RYAN PAINTER: It’s time to choose workers over bureaucrats, communities over activists, and BC over the NDP
The Vancouver Sun says it plainly: BC’s forestry industry is on its knees. As someone who worked in forestry - whose family depended on it - I’m going to break down this piece and show why the NDP’s red tape & ideology are killing our jobs. This collapse isn’t just about U.S. tariffs. As Kim Haakstad of the Council of Forest Industries (COFI) told the Sun : “wood availability is at historic lows, permitting systems are gridlocked, and investment is retreating.” That’s failure made in Victoria. The “War in the Woods” of the 90s gave us a bureaucracy that’s only grown fatter. Politicians tied hands with the Forest Practices Code, and every government since has piled on more rules. The result? 40,000 good jobs are gone -- families gutted. I worked in forestry. My family lived off forestry. I know the pride of a hard day’s work. Today, people like me are watching while their way of life is strangled by paper-pushers who’ve never swung an axe, never set foot in a mill, and ne...