As BC’s Premier travels in Prince George this Tuesday to meet with local officials and forestry workers set to be laid-off in the coming weeks, the opposition BC Liberals are slamming the government, claiming it is neglecting the sector.

David Eby is meeting with some of the 300 workers set to be laid-off by a shutdown of a line at the Canfor pulp mill in the next couple of months.

“The present NDP government said that there would never be a mill shut down under their watch,” said BC Liberal Forestry Critic Mike Bernier. “But yet we see them really sitting on their hands or abandoning the forestry sector.”

Bernier argues BC is the most expensive in North America for forestry companies to operate in, and suggests officials in Victoria are making it more difficult for companies to operate.

“I’m hearing that from a lot of different companies, that are telling me that they’re applying for permits so they can get access to the back-country for their tenures for timber, and they’re not even getting an answer, or the answer is so far down the road that they can’t make good business decisions,” said Bernier.

A lack of available fibre is being cited by the BC Council of Forest Industries as one of the main reasons for the Canfor shutdown, on top of a number of other long-term operational curtailments by other BC-based companies.

“Changes in forest profile and forest policy have led to a decline in economic fibre,” said Linda Coady, CEO of the BC Council of Forest Industries — an umbrella organization representing many of the companies working in the BC forest sector.

“We had a big peak in 2007, 2008 in the annual allowable cut in BC,” notes Coady.  “It was up as high as 80-million cubic meters, because of the infestation [of the bark beetle], and today it’s around 60-million cubic meters, and that is expected to ultimately level-out somewhere between 40 to 50-million cubic meters by 2030.”

The shutdown of the pulp mill line by Canfor is one of a number of shutdowns or curtailments which BC-based forest companies have instituted in recent months, costing hundreds their pay cheques on a temporary or permanent basis.