Vaughn Palmer: NDP was asked four years ago to rescue B.C.'s pulp mills. It didn't

Opinion: Several reports have warned that access to wood was key to mill survival — and that falls under the B.C. government

VICTORIA — Forests Minister Ravi Parmar started the week on a positive note, announcing that the province would be making more wood available to custom cutters and producers in the specialty products sector. “British Columbia’s path forward for forestry can’t just be providing dimensional lumber to Americans,” said Parmar by news release. “We’re supplying fibre to the businesses who are ready to create world-class wood products.”

On Tuesday, Canfor announced the Northwood pulp mill in Prince George will be closing permanently come the end of the year. “On Monday, I was talking about the need for more value and how we can pivot and transform our forest sector in the long run,” Parmar acknowledged in an interview with Sonia Sunger of Global TV. “But when you have news like this, my heart goes out to the 300 workers directly impacted by this, but also the hundreds more that will be indirectly impacted.”

Parmar echoed Canfor in citing an oversupply of pulp in the global market as a factor in the closure. The company also cited “persistent challenges accessing fibre” here in B.C. What about that?

“One of the biggest challenges we face is wildfires,” said the minister. “We are having to go farther and farther away from these mills to be able to collect fibre. And the cost of transporting that into our mills is making some of the blocks (of timber) that we’re harvesting really uneconomic.”

The competitiveness problem is not confined to B.C., said Parmar. “I know that my colleagues Back East are facing the same challenges.” Yet it is not as if Northwood’s owner is giving up on the rest of the country.

Two weeks ago, Canfor completed the $68 million purchase of PinkWood Ltd., a Calgary-based producer of structural wooden I-joists and the largest firm of its kind in Western Canada. The B.C. Pulp and Paper Coalition said Wednesday that the B.C. government could have done more to head off the Northwood closure. “B.C.’s pulp and paper industry has the world’s best fibre and the world’s best workers, but we are not globally competitive,” said the Coalition’s Joe Nemeth.

“We continue to ask government to understand the need to lower costs. “ The government should deliver on its commitment to increase the supply of harvested timber from the current 30 million cubic metres a year to the promised 45 million. The coalition also says B.C. Hydro should pay market prices for the excess power that pulp and paper mills produce and sell into the electricity grid.

“Had these two steps been taken, the closure of Northwood may well have been avoidable,” said the coalition. Four years ago this month, the coalition gave the NDP government a 20-page value-added transformation plan for the pulp and paper sector. It detailed how to secure $2.9 billion in investment over the next eight years in modernizing mills and increasing production in specialty papers, packaging and the like.

Along with regulatory relief, the key recommendation was “reliable access to fibre supply.” The July 2022 presentation also came with a cautionary forecast about the fate of the sector without relief. There were then 16 mills operating in B.C.

As many as five could close over the next 10 years, the coalition warned. With the pending closure of Northwood, the coalition’s mill count will be down to 11 by the end of this year, just four years after the 2022 presentation to government. A more recent, but no less cautionary, report was delivered in June by the federal government’s task force on transformation of the Canadian forest sector.

It detailed two decades of “declining production, capital flight, prolonged mill closures, and weakened investor and workforce confidence,” in the sector. While acknowledging the toll exacted by softwood duties, wildfires, pine beetles, and industry short-sightedness, the 60-page report nevertheless issued an unequivocal verdict: “The most significant barriers to competitiveness are homegrown. “For too long Canadians have blamed distant others for matters for which we must be held to account.

That must end if the trajectory of Canada’s forest sector is to change.” The top recommendation: “Stable, long-term access to competitive fibre is the precondition to everything else in this report. Without it, capital will not flow, regardless of incentives and workforce confidence will continue to erode.”

Access to fibre is the key. The task force said it in June, the coalition said it four years ago, others said it before and since. Still, the mill closures and job losses continue, while the investment dollars go elsewhere.