Canfor

By Cheryl Jahn

More trouble in the forests

More curtailments faced in forestry

Jun 11, 2019 | 4:21 PM

Another forest operation has closed it’s doors. The Norbord OSB plant in 100 Mile House has announced its intentions to indefinitely curtail operations, affecting 160 employees. That comes on the heels of Tolko’s decision to shutter its operation in Quesnel and Canfor’s decision to shut down its Vavenby operation.

Frank Everitt was the President of the IWA, Local 1-424 for 25 years. He says this feels much different.

“We went through a number of curtailments over the years and employers dealt with it differently.What we’re seeing now, instead of them each trying to outdo the others, they’re altogether with the same idea that they have to take part of the market away.”

The latest curtailment by Canfor will take 200 million board feet off the market and follows a string of curtailments. And Canfor is not the only operation.

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“It’s not just one company today. We’ve had Conifex up in Fort St. James that went from two shifts to one shift,” says Brian O’Rourke, President of USW, Local 1-2017. “They were curtailed for the full month of May. They, toward the end of May, we got a call saying they’re going to be curtailed for a further two weeks.”

The mills’ efforts are to drive up the price of lumber. Typically, when lumber prices drop, log costs follow suit. But that isn’t happening and BC is becoming one of the high-cost producers.

“About 85% of our products are exported,” explains Susan Yurkovich, President and CEO of the Council of Forest Industries. “So we need to be able to compete with suppliers around the globe. Being able to compete with those folks is our top priority.”

But Everitt is concerned about how protracted curtailments and shutdowns will impacts communities and others in the forest sector.

“The pulp mills have gotten the chips from lumber mills over the years,” he says. “And there’s also the trickle down effect in the community as well. When people are out of work they don’t spend as much money in the restaurants and on vacations and that sort of stuff.”

And that’s the message from O=Rourke to his members: Reign it in because it could be a challenging summer in the forest sector.