The residents of one of British Columbia’s most beautiful ecological settings and once one of the leading cities in BC’s forest sector got welcome news from the government, today. As the government announced a group of governmental economic development experts would be arriving in Mackenzie in the next couple of days to help the residents spend a sack full of shekels the government is planning to give to the troubled city to help them through these troubled times.

This comes as welcome news in the small BC community that has probably been hit harder then any other BC community by the fall out in the forest sector, with over 1,000 of the city’s residents recently losing their high paying jobs in the recently closed pulp mill in this small BC community.

The funds will come from a $129-million community development trust fund to help forest-dependent towns weather the current downturn. The government has had these funds for awhile, but is just now starting to disperse the money to BC towns hit hard by the forestry industry collapse.

The provincial government has been sitting on a hot seat in recent months for failing to do more to help forestry workers. Since the start of 2007, mills have closed by the bushel, creating unemployed forestry workers in the thousands. The most recent Statistics Canada labour-force survey for March, 2008, shows a loss of 8,000 forestry sector jobs compared with the same time last year.

The slow start toward handing out the funds provided by the federal government’s community development fund is not a surprise, handing out money without proper analysis and understanding of the conditions existing would have been even more irresponsible then their failure to provide many of BC’s communities with the help they wanted.

We need to make sure that this money is put to maximum use in the battle to provide employment alternatives in BC’s troubled forestry towns, and a steady, measured pace to the disbursement is merited, not a rash, fearful, panicked reaction, which will only waste the money we do have and make the situation even worse.
There is only so much coming from the federal government to alleviate the situation and we need to make sure the money isn’t wasted and helps the people and communities it was meant to and not lining the pockets of those who don’t deserve the benefits.