Category Archives: Community diversification

Policy – September 2015 Encouraging use of wood residue https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2015FLNR0285-001530
MFLNRO announces a new fibre action plan to increase use of wood residue.

Building the value-added sector

BC is facing a declining timber supply, closure of more primary wood product mills, economic impacts to rural communities and forest sector job losses.  Growing the Secondary Wood Manufacturing Sector provides an opportunity to more fully utilize the available fibre and reduce or eliminate these impacts.

Building through clusters  describes an opportunity to increase community diversification, move toward full utilization of wood fibre, create jobs, decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase provincial and local government revenues.  We know how to do this and don’t need studies, just action.  Is the Government and the Forest Sector up to the challenge of working for an integrated, viable and sustainable BC primary and secondary wood sector?

NDP forestry election plan

The NDP forestry plan was just announced.  It includes an emphasis on increasing value-added manufacturing which is consistent with the recommendation in the HFHC Update report.  However, the Plan is short on details and has the potential to be superficial just like the BC Liberals actions since 2013 on this topic.  The NDP needs to be pushed for details related to implementing the Plan.  BC Liberal response has been “we are already doing this” but as per the HFHC analysis there has not been any substantial actions to address the issue.  Political parties need to provide details to get support comfort in expecting significant advancement on community diversification and economic development.

Banning log exports not a top priority

Bill Bourgeois Banning log exports opinion

The topic of banning log exports is increasing in popularity again.  Even if more logs were available to the secondary wood manufactures (value-added producers) it would not necessarily result in an increase in their products.  Not all remanufacturers are limited by timber/fibre supply.  However, those who are need a long-term fibre supply at a competitive cost.  There are barriers are certainty of timber/fibre supply and a desirable investment climate.

Kitimat Mayor encourages value-added

The Kitimat Mayor is encouraging Canada through an open letter to Governments and Canadians (kitimat-mayor-an-open-letter-to-canada) to increase value added manuracturing. The forest sector in identified as one of the natural resource industries being challenged to take action. Increasing value-added or secondary wood manufacturing  then BC is not new. Actions have been taken for over several decades on this issue with limited success.  The most recent is the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations’  mflnro-competiveness-agenda and companion value-added-sector-action-plan. Both of these documents address issues related to markets and other support services but they do not mention the major factor of certainty of wood supply which has been identified as a major barrier for many manufacturers.  The MFLNRO Fibre Working Group is supposed to be working on this through creating regulations to encourage “business to business” opportunities.  However, it is yet to be shown this approach will work when there is a disparity of interest and control between the parties.  Hopefully, this will be resolved but until then, the identified priority issue of communities to diversify their local forest sector will be limited at best.