A Virus in Forestry Manufacturing

By Peter Ewart

It is strange what gets priority for government and big media.  On CTV national news the other night, the lead story was about some American citizen with a drug resistant case of tuberculosis who had flown on a plane that touched down in Canada briefly.  Possibly several hundred people were exposed, or so the story alleged.  But later in the newscast it comes out that the likelihood of anyone being infected was low, and there really wasn’t a lot in the story to justify the attention it got.  Nonetheless, it was the lead item in the national news.

On the other hand, there is another virus that has been rapidly spreading over the last five years and that has been much more devastating to individuals and communities.  But it hasn’t got the attention it should from the provincial and federal governments, as well as big media.  And this is the virus that is destroying manufacturing capacity, jobs and communities throughout the country.

Over the last five years, the manufacturing sector in Canada has lost 250,000 jobs in forestry, auto, food processing, and other industries, with 52,000 jobs lost since January.  Foreclosure of homes, cuts in wages, marriage breakups and other social problems, as well as a slash in community services and infrastructure.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of stories of personal tragedy behind these figures.

The forestry sector in Canada has been especially hard hit.  Mills are being knocked down like ten pins in Northern Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere.  And now it is BC’s turn.  Forestry towns in the province like Port Alberni, Terrace and others, are already suffering the effects.  In our region, we are seeing just the beginning with the indefinite closure of Canfor’s Mackenzie operations, the bankruptcy of Gateway Forest Products, and a number of temporary shutdowns.  

There are those in government who say that the current challenges to the forest industry are part of the “cyclical nature” of the industry.  For the last several years, instead of a sense of urgency and bold plans to address the crisis that is decimating our manufacturing workforce, they have put forward some stop-gap measures, and a kind of mindless boosterism that all will be “well” in the end. 

It is true that the a resource-based industry like forestry is given to ups and downs, and sometimes dramatic swings.  But it is a mistake to look at the current crisis simply in that light.  To do so, is to overlook the extent and magnitude of the gathering problem for our region.  Indeed, forest industry analysts, like Craig Campbell of PricewaterhouseCoopers, are predicting a “transformation of historic proportions … just over the horizon” for the provincial forest industry.  He notes that “the outlook is very bleak for the Interior sawmilling industry … dozens of sawmills are going to close”  (Vancouver Sun, May 11).

A number of factors are feeding this crisis, including the pine beetle devastation of millions of hectares of forest and the difficulty in processing the dead trees, the plummeting housing market in the U.S., the rise of the Canadian dollar vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, the nosedive in lumber prices, competition from other parts of the world, the lack of diversification in the BC Forest industry, and the simple fact that there is a glut of product in the market. 

Still another is the rapid increase of concentration and monopolization in the sector, a trend which various politicians and pundits in big media are acting as cheerleaders for.  The results are fewer and bigger mills, and a slashed workforce.  It also means that if one of these big companies gets into trouble, besides taking down an entire community, it could also take down an entire region as did Skeena Cellulose in Terrace / Prince Rupert.

Bioenergy is being touted as a saviour for the forest industry, and it does show some promise.  But we must be realistic.  How many jobs will burning beetle wood or manufacturing pellets for the European market provide?

We are facing the destruction of a substantial part of our region’s economic and social fabric, and the possible extinction of some communities.  But you wouldn’t know it from our government representatives who remain transfixed with projects such as the 2010 Olympics extravaganza and the construction of the Vancouver Convention Centre (the building of which, incidentally, will cost hundreds of millions more than the entire 5 year budget allocated for the pine beetle problem that is ravaging the Interior of the province).

What will it take to turn this situation around?  Seven or eight years ago, the people of Prince George and region came together in a massive rally to demand that the previous provincial government make the health crisis in our region a priority.

Today, we need to shake the ground in an even bigger way if we are to save our forestry manufacturing industry and our communities.  The one thing we do have is people power.  We should use it.

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