A freighter loaded with Canadian logs in Nanaimo today. I know this has nothing to do with Carney, but this is not nation building. I also know it is complex. But would it not be better to load that freighter with finished lumber rather than raw logs?
I suppose we could.
One tradeoff is that the planks or finish products will have to be wrapped in very large amounts of plastic to avoid damage in-transit.
Another hurdle is there would need to be major changes in operation. Did you see those funny shaped boats that drag logs around in the water? You can’t do that with finished lumber or manufactured products. They should expand the E&N railway to accommodate freight delivery and open passenger service.
It’s expensive to pay first world workers with modern worker rights and work safety regulations in Canada … and heaven forbid if they are unionized workers.
It’s cheaper to export the raw materials to a country with cheap labor, few or no worker laws and lax safety regulations … and definitely no unionized labor.
The government wants to build the nation … by allowing companies to skirt as many laws as possible to maximize profits and build the nation’s businesses and corporations in the vain hope that these companies will actually share their profits and benefits.
Nah, that’s like a good load of bullshit. First of alot of our lumber goes to Europe. Second, it’s going to cost a lot more in shipping finished products than it is raw materials. What do you ship the juice box or concentrate that you add water at the location?
How do you know that these logs aren’t some special wood that only grows in Canada and is used for some historic restoration project like white oak for ship building.
Can you predict the importers’ lumber demand? When the wood gets to where it needs to be, is there a lack of 2x4s or 2x6s or did the demand for plywood skyrocket.
it’s a bit like crude oil. lumber cut up to what standards? or maybe chipboard or veneer or paper or cellulose fiber (used in many things including artillery propellant, hot commodity lately)? or maybe some form of chemically modified cellulose or maybe something else? then do you have industrial capacity and logistics for that? what if customer from egypt won’t accept fiberboard made to an argentinian standard, that you made for an argentinian customer that changed mind or the other way around? canada is a rich country, can you make it competitive? sometimes it works. i heard of a case of company that bought logs from finland, processed them in poland into fiberboard and sold them, at least once, to a customer in tanzania
I get the sentiment, but that was a list of intermediate products not finished.
Can they be made into finished lumber in Canada at a cost that would allow them to sell for a profit into export markets? What would it take to achieve this?
Absolutely, first thing we need is to stop the bleeding. It’s easier and cheaper for companies to harvest and sell raw product. Same as our LNG, coal, and any other natural resource.
Stop facilitating the pillaging of our land for quick easy profit. Once the government says ‘company, you have no access to the resource unless you process it within 200km of where you found it.’ then we will see a shift.
More jobs, better quality, improvements to infrastructure and medical etc.
if it’s for paper or chipboard, entire log can be used (waste is fuel for process heat/power)
Blame Eby, him and Horgan are why this continues.
They prefer corporate profits to sustainable jobs.
Blame Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.
They are the ones that capitulated to the US on softwood lumber
US Canada softwood lumber dispute started in the 80s. Not trying to defend Harper, but he didn’t precipitate that dispute, nor did he end it.
He is the one who allowed raw logs to be shipped to the US for processing.
Before him, it was blocked and functionally no raw logs were allowed out of the country.
Agreed. Keep the logs in their community. Ship a finished product.
Cool. How much extra are you willing to pay for that? And what significant percentage (20%+) of your current take-home pay are you willing to sacrifice to that for tax?
What tax? I think too many focus on throwing money at a problem. For generations we had logs processed at local mills. The big shift was the pine beetle, there was heavy investment into pumping as much through the mill as fast as possible. They created super mills. They closed down smaller community based mills to ship logs to bigger centers. Now it costs too much to bring the logs from their closed down communities to their high cost super mills. So they dump that cost on another country who will process without following our safety, pay, or quality standards.
Go back to community managed forests, improve shipping and highways.
