British Columbia is a province with an increasingly urban-based population whose economic success has historically been tied to the efficient extraction, processing and exporting of commodities.  In 2011, approximately four-fifths of B.C.’s international merchandise exports consisted of goods produced by the forestry, energy, mining and agri-food industries taken as a group.  This proportion is little changed from ten years ago, and it is substantially higher than the share of resource-based goods in overall Canadian merchandise exports.

Today’s heavily urban population is poorly equipped to understand the realities of B.C.’s industrial and economic base.  Elected officials, media commentators, and the province’s cultural and intellectual elites disproportionately hail from the comfy precincts of the Lower Mainland and Greater Victoria.  Yet urban British Columbia is not where the export wealth that does so much to underpin our standard of living is mainly generated. Read more

When Burnsview Secondary School teacher Laura Masini Pieralli saw her new Communications 12 class settle into their desks at the start of this school year, she got a good chuckle.

“The funniest thing was doing earthquake drills,” she says. “Some of the male students are more than six feet tall, and seeing them trying to crouch under those small desks – you know the ones with the seats attached to them – it was hilarious.”

Masini Pieralli envisioned a classroom with large, high-end boardroom tables where her students could sit together in a more collaborative environment and learn as a team. But she knew the dream came with a high price tag.

So she had her students write letters to Randy Chadney, the mill manager at the Interfor Acorn Sawmill in the Tilbury area of Delta. They asked him if the mill could donate lumber so they could build the tables. Chadney agreed enthusiastically, and even invited the class to the mill for a tour.

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International Forest Products Limited (“Interfor” or the “Company”) (TSX: IFP.A), in partnership with Arrow Transportation Systems Inc., announced today it will donate $20,000 for a multi-agency community project that will provide housing and other support services in Grand Forks.

The funds – from the 2012 Playhouse Challenge – will help Habitat for Humanity Boundary (HFHB) establish a ReStore, which will sell used building materials, furniture, tools, equipment and other affordable second-hand goods to support the affiliate’s award-winning building program.

The store will be part of a one-stop support centre at 7212 Riverside Drive in Grand Forks where HFHB, Boundary Emergency and Transition Society and Whispers of Hope Benevolence Association will offer shelter, meals, clothing and other support for individuals and families who are homeless, hungry and/or unable to get decent, safe and affordable housing.

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The coastal forest industry wants to set the record straight. While broad and catchy statements are often made about forestry, we have just been through a provincial election campaign when emotions ran high and politics superceded fact in the public dialogue.

Though industries can be depersonalized in the mix, the impact is personal to the hard-working people whose lives depend on the health of forestry. To them, the consequences of misinformation pack a punch.

We have seen flawed claims, assumptions and information make their rounds lately. These have real consequences on real lives and we would like to provide clarification:

• The claim that forestry on the coast is no longer important: Tell this to the men and women who rely on forestry for their livelihoods. Tell this to their children. Tell this to the towns and communities that rely on employed people to keep local businesses afloat and hospitals, schools and social services funded. Even if people do not work in the industry or live in a coastal community, they are still affected by one of British Columbia’s largest economic drivers.

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The coastal forest industry wants to set the record straight. While broad and catchy statements are often made about forestry, we are now in the final days of the provincial campaign when emotions run high and politics supersede fact in the public dialogue. Though industries can be depersonalized in the mix, the impact is personal to the hard-working people whose lives depend on the health of forestry. To them, the consequences of misinformation pack a punch.

We have seen flawed claims, assumptions and information make their rounds lately. These have real consequences on real lives and we would like to provide clarification: Read more

Photo: Forest Education Centre (1976) designed by Paul Merrick, at VanDusen Gardens

In Its Annual list of the Top 10 Endangered Sites, Heritage Vancouver has highlighted how the pace of development poses a threat to preserving the city’s history.

“As the economy continues its slow improvement, more and more heritage sites face redevelopment,” the group states in the preamble to this year’s list. “Our Top Ten sites for this year demonstrate a variety of issues that affect our heritage environment, ranging from individual buildings to entire streetscapes and neighbourhoods.”

Topping this year’s list is the VanDusen Gardens Forest Education Centre. Known as MacMillan-Bloedel Place when it was built in 1976, it included a 50-seat theatre and an educational display called “A Walk in the Forest”.

“In 1986, MacMillan-Bloedel donated the Centre to the Park Board, which continued to offer educational programs until its new Centre opened in October of 2011,” Heritage Vancouver says on its site. “Since then it has been used for storage and offices. Today the Park Board claims it has no use for the Forest Education Centre and has plans to demolish or abandon the building.”

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A Japanese community, devastated by the tsunami of March 2011, is welcoming a brand new public market, thanks to donations from the Canadian lumber industry and its partners.

Officially opening on May 4^th 2013, the Yuriage Public Market, is a result of the Canada-Tohoku Reconstruction Project, established after the devastating Great Eastern Japan earthquake and subsequent tsunami that ravaged huge areas in the north-east of the country.

“It wasn’t just homes destroyed in the earthquake and tsunami here in Japan,” says Shawn Lawlor, from Canada Wood Group. “Community centres, care facilities, kindergartens; they were all washed away. Those places are the lifeblood of any community and I’m delighted that Canada is playing such an important role in helping to rebuild the Tohoku region of Japan.”

The Canada Wood Group, in partnership with Natural Resources Canada and the Province of British Columbia, are spearheading projects using Canadian wood in the construction of several major community buildings; the first, the Donguri Anne Public Library in Natori was unveiled earlier this year. That building is a hybrid heavy timber post and beam structure that uses a wide variety of Canadian forest products such as Coastal Hem Fir, Western Red Cedar, and Maple flooring.

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The B.C. forest industry is about to head into a super cycle of strong markets and healthy prices, says Nick Arkle, chairman of the Council of Forest Industries at its convention in Prince George.
Stuart Davis/Vancouver Sun

New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix plans to reduce British Columbia’s log exports, operating on the campaign slogan “B.C. logs for B.C. jobs.”

But the promise to reduce log exports has been made — and broken — before.

And while many agree a domestic “value-added” forestry economy is preferred, log exports do not necessarily equate to fewer jobs and may actually be subsidizing the market for domestic products, say an industry representative and observers.

“A record six million cubic metres of logs were exported in 2012 when they could have created jobs in B.C.,” Dix said in a news release Wednesday.

But to one industry representative whose association includes more than a dozen logging companies and mills on B.C.’s coast, those log exports created jobs.

Rick Jeffery, president and CEO of Coast Forest Products Association, said every thousand cubic metres of logs exported leads to a job in the industry for a logger, truck driver or longshoreman.

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On behalf of Coast Forest Products Association, I would like to congratulate the Canada Wood Group for the May 4th, 2013 opening of the Yuriage Public Market.   This is the result of an extraordinary partnership* between the Canadian forest industry, the Government of Canada, the Province of British Columbia and Alberta.  Read more

Kevin J. Clarke, President and Chief Executive Officer of Catalyst will be stepping down later this spring and Coast Forest Products Association would like to thank him for the significant contribution he made to the coastal forest sector.  As CEO of Catalyst for the past three years, Kevin successfully steered the company through challenging times allowing it to restructure and quickly emerge once again as a leading company in the paper and pulp industry not only in BC but on a global scale.

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