Forest sector CEOs warn against selective bailouts

CHIEF EXECUTIVE officers from 15 of the nation’s leading forest companies have warned Ottawa against bailing out the auto and aerospace sectors.The CEOs, who have been struggling to survive a severe downturn in their own industry for the past two years, said in Vancouver that they don’t want to see public money going to bailouts for any failing industries, according to Gordon Hamilton writing in the Vancouver Sun.
Industry leaders said that instead of bailouts, Ottawa needed to “fix the fundamentals of the economy,” so that all industries will be better able to withstand the economic crisis, said Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada.
“Using mountains of money to bail out failing industries simply doesn’t work,” said Lazar.
“If the Government enacts measures that focus only on one or two sectors and have more of the flavour of bail-out than competitiveness, we are going to be deeply disappointed,” he said.
“We are expecting this Government to worry about jobs across the country, not just in a couple of ridings, and we are expecting the government to stay true to the principals on which they were elected. Their role is not to freeze the status quo.”
The 15 executives represent Canadian industrial production worth $50 billion a year. Their mills employ 300,000 people and have weathered a downturn that has cost 27,000 jobs so far.
The forest products association has been lobbying Ottawa for several years to introduce policy changes that will encourage investment, which is the best way to secure jobs, Lazar said.
“I am outraged that after all these years talking about what is necessary to pull investment into Canadian mills — investment in research, retooling to the green economy and investment in market outreach — it hasn’t happened.”
Every time a sawmill or pulp mill closes, he says he receives calls from local MPs asking what can be done to re-start it.
“But by that time it is always too late,” he said.