The District of Houston won’t know who the new provincial forests minister is until Nov. 18 when Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin swears in the new cabinet following the NDP October election victory, but that person is already being put on notice by council.

Speaking during the public input session at the start of the Nov. 6 council meeting, Mayor Shane Brienen said he and his council can’t wait to book a meeting with the new forests minister to press their consistent point that trees cut in the area should be processed in the area.

“We’re working as a community to get all northern communities together, working on the same thing, fighting for the same thing,” Brienen told Dana Giesbrecht who spoke about the local economy during the public input session at the Nov. 5, 2024 District of Houston council meeting.

Giesbrecht wanted to know what she, as a Houston resident, could do to rebuild the local timber economy.

“Can we have some say on that? Are you guys able to work on that?” she asked Brienen.

“As a community member of Houston, how can I facilitate to get things to stay here,” she wondered about the local log supply now being exported elsewhere. “I would like to know how to do that. I would like to help. I would like to see jobs stay in Houston, or as many as we can.”

Brienen told Giesbrecht that the District has been fighting to repair the economic damage of the 2014 timber swap when the provincial government allowed Canfor and West Fraser to swap timber rights between the Houston area and Quesnel.

The swap whereby Canfor acquired West Fraser’s timber here and West Fraser acquired Canfor’s timber in Quesnel allowed West Fraser to close its mill here and Canfor to close its mill in Quesnel.

“We’ve argued right to this day. That’s wrong for a number of reasons and it’s too long to talk about it right now but we’ve been trying since 2014 to increase the volume in the community for us,” he said of the plan to add wood to the Dungate Community Forest which is majority-owned by the District.

“For the small amount of volume, it provides much more money to the community,” Brienen added of the Dungate influence. “We have been fighting for that since 2014 and it’s finally moving a little bit, but it’s been moving very slow.”

“It’s not our decision to make,” the mayor added of increasing the Dungate volume. “But we can be in there and keep fighting and keep going in there until they’re sick of us, which is usually how we manage to get things done with the province.”https://www.houston-today.com/local-news/district-to-chase-new-forest-boss-for-more-wood-7634041