WARD STAMER -- Those are REAL forestry numbers, not just made-up numbers

The following is a condensed version of remarks Kamloops – North Thompson MLA Ward Stamer’s made, regarding Forestry, in the BC Legislature, on Tuesday afternoon (02/24/2026)

 

Let’s talk a little bit, when we talk about Budget 2026, about the forest industry, which is near and dear to my heart.

Forestry remains one of British Columbia’s foundational industries. It’s a pillar that built this province. Entire communities depend upon it. Interior towns, northern communities, Vancouver Island regions, the Kootenays, the Lower Mainland, with manufacturing facilities in Surrey and Maple Ridge, just to name a few — everywhere in BC is touched by forestry.

One word that was not mentioned in Budget 2026 was forestry. That’s a shame, an incredible shame. It wasn’t an oversight – it was intentional. This government has driven forestry into the ground .... INTO THE GROUND!

We can talk a little bit about some of the initiatives that this government has brought forth, to try to resurrect the forest industry, but I would suggest that it’s just mere pennies on the dollar.

Forest jobs are often family-supporting jobs. They sustain local businesses, schools, volunteer organizations. In many cases, in smaller communities, they are a major taxpayer in those communities.

As an example, there’s the Crofton pulp mill which, under this government’s watch, just went down after being in business for almost 70 years. That’s a $5 million municipal tax hit to North Cowichan this year, next year and every other year that that pulp mill remains shuttered. What do you think the implications are going to be for the taxpayers in that region? I would suggest it’s going to be significant.

When we talk about our forest industry, I’m not the only one that has been trying to push back hard. Everyone in the industry has been saying, loud and clear, that we need certainty in this industry. This government is basically relinquishing their responsibilities. We’ve got a multitude of issues in our forest industry right now, in the cost structure that is associated with it.

We hear, from the other side, that the trade dispute and the ongoing issues in the world have a bearing on that. Of course they do, but we’ve always had tariffs with the Americans, and we probably always will. I understand the Premier wants to take the Americans to court again. I heard the other day: “Well, we’ve never been successful in the past. What makes them think that we’re going to be successful in the future?”

We have to make sure that we are cost-competitive in this industry, in this province, and be responsible for what we can do, not what other people can do. Unfortunately, that’s what’s not happening.

You know, we had offices around the world for international trade. Finally, the light bulb has gone off, and in the last six months to a year, the Forest Minister and this government have decided to re-open a couple of our foreign offices. That’s great. I congratulate them for doing it, but it has certainly taken them a long time to realize that we shouldn’t be just putting all our eggs in one basket.

When we talk about our costing structure, even permitting which used to be $3 or $4 a cubic metre, that has now tripled in just a few years. Just that alone can make us uncompetitive.

That comes because of all the extra consultation processes that are involved, all the back-and-forth, and the realization that most permitting isn’t even approved by the district managers anymore. It’s being approved by First Nations in consultation with the licensees, not the other way around. Those are bringing significant challenges to our industry right now.

Many international processors and producers have diversified their markets, and we’re just starting to see that, particularly in our value-added sector. When regulatory complexity increases, capital investment slows. I would suggest that most of the capital investment has stopped. That’s why we’re having difficulties in this province right now, across the board, on all our natural resources. It’s because of the uncertainty in this province.

When companies cannot predict the fibre access or tenure stability, they will hesitate to modernize.

Now, I heard a member talking earlier about the $400 million investment fund that is going to be used — we call it a slush fund — basically to try to maximize dollars with the federal dollars. But that’s not necessarily so, and it isn’t specifically identified for the forest industry or any other industry. It just allows, as they said, the ability for the government to have flexibility in the budget.

Well, then, why did they have to put an extra $1 billion into a contingency fund? That $1 billion is a significant amount of money, which does not require any oversight in this House. On this side of the House, we don’t believe in that. We believe in accountability and transparency, not just adding more money to a slush fund.

When we become uncompetitive in our forest industry, Mr. Speaker, these are some of the results that we’ve had.

You might have heard these numbers before, but I’ll tell them again. We’ve lost over 15,000 full-time jobs in our forest industry in the last four years. Our harvesting levels have been reduced by 50 percent in that same time. This is an industry that should be sustainable, with a renewable resource, and we’re only doing half of what we did four years ago.

Now, many will say: “Well, that was partly responsible — a pine uplift and bugs.” That was part of it. But that just goes to show you how badly this government has managed our forests, now that we’re only doing half of what we did four years ago.

This same government, four years ago, promised 30,000 new jobs. I’m not going to try to pretend with the numbers and say we’ve lost 45,000, but we have lost 15,000 full-time jobs.

You multiply that by a minimum of three to five across the board, because of the structure of those jobs, and we’ve lost anywhere between 45,000 and 60,000 jobs.

Those are real numbers, not just made-up numbers.

The other thing I’d like to say regarding forestry, relates to value-added. We all agree that we should be getting more value out of every cubic metre in this province, out of a tree. Unfortunately, that’s not happening. We need to be able to restructure our forest system so that we can incentivize companies to be able to get the most out of the fibre.

No, we don’t need the government to start hiring loggers to try to bring wood to a sort yard, and then try to figure out how to sell that wood to somebody. That’s never going to work.

We have the potential to lead in engineered wood products. We have success stories all over the province in being state of the art in engineering structural beams and structural building, mass timber, advanced manufacturing. We’ve also got opportunities in bioenergy, yet this government doesn’t believe in bioenergy.

This government had to be forced to continue to have the operation in Williams Lake still running to be able to supply electricity to the grid because it’s dirty fuel, dirty energy.

This side of the government doesn’t agree with that. And when we’re government, we’re going to change that.

But value-added also requires confidence. If companies fear unstable fibre supply or unpredictable policy shifts, where we’ve seen shifting all over the place, then we’re not going to have the investment necessary for us to move this province forward.