January 1999

 

B.C. FORESTRY IN R&D CRISIS

By HUBERT BEYER

VICTORIA -- While the B.C. Forest industry is desperately trying to climb out of its worst slump in decades, the one thing that could eventually turn things around is being cut to the bones -- research and development.

The B.C. government, trying to deal with its own budget woes, has cut back on forest research funding. And the industry, losing money hands over fist, looks on research as an easy target to reduce costs.

The result: research, which could produce solutions to the forest industry's problems, is all but non-existent.

This year, the total spent on forest research in British Columbia by various government agencies, universities and industry is estimated at 0.4 per cent of sales, while our American and Swedish competitors will be spending 1.5 percent and 1.75 per cent respectively. That's about four times as much.

Jim Dangerfield, chairman of the Committee of Forest Research Agencies (COFRA), an alliance of all forest research groups in B.C., says unless we invest more in research, British Columbia will become "a marginal force in an industry of heavyweight, global competition."

B.C., he says, can no longer depend on the two traditional pillars of the province's forest industry -- low-cost, high-quality raw materials and easy access to a rapidly growing U.S. market.

B.C.'s only way out, according to Dangerfield, is a radically new strategy: better understanding of the resource, increasing the long-term supply of fibre, greater diversification of our markets and product mix.

"All of this requires R&D. Trends revealed from examining industries that pursue value-added strategies, show success is built on greater R&D investment. It is impossible to significantly increase the effective use of technology for competitive advantage with an investment limited to 0.4 percent."

Those sentiment are echoed by Fred Brunnell, professor of Applied Conservation Biology at the University of British Columbia's forestry faculty.

"We need to value knowledge for knowledge's sake. Had we done that, we would have a research and development culture that sustained knowledge production. Canada would not rank at the bottom of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's list of proportional contributions to research," Brunnell says.

A note of cautious optimism comes from George Weyerhaeuser Jr., chairman of the board of Weyerhaeuser Canada Ltd., and honourary chairman of FORCAST Canada, a national coalition of forest stakeholders from industry, provincial, federal and territorial governments, aboriginal people, environmental organizations and academia.

FORCAST, a non-profit organization, which grew out of a two-year consultative process with the Canadian forest sector, was initiated by the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. Its mandate is to shape the future of forest science and technology management in Canada, set national priorities governing public and private funding and influence forest science and technology research priorities.

"The future of the Canadian forest sector will be strengthened by focused and co-ordinated R&D. FORCAST provides a unique opportunity to shape that future," says Weyerhaeuser.

For the sake of our forest industry which, one way or another, impacts on every British Columbian's life, one sincerely hopes so.