The Steelworkers Union Local 1-417 President says they were not consulted prior to the BC government making the announcement of $69 million to support local forestry workers.

Marty Gibbons says he is cautiously optimistic about the money at this time. “They have put out a program without any sort of details. I have spent almost 30 years of my life working in the forest industry and I’ve been through the community development trust which sounds very similar to what they’ve come out with, with some differences. Some of the announcement we’ve heard that it will be available to all. We’ve also heard displaced, what does that mean?”

Gibbons has  heard it will be available to all and it also talks about supporting workers who are displaced and he questions what that even means. “We also see it’ll be done in coordination with forestry employers and kind of the feedback I am getting from the forestry employers, although not on the record, is their not really sure what the government is smoking. There’s more questions than answers, but a lot of our members are quite surprised that a program would be announced with so many questions attached to it….. Forest workers don’t want hand outs, forest workers want jobs.”

Gibbons says “the real issue that we have to deal with and we have to tackle moving forward is how do we make our forest industry competitive moving forward. And that conversation has to talk about forest practices and stumpage.” Gibbons hears that timber supply is often blamed, but he doesn’t buy it. He says it’s very difficult when the government is unwilling to talk about stumpage.

The government’s $69 million announcement was announced on Tuesday. It was said it would be split up with $40 million set aside for early retirement, $15 million toward short-term forest employment program, $12 million for skills training & training grants and $2 million for a new job placement coordination office.