A continued myopic discussion about forestry it looks like .....

Let's just open up the box a bit ... how about pharmaceuticals .... possible or not???? good or not????

Why in the world would a mature and established industry (pharmaceutical research and manufacturing) come to Prince George? Sorry, but other jurisdictions have that one covered very well.

This region is, and alway will be, a resource extraction one (wood fibre, base and precious metals, coal, natural gas, electrical energy, etc.)

The trick, I think, is to upsell the region as a supplier of higher value technology, equipment and human resources associated with THOSE industries...period.

Computer programmers, metallurgists, instrumentation and automation technicians and engineers- those are the people our colleges (and University) should be producing, I think.

That's the spirit lefty.

"This region is, and alway will be, a resource extraction one "

And therein lies the problem. We are full of people with such short sightedness. If we cannot look outside the box, or outside of Prince George, then we are doomed.

We will need to bring in outsiders with an understanding of how cities are formed and how the economy of cities changes over time if we do not have that expertise right here. Prince George is no different than others that go from one stage to another.

There is nothing wrong with what you suggest Jethro, and I am certainly one who often speaks about building on the strengths one has. However, the Swedes, Nowegians, Swiss, Germans etc have already got that market covered as well. And they didf when Japan got into it on an international scale and became a competitor as well.

So, what is really wrong??????

What was told to me by someone on the weekend who works at a higher level with seeking ecconomic opportunities and seeks out barriers and attempts to reduce or remove them wherever he can.

He is repeatedly told by high level individuals in Asia that Canadians are simply too nice. We generally do not know how to be aggressive in the business sense of the word.

We have to compete in existing markets, the same as other countries have done to get to where they are now, and do to keep themselves there, and others who are moving to their next stage in the marketplace are doing now.

Nothing will be handed to us on a silver platter when it comes to the world outside of resource extraction.

Bombardier competes world wide; Ontario is competitive in the North American automotive industry due to a trade agreement. But what car is a Canadian car? Whatever happend to the Avro Arrow? Many moved to Seattle; others moved to teach at Univeristies in the USA. What happend to our space industry? We have not done anything after the Canadarm that I am aware of. What happened to our communications industry?

There are small successes which were offshoots of those, but they are relatively small compared to what other countries have been able to muster once they reached the capacity we had in the knowledge base. We had too few, and still do, who knew the markeplace, saw products which were needed, were willing to develop them given the knowledge base, and send them off to market.

Our contintental partners to the immediate south were the world leaders in that without a doubt. But they have been, and continue to be, given a run for their money.

"High speed bullet train from Vancouver to Prince George"

How about an underground tunnel from Mexico? It is helping keep the US ecoomy going and they do not realize it.

I have said it before and will say it again and I hope I'm begining to sound like a broken record and the fact is we do not force our corporations to keep their profits for reinvestment in our country.

I notice that you mention Switzerland in your post Owl. They have the top economy in the world. They restrict profits to 15% to leave the country.

Lets hope the pine beetle epidemic will force us out of the box and start to develope our area like others are doing . That is the only hope we have if it dosent we will continue to be hughers of wood and carriers of water

Cheers