January 20, 2006
Check Against Delivery
It’s great to be here again at the Truck Loggers’ annual general meeting. It’s particularly good to be here because one of the things I love about the truck loggers is, yes, we have good years and we have bad years but the TLA, your board of directors and your executive are always looking not just to identify the challenges we face but also the solutions that we can move forward together on.
I’m really always pleased to have Don Hayes introduce me. I went over and said hello to the Hayes family today and I said to Mrs. Hayes, “I’m going to have a little bit different speech that I have usually.” She said, “That’s good.” Not the response I was looking for, Mrs. Hayes, but what can you do?
I am really pleased, also, that we make a point of trying to make sure that a number of our cabinet ministers and our MLAs come and get a chance to meet with you as you go through your meeting, and I’d like to introduce them.
I’m very pleased to introduce the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Richard Neufeld is with us today. The Minister of Education, the Deputy Premier, Shirley Bond is also with us today. The Attorney General, Wally Oppal, joins us. Thank you, Wally, for coming. The Minister of Children and Family Development, Stan Hagen, is with us today. The Minister of State for Childcare, Linda Reid, is with us today. The Minister of Employment and Income Assistance, Claude Richmond, is with us today. MLA Harry Bloy, from Burquitlam, is with us today. MLA John Yap, from Richmond-Steveston, joins us today. And MLA Richard Lee, from Burnaby North, also joins us today.
One of the things that Don mentioned and that we’ve talked about with your executive is that there’s always change taking place. There are always challenges that are in front of the industry. The coastal industry, particularly, has gone through a time, in some cases, of really wrenching and really challenging change.
The coast faces a lot of challenges. In fact, the coast is the place that British Columbians think of the most when they think of forestry, you know. I know that in the north we have a huge and expanding forestry industry. We have a major challenge there with the pine beetle.
But the coast is that picture of forestry that we’ve got. That picture of those great, massive old forests is what people think of when they think of forests in British Columbia. That’s the coast; that’s you. The mountains and the valleys and the fjords: That’s the coast.
One of the challenges for us is to take our minds out of where coastal forestry used to be and move our minds to where coastal forestry has to be, because I think it should be very clear to all of us in this room and, frankly, across the province that forestry is the primary industry in British Columbia. Forestry is our future; forestry is the future for young people, for entrepreneurs, for people that want to be active and vital in building a stronger economy in British Columbia. Forestry is number one, and we have to keep working to make it number one as we look out to the future and define the kind of British Columbia that we want to have. It’s a big challenge because it’s not just what’s going on in B.C. that has an impact on the forest industry.
The theme of your convention is that you are champions of change. I’m going to challenge a little bit of that because I think the fact is that you’re champions at responding to change. But I think we should recognize this: there are only two paths that we can take into the future. Things can get worse, or things can get better. I can tell you, speaking on behalf of a government, it’s often difficult to change and to make things better. Sometimes it’s way more comfortable just to let things lie there, and they slowly deteriorate and dwindle.
I think one of the things that we all have to recognize is that if we want British Columbia’s forest industry and we want the coastal forest industry to encourage investment, to bring young people into it, to encourage entrepreneurship, we are going to have to be part of a transformative change as we look to the future. A transformative change means leadership. It doesn’t mean doing kind of what we used to do. It means thinking about where we want to go; making the big decisions that move us towards where we want to go; and as we make those big decisions that move us to where we want to go, recognizing that there may be some problems.
Last June when I appointed the cabinet, I thought: if I have a big place that I want to go to, I’d better have a big guy that’s going to help carry a lot of the load to get me there. So that’s why I asked Rich Coleman to be the new Minister of Forests. I’m glad he’s here today, too.
We have to challenge our old ways of thinking. One of the things that you should know about your Minister of Forests is that Rich understands the importance of political leadership, of saying to the institutions that work with us, “This is what we’re going to do. Don’t tell me why we can’t do it; tell me how we’re going to do it.” He’s willing to make decisions, and so is the government, to make sure that we move forward and we do have an active, vital industry.
But we all have to reach out and go beyond this room. We have to go beyond what we think of normally in our day-to-day activities. We have to reach out to the province, so they understand why those transformative changes are so important.
So Shirley Bond is here, the Minister of Education. One of the things that I was most interested in was the survey that was recently done, that said people want to see more about our resource industries in our schools.
How important is it, really, for people to understand that when that logging truck is going down the road, with those logs in it, that’s a school that’s being built; that’s a hospital that’s being created; that’s a community that’s having some stability built into it?
We can’t keep taking forestry or resource industries for granted. We have to understand them. We have to talk to people about what they can do. We have to build them into the curriculum so that our young people in British Columbia understand how fortunate we are.
We should never forget, as we face the challenges that confront us, how fortunate we are to live in a province with the kind of resources we have and with the kind of human talent that we have. Because one of the big transformations taking place and that we’re going to have to respond to is that we’re not the only place with fibre, anymore. It’s no longer the only place that people can get a stable flow of fibre.
I think one of the things we have to recognize is that if we decide that we’re going to commoditize our resources, we’re going to end up losing because we’re not going to have control over what we’re doing. It’s not simply a matter of cutting down a tree and saying “would someone please take it?”
We’d better start thinking about our customers. We’d better start thinking about our marketplace. We’d better start thinking about our natural advantages. We’re going to have to retool to do that. We’re going to have to think about the different ways that we can approach this natural resource if we are going to truly maximize the benefits of this natural resource.
I mean, think of all the changes that have taken place since the Truck Loggers was first brought together. Think of all the changes that have taken place in the industry. Today we have foresters working with the idea of little sensors on our trees now that say this is how fast they’re growing; this is what we’re doing; this is what’s working.
We have a huge resource in the province: the hemlock forests. We haven’t really done anything to figure out how we’re going to take advantage of that. How many think: boy, isn’t it great we’ve got a whole lot of hemlock in British Columbia? There’s one guy here. Way to go. I knew I could count on you, Mike. I’ve got some hemlock I’d like to sell you.
You know, the fact of the matter is that it’s a resource. There’s only one way we’re going to take full advantage of that resource: we’re going to have to spend time thinking about it, doing research on it, developing the product, thinking of where we can use it and thinking of how we can use it differently. We’re going to have to apply our knowledge to that resource if we’re going to maximize the benefits of it.
As we move through that and we do the research and development to get there, we’re going to have to apply what we already know, to make sure that we maximize the benefits of the existing fibre block that we have. That sometimes requires change and I know the minister is working on that.
So one of the things that I think is really important for us to decide
