It might be more rhetoric in preparation of next year's election, after all Steve Thomson would probably like to get re-elected. The hard truth about Prince George is that it is still a one industry town with all the eggs in one basket.
Consider for a moment that it is eggs that we are selling and we have lots of buyers, but suddenly the hens stop laying.
We can invent lots of ways to sell eggs, scrambled, poached, easy over, and even raw eggs shipped off shore to make omelettes, but if the hens stop laying, we are out of business.
To bring this home to the forest industry and Prince George, smack in the middle of this mess, it is not for over cutting or poor management that we are now in a very tight spot with a somewhat dim view of the future. This is not so much a view for us today, but more so for our children and grandchildren.
The pine beetle epidemic made vast areas of our forest unusable faster than we could harvest or replant.
We are most certainly going to loose roughly a third of the Annual Allowable Cut, and that may translate into a loss of a third of the forest (supported) jobs in Prince George.
The cycle of fifty to eighty years is what it will take to regenerate the forests to what we have had in recent years.
For most of that cycle, the population will stagnate or decrease, meaning more closed schools and businesses.
All this has been said before, but what can we do?
Simple. Diversify industry and products with different sources of supply. Build new industries that are not based on wood products.
We may have to offer huge tax incentives to attract business, but that most certainly would be better than the prospect before us now.
Robert Clayton,
Prince George
