The only thing the provincial government can do for McKenzie now is help the worker's adjust. They COULD help out the forest industry by actually charging what the beetle kill logs are worth - the stumpage changes done lately sure haven't helped out - raising costs for industries already losing money is not the way to help it survive.

I agree on the stumpage rates for bug kill Parrothead.
The wood is crap, worth far less than the good stuff, so the stumpage needs to be adjusted accordingly.
As far as I know,it hasn't been.
That in itself is not a solution, but it might take some pressure off for some companies.

Yeah, and now she is quitting because she doesn't want to be around when things come crashing down....she doesn't want to shoulder any of the blame.

Yup,get out before the boom is over and the bill for the Olympics comes in.
And hey,it's not like she needs the money!

"Our exports are now in a -4.1 % ."

???? would a negative export refer to an import??????

Right On Andyfreeze!! The corporations know when to say WHOA, Nova/Teck,Canfor,Abitibi etc. But not the government.Can you imagine this headline "2010 Cancelled-Government Broke"

'Corporations' have to GET their 'money' from somebody else, Ragtop, the same as you and I and all the rest of us do. But a 'community' organized as a Nation, (or even a Province, if we wanted to assume the power), is always 'self-financing'. It can create any amount of 'money' it wishes, and is limited only by the actual 'physical' capacity to do something it desires to do.

We were 'broke' for ten years during the Depression in the '30's, or so the politicians all told us. No 'money' to do anything. Yet when war was declared in 1939 against Germany, did the Minister of Finance rise in the Commons and tell us we couldn't fight it because we were 'broke'? In a pig's eye he did!

A couple of decades ago there was a terrific ice-storm that brought down power lines all over Ontario and Quebec. At the time Mulroney was PM and Michael Wilson was Federal finance minister. And our National Debt was over $ 600 billion and rising, and Preston Manning was telling us if it continued to grow we'd be 'broke'.

But did that stop the 'government' from getting the power lines back up, and the juice back on to those that needed it? It cost over half a billion to do it, but nobody said it "couldn't be done, because we can't afford it", did they?

What determined what could be done was the availablity of the men and materials to do the job. "Money" didn't enter into the equation at all ~ people were freezing in the dark, industries were shut down, cows couldn't be milked, etc. etc. And what we needed to do was done as quickly as it could possibly be done. And afterwards, did we declare 'bankruptcy'? We did NOT.

Now we're said to have 'paid down our National Debt', and are continuing to do so. Same, supposedly as we're doing with our Provincial Debt. But look at the RISE in OVERALL indebtedness over the same period these 'repayments' have been taking place. All that's really happening is these Debts are being transferred from the backs of the people 'collectively' to the backs of the people 'individually'. They're not being 'paid off' at all, nor could they be, for the 'money' to pay them currently can only come into existence as ANOTHER DEBT!

If the government cuts the stumpage we run right back into the 'duty' problem when the wood is shipped Stateside. The cut may be of help if the wood could be exported elsewhere, but 'where'? Who needs it that can afford to pay us for it? And HOW will that payment be effected?

If it's 'traded' for Chinese goods, say, those goods will likely further displace industries that make the same goods here. Or in the States. If we unemploy our own workers, or the American ones who might buy our lumber, how do they then buy that lumber?

So we really don't want to 'trade' it, 'goods' for 'goods' anyways. We want to SELL it. For 'money'.

Foreign 'credits' that can be converted into Canadian 'money'. But ask yourselves this :- Why do we have to 'import' some other country's 'money' to live? It's a complete farce, for we DON'T want THEIR 'goods, which is all THEIR 'money' is really good for in reality. We simply want their 'credit'to make up for a supposed shortage of same in our own economy. For if we can't buy ALL our own production with the 'money' paid out in the course of making it, how then can we buy its 'exchange' in some other country's production through export?

And if the other country is in the same boat we are, how can such a 'global' trade be of any mutual advantage whatsoever? We're all just sinking further and further into debt. Without ever asking, "WHO HOLDS THIS DEBT?" Wouldn't it make more sense to take a look at the role 'money' plays in international trade, and WHY ? We might just find out that we don't have to do a whole bunch of things we're currently convinced we have to do.

Do you suppose the folks in 604 down south have a clue to what is going on up here? I doubt it. Mention it to a shopper in Richmond and they will think you are from Mars. Probably due to the fact that they can't correlate the connection regarding trees/employment and the many taxes that emanate from these activities and has a direct bearing on how they in 604 exist. Cutting down trees and the ignorance about us down there is enough to make one wonder. It does me.

Ok socredible...how much does the government pay you to attempt to make them look good?

