Few British Columbia communities have been hit as hard by the forest industry crisis as Mackenzie.
Some 1,500 jobs, by mayor Stephanie Killam’s estimate, have been lost in the community as sawmills, planer mills and pulp and paper mills closed. With hundreds of good paying mill jobs gone, jobs in related service industries have disappeared at [...]
Ben Parfitt’s Blog Posts
Ben Parfitt, Resource Policy Analyst at the CCPA’s BC Office, is a long-time writer on BC’s bountiful natural resources and the huge challenges involved in managing them in environmentally and socially responsible ways. He works closely with environmental activists and the many people who work in the province’s resource industries who are committed to progressive change.
Where's Our Danny Boy (2)? Mayor of embattled town weighs in on needed forest reforms
May 11th, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Municipalities
Tags: Canfor·Danny Williams·Interfor·Mackenzie·Newfoundland·pulp and paper·unemployment·West Fraser
A whole lotta waste goin' on
April 3rd, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Climate change, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability
Last week, research I completed for the CCPA was released suggesting that in the last five years alone the forest industry in this province has managed to leave 17.5 million cubic metres of usable wood behind at logging operations. Loaded onto logging trucks, you could fill a cross-Canada convoy just about twice with that material. [...]
Bioenergy – Catching on like a house on fire or set for slow burn?
March 11th, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
As the global economic meltdown and in particular the US housing market collapse continues to savage BC lumber producers, government leaders boldly predict that wood-fired energy – “bioenergy” – will ride to the rescue of a shell-shocked industry and brutalized rural, resource towns dealing with soaring unemployment rates.
February’s Speech from the Throne is a case [...]
First Nations as "full" forest partners may be Roundtable's most significant recommendation
March 10th, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability, First Nations & Aboriginal
There’s plenty to be concerned about with the recommendations emanating from the Working Roundtable on Forestry – an open door for raw log exports, diminished corporate taxes for cash-strapped rural municipalities, and a steady creep toward de facto privatization of some public forestlands. And in coming postings I’ll speak more about what’s on the negative [...]
Pining for some straight talk
March 6th, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability
BC Forests Minister Pat Bell grabbed plenty of headlines this week when he said that the threats posed to resource communities by the mountain pine beetle infestation may be overstated. Stories about a rapid deterioration in the quality of trees attacked by the beetles, Bell suggested, are wrong. In fact, the minister said, he expects [...]
Memo to Colin Hansen: Time for forest industry reality check
March 2nd, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability
If Finance Minister Colin Hansen’s budget forecasts are right, British Columbia’s battered forest industry is in for a modest recovery this coming fiscal year and a more robust recovery in 2010/2011.
Gian Sandhu isn’t buying it.
Owner of the Jackpine Group of Companies in Williams Lake, Sandhu was a leading light in British Columbia’s interior forest industry, [...]
Tags: forestry·pine beetle·recession
Axing the Forest Service: The Cuts Continue
February 27th, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability
Well it looks like they’re getting ready to wield the axe yet again at the Ministry of Forests, and that the latest victims will join a long list of their sisters and brothers whose jobs were to protect the public interest and ensure that our publicly owned forests were responsibly managed.
In its latest annual Service [...]
Where’s Our Danny Boy?
February 23rd, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability
Give Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams credit for leading by example and doing what no BC politician in recent years had the guts to do: force the issue on what, exactly, the public deserves by way of public returns from publicly owned resources.
Williams’ well publicized decision in December to yank back AbitibiBowater’s public timber and hydro [...]
Tags: Danny Williams·forestry·free trade·Mackenzie·Newfoundland·pulp and paper
Time to take the axe to province's dubious forest-related budget projections
February 19th, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Environment, resources & sustainability
Two words sprang to mind this week when perusing the provincial government’s latest revenue projections from BC’s once healthy, wealth-producing forests – confusing and misleading.
Confusing because Finance Minister Colin Hansen projected that forest revenues will go up next year when all signs point the other way. And misleading because even a cursory review of revenues [...]
Tags: budget·forestry·pine beetle
The biggest forest crisis? A lack of imagination.
February 6th, 2009 · Ben Parfitt · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Environment, resources & sustainability
Everywhere you turn it’s bleak news for BC’s forest economy. Sawmills and pulp mills shuttered left and right, and a provincial government whose lame response is simply to say we’ve got to tough it out until markets improve and some of those mothballed mills possibly re-open. Not exactly encouraging words if you happen to live [...]
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