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BC Libs Exaggerate Forest Jobs Growth, Says NDP

Premier more than doubles actual amount; mill closings nearly equal openings: MLA Macdonald.

By Andrew MacLeod, 7 Nov 2011, TheTyee.ca

NormMcDonald

NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald, MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke.

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There have been 27 mill re-openings and 10,000 forestry jobs added in British Columbia since 2009, according to the Liberal government.

But the New Democratic Party's critic questions those numbers saying they mask what's really happening in the sector and are an excuse for the government's inaction.

The figures have been a talking point for the government this fall. In her response to the throne speech on Oct. 17, for example, Premier Christy Clark said, "Twenty-seven mills reopened across British Columbia because government did as much as it could to enable them to do so."

That translates into jobs, she said. "Now a lot of families are putting food on the table that weren't before. A lot of families are finding ways to support their kids. A lot of families are supporting the rest of the private sector economy through the wages they earn at those jobs."

At a Nanaimo event two days later with Western Forest Products, which has re-opened four mills in the last 18 months, Clark told reporters, "It's not a sunset industry in British Columbia any more, there's a great sunrise."

On the sunny side

Jobs, Tourism and Innovation Minister Pat Bell, who previously had responsibility for forestry, has been citing the mill re-opening and the 10,000 jobs figures since at least the Union of B.C. Municipalities conference at the end of September.

"The overall number that I quote in terms of job numbers is based on exports to China," he said.

Noting it's a market for BC wood that didn't exist five or six years ago, he sketched out the calculation, based on an "average mid-size interior sawmill" producing 250-million board feet of wood a year.

"The mill itself employs 200 to 250 people," he said. "The jobs in the bush, the logging jobs, the trucking jobs, the silviculture jobs, somewhere in the 250 to 300 range.

"If you do the math you will find I always use 500 jobs per mill as direct jobs, and the number of board feet in China divided by 250 million feet per mill as the number of mills that are operating on that basis."

At one point the ministry thought five-billion board feet would be shipped to China this year, but it looks likely to come closer to 4.5 billion, he said. "If it were five-billion board feet, that's 20 sawmills, 500 people per mill, 10,000 jobs."

Based on Bell's calculation, the reduced export figure would cut the jobs number to 9,000.

Mills opened, shifts added

As for openings, Bell offered a detailed list, which he was able to provide a couple versions of within a few hours.

The most detailed version goes back to November, 2009, when Interfor announced a $100 million investment that would put 100 people to work in its Adams Lake mill. The list includes not only re-openings, but also mills where there have been shifts added and investments announced.

Examples include Tolko recalling 187 workers to its Kelowna mill in January, 2010, Canfor adding a third shift to part of its Polar sawmill in Bear Lake northwest of Prince George in May, 2010, and West Fraser's mill in 100 Mile House going back to five days a week in February, 2011, after two years of running for only four days a week.

NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald, the MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke, said he's been trying with the party's researchers to figure out Bell's figures for some time.

Bell seems to be exaggerating the number of jobs recovered, he said. "The figures we can find from Statistics Canada and BC Stats, there's a recovery, but you know we found 4,000," he said. "The 10,000, I don't see what they're talking about there."

Mills also closed, says NDP

Going through media reports and looking at the forests ministry's website, the NDP did find 24 sawmill openings, which Macdonald says is pretty close to Bell's figures. However, they also found 23 that closed in the period and discovered some of the openings are either temporary or were made for reasons other than a recovery in the sector.

"If you're asserting this is a good news story, when the same number is closing, it's a saw off," he said. "It's not a trend. There are problems, and instead of concentrating on a communications plan, concentrate on a forestry plan."

Bell's list includes a re-opening at Ladysmith, for example. Macdonald says his understanding from union contacts is the company opened the mill to avoid having to pay severance that it would have to pay if the closure were permanant. "The openings they talked about are skeleton crews and it has nothing to do with China," said Macdonald.

The Kitwanga sawmill that Pacific Bioenergy opened in July near Hazelton with a visit from Premier Clark has since closed with owners citing weakening Chinese demand. It remains, however, on Bell's list.

Even the recent Western Forest Products announcement of $200 million the premier attended in Nanaimo is dependent on the market in the United States improving and on the mill being able to get enough fibre to process, Macdonald said.