I'd have a hard time making the current BC government 'look good', Andy. I think they're just about the most hopeless crowd we've ever elected. And they've had to overcome some pretty formidable competition from previous governments to win that 'honour'.

Ok socredible,I couldn't agree more...we will now cancel the contract put out on ya!
:-)

"Why do we have to 'import' some other country's 'money' to live?"

?????? I never heard we were importing anyone's money. We import goods and export goods. Those goods are assigned a value. Since our dollar has been low for a long time, our goods have been cheap and the goods from other countries have been expensive.

We have had years of trade surpluses. We have exported more value than we have imported. In an ideal world, I suppose if one were to export as much as one would import, one creates efficiencies.

About the only money I believe we "import" is the US currency we and others buy to prop up their dollar.

The other money we import is the money that tourists bring accross the border when they visit us and spend money here. The buy C$ to do that.

Of course, that is true for Canucks going the other way as well. In fact, when we were running trade deficits in the 1970s (I believe that is when it was), it was primarily due to our large tourism spending imbalance. We spent more out of the country than they spent coming into the country.

Wanna talk about a trade imbalance? Alberta versus the rest of Canada. Now there is a trade imbalance!!! And that is also one of the reasons why we have a trade surplus internationally, and it is also one of the key reasons why our dollar skyrocketed. You probably have heard that our currency is a petro currency, and will likely continue to be so for some time from the looks of it.

I find it strange that living right next door to the province that is causing this no one seems to be speaking about that.

Forestry is diddly squat ......

"Probably due to the fact that they can't correlate the connection regarding trees/employment and the many taxes that emanate from these activities and has a direct bearing on how they in 604 exist."

I think those who really believe that are on drugs and can't see very well or think very well ....... that notion was true at one time, but it is getting less so with the passing of every month.

comparing 2002 through to 2006 (inclusive), BC's non timber and non pulp exports increased from C$15.7 billion to C$21.3 billion.

At the same time the pulp and timber exports went from C$14.3 billion to C$13.5 billion with a high of $15.1 billion in 2004.

So, there was a total increase in exports of 15.8% over the 5 year period.

The forest products had a 5.5% decrease over that period.

The non forest products had a 35.2% increase over that period.

So, as I said, get with it. BC is changing. The lower mainlaind is not booming because of forestry, it is booming because it has found other lucrative market opportunities.

Get your collective heads out of the sand and start looking to see where this part of the province will fit into the BC of the 21st Century.

BTW, if anyone wants ot see the source of the stats, check them out here:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrkti/tdst/engdoc/tr_homep.html

Thought I'd check up on our friendly neighbours to the east while I had that site open.

Albert, in rough figures, moved from C$45+ billion exports to C$80 billion over the same period.

The oil portion of that moved from C$30 billion to C$60 billion over that period.

And they are concerned about the MPB heading their way ......

LOL .... give everyone in the forstry industry a pension and be done with it. Make sure there are some trees around when the oil runs out in 30 or so years ...

;-)

One more thing of note .... Canada exports just over a third as much as the USA which means that Canada exports 3 times as much as the USA per person.

Owl, if your country 'exports' 60% of its 'production', and 'imports' 40% of its 'consumption', we say it's running a "favourable" trade balance, and your Government pats itself on the back.

If your country's export/ import ratio rose to, say, 85% 'out' vs. 15% 'in', your Government would probably proudly proclaim we were in an economic nirvana.

But what if your country exported 100% of its production and imported nothing? Would your country be getting 'richer', or 'poorer'?

socredible

I think you have a major misunderstanding of exports. Nowhere does it say that 60% of a country's total production is exported. Or 100%......

Any elementary school child can tell you that if a country, and organization, a person, exports or sells 100% of what it produces and does not buy back something and does not produce something for its own use, that production will stop relatively quickly since death would happen rather quickly.

Why anyone who can actually use a computer and write would even think in those terms is difficult for me to fathom.

Put more plainly, your last statement is absolute nonsense and not worth even trying to explain. Please have someone else try that and then maybe rejoin the discussion.

It is nonsense indeed, Owl. But that's exactly what we're being fed by those who lead us. If you ship more in the way of real wealth out of your country than you receive back in the way of alternate real wealth in exchange for it, your country is becoming 'physically' poorer by the amount of the difference, is it not? Or are you under the delusion that little scraps of paper with a 'monetary' symbol on them issued by some foreign country, or even our own, is 'real wealth'?

International trade is supposed to be an 'exchange' of relative surpluses. That's really the only way it makes any sense. As a 'barter' system. Our 'stuff' for their 'stuff'.

