raw logs

By Cheryl Jahn

Mulling Mills

Alternatives for raw log exports

Jul 11, 2019 | 4:46 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The province has brought in some new regulations to further curb the shipment of raw logs out of country with a new fee-in-lieu charge. But these measures have little impact on the region of the province where the forest sector is hurting badly.

“The wood in the Interior of the province is milled in the Interior of the province, for the most part,” explains Mike Morris, MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie. “There’s some chips from some of the mills that end up down in the Lower Mainland.”

However, the United Steelworks Union, Local 1-2017 says there could be an alternative destination for those logs.

“It’s a good step in the right direction to curb raw log exports. It would be a whole lot better if they just stopped it completely but we know that’s not a realistic approach at this time,” says Brian O’Rourke, President of Local 1-2017. “But one way to do it to give the opportunity to have these logs shipped to any of the Interior mills if [those mills] could actually manufacture that product.”

O’Rourke says proposes a return of appurtenancy provisions, something that was quashed by the BC Liberals in 2003. Those provisions set out that a log that is harvested in one region must also be milled in that region.

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Big logging companies opposed those provisions as the don’t afford enough flexibility to be globally competitive.

Morris suggests relaxing the stumpage rates and cutting taxes to the big businesses may help the industry to weather the storm.