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Wednesday, June 19, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Burning up the tracks A full contingent from Prince George Fire Rescue was called out Tuesday afternoon to deal with several grass fires that broke out along the railway tracks adjacent to PG Pulp Mill Road. In all, 14 firefighters from four halls, as well as two water trucks, were called out shortly after 2 p.m. They found the fires burning on both sides of the tracks for about a halfkilometre in the vicinity of the Husky Energy plant. All were extinguished in slightly more than an hour. Emergency crews from Husky and Canfor were also on the scene.

Another B.C. sawmill to close Dry weather has B.C. David CARRIGG Vancouver Sun B.C.’s lumber industry has been struck another blow with the announcement that West Fraser would permanently close its Chasm mill and eliminate the third shift from its 100 Mile House mill. This will result in a total loss of 210 jobs – 176 in Chasm (between Clinton and 70 Mile House) and the rest at 100 Mile House – to take effect sometime between July and September. Ray Ferris, president of Vancouver-based West Fraser, said the decision to close Chasm and reduce shifts at 100 Mile House was due to a lack of supply, high saw-log costs and price declines for processed lumber. “This decision is the result of well-documented timber supply constraints owing to B.C.’s devastating mountain pine beetle infestation, recent record wildfires, price declines in lumber markets and high saw-log costs,” Ferris said in a prepared statement. Ferris also attributed blame to “reduced harvesting levels set by

the Chief Forester of B.C.” that meant there was insufficient timber supply to support the Chasm and 100 Mile House operations. “We sincerely regret the impact this decision will have on our employees, their families and the affected communities. We will be making efforts to mitigate the effects of this business decision, including opportunities for affected employees to transition to other company locations,” Ferris said. West Fraser announced two weeks ago that production would be curtailed temporarily for a week in June at five B.C. sawmills. The company has mills at Chasm, Williams Lake, 100 Mile, Chetwynd, Quesnel and Fraser Lake. It also has a pulp mill in Hinton, Alta. In the first three months of 2019, West Fraser had sales of $1.2 billion, while cutting production by 125 million board feet. It also permanently cut B.C. production by 300 million board feet. The company’s first-quarter financial report pointed to B.C. government policy initiatives that

would “affect the B.C. forest sector.” This included the creation of a Cariboo Protection Plan that could remove timber supply, amendments to the Forest Protection Act that would require companies to get government approval to transfer logging rights and the initiation of the Interior Revitalization process. Earlier this month, Canfor Corp. revealed it would close its Vavenby sawmill in July, at the cost of 172 jobs. The company plans to sell its logging rights to Interfor Corp, that would process the wood at its sawmill at Adams Lake northeast of Kamloops. On May 10, Tolko Industries announced the closure of the Quest sawmill in Quesnel, resulting in 150 job losses. In total, seven B.C. woodmanufacturing facilities have announced a mill or shift closure in the past seven months. On Monday, the provincial Liberal party called on B.C. Premier John Horgan to do more to protect lumber-mill jobs.

communities on edge Denise RYAN Vancouver Sun Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell said his community is on edge, anticipating what could be another record-breaking fire season. Across B.C., in communities that were hard-hit during the record-breaking 2017 and 2018 wildfire season, the mood is similarly tense. “Nothing is normal anymore,” Blackwell told Postmedia on Monday. “The behaviour of wildfire can be so dramatic that it has scared a lot of people into a different level of anxiety.” That mood – anxiety, foreboding – is exacerbated by June’s low rainfall in the area. “It’s dry,” said Blackwell. So dry the earth is already hydrophobic: water bounces off the soil and trees are already “standing red, dead.” The community, situated 125 kilometres north of Kamloops, started preparing earlier than

ever this year. By February, Blackwell and his associates were running tabletop exercises, prepping emergency scenarios, and fire crews were practicing with new water cannons. “We are the lightning strike capital of B.C. so there’s a lot of risk here,” said Blackwell. In the Stellako region on the western edge of Fraser Lake, former tribal chief and hereditary chief David Luggi said his family was on evacuation alert for about two weeks last summer, their belongings packed into a U-haul. This year Luggi isn’t anticipating as much wildfire in the region because there’s not much left to burn, although they’ve already dealt with a smaller fire east of the Fraser Lake township that sparked after someone cleared their yard and burned rubbish. Luggi said locals are now dealing with a “direct economic hit” as a result of the fires. — see “(IT) GOT, page 3

Feds approve Trans Mountain pipeline expansion Mia RABSON The Canadian Press OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave Canada’s controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion a second lease on life Tuesday, framing the decision in starkly political terms that portrayed his Liberal government as best positioned to walk the narrow tightrope between economic development and environmental protection. Trapped between the need to find new markets for Canadian oil and his own party’s branding as environmental stewards, the prime minister made his best case for a pipeline project – one the federal government now owns outright – that critics see as diametrically opposed to the core Liberal message of confronting the climate crisis. “The truth is, it doesn’t make economic or environmental sense to sell any resource at a discount,” Trudeau told a news confer-

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ence in Ottawa – a reference to the fact that Canadian energy doesn’t command a premium on the world market, since the neighbouring U.S. is by far its biggest customer. “Instead, we should take advantage of what we have, and invest the profits in what comes next – building the clean energy future that is already at our doorstep. Fundamentally, this isn’t a choice between producing more conventional energy or less. It’s a choice about where we can sell it and how we get it there safely.” The decision to approve the project a second time comes nine months after the Federal Court of Appeal ripped up the original approval, citing incomplete Indigenous consultations and a faulty environmental review. The court said the government needed to do better, Trudeau noted. “And you know what?” he said. “They were right.” Critics, of which there are many, wasted

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little time denouncing the news and predicting another courtroom rejection. “The federal decision to buy the pipeline and become the owner makes it impossible to make an unbiased decision,” said Chief Leah George-Wilson of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation in B.C. “We will be appealing the decision to the Federal Court of Appeal.” The Liberals ordered the National Energy Board to look at marine shipping impacts; Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi started another round of consultations with Indigenous communities affected by the project. Tuesday’s decision also comes the day after the Liberals passed a motion in the House of Commons declaring climate change a national emergency that would require more cuts to emissions than have already been promised. In 2016, the National Energy Board said the production of another 590,000 barrels

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of oil, which would maximize the twinned pipeline’s capacity, could generate 14-17 million more tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, which means Canada would have to find ways to cut more from other sectors to meet and then exceed its current targets. While he is sympathetic to concerns about the environment and the need to transition to cleaner sources of energy, Trudeau said Canada needs to take advantage of its natural resources while they are still needed in order to fund that transition. “The policies of the last century will not serve Canadians in this one,” he said, acknowledging the concerns of environmentalists who fear the twinning project will exponentially increase the risk of a catastrophic spill on the West Coast. “I understand your desire to protect your coastline and your ocean, because I share it,” he said directly to B.C. residents. — see ‘THE CONSERVATIVES, page 3

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