Peter Ewart:- "During this difficult period of time, forestry based communities need more, not less, reinvestment by big government and by the big forest companies, and not just a haphazard “sprinkle” here and there that doesn’t add up to much."

This is an excellent article, Peter, the future of our smaller communities should be of concern to us all.

But what the people of Mackenzie and other like situated communities need right now are "incomes". Ones sufficient to meet their ongoing costs of living, without adding to a debt load many are already struggling to get, or keep, clear of.

Simply shifting that debt off the backs of 'persons' to the books of 'corporations' or 'government' by expanding it simply isn't going to cut it, however.

It's a 'quick fix' that'll morph into a far larger future problem ~ for no matter who it's assigned to, the debt still must be paid. And we've just made it larger, and more difficult to pay.

In the final analysis, we'll find that it's only the 'persons' ~ all the people who make up those communities, and every other community, as 'individuals', who'll have to pay it. Will they be able to? And what will happen then to the physical plant of all that 're-investment', when they find they can't? Isn't it time to stop "buying time", and find a permanent solution to what's going to be an ever expanding and ever recurring problem?

The real question here is, do we all have to engage endlessly in what might just as easily be described as "digging holes, and then filling them in again" first, no matter how useless such an exercise may be from any 'economic' perspective, just to provide a 'moral' excuse for paying someone an 'income'?

Or can we 'change the bookkeeping', as it relates to PRICES and INCOMES, and the connection of those two to 'money' itself?
To make that 'bookkeeping' reflect 'reality', as it's supposed to. Rather than pervert it, and prevent people from becoming increasingly slaves to a maze of 'figures'.

Socredit, your final analysis is wrong with a negative tone.

The problem with Mackenzie is not the pine beetle, it is not that the mills there on not as competitive as anywhere, it is not that they don't have the best fiber base in the world, and it is not that they can't be the last man standing in any market downturn if but a few important things...

#1) The BC liberal government abandoned communities like Mackenzie when they allowed forest tenures to move trees to central plants with no restrictions. This is probably the biggest factor preventing future growth in those communities.

#2) The BC liberal government sold BC Rail so as to make a quick dollar, and facilitate the closing of the Sea-to-Sky highway for a 2-week party paid for by the tax dollars for the mills in Mackenzie. The $800 million dollar highway to the ski hill could never have gone through if use of the railway bed wasn't part of the final plan and CN knowing this and knowing they where the optional route for any Mackenzie goods to market pressed full court for the privatization of BC Rail for a song.

The BC Rail sale hurts Mackenzie primarily because once CN Rail took over rail service; the mills in Mackenzie could not get product to market with a deterioration in service due to a lack of car availability, and thus a just in time industrial operation was faced with weeks of inventory back-ups that cut into cash flow and competitive turn over times. Dollar crunchers from far away places interpreted this as an inefficiency and thus a potential cut in a down cycle for the markets.

Between the BC liberal government forest tenure and the BC liberal government privatization of the BC Rail economic life line the town of Mackenzie was marked for death (pulp mills, saw mills, finger joiners... everything). The BC liberal government will just get 80xtimes as much new voting power (after redistribution) in the Lower Mainland anyways (where policy really counts).

The only real solution is for an independent province of Northern BC with its capital in a town like Mackenzie, so we can have policies from a government that respects the value of prosperous, efficient, hard working, and profitable communities like Mackenzie.....

Otherwise we probably will do just what the Vancouver economists are calling for and we'll all move away to find employment elsewhere, while the government closes our communities in budget cuts... all without a wimper from the sheeple because they will have already been forced out long before to make ends meet.

Time Will Tell

Eagle, I have no doubt whatsoever that the policies of the Campbell government have negatively impacted Mackenzie just as you say. They have. And other northern small towns, in a lesser or greater degree, as well.

Other towns and regions throughout the WHOLE of British Columbia, not just the north, have been hurt by them, too.

And even Vancouver, and the lower mainland region, are going to find out very soon that the 'prosperity' that's supposed to be making BC "number one" again is really no more than thinly disguised 'inflation'.

Admittedly, it seems that the the "chickens haven't come home to roost" down there yet like they have elsewhere, but shortly they will.

We would really gain nothing by subdividing a 'country', (which BC is ~ a 'nation' every bit the same way Quebec is), just because we currently have a twit at the top propped up by a greedy gang of fawning sychophants in the most historically corrupt political Party to ever hold office.

