Ironic that an NDP hack would suggest a little foresight is needed by our local politicians towards this problem. If memory serves me, it was those navel gazing hand-wringers who demonstated a complete lack of foresight about this when it was first discovered.
The lack of action by the NDP, so they could maintain their weekend-enviromentalist vote in the lower mainland, has to be the most damaging and irresposible move since the cod fishery was allowed to vanish. I certainly don't support very much of what our current council espouses, but I do not need to take morality lessons from the NDP.

These 'informed' comments are made by one from the same bunch of NDP diddlers who, for instance, justified building totally useless ferries at a cost of one billion dollars (including debt servicing charges)with the explanation that "after all 300 welders were kept fully employed for several years."

The things were eventually sold at scrap value with a loss of close to a billion to the taxpayers.

"It is time we got our head out of the sand, we are facing a very real problem."

Really? What a brave thing to say! Remember: The NDP goverment had its head buried in the sand for a whole entire agonizing decade while blissfully doing fulltime social-democratic conversion surgery on our society!

Result: Liberals 77 - NDP 2.

NDP credibility 0.

Cheers!

If we are only seven years from disaster for the local forest industry, should we really be wasting time arguing about the NDP's failure to stop the infestation? Ten years from now those same people will be blaming the Liberals for their failure to secure a new economy to replace the forest industry in the north.
More people need to be looking at this issue, determining how Prince George will survive when, six or seven years from now, forestry employment drops by at least 50 per cent.

Some of you may not be aware that Simpson was a founding member of the BC Liberals under Campbell. He was on the team which got him elected as leader. At the time he was a senior manager at Weldwood.

So, he is not necessarily the left-wing individual you may make him out to be but, as more an more people today are doing as parties scramble for the middle, he goes where he thinks he can be most effective.

The main thing is that he knows his forestry stuff. I have seen him in action with Rich Coleman. The two play off each other in venues outside of the Legislature.

If we do not wish to listen to Simpson because you have a mental block when it comes to the NDP, then so be it. I would say in this case we may do so at our peril.

I am quite familiar with whate he is talking about. I really do not care who says it, the information is basically there for the viewing and the outcome is virtually the same no matter what political stripe is looking at it.

Owl: "If we do not wish to listen to Simpson because you have a mental block when it comes to the NDP, then so be it. I would say in this case we may do so at our peril."

Yes, it all boils down to mental blocks.

Although the record speaks for itself.

There are already a very large number of government and industry experts who are actively working on short and long term scientific and economic solutions for the beetle kill reality, and even Kinsley and Zurowski ought to pay close attention (although I wish they would just stick to running the City as efficiently as possible).

Mr. Simpson is attempting to make political hay by insinuating that we "have our heads in the sand."

He knows that it is simply balderdash.

The word I have heard and have not said before, because it is damaging to our economy (I like to be a boaster), but truth be said we are approaching mill closures.

The mills I have heard will be closing in the next five years for sure are Polar in Bear Lake, PG sawmill, Clear Lake Sawmill, and Isle Pierre Sawmill in and around PG. These mills directly employ through the mills and in the harvesting end of things nearly 2000 employees. That is a potential lose of 10,000 jobs in PG alone.

Simpson is totaly correct when he says the two super mills in Vanderhoof and Houston will be taking on the majority of the fiber. Each of those mills has three times the capacity of the individual mills mentioned above and are situated perfectly for the fiber supply and are in the direction of future trading routes.

I also heard PG pulp will be closing its digester and working of the intercon digester costing 60+ jobs.

Thats why a container port and its spin off benefits are soooo important to PG's economic survival as well as tourism and the hope for value added industries.

Time Will Tell

PS Think of the damage to our tax base, and the fact we are at our credit limit with a bloated tax base at present with more mega projects on the horizon....

"The things were eventually sold at scrap value with a loss of close to a billion to the taxpayers."

To correct the facts. The ferries were not sold for scrap. They were given away for $3 million apiece to a company who now claims they are suitable for ferry use in BC waters and has asked for a license. Apparently under the NDP they were useless, but under the Liberals they are perfectly OK. Go figure.

Diplomat: >The things were eventually sold at scrap value<

Nobody said that they were sold for scrap!

