Editor:
My chin dropped when I read that 80 per cent of the proposed cuts in the Sunshine Coast Community Forest need to be exported, because of the lack of sawmill facilities (Coast Reporter, Nov. 16).
In this province where logging has been the number one industry for almost two centuries, we still don't have the capacity to process our own logs, and more than three quarters of the lumber needs to be exported? Adding insult to injury, we not only get environmental degradation, but also do not get the jobs - a perfect lose-lose proposition.
My hunch is that these saw mills did at one point exist, but were closed down because of the economic realities. The one per centers carefully design these economic realities.
The raw log (job) export from this province has doubled in the last two years - this under a government that claims job creation as a number one priority. This province for too long has had a government that has made itself the willing handmaiden of the one per centers. Look what happened to Mitt Romney, who actually took pride in the fact that he made his fortune by closing down American jobs, and would have let go of the automobile industry as well, had he had a chance. He also claimed that job creation was his number one priority.
People may not believe what you say, but they sure believe what you do.
Klaus Blume, Gibsons
