The Northwood closure in Prince George is devastating to that city, which has been home to three pulp mills and many more sawmills since the 1960s. I feel for the 300 families directly impacted, and likely hundreds more families indirectly impacted through contractor, supplier, service and retail businesses.
A few thoughts:
- This was predicted. It was known within government, industry and communities that at least one more pulp mill would likely need to close in the central interior due to excess production capacity. The question until this week was whether it would be Prince George or Quesnel that took the hit. It’s Prince George this time, but Quesnel remains extremely vulnerable due to depressed market conditions that are unlikely to recover any time soon.
- Successive governments have pushed for “value added” forestry over and over. Pulp and paper mills are value added, especially kraft mills that can generate electricity for the grid through their production cycle. These are manufactured products that serve global markets and also generate power we increasingly need. They are critically important for Canada. They are everything government and communities say they want, yet interventions to keep them have been minimal recently, at least in B.C.
- It is likely that further sawmilling capacity will need to come out of the interior before we hit the bottom. This isn’t over as B.C. transitions to far less volume, and struggles to even meet the goals it has set for itself.
- While the current “major projects” focus is on clean energy, LNG, and mining (these are all welcome things), none of those (with the exception of export terminals), will typically locate within municipal boundaries—this is not a one-for-one trade to maintain sustainable jobs and industry presence in northern communities. We’re losing community-based employment and industrial tax revenue, while being legislatively compelled to respond to aging infrastructure we can’t pay for, new health guideline requirements for systems we can’t afford, and social issues that aren’t within our jurisdiction. It eats towns at both ends.
- The solution is not a transition strategy to tourism. While a great sector, it does not generate the same tax, or even lives within the same tax class, to make up the hole that’s been created. It’s part of a solution, but ultimately if the province’s and residents’ expectation of their municipalities is that they manage their assets for the long-term, facilitate housing, maintain service levels, and respond to healthcare and public safety issues proactively, we will need in-boundary industrial development or significant wealth transfers from senior levels of government just to maintain these expectations, to say nothing of growth.
The solution requires time, patience, collaboration and not getting distracted. We must be focused as an all-of-public-sector strategy through the next decade to address these issues. A few obvious items within that strategy would be:
- Industrial land and investment strategies at a local/regional level that align with provincial and national goals, and the tools and collaborative efforts to implement them.
- Continued investment at senior levels in key infrastructure to facilitate goods movement, people movement, communication and trade—this means highway and rail improvements, port improvements, broadband and cellular infrastructure expansions, and trade agreements (interprovincial and international). This is passive infrastructure and systems that attract people and goods.
- A plan to encourage significant resident and business relocation and investment to the interior and north (come on up, it’s not actually that cold, my friends), which would slow the growth pressures on metropolitan areas and bring new tax revenue and diversification to communities in decline. There needs to be an understanding that solutions for metropolitan area-issues and small-community issues can be and are the same thing.
- Continued work to ensure healthcare professionals are hired, placed, and available to serve an aging population with increasingly complex needs, but also that these professionals aren’t over-worked and pushed into stress leave. Give and take will be required at both ends of the bargaining table to ensure acceptable service delivery for the public while creating labour environment with more certainty. Professional regulatory bodies must also be be enabled and be willing to welcome skillsets from other provinces and jurisdictions that meet our population’s needs.
- Continued investment in the justice system, mental health, and housing supports to work through the opioid epidemic present in nearly every community across the continent.
- Continued effort to remove, reduce, or modernize unnecessary and duplicative regulatory requirements at all levels of government, including ongoing revisions to the tax code not to control or punish but to facilitate prosperity and opportunity for young people and families to get ahead.
Many of these things are underway (and kudos to leadership for doing it), some are not. And many more ideas (likely better than these ones) can and should be put on the table. What’s needed now is leadership to adequately articulate the challenge we face, the opportunities within that, and bring people together to tackle them through imperfect but necessary solutions to make progress.
Joel McKay is the City Manager for the City of Quesnel. A public administration and rural development professional, his expertise spans local governance, economic strategy, operations, and community communications.
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