They were sold at scrap VALUE(as stated in the original comment, as the value of aluminum goes.

>Apparently under the NDP they were useless, but under the Liberals they are perfectly OK. Go figure.<

More plots, more conspiracies worthy of the Twilight Zone!

Who took them out of service?

From the Web:

The ghost of NDP past mismanagement in British Columbia reared its ugly head earlier this week when the current Liberal administration of Premier Gordon Campbell saw the socialists' failed four hundred fifty-four million dollar fast ferries experiment go on the auction block and realise fewer than twenty million dollars...

An American-owned BC shipyard built them. According to the NDP, the three ferries would be built for two hundred ten million dollars. Glen Clark boasted that the ferries would come in on budget "even down to the toilet paper." All British Columbia knows that was a figment of the then-premier's imagination; the final tally was the aforementioned four hundred fifty-four million dollars. To that nearly half-billion bucks must be added the cost to maintain the vessels after they were pulled from service. Moorage was ten millions dollars and eight hundred thousand dollars went to PriceWaterHouseCoopers to sell them. The Richmond-based Ritchie Bros. conducted the actual auction. The company is known world-wide but this was its first go at auctioning off failed ferries. All in all, the taxpayers of British Columbia took a huge hit on Glen Clark's dream of building and operating 'FastCats,' .. ....Interestingly, of the nearly twenty million dollars garnered by the auction of the ferries, not all of it will see its way into the provincial coffers; the auction house will take its cut, at the moment an unknown amount. And who was the successful bidder; why no other than the American who built the ships in the first place.

The ferries were plagued with difficulties from the beginning: mechanical problems, if the ships sailed at their designed speed the wash set up caused havoc to the shoreline of Horseshoe Bay [and raised a ruckus from property owners whose properties lined the picturesque bay], operating cost was twenty-five per cent higher than the conventional ferries, the catamarans could not carry as many trucks and buses as conventional ferries, and they were uncomfortable. Passengers sat on hard seats that reminded one of early McDonald's Restaurant seating.

...in the end, the crossing time was reduced by a mere ten or so minutes; hardly worth the four hundred fifty-four million dollars.

...Ironically, Glen Clark announced the fast ferry fiasco on April Fool's Day seven years ago.

"There are already a very large number of government and industry experts who are actively working on short and long term scientific and economic solutions for the beetle kill reality"

Wishfull thinking! There are people working on it, to be sure. Most certainly not a "very large number". Much of the short term informnation is available and is not being acted on.

There are a "very large number" of local "coalitions" who are sucking money out of the system to have "the sky is falling" meetings in various communities and building "interpretive centres" in some cases to explain the situation to the general public.

The MPBE (Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic) is called the "Mountain Pork Barrel Epidemic" in at least one circle of my forest industry associations.

I have several times seen the modelling projections from various independent groups, and believe I have posted some of them here, if I recall correctly.

Canfor, for instance, has not been logging TFL 30 for the last two or so years since there is very little pine there. They are taking down the pine to the west of PG and feeding their mills with that. In the meantime they will likely be able to cut a larger amount on an annual basis once the usable beetle wood has been harvested. They actually had to approach the government with that. They simply took a chance and tried to do the reasonable thing. That might keep the mills going a bit longer for them but hardly of any consequence.

The government is not moving, whether NDP or Liberal or the Rhinocerous Party. As far as I am concerned, they are all the same. Bureaucracy driven.

At the same time, the licensees are harvesting all wood in mixed stands rather than selectively logging just for beetle kill. That is not the best way to go about it for buffering the impact on the economy. It is the best way to go about it to decrease costs. There are still trucks coming out of the woods with everything but pine on them. No one in government is doing anything to stop that. It does not take a rocket scientiest at UNBC or UBC or Forintek or in the MoF to figure out that that is not the thing to do if you wish to reduce the socio-economic impact on local communities.

One aspect which has been worked on is how long the wood is usable if left standing. That too is not rocket science. It basically depends on how dry the root ball and lower part of the tree is kept. Thus, to apply that to the field, you determine the areas which should be logged in the first 3 or so years, the areas which should then be logged in the next 3 or so years, and so on. No clear cutting, but selective patch harvesting and then returning to get the rest later.

To do that takes government intervention. No company is going to do that on their own.

