Friday, July 31, 2020, Afternoon — Committee A
As the member has outlined, the proposals involve multiple ideas around the use of this land. The land in question that was being proposed for this commercial development is Crown land that is allocated for the purposes of airport use. Our ministry is aware of the proposal and has provided a number of options to the proponents, including the suggestion that they can request the land that they need for the various commercial activities that they're proposing be split off and be considered for a commercial property, removed from the Crown land base and provided at market price to the proponents. That's one option they can pursue. But this is obviously…. We've got a number of moving parts to it. The member said that the glulam factory idea, search and rescue, and I missed the other one. It had to do with electric vehicles, I believe. So our staff is willing to meet with her to discuss our processes about how we considered the request. As I said, this is land that is not designated for these kind of commercial purposes, and obviously these kind of land applications have to fit within what the permitted activities are for that. So, happy to set up a meeting with staff to go through the process that we've embarked on with the proponents and to outline the options that were in laid front of the proponents around how they could potentially acquire the Crown land that they were looking for in that area. As far as forestry in general, and the member had a number of comments around that, I do recall very well the truck rally at the UBCM last September. We met with the leaders of that rally. I met with people who participated in the rally out on the street as well. The majority of those people were providing concerns from the Interior. I'm happy to report that many of the mill curtailments — almost all of them now, that were temporary — are pulled off in the Interior. People are back working in those mills and contractors are harvesting the timber from the forest. For these workers in the Interior who were impacted by mill closures, well, we have the $69 million interior forest worker support program that is available, and it's being used. And also within that program, the training and the offices to assist with job who were impacted by mill closures, while we have the $69 million Interior forest worker support program that's available, and it's being used. Also within that program, the training and the offices to assist with job placement are available to workers on the coast who are experiencing job loss from mill closures. But I'm also happy to report that on the coast, because of our efforts, the labour dispute between Western Forest Products and the United Steelworkers is now resolved. The issue with Mosaic has led them to return to activities, putting a lot of people back to work in the forestry sector. There are great market prices right now. The demand is high, and industry is happy to run as full out as they can to support communities and people that depend on forestry jobs.
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