NDP vows to curb log exports and create jobs in forestry

B.C.’s main political parties sparred over forestry policies Monday, with the B.C. NDP leader attempting to hang mill closures and job losses in the sector on the government and the B.C. Liberals declaring that the opposition’s platform offers nothing new to the industry.

NDP leader John Horgan unveiled a four-page plan that hints at a promise to curb log exports and included initiatives to boost value-added wood manufacturing, to work more with First Nations, and to increase reforestation efforts that he argued have languished under the last decade-and-a-half of the B.C. Liberals’ tenure.

“The objective today was to highlight (that) in the last 16 years of B.C. Liberal rule, we’ve seen 30,000 fewer people working in a once proud forest industry,” Horgan said.

Forestry remains a cornerstone industry in much of rural B.C., supporting some 60,000 direct jobs and generating $14 billion in exports in 2016, according to Ministry of Forests statistics.

Horgan said he wants to require publicly funded construction projects, such as schools and hospitals, to “use as much of our engineered wood products as possible” in their designs to boost domestic demand. He argued that would go further than the B.C. Liberal government’s “wood-first” initiative of promoting wood in public projects.

And Horgan wants to see more consistency in applying the test for determining whether logs are surplus to domestic need so that fewer of them wind up on barges for markets offshore.

However, John Martin, the Liberal MLA for Chilliwack, argued that the existing auction process for logs does make sure that they are offered to domestic buyers first.

He said the other NDP promises touch on initiatives the government is already working on.