The information is there. It is not being acted on. Simpson is on the money. What side of the house he is on is not the issue. In fact, when Coleman and Simpson are in the room together, I have heard them say as much. There is no reason why either of them would have to say that if it were not true.

The scrap value for each ferry was estimated by the Liberals to be about $20 million dollars. They were given away for $3 million each. That is NOT for scrap value. That is an example of shoveling tax money into the back pocket of friends.

Now the company wants to use them as ferries in BC waters. Why couldn't the Liberals do that instead of selling them? How have they now magically become usable?

From Wikipedia:

"After a change in the leadership, the new Premier of B.C. Ujjal Dosanjh placed the ferries up for sale. A subsequent election virtually eliminated the New Democratic Party from government, and Gordon Campbell of the BC Liberals auctioned off the Pacificat fleet on March 24, 2003 for $19.4 million ($6.5 million/vessel) to the Washington Marine Group. A final source of controversy, was that the same company had offered $60 million for the vessels prior to the auction."

"Apparently under the NDP they were useless, but under the Liberals they are perfectly OK."

???????

Does anyone here ever read for content?

If they were perfectly okay under the Liberals, why did they sell them?

Someone bought these things and is applying to use them.

Lets say someone had a single purpose van built to shuttle people to the airport from downtown and it cost him $100,000. Let's say that when he got it delivered he could not compete with another operator who used a standard van and was forced to go out of business.

You managed to buy the special van for $5,000. You now have a completely different set of operating costs than the previous onwner had, and even if it costs a bit more to operate the van due to fuel and maintenance, and even rider capacity, you have a much different chance of survival in the marketplace.

In the case of the cats, change the seats, put them on longer runs and on runs which have different wharf configurations such as Tsawwassen rather than Horeseshoe Bay to diminish the wake problem, and all of the sudden you may have suitable operating conditions.

As they say, time will tell.

;-)

My point in asking the question is simply that if they can be used safely in BC waters without the wake problems, why have they not been. Why sell them at firesale prices if they are indeed useful as ferries?

Selective logging in beetle infested areas leaving behing the good trees for logging at a later date, and logging those trees that will rot first, of course would be the sensible thing to do. Will this be done, or will the Government of the day continue to let forest companies clear cut everything in their path and moonscape the Interior. You tell me??

With millions of dead trees in the forests, one of the major problems that we will see, very quickly is that there will little if any **live** trees to soak up the Spring Runoff. This means that you will have excess water laying in pools in the forests, making it almost impossible to log until much later in the summer. In addition, you will have increased flooding throughout the area. I would think that under these circumstances the dead trees will be subject to dampness for longer periods of time and will begin to rot quickly.

There is absolutley no doubt that we have a serious problem here. What is our long term plan?? Who knows??

It appears that the Citys plan is to continue to borrow and spend as usual, running up the debt, even though we will be facing some had times in the near future. Even at this time we have trouble paying the bills for the maintenance and heating of all the public building in this town, and we have some hair brained idea to set up a co-gen plant and heat some of these building with hot water (Steam). Maybe we should heat them with all the hot air that comes out of City Hall.

In the next few years the City will go over the 100 Million dollar mark for our debt, not counting the money owed on the Terasen gas deal.

I defy anyone to find a City anywhere in Canada of similiar size that has anything close to this amount of debt.

When the hard times come, who will pay the debt. The cascading effect of 2000 less jobs will mean numerous business will close, etc. Our tax base will decrease, and we will be in big trouble.

To think otherwise is foolish.

Pal & Owl, your comments are always very informative.

I didn't know that Simpson is/was really a Liberal. But then, Dosanjh wasn't a real NDPer either. The lines are getting more and more blurred as politicians are simply looking out for their own personal gains and glory and make a mockery of the fact that some voters actually believed what they were saying on the campaign trail!

How many more of that kind are there in the Legislatures and the Parliament? Pathetic hucksters and turncoats who speak with a forked tongue?

Owl:" The government is not moving, whether NDP or Liberal or the Rhinocerous Party. As far as I am concerned, they are all the same. Bureaucracy driven."

Well, no wonder less and less voters show up at the polls, especially since the Rhinos packed it in.

This democracy gig sure is beginning to wear thin!

