congratulations to Pat Bell . I know this has been your vision, The years of consistant and hard work have paid off. I see nothing but positive in this area for years to come from your efforts.

"encouraged B.C. to collaborate on a a six-storey,wood-frame apartment building"

Too bad they weren't around to encourage BC to use wood when building the new school.

This is great news, unfortunately China is located next to an enourmous and untapped source of lumber in Russia. Inevitably they will become lumber producers. Its just a matter of time before we see alot more competition in that market after we have spent alot of time and resources to develop it.

Still great news though in the here and now.

Schools are on top of the list of buildings that the CODE dictates you must use steel stud construction. The CODE is the law, no matter what Pat Bell or we want. End of story.

Lumber sales to China have kept some mills running which is a bonus, but how much money did they actually make. Most if not all mills lost money in 2009.

Export lumber to China surpassed exports to Japan for the first time ever in 2009. Thats the so called upside. The downside is that even though we exported less lumber to Japan we made $200 Million dollars more on the Japan lumber than we did on the Chinese sales.

So its obviouse that we are selling huge volumes of low grade lumber at low prices.

Once the markets picks up and the prices rise, I suggest you will see huge increases in exports to the USA, and Japan, and a decrease in sales to China.

Unless of course China wants to pay the higher price, which is doubtful.

wow !!!! good news !! man have seen all the jobs ? awesome ! now what colour is the sky in your world ?