I know it doesn't sound like much but most of the logging contractors are desperate to find bodies. Some of these laid of folks would have mobile equipment expierience... some advice would be to start calling around PG Quesnel, Williams Lake and 100 Mile..... Good Luck...keep your head up and don't expect much from Government.

The tough part for many people is moving to new job out of the community you are comfortable with.
Awkward at first,but ya do what ya gotta do I guess.
Been there,done that, and realitysetsin is right..expect very little from our government!
They are too busy with the Olympics and pretending nothing is wrong.

Government? Why, what's the government got to do with it?

Oh, you mean the government should never have given the unions so much power they cooked their own goose.

Lol Yama, Are you sharing Harbinger's bat cave? You're eating too much guano.

Wouldn't really matter how much power the Unions, or the Companies have been given by the government. Neither one can ever really get ahead by by gouging the other.

If the Company isn't profitable the workers (and their Union, if they have one), won't be around long. For there's no point in staying in business if nothing's to be gained from it.

But if the workers don't have sufficient incomes to FULLY liquidate the Company's costs through buying its products, or the exchange of those products through export/import, how then is the Company going to be profitable?

Now how can labor incomes paid out over any given cycle of production, which in any business are only a PART of the OVERALL costs coming through into PRICES of that production, ever be expected to TOTALLY meet those PRICES? They can't be. It's a mathematical impossiblity.

If those prices aren't totally liquidated through sale of the company's products, the costs behind them are carried over into the next cycle of production. Do the same thing over and over, and the Company is soon completely unprofitable, and the workers no longer have a job or an income.

The problem can't be solved by decreasing worker wages, any more than it can be solved by increasing them.

A decrease means past costs can't be liquidated to even a greater degree than they already are unable to be.

While an increase simply flows through into future prices making them higher, and quickly negating the benefit of the increase to the recipient.

There is a solution, but don't look to any of those in this government, or those who'd like to replace them, for it. Neither even understand the problem, nor do they want to.

OK, I'll bite. What's the solution?

Thanks to the liberal goverment,no direction, allow lots of consolidation, shut down mills,Wrong...............If David Emerson negotiated a quota system for lumber shipments to the u.s.a., these mills would all be operating and prices would be atleast $300 to $350.00 mill. Why, because we are regulating volumes going to the u.s. dimension market. everybody gets to share , not just westfraser and canfor. You would still have Terrace Lbr,Stuart Lake,Tackama,Lytoon Lbr,Wecyo Ok Falls ,Woodex ,Valemount all running as they would be making money, volumes shipped to the u.s. would be limited by quota. It worked extremely well from 95-2003. Then we opened the flood gates,
This is the result.

Rich Coleman.. time to find another ministry and perhaps, a new donut shop.

:)

Not quite so simple anymore, loggerhead88. Thaks to our politicians of all party labels, we're in a Global economy now. If the prices rise due to our restricting the supply, we get lumber entering the States from places that we've never competed with before.

New Zealand is already shipping in both logs and lumber, the former to be milled in some interior Oregon mills, like the big one at Gilchrist, now owned by Canadian based Interfor. Modern mills, many as good as anything we've got of comparable size, which no longer have access to U S National Forest timber sales due to the Environmental lobby filing suit anytime one is put up.

Ohocho Lumber in Prineville, Oregon, already imports as much, or more, lumber into the States from Latvia as it cuts in its own subsidiary mill a few miles away at John Day.

Chile, Uruguay, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries have all sent product in, too. And are just waiting for the price to rise to send in ever more. The Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Finland, have already taken most of the market coastal BC once had for hemlock in Japan.

As I've said before, we're trying to address the wrong problem thinking we can still do as we've done in the past.

The solution is time. We are in the perfect storm of High dollar, duties, MPB and 45% less demand meaning low returns on the lumber. In time, this too shall pass.

Even if we didn't have global competition to contend with, a quota system won't really work long term. I think the same thing would happen in our forest industry that's happened in other industries where there are quotas.

Costs rise, profits fall, and small operators eventually get eaten by the big ones. And then the big ones by those bigger still. Who really want additional quota to try to achieve economies of scale in their existing operations, not to operate the smaller facilities they've bought along with it.

That's been the case in BC with milk, and on the Prairies with wheat. The milk quota was originally designed to give the guy with a small dairy farm, maybe 40 acres or so, and just enough cows that he could still milk himself, a chance to make a living.

But you don't see many of those 40 acre titpullers in business anymore. As their costs increased over time, they pretty nearly all sold their quota to the larger dairy farms, and got out of dairying. And that industry has morphed into a protected enclave of a priviledged few, while the price of milk the public pays is more than what it might otherwise be.

In other areas, too, it became more profitable for most to sell their quota than to continue to operate under it. That was certainly the case when quota used to be assigned on the timber supply, or input side, of our forest industry. And there's no reason to believe it would be any different on the lumber sales, or output side now, if we had it again.

The problem we need to find a solution to is to recognize we're really at cross-purposes if we think we can have both full employment along with ever more efficient production methods.

The two are completely incompatible. We have to decide which of the two we'd rather have. That's the very first thing, before any solution can be offered.

Personally, I don't think there's any question. More efficient production methods, when they truly are just that, are going to win out every time.

There is absolutely nothing to be said for having a gang of guys with chainsaws and axes and tapes and scale sticks, out limbing, measuring, topping, and scaling logs while dodging every incoming turn, working in -25 weather, when one guy on a modern processor can do all that from the heated, protected, comfort of that machine's cab.