John Brink has built three value-added forestry companies without having any direct access to the trees that have made his businesses thrive.
In addition to old-growth forest protection, the plan reinforces the government’s commitment to promote higher-value wood products like mass timber laminated products used for load-bearing columns, beams and panels. It wants new and innovative value-added products to reach new markets. That commitment to support value-added secondary wood manufacturers is music to Brink’s ears, but unless it guarantees companies like his access to fibre, the plan rings hollow.
“Now, all those issues are in question. Industry, mainly the larger ones, have decided that they can be much more profitable elsewhere, so they’re not really investing in B.C. because they are not globally competitive here, but they still control all the timber.” Part of that is the consolidation of primary forest companies which left the province with five or six companies which now control 75 per cent timber available to B.C.’s forest industry. The industry was especially hard hit by the pine beetle infestation from 1999-2015, which practically wiped out the region’s supply of lodgepole pine, and that was followed by two severe wildfire seasons in 2017 and 2018, which burned seven per cent of the province’s entire forest supply.
“In the early ’80s we had the spruce beetle in the Bowron and if you go there now you won’t believe it happened,” he said. “We had a sawmill set up there and nobody wanted what was left. That gives us a picture of what can be done. There is no better quality fibre than what we are growing here in B.C.”