Local residents deserve an answer to why, for the third time in 20 years, a sawmilling company in Terrace has failed. First, it was Skeena Cellulose then the Terrace Lumber Company and now Skeena Sawmills and its associated pellet plant.
Not enough money? Bad decision-making? Management practices not suited to the running of a mill? Excessive government taxes and other government fees? A mill not positioned to cut the wood assigned to it? Perhaps all of that and more.
The problem is that bankruptcy and the sale of assets doesn’t answer those questions. The receiver’s job is the who, what, where and when of satisfying debts and not the how and why it came to that point in the first place.
But there is an entity that can address the how and the why and that’s the provincial government. It decides who gets the fibre owned by the people of B.C. and how the monies paid by mills are used for the benefit of the people of B.C.
Surely, someone within the provincial government should be curious as to what has happened. And once the province has done the how and the why, perhaps we can figure out how to not let it happen again.
Over to you, B.C. Premier David Eby.