$198 MILLION SLASH
There was nothing in B.C.’s latest provincial budget released yesterday that will help the province’s ailing forest sector. In fact, the Ministry of Forests and Range will take a $198 million budget cut over the next three years.
That decline in the Ministry’s budget worries NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald. “There is a need to reinvest in a forest with serious forest health issues,” he noted, referring to the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation. “They seem to be stepping away from their obligations to properly look after the public land.”
Forestry isn’t the only natural resources group to be hit by new cuts outlined in the budget, as the energy budget is also being scaled back. According to the Vancouver Sun newspaper, documents from Finance Minister Colin Hansen indicate that resource royalties from lumber and natural gas are $100 million lower than predicted last September. The Sun also says that by 2013, the B.C. government’s revised budget and fiscal plan calculates lumber and natural gas royalties will fall $1 billion short of what was projected just six months ago.
In the fiscal year just ending, forest revenue is projected at $345 million. That’s about one third of the recent historical levels of more than $1 billion annually. And it’s a number that isn’t expected to grow until the biggest market for Canadian lumber - U.S. housing, gets back on track.
The provincial government is expected to focus its efforts on health care and education.
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