With the municipal election already fading into the rear-view mirror, let's hope one of our first priorities will be the creation of high-paying local jobs.
Just over a month ago North Vancouver-based Seaspan Marine Corp. was awarded an $8 billion federal shipbuilding contract. B.C. Chamber of Commerce president John Winter anticipates the total benefit to the B.C. economy "will outweigh the 2010 Winter Olympics by a factor of 10." He believes the agreement will create jobs on a large scale and benefit the economy across multiple sectors.
As the massive Seaspan deal gradually trickles down to the subcontractor level, will Squamish-based firms be ready to explore opportunities in the shipbuilding industry, including machining, metal fabrication, welding, and a host of other processes?
On another job creation front, raw-log exports from B.C. to China skyrocketed from 93,555 cubic metres in 2006 to 1,136,901 cubic metres in 2010. But, according to one source, B.C. has lost 10,000 permanent forest industry jobs since 1996. Between 2000 and 2009, 71 wood-product manufacturing plants closed, including 45 lumber mills and 16 producers of engineered and value-added wood products.
The prevailing opinion is that simply exporting raw logs transfers all the higher-paying milling and manufacturing jobs elsewhere. A number of observers have candidly pointed out that B.C. once had a thriving lumber industry; now we have a logging industry.
Still, let's not dismiss the impact of log exports on the local economy. According to Dave McRae, at Squamish-based Triack Resources, more than 50 jobs depend on logs shipped to China by his company. John Lowe, manager of Squamish Mills, one of the oldest logging operations in town, claims that without the Chinese market, his firm would not be logging today.
Meanwhile, to add fuel to the fire, Rod Bealing, Private Forest Landowners' Association executive director, tells us that exporting raw logs works for various reasons, including the virtual collapse of the domestic log market and the uncompetitive state of B.C.'s mills.
That debate aside, the Chinese will not continue to be the only large-scale buyers of Canadian wood. By 2050 India is projected to be the world's third-largest economy and during the next five years, according to some business experts, bilateral trade between Canada and India will almost quadruple to $15 billion.
Paul Newman, an executive director with the Vancouver-based Council of Forest Industries, is convinced that "B.C. coastal hardwood species will have opportunities, especially in the shop factory grades" and "with softwood, it's probably a case of finding niches in decorative uses for wood."
Earlier this year a fact-finding committee from Surrey travelled to India in search of more robust trade ties. One of the delegates, Don Quann, chief financial officer of Mill and Timber Products Ltd., said he strongly believes that within three years the trip "will result in significant volumes of lumber sold to the massive Indian market."
Here in Squamish, tapping into emerging markets along with the possibilities presented by the Seaspan shipbuilding bonanza will go a long way toward giving the local economy the shot in the arm it needs.
