Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations
VANCOUVER - Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson announced a contractor sustainability review Friday morning, Jan. 27, during his address to the annual Truck Loggers Association convention in Vancouver.
The review will identify areas of opportunity to improve the sustainability and competitiveness of contractors and licensees in B.C.'s forest sector. As one of the action items under B.C.'s forest sector competitiveness agenda, the review is a key priority for the ministry.
"Our forest sector needs to be environmentally sustainable and economically sustainable,” Thomson said. “Forest sector industry association executives have done a good job of raising the issue of contractor sustainability and the goal of our review is to identify opportunities to improve the competitiveness of both contractors and licensees."
The first phase is an economic assessment and review of the contracting sector to develop baseline information and identify economic drivers within the sector. Work on this phase has already started, to be followed up by a facilitated process to define issues and potential actions that all parties can support to improve competitiveness of both contractors and licensees.
An independent third party will be selected by contractors, licensees and government through a collaborative process. Concurrently, the economic assessment will be completed by March 31, 2017.
Strong Past, Bright Future: A Competitiveness Agenda for British Columbia's Forest Sector can be found at: www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/competitive-forest-industry