Beetles take Bite of Alberta, Ont Mill wants Smarter Workers

Climate change deniers, who seem to abound in Alberta, get to feel the bite of the Northern Pine Beetle as yet another mild winter is causing an explosion there of infestation.

Spring survey results released this week are showing that high numbers of the beetles survived the winter across much of southwest Alberta and in several pockets in west-central Alberta.
Two years ago, beetles had attacked 19,000 trees in Alberta. A year ago, the figure was three million. Besides threatening an estimated $23 billion worth of timber in Alberta forests, officials worry about potential changes to the watershed, leading to more run-off and flooding.

Ontario Mill now sets Grade 12 standard:

When Red Rock Mill Inc. reopens the mill in Red Rock, Ontario in 2009 (to manufacture the Multiply line), all employees will need to have their grade 12 for safety reasons.

According to Red Rock's labour adjustment centre, roughly 40% of workers who were laid off from mill closures in Nipigon and Red Rock over the last few years didn't finish high school.

Mill manager Mike Shusterman said Thursday that some workers who would normally be hired in a flash because of their solid work history, won't qualify if they don‘t have Grade 12.

It ain't that hard!
Mills here should strictly enforce GR 12 or better on all new hires, there's no way some kid who won't finish school should be taking a job away from one who will. No way a Supervisor should consider hiring someone without the ambition to even graduate!

--both stories in foresttalk.com

Booked your Moving Van yet? More wait and see...

The courst have granted P&T another extension on the sale of their 3 BC mills. They now have until July 7th to gather offers.
Hurry up and wait some more, which should be adopted as a motto for our town where absolutely nothing, ever, comes to a speedy conclusion.
The delays have been so numerous the P&T sale has become un-newsworthy in the major papers, like "Dog Bites Man".
Read about it here in the PG Citizen, or here on opinion250, or here on foresttalk.com financial news if you really want to get further depressed.
Worker options have been reduced to move or hope that this area of BC will be granted the status of some isolated Newfoundland outport and grant EI extensions. The second option carries with it the warning that even with an EI extension, that too will be run out by the time the mill becomes operational again.

Milligan Files Enviro Assessment

Terrane Metals has filed their project assessment, the next step is to file to initiate the statuatory review period.
Read the article, they even mention some workers will be living in the Fort.
----opinion250.com

P&T's Halsey Oregon mill was flogged for $24 million yesterday to Ableco Finance LLC.
---Portland Journal

Mackenzie takes another kick in the 'nads as CANFOR announces an indefenite shutdown of it's mill there, throwing another 200 people out of work
---opinion250.com

Canada Paid for US Timber 'Slush Fund'

From the 2006 Softwood Lumber Deal:

"much of the $1 billion the Canadian negotiators relinquished to the United States has been used to reward the American lumber industry and other friends of President George Bush's administration. Concerns the money would be used for a slush fund may well have been fulfilled."

But wait, it's not that at all...

"We don't like where the money went," said Peter Goldman, the director and managing attorney of the Washington Forest Law Center. "I personally would not call it a political slush fund; I'd call it a timber industry slush fund."

So let's keep in mind the figure $129 million doled out to help Forestry across all Canada. And look at what got dispersed:

$500 million to the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, the American lobby group that sparked the latest round in the softwood lumber dispute in the first place

FOUR TIMES as much directly to 'the enemy'

$200 million to the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, an organization created to receive the funds and dominated by timber industry executives

Almost twice as much to AMERICAN forestry, AMERICAN communities, controlled by the very people who started this.

$150 million to the American Forest Foundation, which "promotes the interests of small forest landowners"

More to AMERICAN small forest owners than ALL of Canada got.
--- figures from Andrew Macleod's story in The Tyee

So when we see Dick Harris's smiling face in the paper as he hands over a niggardly $130,000 to talk us into being farmers, WTF are we doing cheering him? It's a slap in the face to the Fort's mill workers, and the electors that supported this clown. Let's keep that in mind if an election is called. You want to support a gov't of sycophants who'll willingly give 1,200 times as much to the American Forest Foundation as they'll give to you? Let's tack on the $2 million to train people for jobs that aren't here and recalculate. That's only 75 times as much to the A.F.F. alone. 250 times as much to C.O.F.I. the bastards who crippled our whole Industry.
Is this the type of 'representation' you deserve? The figures make Chretien's Adscam look bush league. This is ONE BILLION dollars to the blackmailers, to keep up the blackmail, because they're too chicken to stand up for their own country!

