Unfortunately, Bill forgets

Unfortunately, Bill forgets to mention that the biggest problem of the forest industry is gross and disgusting overcapitalization that strips the forests bare with very little benefits to the public.

The people of Burns Lake could make a good living with a string of small mills, set up with low capital investment. It can be done.

It should be obvious to anybody that when a single job has 70-80 wage years of investment and requires 400 loads of logs per year to keep one person working, disaster is just around the corner.

All to repay the imaginary money created from the air by some bank, or "wealth creating foreign investor".

40 years ago the BC forest industry employed 3 times the present number, all making decent wages and communities were thriving all over.

All we can see now are schools closing, some 14 in the PG area alone and people jammed into the chicken coops of mega cities.

All for the sake of "economic efficiency", of course.

Ed Deak.

waste of wood

Fiat Lux forgets that the small mills he talks about were extremely wasteful in their use of wood. Modern mills have almost no waste. Also because of all the waste the small mills were an environmental disaster. Do we really want beehive burners all over again. Take one burner for every twenty people working time 3 time the number of present forest industury workers. Pretty bad. But thats is what Fiat Lux wants. Back to horse logging, diesel powered small mills, 50% less utilization of the wood harvested. And a much lower grade final product due to air dry vs kiln dry.

How about going back to stone

How about going back to stone axes and living in caves, as any good "conservative" should ask ?

Can you give me one rational and logical reason, why small mills can not be run in physically efficient ways ?

There are pigs in any profession and the bigger they are the worse. The waste of the forests to pay for the overcapitalization to get rid of the workers and the sale of raw logs are the biggest crimes.

Ed Deak. Not hiding behind a phony name like chickenshit in the grass, like some good "conservative".

Thanks

Hey The Tyee - thanks for using my forest industry pic as your cover for this article. Thanks also for providing an opp for critical comment on what's happening in the industry. I'm working on a photographic essay about the coastal industry and am always amazed at how much things have changed (some good, some bad) since I was "working in the woods." FMI about my project visit www.coastalforestindustryproject.com
For more contemporary images of the coastal industry, http://j.mp/ForestPics
cheers,
hpm

@woodworker "Modern mills have almost no waste."

If I had a penny for every time somebody confused modern with corporate... Beehive burners don't go hand in hand with small mills. You don't need to be a large mega corp mill to sell wood waste for paper.

Corporations are formed to avoid litigation not because they make Bladerunner look like a trip to Dayton OH.

@starla

true that small mills don't go hand in hand with burners. most small mills just let the waste pile up and burn it as an open fire in February that smolders until May. Or is left to rot slowly if the mill is moved.

Report of the Special Committee on Tmiber Supply

Given the scope and quality of the public presentations, oral and written, the final report is utterly reprehensible. Why?

Even the title is enough to make one gag. The main thrust of what the Special Committee on Timber Supply heard from presentations to its members had little to do with “growing fibre and growing value”(sic) and the report had only weak bureaucratic drivel to say about communities, replanting backlog NSR and the need for a value-added industry.

So how did the Burns Lake issue distract and sideline the Committee from the central issue of timber supply? Why were the recommendations written in weak, lose bureaucratese (ensure this, maintain that, place priority here, work with others, etc)?

And what are the relationships between the NDP and the Burns Lake first nations’ group, between the first nations and Hampton Affiliates Ltd, and the NDP and the Steelworkers Union? And how many NDP members of the Committee have worked for the Steelworkers Union, which made its position on the leaked Cabinet document clear from the outset?

Answers to these questions will unearth why the NDP members of the Committee played into the BC Liberal agenda and failed to act in the public interest.

@woodworker

That's really hilarious you complaining about waste from small sawmills. You want to talk about waste. In just one year a sawmill on the west coast lost 73,000 M3 of sawlogs. Yes lost.
How could one sawmill lose that many sawlogs? Simple. They sank to the bottom of the ocean. But wood floats they say. Well coastal hemlock doesn't always float. So you want to talk waste, that's one sawmill in one year. Maybe we should talk about what is left on the ground in the TFL's. Gee, I wonder what happens to that wood? You don't think the forest companies pile it up and burn it. Ever check out the waste scales from any TFL or TL. If you leave merchantable wood on the ground the government charges the license holder 25 cents a meter. Thousands upon thousands of meter of wood left every year. Yeah, lets talk about waste. I remember having a conversation with a DFO officer operating the Pisces V deep water submersible near a pulpmill, quote, " I turned the main lights on and it looked like we were in a forest, you couldn't tell where the bottom was. The logs were everywhere."

Forestry

I used too work in a sawmill making good wages now I make lousy wages as a Security Guard Thank you Liberal Government. Thank you for not replanting the forest after you gave permission to butcher the forests to line your buddies pockets. I didn't need a committee of your buddies to tell me what I already knew that the logs were destined for off shore to other countries and to the States. If one wants to see what goes on take a trip to Youbou on Vancouver Island for example they shut down the mill and are hauling the logs to the United States to process for one example and it is still going on this Lieberl government needs too have their wages cut down too basic wages $10.25 and see what the real world of BC people indure every week, day hour get back to reality Christy.

Small mills that never shut down

Contrary to @woodworker's posts, there are small mills operating in this province that have not shut down at all for many years.

This either (1) demonstrates their efficiency or else (2) confirms that "efficiency" as defined is an inappropriate measure upon which to judge a sawmill.

While the bigger mills have been closed more than open, there are small independent mills that continue to operate 24/7, as they have throughout the entire so-called economic crisis that began in 2008.

I'd take successful and value-added over unsuccessful and efficient any day of the week.

Small Mills

I used to run into a local who owned a small mill. He repeatedly reminded me that he could get more wood out of a tree than the big mills. He had the evidence to prove it.

For one thing, small mills

For one thing, small mills don't need 400 loads of logs per worker.

If that's not a criminal waste of resources, I would like to know what is ?

Ed Deak.