Editor;
Regarding the story, Forest practices pulp fiction for protestors
As much as my concern goes out to those protestors in Prince George, it’s bad to lose your job! But if they are blaming any of this on David Eby they are howling at the wrong moon.
From time to time various NDP governments have tried to save various pulp mills, go back to Ocean Falls a town that I spent quite a bit of time in the 1970’s.
But when the Socreds were re-elected they shut it down. I was there a few years ago. It’s a semi-ghost town, the 370-room hotel, the Martin Inn, standing empty plus the cement and brick Cypress Apartment stands ghost like. Only the dam and powerhouse still function, suppling power to Bella Bell and Shearwater.
The Harcourt government supported the Skeena/Watson Island pulp mill until Gordon Campbell hoodwinked the people of B.C. into giving him a virtual dictatorship for the first four years anyway. The first to go was Port Edward pulp mill. It closed in 2001 and the machinery was sold to China (where much of our raw logs go!) for a million but the buyer didn’t pay any taxes to the city of Prince Rupert. The people in that area lost jobs and money on top of that.
The whole Port Edward pulp mill was thus engineered by Pat Bell, Gordon Campbell’s jobs minister? It was typical Campbell ‘carpetbaggery’ sleaze with many questions still unanswered!
Anyway, Gordon Campbell’s attempt to sell of B.C. in bits and pieces finally caught up with him on the Coquihalla and the HST, but that’s another story.
At present the Eby government is putting a lot of money into restarting the Crofton Mill with manufacturing some lines of different products. Since the evils of plastic have been revealed paper appears to have a future?
However, if after the next B.C. election ‘cost overrun’ - remember Port Mann - Kevin Falcon is elected then the whole Crofton thing could be for naught?!
It started with Ocean Falls, the mill that its timber quota was shifted to Elk Fall which has stood silent and empty for years. The list of shut down mills has snowballed in recent times, Port Alice, being dismantled at this present time, Powel River one the largest mill in B.C. now shut down forever, Port Mellon the list goes on and on.
In many ways this appears to be part of a master plan advocated by such think tanks as Frontier Macdonald Saurier Fraser. Manufacture, refine nothing. Here in Canada, just ship it all out. Raw certainly won’t do anything for employment but then who cares?!
Pulp Fiction anyone?
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
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