The Glass Isn't Half Full Or Half Empty... It is Getting Drained

By Ben Meisner

If you have listened to the politicians in recent months they all talk about the glass being half full not half empty or something to that effect.The reality is that most of them are shielded from the real world.

The shoe is dropping and so far all we are hearing is that the economy of the region is “diversifying”.

Talk to the 300 people who are about to hit the bricks from Canfor mills in Prince George and Mackenzie.  Talk to the 150 people who have already lost their jobs in Mackenzie. Or you may wish to talk to the people who are seeing down time at any one of a dozen mills in the region , or the workers in Ft St James who don’t even know if they ever will be back to work in that community.

Are we doom and gloom? 

Well let me add yet another dimension. What about those who are contractors for the companies such as Canfor who have curtailed production, what about those workers who we rarely hear about? , When 300 workers get laid off it just doesn’t stop there, this is fall out ,major fall out, we just can’t seem to get our head around that.

Now lets look at the events of the past six months to see if we are lining up for a perfect storm.

The Oil patch takes a  major nose dive and suddenly the economy of even places like Ft McMurray have ground to a halt.

The slow downs in the patch in Ft St John, Dawson Creek and Tumbler Ridge are just now making their way into the pocket books of people who formerly did business in the north. The bright spot has been Tumbler Ridge coal which continues to move.

But then can you remember back a month or so when Kemess Mine announced it would not go  ahead with its two billion dollars project, it went into the ash can and with it 400 jobs that pay on average $90,000 a year.

Then along came Galore Creek.  Just when we were saying the mining industry will carry us for the next few decades while the forest industry revives after a fatal blow from the mountain pine beetle, the project was put on hold. That was another two and half billion dollar project .

What happened the following week, the government announced  the hydro power extension along highway 37 into the area north to the Bell Irving River is on hold. Galore was in for 158 million of the total 400 million cost.

Then there is that ever pressing problem of the Mountain Pine beetle destroying 85% of the lodgepole pine in rural BC. along with a US housing market  that if it isn’t being called in a depression certainly should.

We may have a strong dollar that would normally, at the very least encourage people to take a cheap holiday.  A holiday is not uppermost in many people’s minds. As we get ready to enter 2008 the glass is getting quickly drained, but there are many out there who don’t want to admit it.

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

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