Two days before Christmas, the B.C. government has announced it’s committing grant funding for nearly a dozen Interior communities directly affected by forestry job losses this year.
The Forests Ministry says 11 communities will have access to money totaling $875,000, including Clearwater, Merritt, Clinton and 100 Mile House.
Mayor of Clearwater Merlin Blackwell says the announcement is great news during the holidays.
“As I said last week on the NL Morning Show, hope is a good thing to have. What I see this going towards is worker support programs, so employment training, counselling, maybe skills upgrades,” he says.
“I know some of the stuff that we’ve asked it to go for, like the Clearwater Healthy Living Program, would be things like daycare, exercise programs that workers could go to, to sort of get them out of the house, lift their spirits, give them some free time to kind of look after themselves a little bit. And I think that, at this point, six months into it, is kind of what we need to do for people.”
The money being made available is part of the government’s $69-million-dollar forest relief fund, which was reallocated from rural dividend program earlier this year to be earmarked for rural, forest-dependent communities that have had recent mill closures and curtailments.
“This is the Community Supports Grants portion of it, there’s also the stuff that goes directly to workers through other programs, and through things like, potentially, work, through fuel mitigation and the likes. But this is the portion that would go directly to communities,” Blackwell says.
“At this point, Clearwater is anticipating passing most of it straight through to Yellowhead Community Services, because they’re our local partner that looks after things like WorkBC and job training. So we’re giving it to the people who already know what they’re doing.”
Clearwater, Clinton, Quesnel and Kelowna will each be eligible for $100,000; all four communities have had major sawmills shut down this year. 100 Mile House, Mackenzie, Fort St. John, Fort St. James, and Jaffray will each be eligible for $75,000, while Merritt and Isle Pierre will each be able to get up to $50,000.