The company may actually spend as little as $20 million, he said. "It's just the maintenance. They have sitting mills that if they don't invest in maintaining them they lose the value of the asset."

Complex issues need more than PR

The way Bell and the Premier quote statistics suggests they are more interested in portraying optimism than they are in addressing the serious challenges that face the industry, said Macdonald. "It's the difference between campaigning and actually governing," he said.

"Let's get the situation laid out accurately so we know what we're dealing with as a starting point," he said. "It doesn't help a community member or a mill worker anywhere to not have a clear picture and a clear picture . . . If you're talking about the openings, I think you also have to be talking about the fact pretty well an equal number has closed."

Dealing with the issues includes reducing the number of raw logs that companies export from the province, he said. "There's recognition from the government the balance is wrong, but it's an issue they created and haven't dealt with."

Other issues include finding ways to improve forest health and to get more of the waste that's left after logging used, he said.

He said he does not, however, favour returning to an apurtenancy system where logs had to be milled in communities close to where they were logged, a requirement the BC Liberals ended in their first mandate. NDP Leader Adrian Dix expressed the same position in a recent interview.

He renewed a call to start a legislature forestry committee, noting there are MLAs on both sides, as well as independent MLA Bob Simpson, who have experience in the industry and have much to offer. It would be a better way to deal with a complex industry than the superficial attention the government is giving it now, he said. [Tyee]

Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. Reach him here.

28 Comments:

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  • Fiat lux

    28 weeks ago

    The main problem of the

    The main problem of the forest industry is gross overcapitalization to automate and divert the benefits into the pockets of the corporations.

    As I wrote before 2 guys can make a good living with a low cost mill and 50 truckloads of lumber per year, but each worker in the automated monsters uses 400 loads for his wages and the rest of the benefits go into the pockets of the speculators.

    This can be proven very easily, with examples all around.

    Ed Deak, Big Lake.

  • Steelhead

    28 weeks ago

    deforestation

    Here in Terrace BC, in the heart of Skeena country, our two large saw mills have closed down. A forty minute drive south, the Eurocan pulp mill has shut down. Last summer, Christy Clark snipped a ribbon as the cameras rolled and declared the Kitwanga Mill, a forty minute drive east of Terrace, open. Now, a few months later, it's shut down. While we watched all the mills shut and unemployment rate climb, trucks loaded with raw logs flagged for export continued to roll down highways 16 and 37, many of them bound for newly opened mills in China. Terracites of the left and right are united in their disgust at this irrational practise. If this were not bad enough, the way these trees are being logged in an environmentally reprehensible fashion that hearkens back to the 1950s. Salmon streams are being laid waste, wildlife habitat needs ignored. The contractors high grade the cutblocks leaving huge waste piles in their wake. This is the Liberal vision for the North. The intend to plunder the earth and ship off raw resources, effectively turning us into a third world country.

  • igbymac

    28 weeks ago

    Capitalism IS

    ... right-wing politics.

    And right-wing politics focuses on business and private wealth.

    Left-wing politics focuses on the people, on our needs as a society and fulfillment as individuals.

    Its sure been a nice run for business this past century; shame about what happens to the people.

  • DPL

    28 weeks ago

    People must be catching on by

    People must be catching on by now that the BC Liberals invent statistics that make them look good. Jobs are down in BC and those numbers come from the federal government, not the PAB"s in the basement

  • occupyyourself

    28 weeks ago

    There is no accounting for bad management

    Many mills have reopened successfully in B.C.'s interior. Mills that were poorly managed or where transportation to larger markets is an issue will continue to struggle. Those with solid business connections in Asia will thrive. Even as China's demand lags Korea, India and other Asian markets are rising. This has little to do with the Liberal government and more to do with the global economy. Government cannot create external demand for manufactured products. Bad corporate management and bad government policies can impact the industry. Tax the corporations so they don't get off easy but don't meddle in their business.

  • freewilly

    28 weeks ago

    blocking access

    A friend of mine complains how difficult it is to go camping and exploring in the lowermainland. more and more roads get blocked off, gated or retired. There are fewer forestry campgrounds every year.

    We notice the same thing here on the westcoast of the island as well.

    The few points of interest in our village no longer are accessible. Lookouts, caves etc...
    These places were a draw for summer tourists and locals. Its bad enough that the forest companies wont let us in, now we have these independant power producers claiming chunks of the island as their own to plunder.

