If Government is to grow a viable, diverse, and sustainable secondary wood manufacturing sector, a healthy investment climate must exist to encourage investors to operate in BC. Currently this level of certainty does not exist. To change the situation, Government would have to provide a clear and transparent policy and action plan focused on building a positive and healthy forest sector investment climate including:

• A fibre accessibility and pricing system that supports local/regional community wood manufacturing sector visions.
• A regional “cluster” system involving wood manufacturing facilities.
• Creation or expansion of small secondary wood manufacturing businesses that can efficiently and effectively utilize small volumes of timber or fibre while attracting wood manufacturing investors that produce products consistent with the local/regional fibre profile and aligned with a clear, consistent, and stable local/regional community vision.
• A sustainable program to develop, the necessary work force, markets, and incentives for non-traditional BC wood forest products.

If Government demonstrates a sound commitment to increasing secondary wood manufacturing by implementing these actions, this is possible. The commitment cannot be focused on politics in the implementation of an action plan. We have been here before and nothing changes. An Action Plan was produced in 2016 (https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/forestry/competitive-forest-industry/value_added_plan_sept_2016.pdf) but does not appear to have been implemented to an extent. This should be reviewed by the 2017 established Wood Secretariat (https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2017FLNR0076-001117) from the perspective of relativity in 2022.