Published: January 17, 2012 7:00 AM
The bio-economy could restore connections between communities and their forests, and government has a crucial role to play in fast tracking the industry, says Independent MLA Bob Simpson.
As the Natural Resources Forum wound up in Prince George Thursday, the Cariboo North MLA told the Tribune that if B.C. can get into bio-digestion and make different products from its forests then the province will get back into that time when the existing forest industry was starting out.
“That exciting time frame, when you’re developing whole new markets and whole new product lines and just maximizing the benefits that our forest fiber can bring to us,” Simpson said. “There is some work being done in British Columbia, but we’ve had to look at other jurisdictions such as Europe and Scandinavia. Quebec is directly funding a bio-digester there. So other jurisdictions are being very proactive and putting taxpayer money on the table to help with the risks of the start up of these new ventures.”
It’s a market with a huge potential, he adds, but it’s a new market, which means infrastructure has to be built, forest or agriculture fibre has to be brought to the mills, mills have to produce the products, and the products have to be transported to customers for further manufacturing of finished products.
Three critical reasons why government should play a role have been identified and Simpson says they include the fact that the bio-economy, at its crux, is a public resource.
On the forest side, government regulations and government allowing access to that resource will drive the industry.
Secondly, he said, government needs to step in and help build a collaborative model.
Simpson noted the existing industry is quite nervous about more demands on what it already sees as a shrinking fibre supply, but he believes the new emerging industry has made the forest industry more competitive.
“It can give them another number of decades because it will maximize the fibre they’re bringing in, and the waste material, the fibre they’re not using. They’ll realize better value and reduce some of their costs.”
Government can be the one that brings the players to the table to collaborate, he said.
He pointed to government already funding research and market development, such as the China Strategy that was fully subsidized by the Canadian and B.C. taxpayers.
“We fund research and development in what we would call normal or traditional forest products, pulp products, etc., so government is already helping the existing traditional industry and it needs to do the same for this emerging industry.”
The forum attracted between 200 to 300 participants. Normally this is the season for different sectors to have their own conventions, but this one had all of the sectors.
“It was nice to get quite a decent broad overview of where mining, LNG (liquefied natural gas), oil and gas, and the forestry industries are all at,” Simpson says.