Harry Bains: Post Pine Beetle Strategy Needed

From the Rush:

Surrey NDP MLA Harry Bains says a post pine beetle strategy is needed in BC.

Here Bains explains: “A post beetle strategy is not there. Steelworkers and forestry workers, they’re telling me that in the next three to four years when the pine beetle wood is gone, they’re annual cut will go down anywhere from 25 to 40%, that means that many jobs and sawmills will be shutting down.”

Bains says the NDP has a plan in place which includes making forestry a number one industry again in BC.

He says they’d achieve that by working with industry, communities and forestry workers to ensure raw logs stop leaving the province and by encouraging locals to process logs here.

Bains was in Williams Lake and 100 Mile House this past weekend.

Question:

1) Like Bruce Ralston over the HST Debate - doesn't Harry Bains have enough work to do in Surrey-Newton and being the NDP Transporation Critic, rather than coming up here and telling us what we already know.  The Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition, for years now, has been working on a Post Beetle Strategy which has received some money (not the amount this region needs I'll grant you) but work progresses in this regard and no thanks to Mr. Bains and his party but thanks to great work from our local MLA, Donna Barnett and BC Cabinet Ministers like Pat Bell and Steve Thomson