Town looks to recover from closure
CLEARWATER — Simone and Christian Volk moved to B.C. from Switzerland in 2015, drawn by their love of Canada and desire to do sustainable logging in its vast wilderness.
With their son, Gion, they moved into a house nestled in the woods up Clearwater Valley Road, where they own and operate VOLKtrans Canada. Canfor Corp., which had a mill in nearby Vavenby, was keen to contract them for highly specialized, steep-slope logging. They had the cutting-edge equipment and skills to do selective harvesting.
The Volks soon learned the pace of logging in B.C. was nothing like they expected.
Nobody wanted us to do selective harvesting, said Simone, 41.
“It was, ‘Why did you leave these trees? Cut it all down.’”
They adapted their equipment and trained their staff to meet the industry’s demand for high output. But in January, the Volks’ contracts started slowing down amid a dwindling allowable annual cut and poor market conditions. They had a sense worse news was coming.
By the time that Canfor announced on June 3 that it was closing the Vavenby mill permanently, and intended to sell the associated cutting rights to Interfor for $60 million, the Volks had sold off five main pieces of equipment. They now count themselves among North Thompson Valley contractors struggling with uncertainty as they await the completion of the tenure’s sale.
They are worried about what will happen to Gion’s school (it will be their 11-month-old daughter Leeza’s someday, too) if everyone has to leave town. Will the Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital lose doctors and nurses? Will there be enough children left to field a Clearwater Rapids soccer team?
“In my mind, when it happens – the transfer – it will be good for the loggers short-term,” said Christian, 43. “But for the longterm, for the town and the valley, it’s the worst thing that could happen. Then these opportunities are forever gone.”
The Volks hope the B.C. government will find a way to prevent Clearwater and Vavenby from further suffering, following the sudden slashing of more than 170 mill jobs and loss of work for contractors. The government says it is doing everything it can.
Delays in decision on tenure sale causing stress
The forestry sector faces a dwindling timber supply, record wildfire seasons and lower prices for spruce, fir and pine lumber.
According to B.C. government data, the B.C. Interior timber supply is forecast to drop as much as 40 per cent in the region to 40 million cubic metres from its peak during the beetle epidemic, when harvesting was increased to salvage dead trees before they were no longer economically useful.
In response, firms are rationalizing operations – closing three mills, and implementing curtailments and shift reductions at 19 others this year – leaving many workers and contractors out of work and facing uncertainty. The Ministry of Forests said an estimated 3,984 workers have been directly affected by active mill closures and curtailments this year.
Canfor, Interfor, the District of Clearwater, Simpcw First Nation and B.C. government are hammering out the details of the Vavenby tenure’s sale.
Bill 22, which passed in May, requires forest companies to obtain approval from the forestry minister before transferring tenure agreements to another party. Minister Doug Donaldson has the power to refuse the new arrangement or put conditions on it, if it is not in the public interest.
The Vavenby tenure sale proposal is the first application of the new legislation. The process is expected to take 90 days, meaning a decision should come Sept. 1. However, because the legislation is new, most expect the announcement to come weeks or up to a month later.
Meantime, Interfor and Canfor are both working to support the North Thompson Valley community while it awaits news of the sale.
Canfor has a transition team for the mill workers and has been working with government agencies and service organizations to support them and the community, said Michelle Ward, director of corporate communications. The firm co-ordinated a job fair in June and some employees are transferring to its other facilities, she said.
The firm is doing work to clean up and shut down the mill site in Vavenby, but hopes it can still be used to benefit the community.
“We believe the site could be suitable for other industrial activities given the existing infrastructure and its access to transportation and the local skilled workforce,” she said.
“In the meantime, we are interested in exploring short-term uses for the site that may generate or support local employment and economic benefits.”
Ric Slaco, vice-president and chief forester at Interfor, said it is important his firm secures the tenure to support workers at its Adams Lake mill and the surrounding community, about 120 kilometres to the southeast of Vavenby.
Interfor has hired two Vavenby mill workers and is working with Canfor to find jobs for more, Slaco said. They hosted a job fair in June.
Slaco said Interfor has been in touch with all of Canfor contractors in Clearwater and Vavenby. Those with replaceable licenses will automatically be transferred to Interfor when the tenure is transferred.
“Interfor’s going to need all the logging, road-building and trucking services on those timber tenures and we plan to maintain a hub of contractors in the North Thompson area to do that,” he said.
But Slaco said the delay in the Bill 22 process is creating uncertainty, and Interfor recognizes that is causing hardship for contractors. “We’ve got a plan in place, we’d like to get going. But until the tenure gets transferred we’re in limbo,” he said.
Some people in the community have found hope in the potential for hundreds of jobs during the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and when a mine opens near Vavenby. Ali Hounsell, a spokeswoman for Trans Mountain, said a temporary construction yard, work camp and pipe stockpile site will be built in the District of Clearwater. Work would start this fall with site clearing and preparation before pipeline construction in 2020 and 2021.
