West Fraser Timber announced on Jan. 22 it was permanently closing its Fraser Lake Sawmill, which will result in the loss of 175 jobs.
That means 17 per cent of the 1,000 people who live in Fraser Lake, 158 kilometres west of Prince George, will no longer have jobs.
If that happened in Greater Vancouver, a city of 2.6 million, that would mean 442,000 people would be out of work.
That comparison, to highlight the impact of a mill closure in an isolated resource industry-dependent community such as Fraser Lake, was included a report compiled by the three largest forestry unions in the province who gathered for a one-day conference last week in Victoria to voice worker concerns about the ailing forest sector and how it is being managed by the provincial government.
About 80 representatives of the Public and Private Workers of Canada, United Steelworkers and Unifor attended the March 12 conference and met with Premier David Eby, Forests Minister Bruce Ralston and Andrew Mercier, Minister of State for Sustainable Forestry Innovation to discuss the future of forestry and let the government know what workers think should be done to stop the bleeding.
“With the state of the forest industry in general both softwood and pulp have taken some major hits over the last five years when we’ve really noticed it,” said Chuck LeBlanc, president of PPWC Local 9 and millwright at Prince George Pulp Mill.
“We want a say in what’s happening in our industry. We’ve been left out of the table at a lot of the talks around deferrals and that type of thing and as workers we want our time to have our voice heard. For the three unions to get together that really tells you the state of our industry right now and we’re going to step up and do a lot of lobbying and a lot of talking to government officials to make sure we’re part of that solution going forward.”
Last summer’s wildfires burned three million hectares of forest, the most destructive fire season in B.C.’s history, which further restricted access to fibre, yet another obstacle that cumulatively has cut softwood harvesting in half over the past seven years from 30,000 tonnes in 2016 to 15,000 tonnes in 2023.
Fires, the end of temporary access to beetle-killed wood and falling lumber prices has led to mills being closed permanently or curtailed and has reduced engineered wood and other types of wood manufacturing activities.
LeBlanc said better more access timber in the immediate area could have prevented Canfor’s decision to close Polar Sawmill at Bear Lake for six months starting in January, which he said resulted in layoffs for another 175 workers.
“BC Timber Sales haven’t put out any permits for coming on two years in the Prince George area and we really pressed the government on getting BC Timber Sales to get that wood out,” said LeBlanc. ”That’s 20 per cent of the (province’s) allowable annual cut and that’s a lot of wood that could be coming into our mills feeding the Polars, which then gives the pulp mills the residual chips.
“Certainly the allowable cut is down but there is still wood out there that isn’t being brought in and that tells us that the system isn’t working. Sustainably they set the cut, let’s make sure that all that wood is going to get into the mills so we don’t have to shut sawmills down and pulp mills down.
“They heard us and they are trying to get that moving quicker but things like that, it’s quick and easy stuff.”
Discussion at the conference centred around the report, A Better Future for BC Forestry, created the BC Forestry Workers union collective.
The report identifies a combination of factors contributing to depleted fibre supplies and reduced forestry activity in B.C. over past two decades, including unsustainable harvesting practices, the pine beetle infestation, climate change and wildfires, the ongoing softwood lumber trade disputes with the U.S., and the mass-media’s shift away from buying newsprint.
The three unions want the province to form a permanent Forest Sector Council that would formulate forest strategies and policies drawing from the expertise of leadership from all stakeholders, including business leaders, service sectors, union members, post-secondary schools, public utility operators and representatives of all levels of government.
The council would work with the government to design, implement and evaluate forestry strategies of and would come up with a plan to create a stable and sustainable fibre supply that would make project investment profitable.
The unions say fibre supply could be enhanced through more intensive collection, better capture of waste from forest and downstream operations, fiscal incentives/de-risking to ensure economic viability of more costly fibre sources, more recycled fibre and partnerships with First Nations and private forest operators
To maximize value from the forest manufacturing sector the report suggests the province should guarantee benchmark prices for input/output that reduce the risk to companies investing in value-added projects.
As difficult as it has been for forest companies to operate profitably with diminished supplies of economically-viable fibre, B.C.’s forest sector, which includes harvesting, paper product manufacturing, and wood product manufacturing, still provides 44,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs and those workers contribute billions annually to the economy in wages, exports and government revenues.