    Really there are still many places to explore and go, especially in Strathcona Park, but it was nice to explore our own backyard.

  • Bucketbrigade

    28 weeks ago

    Breaking news...

    BC Liberals fudge the numbers...Deja Vu

    Well, with nearly 100 million brand new empty condos/apartments/townhomes in China they too will soon stop buying pine beetle logs for forming.

    Christy Clark has put all her eggs in a Chinese bubble...Enjoy the film.

    http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.com/2011/10/christy-clucking-clark-falls-into-asian.html

  • freewilly

    28 weeks ago

    to occupyyourself

    "Tax the corporations so they don't get off easy but don't meddle in their business."

    well they see fit to meddle in everyone else's business and negatively affect other industries. hate sounding like a socialist or tree hugger but this resource belongs to the people of bc, at the very least in part.

    its a quite a bit different than the entrepreneur that create products like new tooth brushes, or produce popular tv programs. the forests belong to all britsh columbians. the tax payers and first nations people have every right to meddle in their business, cause its not theirs.

    btw
    someone forwarded this link to me, might be of some interest
    www.againsttheleandocfilm.com

  • Fiat lux

    28 weeks ago

    The Fraser Inst. and the

    The Fraser Inst. and the Reform Party, now in control, had, and must still have long standing plans to sell of all public properties, like forests, Crown Lands, lakes, rivers.

    An economics prof. by the name of Arnold Block, now I believe in New Orleans, who was one of the bright lights of the FI at the time, published "studies" and was on TV and radio, claiming that he would even divide and sell the oceans as an "environmental protection" measure.

    The Reform gang also had plans, when Harper was still one of the top lieutenants, to do away with the old age pensions and replace them with RRSPs.

    Let's see what he comes up with next year to dismantle Canada.

    I can see the Chinese buying up the forests and Crown lands, for the sake of "wealth creating efficiency" of course.

    Ed Deak.

  • pwlg

    28 weeks ago

    Governorning by Propaganda

    Well it seems the PAB is alive and well in the Premier's Office. It seems Christy is maintaining the propaganda arm her predecessor set up. Could this be what she means by creating employment?

    Every communication coming from her office should be suspect and require fact checks before publication by the media. Oops, seems the media no longer has fact checkers or researchers.

    Comments by Sean Holman regarding his short career with the Vancouver Sun are telling. When you have no journalists working on projects that require long term research then politicians and corporate propagandists have a field day.

    Thanks to the Tyee and Andrew for continuing to deactivate Christy and her minister's cloaking device, the PAB.

  • freewilly

    28 weeks ago

    about ghost cities in china

    Bucketbrigade posted a great link about ghost cities in china. Forward thinking or not, lots of specualtion on the net from nirubu and wacky conspiracist theories abound, why they would build all these condos and cities.

    I tend to beleive the chinese have been duped by developers. but who really knows,the crazy commies may be right, nature abhors a vacuum, and the rate of population growth, these cities and condos may fill up rather quickly. this should be a bigger story.
    its the cost thats the issue.peasants cant afford them.

    So thats where some of our lumber is going...
    hmmmm

  • Fiat lux

    28 weeks ago

    That lumber is paid for with

    That lumber is paid for with the monies lost by our people through the destuction of manufacturing jobs.

    In other words, the imports from China, filling our stores are not "cheaper", but more "expensive", through damage to the environment by long distance transport, the losses of housing and self sufficiency, the poverty and homelessness here and the short lifespan of most of the junk our 1% is making their billions of profits from.

    The most profitable business is the making of waste, and environmental and human destruction, because they're not accounted as liabilities or losses but as the "growth of the GDP"

    Ed Deak.

  • Amor de Cosmos

    28 weeks ago

    You're quite right Mr. Deak

    You're first comment about forestry still being able to pay is quite correct, Ed.

    While the globally-owned forest companies have been shut down (on and off) for years, there are many who have continued to make a living the entire time.

    Those who have been able to make a living range from a couple guys with a chain-saw mill to some medium sized mills (100+ workers).

    One company/mill in the Kootenays, Kalesnikoff Lumber, has never shut down the whole time. In fact, they have been hiring most of the last few years, and applied to the regional district to expand their hours of operation a year or so ago.

