The mayor of Merritt says local forestry is still not as good as it should be after Aspen Planers restarted a second shift.

Linda Brown says the local sawmill now has more logs but loggers are still out of work.

“So in other words, Aspen is finding fibre to cut but our loggers are still out of work, so there are no logs being cut in the area. We still need the province to review the stumpage fees and the other issues that allow current allocations to the area. The whole allocation of timber is still at issue,” Brown says.

“Nobody is using logging right now. They’re not cutting wood, because the stumpage fees are creating a big cost of cutting a tree right now. So they’re not using loggers to cut new trees. Aspen Planers is looking at this point at trees that have already been cut on the open market already.”

The B.C. government says it doesn’t plan to lower stumpage fees at this point, saying it could lose softwood lumber disputes with the U.S. if there’s a perception that forest companies in B.C. are being subsidized.