A8 • www.vicnews.com Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - VICTORIA NEWS

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Just as the city media report only the deaths in Afghanistan, they report only the mill closings in the forest industry.

There’s a journalistic conceit behind this: any trace of “good” news tends to be dismissed by senior editors as government, or worse, industry propaganda. But when it comes to B.C.’s weary woods, the main reason is that urban people just don’t care any more.

That was evident as I listened to Vancouver’s most popular radio talk show on Friday. A single caller touched on the troubles of B.C.’s historically dominant industry, but the discussion soon switched back to the urgent matter of the tax on Metro parking spots.

You might have heard that another sawmill is shutting down in Quesnel this week, laying off 180 workers. You probably didn’t hear that two sawmills have restarted in Mackenzie, or that another in Chetwynd is to restart this spring after 18 months down, now that specialty markets have been found and mill workers have agreed to cut their pay by $5.49 an hour.

Since Forests Minister Pat Bell returned from his latest trade mission to China and Japan in November, I’ve spoken with him, with the NDP’s new forestry critic,

and also surveyed the major B.C. industry CEOs who went on the trip. Here’s some of what I’ve found.

There is, in fact, a sharp increase in demand for wood in China, with the prospect of much more to come. Bell’s goal of selling a third of B.C.’s wood to Asia appears within reach.

Whether it’s logs from private land (mostly here on Vancouver Island and regulated federally) or kiln-dried lumber from the Interior, sales to China in particular are where the main hope for recovery rests.

The larger question for B.C. is to what extent logs from Crown land will be exported, as the Chinese weigh our cost versus that of Russian logs.

These days there are two forest industries

in B.C. There’s an old, inefficient one on the Coast and an Interior industry that’s a world leader in efficiency.

The Truck Loggers’ Association represents the coastal harvesters, who are now saying bluntly to the B.C. government that their sawmills can’t compete with those in the Interior. They want the province’s rules for selling Crown logs relaxed to at least get some loggers back in the bush.

B.C. has authorized some log exports from the North Coast, where there is no practical access

to mills and where the resource has essentially been ceded to aboriginal people. The notion of expanding those exports southward is likely to be a hot topic when the truck loggers hold their annual convention in Victoria next week.

One thing is certain about China. It will use its huge supply of cheap labour wherever it can. Forget shipping pre-fab roof trusses over there, for example. To re-roof an apartment building in Shanghai, construction workers hoist B.C. lumber up six floors by hand and build trusses in place with hammers and Swede saws.

The B.C. and federal governments have been spending heavily on demonstration projects and construction schools since 2002, trying to persuade the Chinese to build entirely with wood instead of concrete or steel.

NDP forests critic Norm McDonald says Bell is overselling the gains made in China, which are mostly low-grade wood sold at a loss, or building projects subsidized by Canadian taxpayers.

Bell points to private investment in a Chinese resort community, with wood-frame luxury homes that look identical to new construction in the Okanagan Valley.

That’s the future.Right now, the question is log

sales.Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter

and columnist for Black Press and BCLocalnews.com.

tfletcher@blackpress.ca

OUR VIEW

Forest industry bets on China

‘Bell’s goal of selling a third of B.C.’s wood to Asia appears within reach.’

Five years out, arena plan fails

Greater Victoria has the opportunity to host the Juno Awards sometime this decade, but a lack of teamwork in our region may have thrown a spanner into those works.

The fact the region’s largest arena holds just 7,000 or so seats – perhaps less for an event such as the Juno Awards gala – is a stumbling block that may have been avoided, had the

region’s municipalities had the foresight to work together.

Contributions from outside the city were hard to come by when

the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre project was in the works, despite the fact residents from around the region would no doubt be using the facility or attending events there. A logical argument was made at the time that city taxpayers bore the brunt of the cost of borrowing for the arena, while more non-city residents will use it.

Such arguments are made the opposite way today based on operational costs, for facilities such as Saanich Commonwealth Place, Oak Bay Recreation Centre and Bear Mountain Arena on the West Shore, which are funded by those municipalities.

The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which stages the Juno Awards, is said to have a general rule about avoiding venues under 10,000 seats for the event. That is just one example of how building a smaller arena might come back to bite the city.

There appears to be a cash option allowing cities with smaller arenas to host the Junos – 2010 host St. John’s, Nfld. has the same size arena as us, but kicked in an extra $500,000 to replace lost seating revenue. But we’ve heard concert promoters say on several occasions that if there were a 10,000-seat venue here we’d be seeing bigger-name acts come to town.

Could we have combined to build a bigger, more suitable arena back in 2004-05? Perhaps. But until we start thinking regionally and less as independent fiefdoms, such projects and events are likely going to pass us all by.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking more as a region

Tom FletcherB.C. Views