Hounsell said they intend to hire as many local, regional and Indigenous workers as possible. The firm has already awarded general contracts but is still determining scheduling and how many workers it will need.
Taseko Minerals acquired Yellowhead Mining on Feb. 15, 2019, which is sole owner of a coppergold-silver development project 24 kilometres from Vavenby by forest service roads.
In a document filed in March, Taseko said it “intends to conduct further technical review and optimization work and to consider potential revisions to the project before providing any further disclosure.”
Taseko hasn’t yet made an application to the Environmental Assessment Office, the Ministry of Environment said.
The pipeline jobs are only temporary and the mine will come too late, lamented Madeleine deVooght, a planer tech who worked at the Vavenby mill for 30 years. She wants the B.C. government to show it cares about forestry workers by slowing the rapid consolidation of mills and continuing job losses. She wants the province to consider how the transfer of tenures punishes the communities attached to affected mills.
“We don’t want to live in the past,” deVooght said. “But forestry is still here, it’s still viable. It just needs to be managed.”
Instead, she is watching with concern as super mills continue to process millions of board feet and buy up fibre from other mills’ tenures when they run low.
“They gobble up a lot of wood really quickly,” she said.
“The thing is, it would be sustainable if they slowed down a little bit. But because the companies are so large and are running a business, they don’t want to slow down. They don’t want to reduce how much we produce.”
Government seeks public input on protecting forestry sector
Forests Minister Doug Donaldson said he and his deputy minister are regularly meeting and speaking with representatives from Clearwater, the Simpcw First Nation and mill workers’ union to discuss what government can do to support the North Thompson Valley community following the closure.
“We’re very cognizant of the stress it puts on families, workers and the community,” he said.
“We’re doing what we said we’d do as a new government to recognize that the forests are a publiclyheld asset, and first and foremost they should benefit the people and communities they surround.”
Teams have been co-ordinating supports and services for the workers. The province has sent representatives to information sessions and job fairs, and more job fairs are scheduled this fall.
To address the broader issues facing the sector, the Interior Forest Sector Renewal process is being ramped up in the coming months, Donaldson said. It provides an online portal where the public can submit suggestions for revising policies and legislation related to the forest sector in the region. Donaldson wants to use Bill 22 to ensure a diversity of tenure holders in order to have more producers, including communities and First Nations, and to ensure that the public interest is factored into any sale, he said.
“I would say that we’ve been making changes at the legal, regulator and policy level, and that these changes take some time to turn things around after 16 years of the previous government taking a certain direction,” he said.
“I believe the direction they felt was best was if it’s in the best interests of the corporations, then eventually the communities and workers will benefit. We think that needs to be tweaked (to ensure) more of an equal footing between industry, communities, First Nations and workers.”
In June, the Simpcw First Nation said it had been in talks with Canfor about acquiring some of its cutting rights and was disappointed to learn the firm had been “making a deal in another room” with Interfor.
Now, talks are underway with the province and Interfor regarding the tenure, said Kukpi7 (Chief) Shelly Loring, who declined to make further comment.
Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell doesn’t want the tenure to leave Vavenby but said he recognizes that a municipal government has limited power to stop it. As far as he’s concerned, the sale is already a done deal.
“Any delays in that process or any shift under Bill 22 that the B.C. government wants to do on that, we’re more than willing to talk about that, about holding back some of that tenure for local production, local cutters and our community forest,” he said.
“If it all gets shifted to Interfor at Adams Lake – Interfor pitches that as a local mill – it’s not local. It’s a long way away.”
Blackwell had meetings in late July with Donaldson, his deputy minister John Allan and Interfor, and was able to express the community’s concerns about the tenure transfer. He felt good about the meetings but recognizes that there’s a tremendous amount of work ahead to ensure Bill 22 benefits the community, he said.
Blackwell believes the Interior Forest Sector Renewal process will do more than Bill 22 to bring about change that will benefit forestry-dependent communities, he said.
“We have a little bit more hope for that one,” Blackwell said. “We could be looking at a different world, next summer, as far as how the forests are managed.”
Meantime, Blackwell is working on immediate job creation. The district is seeking provincial funding to hire more people to do wildfire fuel mitigation, including at Wells Gray Provincial Park, he said.
He is talking with Telus about improving cellular and broadband service in the region. It would help attract more workers who teleconference from their homes and benefit tourism, too. Telus could cash in on the roaming fees of 450,000 tourists who visit Wells Grey Park each year and upload videos of waterfalls and bears to their social media networks, Blackwell said.
“We’ve been about economic diversity here, growing tourism and other smaller businesses, getting those people who want the lifestyle to come and live here,” Blackwell said.