June 10 - Big Day - New Possibilities

June 10 is the day potential buyers of Pope & Talbots mills must file by. Reports indicate six expressions of interest so far, and a Vancouver Sun report mentions the possibility of a seventh, by the investor behind the revival of Port Alice.
That one is interesting in that the overall plan would include $250 million investment to turn some of the wood and pulp waste into ethanol fuel instead of wasting food products for production, in the largest refinery in Canada!
Several interests include both the mill here and the pulp mill in Mackenzie.
-Read the whole story in the Sun

P&T Sale Opened to Other Buyers, Mackenzie On The Mind

BC Supreme Court ruled against AP&P and the sale of the Takla Mill is now open to other buyers. The Court ruled AP&P had it's chance, failed to close the deal and now has no right to try to claim the mill for a paltry $6 million. It will have to compete against any potentially higher offers from the open market. PricewaterhouseCooper (the bankruptcy trustee) says it has received 6 expressions of interest and thinks it can get a much better offer.
The Court will also be ruling on how much the Province of BC will be on the hook for cleanup should the mill, the one in Mackenzie and Harmac go down for good.
---here's the story reported by The Sun
Meanwhile Even Our Closest Neighbours Have Mackenzie On The Mind
as the Prince George Citizen headlines

Mackenzie hoping buyer will operate mill

then goes on to quote Mayor Rob MacDougall about the Fort St. James mill! Nice going, Rob! Not your fault for their mistake, but it shows what happens when one town screams, yells and hits the streets and the other town doesn't. Pretty obvious that a more activist approach should be endorsed at the next Council meeting.
More about the Court ruling is included in the Citizen article including this juicy tidbit:

PT Pindo Deli's lawyer Nicholas Hughes told the court during the hearing that his client should not be “tarred” for cancelling a separate deal with Pope & Talbot for three of its pulp mills. He also said if the deal goes ahead the Fort St. James mill could be operating in three months.
The receiver disputed that timeline as being too short considering other issues that needed to be resolved.

AP&P blowing smoke or confirmation that the troops will be out all summer even with the best possible result of all this. Explains why the govt's are considering EI extensions (a dole) but not considering shelling out money to hire the unemployed to clean out some of the deadwood.
---read the miscaptioned story

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Gov't Take Over P&T?

Well yesterday's rally didn't seem to get beyond Prince George, with no major newspaper picking up the story. Diddly-squat on CTV news, a family of ducks was more important to them, while Global continues its obsession with Mackenzie.
Hers's a report from the PG Citizen that mentions the rally in passing while it interviews rally leader Winson Cheung for his idea of having the gov't run the mill while it finds a buyer. As Winson mentions, workers would work, the town would remain stable, and it would be cheaper in the long run that paying out EI for no results and watching the Fort die. Money from the operation may not be good until a buyer is found, but productivity and results from a closed mill and workers on EI is a complete zero.

Winson, you're an NDPer at heart or a True Liberal just like me. nfortunately Gordon Campbell et al. are not even close to Liberal. They're dyed-in-the-wool Tories masqeurading as Liberals, bent oon implementing free-market ideology on BC at any cost.
Let's never forget how a party so hell-bent on trashing the NDP they bad-mouthed the fast ferries even after they won their first election. Perhaps only to the public's surprise (not to theirs, they're chuck filled with car-salesman support), we discovered you couldn't sell those things for a nickel they'd been trashed so bad. Even when Nova Scotia companies were buying fast ferries from Australia!
Look back again at the Skeena Mill in Terrace. The prop-up by the NDP is now a neo-con legend as to how gov't intervention 'only messes up the inevitable'.
These people WANT the mills to go down. They WANT it to get so bad they can justify raw log exports and use the "at least the loggers are working, better than nothing" mantra that is bought buy so many of the richest per capita resource country in the world so easily. The few of us own so much, and we'll take the least we can get. That leaves the fewest of us few (or foreigners) to take the most they can get. THe core of neo-con ideology. I'm okay Jack, you can always work at Wendy's.
Terrace was devastated by the Skeena closure, it took years to recover and for a decade was a skeletal blight upn the town, a depressing reminder of what once was. Terrace has recovered, but it's geographical position as a central market for big-box outlets to draw from Terrace, Rupert, Kitimat and the Hazeltons was the only reason why. Some mines nearby HAVE opened, and are not mere promises. Had Skeena gone down on Day One, many of the residents would be gone. No workers to attract those big-box stores. No population to even consider the investment that did happen. The NDP bail-out bought time and saved that community!
So Winson, even though your idea makes the most common sense and is better for everyone all around, there's no hope of it being implemented.