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Community Roots May Be Shallow

By 250 News

by Ben Meisner

“Our Roots are in the Community” may have a nice ring to it, but for all intents and purpose it is a spin by Canfor to try and convince the people of Northern BC that they have them at heart. 

Last week when the company announced it had purchased the US company that has been a leader in the US lumber coalition, it became apparent that Canfor was about to hedge its bets in the lumber industry of the world. 

New South has made its money importing European lumber and then re-selling it to either the US market or to China and Japan.  Buy your lumber in Russia and re-sell without fear of duties. 

Canfor hasn’t said it will bail out of the coalition. In fact, last week, the company said it would look at its membership after it has completed the deal with the US interests. 

So when the beetle has had its run and Canfor has exhausted its resources in this region, will it still be saying Our Roots are in the community?  Or by that time, will Canfor have written down the assets and used its leverage in shoring up the US interests, move into the Russian and Chinese markets and close their operations in this part of the country?

There is another famous example where a company said it only had the interest of the people in the western part of this province.  Alcan tried to whiz the people into believing it wanted to expand its aluminum operations, when in fact  the sale of cheap power was really what it had in mind. The company now has world wide operations, the town of Kitimat lies in shambles. The people of the province, who had been promised employment forever, now have a company selling the power with a skeleton employment role and the citizens face a community reduced to bare bones. They also were told the company had them at heart. That may explain why the citizens of the community found it necessary to band together to seek court action to prevent the collapse of that city.

Lip service, is just that. 


I’m Meisner and that is one man's opinion.

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