    They are a third-generation company owned by a local Doukhobor family, and their moto is "Take care of the land and the land will take care of you".

    They have their detractors as they are non-union, but there is no denying that they have been able to continue to operate the mill full steam for years while all the large corporately-owned mills in the area have been shut down.

    http://www.kalesnikoff.com/about.html

  • Fish-counter

    28 weeks ago

    The BC Liberals exaggerate job benefits? Well I never!

    By the time a person figures out who really owns our large logging companies, it turns out it is some pension fund in Ontario. And that is the good news.

    The companies are closing down the trails as a direct result of vandalism, Free Willy. Here in Nanaimo, the damage is in the tens of thousands every month. IF ATV drivers can get in, some of them will trash the place, and they do.

  • freewilly

    28 weeks ago

    vandalism

    "The companies are closing down the trails as a direct result of vandalism, Free Willy. Here in Nanaimo, the damage is in the tens of thousands every month. IF ATV drivers can get in, some of them will trash the place, and they do."

    Yikes, well that doesnt surpise me. I sympapthize with the situation. Disrepectful youngins have been the blight of our society. We need more jails darn it! Lets put up some signs and more fences, keep em all out

  • paisley

    28 weeks ago

    Well If your going to..

    tell a lie you might as well make it a big one. Ten Thousand jobs, are you kidding? Now that is so ridiculous its funny. Makes you wonder how someone could say that and keep a straight face.
    On second thought maybe the Liberals are talking about all the foreign jobs created by raw log export and hoping nobody actually noticed our publicly funded infrastructure, in itself, makes raw log export possible. Now that's funny!

  • zalm

    28 weeks ago

    Walter Block

    "An economics prof. by the name of Arnold Block, now I believe in New Orleans, who was one of the bright lights of the FI at the time..."

    That would be Walter Block, the public face of the Fraser Institution in the 1970s. If he's at New Orleans now, it must be as a test subject for senility. He's the one who put the Institution on the map for defending cigarette companies because "their product was tested, legal and good for business". He also noted that a "good-looking woman should expect a certain amount of harrassment in the business world."

    I think he's in one of the paleontology department's freezers.

  • zalm

    28 weeks ago

    Doomed to repeat history

    The BC Fiberals are trying desperately to rewrite history. Everyone knows you can't rewrite it - you can only repeat it.

    BC is falling into a repeat of every recession since the 1950s - commodities markets like BC and Alberta fall into the toilet about 12-24 months after manufacturing markets do, and climb aback out if the recession 24-48 minths after manufacturing markets do.

    Spin all you like Ms. Christy, BC's headed for a recession. It'll arrive in about 6 months and it'll stay for 2-4 years after Ontario recovers. It always has. It always will.

    And it happened on [b]your[b] watch.

  • sdgreen

    28 weeks ago

    Oh Really

    The fact is that the NDP government of the 1990s absolutely destroyed the forest industry through ignorant and very bad policiies. Further when the NDP discovered to their socialist dismay, they started purchasing failed companies, which promptly went broke killing a massive amount of jobs and a waste of taxpayers money. Policies of the left further placed BC into a non-competitive foundation. Once the NDP were defeated the world markets dictated further pressures; paper was no longer a big ticket item; BC was no longer a powerhouse of wood products, replaced by other nations with such resources.

    The entire demise of the forest industry can be placed on the doorsteps of the NDP without question.

    Any announcement that mills are opening, or new forest endeavours are evolving is good news.

    NDP Norm Macdonald needs to do more homework, as he has annunciated pure BS!

    But it seems that the NDP again cannot see the forest for the trees!

  • borg

    28 weeks ago

    sdgreen

    Well it looks like someone has been reading the BC Liberal Big Book of Fairy Tales of History and dozed off into La La Land. Wake Up, even Rip Van Winkle did.

  • Frank

    28 weeks ago

    sdgreen

    You're uninformed. According to BC Stats employment in the forest industry over the last 15 years has been thus :

    1995 : 36,100
    2000 : 35,500
    2005 : 21,300
    2010 : 16,100

    Obviously it wasn't the NDP that destroyed forestry. Might have been allowing forest companies to cut down the trees and ship the raw logs out of the country maybe?

    You think?

