; Why would you locate a distribution centre in the middle of nowhere to supply highly populated areas thousands of miles away. (You wouldnt)

Prince George has no competitive advantage flying from Pr George to South East Asia because we would have to fly into the Jet Stream, and would therefore have to reduce Cargo to allow for enough fuel to get to our destinations. This is a non starter for Cargo Carriers. By going through Anchorage they can eliminate this problem. Coming from South East Asia to Prince George is probably a little more competitive, however why would you stop in Prince George with your Cargo, when the bulk of it is going to the USA (You wouldnt).

We have been told before, and I will mention it again, that the Calgary Airport tried to get some business from South East Asia a number of years ago. They used the same sort of arguments that we are using, and it didnt go anywhere.

As for as shipping pellets to Alberta for the Oil Sands. What kind of a statement is that. Doesnt this dude know that Alberta has trees the same as BC. They could build the pellet plants in Alberta, say Grande Prairie, or Ft McMurray and send the pellets to the Oil Sands. Why on earth would they haul them all the way from Prince George???

Pacific Bio Energy ships the majority of their pellets to Europe. They have just bought a mill in Kitwanga or somewhere and are planning another plant and mill close to Bella Coola because they can't produce enough for the demand right now. They have secured foreign investors to get this done quick as possible.

The story I heard is that Canada wants just about as much as they ship to Europe so I guess that could be the tar sands?

Poppa wrote:
“At least these people are trying to do something positive besides spending all their time bitching and nay saying like the majority of the posters on this site!
Give it a rest and try to be part of the solution and not the problem!”

When it comes to solving problems or deciding on which way to set a direction there are various ways professionals use to do that. Most use a combination of several.

The process of designing something or developing something or improving something is normally one which is iterative. There are many ways to describe the process in detail, but generally it includes the key steps of
• Defining the objective/problem
• Analysing and researching the conditions – fact finding
• Synthesizing the findings into a functional product/service – idea creation
• Creating the details of the product/service – defining the solution
• Implementing the product/service – accepting the process results
• Assessing the product/service in operation
• Identifying improvements
• Implementing the improvements by applying the original process

At any time in the process the activity can be recycled through one or more a previous phases.

Boards of Directors also define objectives for their organizations and assess the operations of those organizations.

In order to be a productive member of the above types of teams, one has to understand the nature of critical thinking, that is thinking which is purposeful and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or arguments. Critical thinking does not involve prejudicial thinking. Nor does it involve supportive thinking for the mere sake of supporting. When there is support, it must be on the basis of independently formed and reflective judgment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
http://www.uie.com/articles/hunkering

Remember the story of “the Emperor has no clothes”. The consummate environment of the “yes men”. That kind of approach is absolutely useless, and actually downright dangerous, in the world of direction setting, problem solving, evaluation and continuous improvement.

Turning this dream of playing a bigger part in the international market place (I do not actually know whether that is the “dream”, since that “dream” has not been stated by the gentlemen in the picture) and whatever other dreams there may be is what I think can be referred to as a “wicked problem.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

From the link, a “wicked problem” is one that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.

These people have, because they are public people and need to show they are doing something, decided to step out of what is essentially a closed door decision making process and have thus opened themselves up to public scrutiny. The story was posted on a site which allows people to participate by providing their opinions. We can all tell the Emperors that they are dressed very nicely, while some may feel that they actually have no clothes.

In my view, we can either be part of the process and be encouraged to provide reasoned points of view without being summarily dismissed because they are perceived to be “negative” and unsupportive, or we can let the world be run by 3 year or 4 year term dictatorships. So far, I think I am still living in a semblance of a democracy and I am not about to tell the emperor that he has clothes when I feel he does not.

There is another part of the call by Poppa to be part of the solution I must comment on. Why people assume that just because one uses part of their leisure time to comment on here one does not participate in being part of the solution in other areas is beyond me. Three of the four people in the photo get paid for working on solutions for this community. I do not get paid for the work I do in the community to support it. The same as those who get paid, I get some who come up to me and appreciate what I do, others who tell me that I am wasting my time. I know what it is like to be criticized. But some of the criticism is valid and I use that to try to improve what I do. I never, however, say or even think that they are not supportive of the community. They might not support me or my organization’s point of view, but they are still part of the complex social system that makes up a community.

Poppa, as I often ask people who come here with words that are attacks on a person rather than their point of view, what do you think of the idea of cutting down trees in this province in order to create the energy to turn tar sands into oil, knowing that it takes the energy of two barrels of oil to create three barrels, an efficiency of 33%. Is this the best use for timber you can think of?

Or how about the notion that just because we are on a train track – which has been around here for 95 years – that we can produce goods which can be shipped from here other than those we have been traditionally shipping from here simply because they are grown here and we produce more than we can use ourselves. No one has ever closed the Vancouver port to us. No one has ever prevented us from shipping to Thunder Bay and sending products to Eastern North America or Europe and Africa via the seaway.

We are feeling the pain of having a single market we have been “trading” with – USA 70%+, having a major fall down in that market, as well as having a 40% reduction in standing timber to deal with for the next 50+ years.

In fact, if anyone would have thought the risk of that through some 30 or 40 years ago when we were painting ourselves into that corner, we would not have such a “wicked” problem these days.

Whew! Now that is more like it...Not really sure what all the above amounts to but it sounds stimulated, motivated and should be coming from a soapbox---or is this the soapbox?

Gus, very good analysis. Although I do have to study it more.
I do believe that some of the decisions made by city hall and other levels of government have been hasty and self serving.

Some? That's letting them off easy.

Some? That's letting them off easy.