“The environment is not to blame,”
That’s from Stop the Spray spokesperson James Steidle who is helping organize a rally in support of forests and forestry workers in the north.
This comes less than a week after Canfor announced the elimination of 300 jobs at its pulp line at the Pulp and Paper Mill in Prince George.
Steidle told Vista Radio the event will be held tomorrow night (Tuesday) at Canada Games Plaza.
“We want to send a message to David Eby. He’s going to be having dinner inside and we will be outside having a protest. This is unacceptable (the Canfor closure) and we have to have more local decision making and we have to start managing our forests for Prince George, not for Vancouver.”
“The environment is not to blame. This is a failed economic model that isn’t serving the workers, it’s not serving the forests, and it’s not serving our wildlife.”
He added the latest job cuts are just the tip of the iceberg.
“Let’s not forget, we have lost a thousand direct mill jobs in Prince George in the last 20 years. This is just further to what has been happening. I grew up in a small mill called Clear Lake and that was closed down – it should have never have been closed and that provided a lot of jobs and didn’t require that many logs.”
Furthermore, the Old Growth deferrals announced by the province haven’t even taken effect yet – adding even more fuel to the fire.
“These deferrals have not happened yet. There has been no protection in our region whatsoever. Some people say, oh these environmental policies are to blame and I say what policies? Nothing has happened.”
Steidle stated one solution for the north would be to utilize the local fibre supply at several pine plantations where commercial thinning could occur to reduce wildfire risk and to keep the pulp mills running.
However, there is one small issue.
“One of the problems is the government wants full stumpage for that plantation thinning. So we said if we reduce the stumpage for that kind of work we can then go into this kind of degraded, low-quality areas that have all these refined stems and then start making them better actually and provide the fibre supply for the mills.”
“The whole argument that we are out of fibre is a bit of a myth. We can do stuff that keeps these mills running without going into the last of our old growth and heading down every last stitch of forest habitat that we have to start looking at protecting and being more responsible for.”
Premier Eby will be in Prince George this week to give the keynote address at the B.C. Natural Resource Forum which runs from Tuesday to Thursday at the P.G. Conference and Civic Centre.
He is also sending a crisis team to the northern capital to assist the displaced workers with government support and retraining programs.