  • Treefaller

    28 weeks ago

    Borg

    I think perhaps the same could be said of your post? Of the opposing party of course.

    Here's a perfect example of the NDP's problem,
    "Macdonald says his understanding from union contacts" I would suggest a bit more in depth research before speaking.

    As for the socialists who decry the lack of funding for schools, hospitals etc, where do you presume the money to fund that comes from? As well as to fund the other socialist policies?

    sdgreen was bang on.

    In regards to the lack of access to the great outdoors, are people really upset about not being able to use the logging roads?! Built by the very companies who they decry?! So if I am to understand correctly, and I'm sure I'll be corrected, but you want them to build the roads so people can access the wilderness, but just not log? I think not.

  • Frank

    28 weeks ago

    Treefaller

    Ignoring the numbers and wrapping yourselves in ideology isn't the answer.

    If one wants to believe all of our social programs come from 16,000 forestry workers then Borg's post is bang on.

  • borg

    28 weeks ago

    Treefaller

    I would say that maybe you might be the one that should do a bit of in depth research before speaking because if you did you would realize that sdgreen and yourself are " dead wrong". By the way I'm not a socialist but a realist. I'm pretty sure that the amount of money coming in from stumpage in this Province right now due to BC Liberal Forest Policy is barely enough to pay for the BC Forest Service let alone all those dreaded "Socialist" policies like Schools and Hospitals. Give your head a shake and don't believe everything the BC Liberals tell you as it's been proven daily they're a bunch of liars whom play fast and loose with the truth.

  • Frank

    28 weeks ago

    Treefaller

    Don't be shy, tell me what I'm "dead wrong" about.

    By the way, my facts come from BC Stats, where do you get yours?

  • Curt

    28 weeks ago

    And Christy and Co. are

    And Christy and Co. are where?

    http://business.financialpost.com/2011/11/10/thanks-for-the-money-canada-goodbye/

    Keep the jobs at home; process all resources here before shipping. Do not ship raw materials offshore.

  • zalm

    28 weeks ago

    The saddest thing

    ...is sdgreen is at least partly right for the wrong reason

    "...they started purchasing failed companies, which promptly went broke..."

    The whole north from Bella Bella to the Nass Valley was dependent on one company - Repap of Montreal - to utilize the tree harvesting licences it acquired for the benefit of the company and the communities for two hundred miles around.

    But Repap CEO George Petty was a pirate, putting the company into debt to purchase more tree farm licences, and then loading more debt onto the only money-making operation Repap had - BC - while it rebuilt aging paper plants in Wisconsin and Manitoba.

    Finally when Petty had loaded all the debt it could on BC's mill, he allowed it to go under, while the paper mills he rebuilt elsewhere walked away debt free. BC communities paid the cost of this very expensive upgrade of a Manitoba plant.

    All entirely legal... and thoroughly immoral, which is exactly the BC Fiberal way of doing things. Admittedly the NDP didn't help, by giving a break on the stumpage to Repap on northern timber, but who ever accused the NDP of being good businessmen? Certainly not sdgreen....

    No, despite the best efforts of communities, workers, middle managers, government and small businessmen throughout the north, BC has no pulp and paper mill in the north closest to its best fibre, because business was too short-sighted and greedy to do its due diligence, and governments of every stripe were too cowardly to hold them to account.

    http://www.forestnet.com/archives/July_97/repap.html

    But sdgreen can believe any silly fairy tale he or she wants to in defense of Ms. Christy the Tooth Fairy.

  • firefox007

    27 weeks ago

    More Ed...?

    "In other words, the imports from China..."

    Veering from professional knowledge of forestry to China, Ed Deak is just an encyclopaedia of 1st-hand knowledge.

    Yeah, let's stop importing manufactured goods into BC! We'll make our own Ipads & vehicles and every other item the Chinese make; with our huge industrial base, importing anything is wrong and bizarre.

    But back to forestry, I worked for over 20 years with the Forest Service doing forestry surveys all over BC. Glib one-paragraph answers to this most complex of all BC issues (name ONE person who can calculate stumpage accurately?) are shallow. As usual, knowledge comes second to the political ranting that is the actual heart of all Mr. Deak comprehends. He's never completed one single silviculture survey in his life, I'm quite sure. One can discount his *knowledge* of forestry.

    But its early days with only three or four posts so far.