There is really no other purpose to 'production' than 'consumption'. We 'produce' to 'consume' ourselves, or to 'export' that part of our overall production that is surplus to us in exchange for some other country's surplus production that we'd rather 'consume'instead. Trade this way makes perfect sense, and is of mutual benefit to the transacting parties.

Now if that's so, and I don't see how even you could contest that it is not so, when we bring 'money' into the equation should we not then be able to BUY ALL OUR OWN PRODUCTION WITH THE INCOMES THAT ARE PAID OUT IN THE COURSE OF MAKING IT?

Not that we'd want to, of course, but if we AREN'T ABLE TO, how then are we going to buy the 'exchange' of that 'production' that enters this country as 'imports'?

Don't get yourself confused thinking about the fact that coffee or bananas or Sanyo tv sets might be produced 'cheaper' where they're grown, or made, than they are here. For that may well be so, but really has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

If we haven't distributed enough in overall incomes to buy ALL our own production at the 'costs' allocated against it in any same time period, we have only two ways we can get enough 'incomes' to buy ALL of it, or its exchange through foreign trade.

One is to go ever deeper into debt. Which we're doing. The other is to 'import' some other country's money, really its 'credit'. Which we're engaged in an ever greater frenzy to try to do, and which will eventually lead us straight into another war.

Tell you what. We will produce only as many 2 by whatever lumber and panelboards and kraft and paper as we can consime ourselves.

Then we stop.

MPB epidemic ain't nothin' to compare to it.

Of course, the best part of that would be that PG would not have grpwn to the extent it has and we would be a community more the size of Williams Lake, if that.

So, are you suggesting that government restrict the amopunt of good we can produce based on what we consume and give special quotas to companies to produce more goods for export as only the government determines?

BTW, how far will you take this? Will you stop at the international trade? If so why? What works internationally to the benefit of the country would surely work nationally to benefit the region - province, regional district/county, municipality.

I love the notion of City States which would tax incoming goods from outside the city.

;-)

No, Owl, it's not really a question of 'restriction' or 'quotas' at all. It is a question of establishing and maintaining a correct nexus between 'money' and 'price values' of goods represented in 'money'. Whether they are goods produced domestically, or imports from some other credit area exchanged for our production.

The whole purpose of any 'economic' activity is to produce and deliver goods and services to Consumers as, when, and where required. Every good that comes onto the market has a 'price' attached to it. That 'price' is made up of 'costs' being impressed through to the point of final sale.

And the theory is that there is supposed to be an equivalent amount of 'money' in the hands of the consuming public, that was paid out as 'incomes'to them over the course of making those goods that can then fully liquidate those 'prices', as the goods are sold into final consumption.

If there isn't, the 'bank loans' which created the 'money' that enabled Firms to produce cannot be totally amortized. And 'debt', and 'debt charges', begin to accumulate, and are themselves 'costed' into future production.

Currently, there is a correctable 'flaw' in the way accounting conventions apply in the macro-economic sense, (to the economy as a whole), in relation to total purchasing power that is actually distributed as 'incomes', and total 'costs' which are made up of sums increasingly 'allocated'into 'prices'.

As 'capital costs' are increasingly displacing 'labor costs' with ongoing mechanization and technological advancement, a greater percentage of 'costs' flowing through into 'prices' are charges that don't represent any actual 'distribution' of purchasing power to Consumers at all in any same cycle of production.

These are charges mostly for 'capital depreciation', (the wearing out, or obsolescence of plant and equipment). They are charged to the Public, as is entirely right and proper from the standpoint of accountancy as it applies to each individual Firm. The only thing is, the Public doesn't have the 'money' to pay them.

Currently, it can only get that money as another 'debt', since virtually ALL money is currently created as 'debt'. Or, as I said previously, by 'importing' some other country's 'credit'.

The whole system is completely unsustainable. It forces us to engage in endless 'growth'and 'expansion', even though the only reason for that 'growth' is to distribute 'incomes' that might be applied to more fully liquidate current 'prices' for consumables we need or desire now. And it forces us to try to export more goods than we'd normally need to to try to gain foreign credits convertible into Canadian dollars. It leads to a constant 'inflation' of consumer prices, increased corporate concentation into ever larger production units, (most of which have only a 'paper' increase in 'efficiency' ~ oftentimes smaller production units are far more genuinely efficient), a rise in unrepayable debt, leading in itself to occassional severe 'write-downs' and bankruptcies, as we're seeing now.

Internationally, the frenzied quest for 'markets', for someplace to 'dump' our surpluses, are the main friction that leads straight to military war.

The 'problem' is entirely correctable by some simple changes in National accountancy. Such changes need not restrict our 'exports' if it is indeed in our best interests to enter world markets as a 'free' seller, rather than at present, as a 'forced' one.