Eliminating waste in the forest, growing more trees, getting into the Chinese market and building more homes and offices with wood are the top priorities for B.C.’s Forest Minister.

Pat Bell told the Cowichan Lake District Chamber of Commerce Wednesday night that he’s excited about the course the government has been charting for the forest industry, with his focus on the four areas he believes are key to revitalizing the industry.

“I’m sick and tired of how much waste is left in the bush,” said Bell. “It’s disgusting.”

He said his ministry will encourage aggressive use of all the fibre and used the example of a company in the Interior that’s selling wood waste to be ground into wood pellets for energy. He expects to see such operations across the province.

“Some are making fencing from it,” he added. “In two years you’ll be hard pressed to see any waste in the forest. That’s immediately creating jobs. We’ve made some headway, but we’ve got a ways to go.”

Bell said B.C. is in a situation of possibly running out of trees unless more are planted, so he wants to focus on that as well. He forecast that the silviculture industry will be four to five times bigger within the next 10 years or so, which also includes spacing, thinning and fertilizing.

Getting more into the Chinese market, Bell said, would be huge for B.C.’s economy. “We’ve relied far too long on the American market,” he said.

B.C. lumber sales to the U.S., historically in a class by itself at up to 10 billion board feet annually, has fallen to about six billion. Bell said the provincial government started focusing on China six years ago and real growth with that country is just starting.

“About seven per cent of our total forestry production goes to China,” he said, noting that’s about 1.4 billion board feet. The goal is to reach four billion board feet by 2020.

An agreement to renovate 150 concrete apartment buildings with wood roof trusses and interior partition walls is seen as a possible breakthrough. Bell describes the scene in Shanghai where six-storey walk up apartment blocks stretch to the horizon, all susceptible to collapse in a quake.

B.C. recently approved six-storey wood construction for its own building code. That was to promote domestic lumber consumption, but Bell said it is a key to the Asia marketing effort. The B.C. and Canadian governments are also spending $13 million on demonstration projects, wood construction training and other marketing initiatives in China this year, up from $8.6 million last year.

In response to a question, Bell said that to deal with the pine beetle epidemic the government will likely urge the replanting of mixed species in the Interior.

— With a file from Tom Fletcher