Lets work towards getting rid of them. Not in making it easier for them to 'divide and conquer' by doing their dirty work for them.

Why I say this is because, in my view, British Columbia, as it is, is potentially nearer to internal 'self-sufficiency' economically than all the other Provinces, and even most recognized 'countries' in our world today.

Don't ever overlook the signifigance of that FACT. It is of vital importance if we are to ever fully achieve the physical potential that is OURS as a sovereign and prosperous people again.

But, having said that, I don't think that what you've said was exactly what Peter was getting at in his article. At least in the small piece of it I commented on.

He, if I understand him correctly, is calling for 're-investment' by 'governments' and 'corporations'with the express purpose of "making work". Whether that "work" is in any ways sensible from an "economic" standpoint or not.

This is, in my view, a failed prescription. It was tried in other times, in other places. By those as seemingly different as FDR and Adolph Hitler. It is simply, at best, deferring a problem. Which will come back again with a vengence.

We do NOT have to "make work" for people who are currently un-employed to provide some 'moral' excuse to pay them an INCOME.


We have, reposing in the Employmnmet Insurance fund multi-billions of dollars collected off all employees, and to the ratio of 1.4 to 1 also even more so off their employers.

The 'cost' of these deductions has ALREADY been charged into consumer prices of everything we buy, or will buy. It, in other words, belongs to those who have paid it.

Now that they need it, pay it back to them. We don't have to make them 'work' again to get it. It's already theirs.

Doing this allows "consumer demand", not some government or corporate "make work project", to become as it always should be ~ the origin of all economic activity. That "consumer demand" is what will save and restore your hard hit communities, and keep them going until the current crisis is over.

Just curious, but don't the punitive Softwood Agreement, the beetle epidemic, the collapse of the US housing construction market, the US mortgage meltdown, the incredible increases in the price of crude oil, and so forth have something to do with the difficulties that the forest industry is going through right now?

Whenever your main market can't afford to buy new houses, not even the new ones that are still sitting unsold and empty and when there are new relentless efforts by the American Congress (see today's Citizen paper) to pass new laws which will restrict and penalize Canadian lumber exports to the States even more - all the political rants and finger pointing here in B.C. aren't going to change U.S. and global circumstances which are not in the hands of Canadians to control.

The IE fund has enough surplus money in it to tide these B.C. workers over for a long time - until this cyclical downturn is over.

If we can spend billions on military hardware, a war in Afghanistan and the rebuilding of the war ravaged infrastructure in Afghanistan we certainly must not object to supporting our own people right here, especially since the B.C. forest industry (everybody is agreed on that) definitely has a good future and will easily repay assistance that must be given now!

Let's learn a lesson from this: These so-called *Free* Trade Agreements are not free at all! The biggest bully on the block wouldn't sign on if the deck wasn't stacked in his favour from the very first paragraph!

I forgot to mention that B.C. is not the only province in Canada where the forest industries are going through really rough times!

Thanks, diplomat, I completely agree with you. If the world at the moment does not need the 'production' of the people of Mackenzie, then why should anyone in it object to their continued 'consumption'?

If it needed their 'production' to enable them to have continued 'consumption', they wouldn't be unemployed.

Obviously, the fact that no one else seems to be adversely physically
effected by them continuing to 'eat', be 'clothed', and 'sheltered' without doing further 'work' first, must mean there's certainly food, clothing and shelter available already, and the only thing lacking is the 'money'to distribute it.

The money in the EI fund was deducted from the gross pay of every employee in insurable employment in Canada. For every dollar taken from the employee, his employer must pay an additional dollar and forty cents.

These charges are COSTS to the business, since it's the employee's GROSS pay, plus the additional matching dollar forty for every buck that goes to EI, that will have to be charged into the final price of product, and recovered from the PUBLIC in that price, if the business is going to stay in business.

Even if that product is exported, what we receive back in the way of an imported product in exchange for it won't change the fact that it'll be Canadian consumers who'll have to pay these costs in the final analysis. How ARE they going to pay them when the 'money' has been removed from them and now reposes out of reach in an EI fund? Someone, somewhere has to go further into debt. Since the only place additional money can come from is a Bank, and they only 'lend', never 'give'away their 'product'.