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Mackenzie seeks projects to help create new jobs |
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Written by GORDON HOEKSTRA
Citizen staff
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Tuesday, 13 May 2008 |
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STEPHANIE KILLAM
Premier Gordon Campbell announced last week that $2 million of $129 million in federal funding is being set aside for both Mackenzie and Fort St. James.
"What we have to do is define projects that will provide job creation for as many as we can in the community in the next little while," said Mackenzie mayor Stephanie Killam.
She noted that the money for Mackenzie was not being administered by PricewaterhouseCoopers, but instead through the B.C. Ministry of Economic Development and is meant to be used immediately.
The province has already set out a list of areas where the job-creation money -- $25.25 million of the $129 million in federal funding is being set aside for the program -- can be used, but it's not known yet what projects will take place in Mackenzie.
The allowed projects include items like treeplanting in urban areas, managing forest fuels to prevent fires, restoring fish passages, brushing road sides and building recreation sites and trails.
The community of Mackenzie, 175 kilometres north of Prince George, has been hammered by a series of mill closures that have put more than 1,000 mill workers off the job. AbitibiBowater has shuttered two sawmills and a paper mill, and Canfor has closed one sawmill and reduced the workforce at another. Last week, Pope & Talbot's pulp mill closed as the 160-year-old, Oregon-based company went into receivership.
In addition, there have been hundreds more logging and trucking jobs lost in the community of 4,700.
The sawmills, like others in B.C., have closed in the face of an array of negative market forces: the collapse of the U.S. housing market, a high Canadian dollar and a 15-per-cent export tax on softwood lumber shipments to the U.S.
The paper mill was closed by AbitibiBowater in an effort to reduce newsprint capacity in North America, which has seen demand drop in the past decade.
AbitibiBowater has said it plans to raise $750 million by 2009 with the selloff of its assets, and has also talked about converting some newsprint capacity to higher-value papers. However, few observers believe the Mackenzie newsprint mill will reopen.
There was a buyer lined up for Pope & Talbot's pulp mill -- which workers claim was a money-maker in the current robust pulp market -- but the sale to Indonesia-based Sinarmas collapsed.
The receiver, PricewaterhouseCoopers, has said it wants to try to sell the remaining Pope & Talbot mills, which include the pulp mill in Mackenzie, a pulp mill in Nanaimo and a sawmill in Fort St. James.
Some residents in Mackenzie are organizing a "Save Our Community" rally, scheduled for May 23, the same day the B.C. government is scheduled to host a roundtable on forestry's future in the community.
Nora Wilkins, a laid-off sawmill worker and organizer of the rally, said the community has reached a crisis situation. "The community and the region as a whole needs a plan to deal with the immediate problems of shutdowns and layoffs, as well as long-term solutions that will provide a future for the hardworking families who live here," she said.
Wilkins pointed out that during its 40-year history, Mackenzie and the surrounding region has been an economic powerhouse, contributing a huge amount of government revenues through timber fees, taxes and royalty payments, as well as corporate profits.
"If towns like Mackenzie, Fort St. James, Chetwynd and others go down, it is like taking the heart out of the provincial economy," she said.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 13 May 2008 )
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