Diplomat are you suggesting there is something out there better than a democracy?

IMO politicians that cross the floor are not all bad. Sure the ones that do it for power are not good, but to do it out of principle is good in my books. IMO you should first and foremost vote for the person and then for the party. If you simply vote for a party than I would have to say it is a foolish thing and dangerous for democracy.

Ammonra, I fully agree with you regarding the Fast Cat give away. IMO it was a financial gift from the liberals that never should have been allowed to take place.

"With millions of dead trees in the forests, one of the major problems that we will see, very quickly is that there will little if any **live** trees to soak up the Spring Runoff."

Haha, thanks for the completely bullshit pseudo-science.

There are very few areas in the forest that are solely pine. In most cases around here, there's a mix of pine, spruce, balsam, birch, aspen, and Douglas fir, with actual species composition dependent on location. What's more, there are also shrubs and other similar plants to absorb this "pooling water".

Please don't spread disinformation about topics that you do not understand.

Re: Fat Ferries. Everything sells on aution day. You think someone got a deal? Start bidding.
Ever been to an auction? I went over to RB Auctions and watched the biding live.
Sometimes you get more, like when RB sold their property on Highway 16. Sometimes you get nothing, and that happens when the world doesn't want it or has no use for it.
People were shocked, but the buyer/bidders paid exactly what the maxium value was. Problem?

I'm sure the NDP are quite capable of making the business of auctions illegal so this can't happen in the future.
Go see Carole James, I'm sure she would like a bold new Ministry that establishes a minimum value of BC Products.
Hee Hee.

Chad:"Diplomat are you suggesting there is something out there better than a democracy?

No, I don't think there is. But you must admit that democracy has plenty of shortcomings as well.

Chad:"IMO politicians that cross the floor are not all bad... IMO you should first and foremost vote for the person and then for the party..."

Well, IMO if a candidate doesn't wish to be connected to a party (by running under its banner!) then she/he ought to simply run as an Independent!

Connecting oneself to a party by running as one of its candidates creates the potentially misleading impression that the candidate actually intends to support actively the aims and policies of that particular party while promising to oppose the aims and policies of the other parties which also would do the same, of course.

Crossing the floor IMO is sometimes the honourable thing to do if your party embarks on a new policy that you simply can't support. Even then the person should consider sitting as an Independent until the next election and by doing so try to represent his/her whole riding.

What Emerson did was,IMO simply accepting an invitation to get a powerful appointment.

Why the new PM could not find a suitable and qualified person amongst the 123 or so Conservative MPs is a source of continuing puzzlement to me.

In B.C. a governing party consisting entirely of Independent MLAs may be the best thing that could happen to us because of B.C.'s long running history of left vs. right and each calling the other unfit to govern.

Just to make sure we do not go off tangent here. Simpson did not cross any floor of parliament. He ran for the NDP and got elected as an NDP and is still an NDP.

Prior to running he was a member of the BC Liberals. Why he changed, I do not know.

Maybe he will cross the floor tomorrow, but I doubt it. He is of the opinion he can do more in opposition than he can on the government side of the house. Seeing him out there in this part of the country, one would think so. Simpson is in the media, Coleman is not. I suspect that changes when one looks at the Vancouver media and the Island media.

Canar. When you see miles and miles of dead pine trees all over the Central Interior and when you realize that all these trees used to soak up water, and they are no longer doing so, then common sense tells you that you will have a major problem with run-off. You can call it *BS* if you want, but you dont have to be a scientist to figure this one out. Put your head back in the sand and carry on.

Hey CANAR...
You had better get in a plane and go look at the almost 100% pine forest out there.

"Prior to running he was a member of the BC Liberals. Why he changed, I do not know.

Maybe he will cross the floor tomorrow, but I doubt it. He is of the opinion he can do more in opposition than he can on the government side of the house. Seeing him out there in this part of the country, one would think so. Simpson is in the media, Coleman is not. I suspect that changes when one looks at the Vancouver media and the Island media."

No wonder Simpson left the BC Liberals! Simpson likes it in the cheap seats, where he can whine and bellyache, do nothing, have no responsibility, take no responsibity and be lazy.
No wonder Simpson bailed out of the BC Liberal Party!