MACKENZIE, BC. -  Concerned citizens in Mackenzie, BC, are organizing a “Save Our Community Rally” for Friday, May 23. The rally will coincide with the provincial government’s Forestry Roundtable, which will be meeting in Mackenzie on that day.

 

Over the last year, the town of 5,000 people has been hit with massive layoffs and shutdowns in the forest industry that have resulted in an astronomically high unemployment rate, plunging house prices, and a depressed economy.

 

Nora Wilkins, a laid-off sawmill worker and an organizer for the rally, says the community has reached “a crisis situation” and the community and the region of the North as a whole “needs a plan to deal with the immediate problems of shutdowns and layoffs, as well as long term solutions that will provide a future for the hardworking families who live here.“

 

Wilkins points out that in the course of its 40-year existence, Mackenzie and surrounding region has been an “economic powerhouse” and has contributed a huge amount to government revenues through stumpage fees, taxes, and royalty payments, as well as to corporate profits. 

 

“If towns like Mackenzie, Fort St. James, Chetwynd and others go down,” she says, “it is like taking the heart out of the provincial economy.” In her view, the federal and provincial governments and the big forest companies “need to reinvest in our region, and in a big way – not just a sprinkle here or there.”

 

One of the purposes of the rally, according to Roxanne Barton, another organizer for the rally who has recently lost her job as a chip hauler for a local trucking company, “is to get people from northern communities working together to support forest policies that work for the North.” 

 

To this end, the Mackenzie organizers are inviting people from other communities to attend the rally. “An injury to one community,” says Barton, “is an injury to all communities. We need to stand together during this very tough period.” 

 

Organizers believe that working together, northerners can save their communities. In that spirit, the Mackenzie rally will be non-partisan and welcomes people from all political persuasions and sectors of the community. Representatives from both government and opposition political parties are being invited to attend, as are speakers from business, labour and the professions, as well as other communities in the region. 

 

The rally is set to start at 8:30 a.m. on Friday May 23rd at 200 Osilinka Drive in Mackenzie.