Do they care about Northern B.C.?

Growing up in Kitimat, I was surrounded by a strong resource-based economy in the region. Eurocan, where I did my high school work experience, was going full bore, while Terrace had two large mills operating and Prince Rupert was enjoying the benefits of a pulp mill of its own.

When I graduated in 1997 I began pursuing an education in Natural Resource Sciences and got a diploma from NWCC in 2001. When traveling south to pursue a degree at UCC in Kamloops, you couldn’t help but notice that forestry was driving the economy of Northern B.C., with mills just outside of Kitwanga, Quesnel, Williams Lake and so on.

It’s amazing how things changed, with pretty much all of those mills no longer operating and the final nail in the northwest coming this week as Eurocan announced that it will be shutting down in January. What’s more amazing is the total apathy and lack of support for this industry from the provincial and federal governments.

Harper and his buddies were happy to throw billions of dollars to prop up the automotive industry in Ontario and millions to the east coast fishery, but could seem to care less about supporting an industry in the rural communities that make up Northern B.C. It’s almost like we don’t count since we’re not a major source of the electorate.

And Campbell and his group of merry men have seen mills shutting down in B.C. for years and years, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs, and have done nothing to try and stop the trend. Sure they’ve offered retraining programs, but they’ve done nothing to make it so people don’t need the retraining. I’m thinking policies or incentives for value-added products or limiting raw log exports or those types of things could have helped limit the impact to forestry.

It’s unfortunate to see an entire industry devestated without the support offered to other industries. It sends a pretty strong message of the value that has been placed on Northern

B.C.

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