Wednesday, May 02, 2007

We would be lumberjacks


The city is still hopeful that the three year old plan to have a community forest licence in the area will soon come to pass. Originally proposed to take advantage of the North Coast Timber mill, which has since been dismantled and shipped overseas, the plan at the time seemed to be to provide value added product for export, providing for local jobs both in the woodlands and at the mill.

Where the process is now is anyone’s guess, apparently stuck in some kind of bureaucratic log jam, waiting for a decision one way or the other. The current freeze at the ministry level on similar applications seems to be the main roadblock the plan becoming viable again.

Regardless of the freeze, it seems like this is a bit of a missed opportunity that perhaps the city should have been more proactive on in the early stages. While the New Skeena deal was falling through and with it the tax dollars that might have returned to city coffers, there might have been a job creating and revenue generating project waiting for the go ahead.

Had the city and the province been on the same page over the Community Forest licence early on, and a little more dedicated to a finished deal, perhaps there would have been a chance to save the North Coast sawmill and create a market for wood on the North coast. But that’s most likely just a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking/

Much of that lumber that is harvested at the moment now disappears as raw log exports which don’t seem to be a generator of processing jobs here. What isn’t explained in the plan now to revisit the project, is what will happen to the timber should they receive approval to harvest it.

Other than the logging jobs created, one wonders where the logs will go for processing and where those jobs will be created. Considering the shaky local municipal finances of late, how much it will cost Prince Rupert and Port Edward to get the plan up and running might also be something to share before knocking on any more doors.

The Daily News revisited the project on the front page of Tuesday’s paper.

THREE YEARS LATER, DREAM OF COMMUNITY FOREST ALIVE
Mayor Herb Pond hopeful logjam on minister’s desk will be cleared soon
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Pages one and five

Three years after Prince Rupert and Port Edward submitted to the province a joint business plan for a Community Forest Licence, Prince Rupert Mayor Herb Pond still believes there’s hope for the project.

“The real deadlock is at the minister’s office, he said.

“We have done everything on our end to get a Community Forest Licence. We have done everything we need to do. We have filled out everything we need to fill out,” said Pond.

“We are told and we have been told for a few years that our application is on the minister’s desk. We are in the pile, we are near the top of the pile, we will most likely be among the next communities that will be officially invited to apply.

“The minister simply hasn’t approved any in quite a period of time and that’s where the hold is taking place.”

Vicky Grainger, speaking during a North Coast Forest District presentation at a recent Chamber of Commerce luncheon, also said that local district officials have chosen an area for the Community Forest Licence and hope to see it approved.

“We will be moving forward on it and hopefully we will get it through the freeze. Sometimes when there is a freeze on and you are in a different situation as we often are on the North Coast, there’s possibilities to move things forward even though there is a freeze,” said Grainger.

The city has been working on a Community Forest Licence since 2003, but has yet to receive an invitation from the Minister of Forests to apply for tenure.

Under a Community Forest Licence, Prince Rupert and Port Edward could be granted tenure - an area to be harvested and managed by the two municipalities.

The idea was originally put forward to the city by small-scale loggers and salvage operators as a way to access more timber.

The original proposal also included buying the former West Fraser specialty sawmill size in the industrial park as a facility where value-added processing could happen, however that facility has since been sold and stripped of much of its sawmill equipment.

While they are hopeful they will see a licence in the future, Pond admitted they haven’t been beating down doors to see the project come to fruition. The city has had a lot of staff turnover, losing both their chief administrative office and corporate administrator in the past year and currently, the city is focused on the success of the Fairview Container Terminal, which will open this October.

“The city hasn’t been pounding on desks or agitating strongly with people to get on with it because of our own situation… and even because of the state of the industry right now on the North Coast. Both are true, but given the chance, we would proceed,” he said.

“Given the very real demands of making sure that Prince Rupert becomes the next great port city and the gaps that exist on that file, that’s where we are throwing our energy.”

However, a forestry task force report from the City of Terrace noted the container port could also bring new opportunities for the region’s loggers because the empty containers moving back into Asian markets offer cheap backhaul rates.

With 50 per cent of the province’s lumber coming from north of Quesnel, Rupert’s container port could become the destination for much of what the province exports, noted the report.

No comments: