The Mayor of Clearwater says he’s looking forward to working with the province’s new Forests Minister, Katrine Conroy, this year, saying she understands rural issues well.

“I had dinner at UBCM [in 2019] with the new minister. I was happily surprised when she was announced,” Merlin Blackwell said. “She’s a very sharp person, gets rural deeply. Yeah, I had a great conversation with her at UBCM, and though, ‘yeah, this is a perfect fit. This is great.'”

Speaking on the NL Morning News, Blackwell says he is especially optimistic because the North Thompson is unique when it comes to the forestry sector.

“Its called the cedar-hemlock partition which is a bunch of low quality timber but its really good quality fibre. We just need to find a way to turn that into money and move it out of the North Thompson,” he said.

“I think Domtar [in Kamloops] would love it if we could figure out a way to get that rolling because they can really use a lot of fibre and we use sort of the spin-off stuff.”

He notes while there may not be the demand for lumber like there once was, he says it doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for wood products in B.C. and across Canada.

“Part of that is associated with the purchase of the whole Canfor-Interfor lands and what the Simpcw First Nation are doing up this way as far as looking at new industries to develop on those warehouse and Canfor lands in Vavenby,” Blackwell said.

“There are a lot of irons in the fire and there’s a lot of potential behind a lot of them and a lot of optimism too.”

Conroy replaces Doug Donaldson as B.C. Forests Minister after he chose to not run for re-election back in October.