The President and CEO of the BC Council of Forest Industries is pleased with the government’s 69-million dollar investment to support forestry workers who have been impacted by curtailments and shutdowns.
Susan Yurkovich admits the industry is in a significant transition phase and that the province and industry need to work together to get it back on track.
“I think that it’s important the industry and government are working to do everything we can to possibly support workers and communities as we move through this difficult period.”
Forty million of those funds will help establish a cost-shared, early retirement bridging program.
Yurkovich is satisfied to see a program of this kind in place since most of the current workforce is a decade or less away from retiring.
“We are going through a demographic shift when we are going to have a large number of workers in the resource sector including forestry that would be eligible for retirement in the next ten years and we also need to attract new workers because while we are going through this difficult period, we do see a bright future.”
On Monday, COFI unveiled a 60-point plan to better shape the industry.
MyPGNow will have the full story with Yurkovich later this week.
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